Lenovo Flex 5 14 2-in-1 Laptop, 14.0" FHD Touch Display, AMD Ryzen 5 4500U, 16GB RAM, 256GB Storage, AMD Radeon Graphics, Digital Pen Included, Win 10

TL;DR Overall a very nice laptop, would recommend <$700 I've had this laptop for about 6 months, and I wanted to share my thoughts on it. CPU: The CPU in this laptop is excellent. For daily web browsing honestly this CPU is a bit overkill. Unlike on some laptops, this laptop has built in power profiles that let you increase the processor's TDP in order to get better performance, which allows it to overtake some of the cheaper 4700U based laptops (albeit with more power usage). Using the "Extreme Performance" power profile, the CPU will use about 30-35W continuously and has a max burst power usage of 45W. Max temps in Extreme Performance mode are generally around 95C, and in "Intelligent Cooling" mode (basically Balanced Power:Performance) they are around 75C. GPU: The iGPU does fine. It's enough to let you play some older games at decent framerates, and maybe some new titles with some convincing. Performance is pretty standard for a 4500U based laptop. RAM: This laptop features dual channel 3200MHz DDR4 RAM, which the Ryzen CPU is quite happy with. However, the RAM is soldered and there is no way to expand it. SSD: Mine came with a 256GB NVMe SSD (Union Memory 8SSSS0W761B1Z1CH05X0XH0). While this isn't going to win any awards, its decently fast and gets the job done. If you want to, the SSD in this laptop is replaceable with a 2280 or shorter, but unless you want to either buy or 3D print a SSD extension, this laptop will take 2280 and 2242 drives out of the box. WiFi/BT: The internet wasn't very helpful in identifying what WiFi/BT card this comes with, but it is either a RTL8822BE or RTL8822CE, the only noticeable difference between these 2 cards is one supports BT 4.2, while the other supports BT 5. Based off of the description on this Amazon listing, its probably the RTL8822BE. While I kinda wish this laptop came with a WiFi 6 card, it is swappable and an AX210 only costs about $20. I do not believe there is a WiFi adapter whitelist in the BIOS either so any wireless adapter should work fine as long as it is an M.2 E key card. Screen: It's okay. With only 250 nits of brightness, I wouldn't recommend it if you plan on using this outside often. The hinges are just about stiff enough to not have the screen violently shake while typing, but also soft enough to be able to open with just a single hand. Touch: The touchscreen is probably my favorite part of this laptop. Although it only has 4096 pressure levels, it is plenty to write on and is probably enough to sketch. The touchscreen feels decent to use and this laptop comes with a pen that takes 1 AAAA battery (1 is included), which also feels decent to use. The laptop also feels quite nice to use in tablet mode. Battery: I usually end up getting around 8 hours or so under typical usage. There probably is some room for improvement but 8 hours is already enough for me and I don't want to sacrifice features. Keyboard: The keyboard feels okay. As far as I know it uses the standard scissor mechanism with rubber domes. The keyboard also has a backlight with multiple brightness levels. Touchpad: The touchpad is decent. It supports gestures, and has a left, middle and right click. The middle click is something I quite enjoy. Chassis: The chassis feels very nice for ABS plastic. It has a nice finish to it that makes it feel surprisingly premium. IO: This laptop has a DC barrel jack, type C PD, HDMI port, 3.5mm combo jack, 2 USB 3 ports and a half length SD card slot. This laptop comes with a USB Type C charger (very nice). The type C port can act both to charge and as a standard USB 3 port with an adapter. I am not sure if this port supports video out, as I don't have anything to test it with and Google gives me mixed results. The laptop seems to be able to charge off of basically any PD capable adapter, however lower power adapters will make the CPU throttle down to 400MHz. Audio Out: The speakers are upwards firing and sound okay for laptop speakers. The built in DAC definitely won't replace an external DAC, but for a laptop its pretty good. It sounds decent and provides up to 32 bit audio at 48khz sampling rate. It's output power is a little weak, but it can still drive 50 ohm headphones without a problem. The HDMI audio out supports 32 bit 192 khz audio. Audio In: The internal microphone sounds okay but picks up a lot of noise, both in the electrical sense and in the background sense. Typing and clicking on the trackpad are about 2/3 as loud as my voice is. Serviceability: Pop the back panel off and you have access to basically everything. A screen replacement seems to be pretty standard in terms of difficulty. Included OS: My memory isn't too great for this part since uninstalling the included OS was the 2nd thing I did. However from what I remember it was Windows 10 Home, and the bloatware was okay. It mostly came with Lenovo stuff for the laptop. Other OS Support: Linux support on this laptop is amazing, as long as you are running kernel 5.9 or newer. The laptop does not work properly at all in kernels 5.6 or older. Distros that I know include a new enough kernel and are for normal desktop usage are Ubuntu 21.04 (no stable release as of this review), Debian Bullseye (also not released yet), and basically all Arch Linux derivatives (Manjaro Linux is highly recommended by me, especially for this laptop). If you are going to boot Linux, make sure you are on the newest BIOS as older BIOSs have issues suspending. I highly recommend checking out this page if you want to tinker with this laptop on Linux (I did not have any of the mentioned issues that are on this page). https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Lenovo_IdeaPad_5_14are05#Tips_and_tricks FreeBSD based OSs boot, however are currently missing drivers in 12.x such as for the touchscreen, touchpad and WiFi/BT. Other Notes: The AMD PSP is disableable on this laptop, which is a bit nice. There also exists a patch that you can apply to the BIOS for this laptop to unlock a bunch of stuff, including some base clock overclocking (this of course voids your warranty). Check out CodeHusky's video for more information on that. This BIOS mod does require a SOIC8 clip as the stock firmware flashing utility does not accept the modded BIOS file.

I recently bought this laptop (a week ago) and it is truly a dream! Editing pictures on Photo shop and Affinity Photo has been an absolute breeze! No lagging, no glitching, no super long load times. This little laptop has been able to handle just about every task I've thrown at it so far. I was able to edit a small clip through Adobe Premiere Rush with no problems at all. I then went on to see how well FL Studio would operate on it, and I was not disappointed in the slightest. I was able to seamlessly add tracks and play with the drum kits and synths with no issues in performance. Now granted, I haven't done anything too intensive on any of these apps just yet, I've really just been doing small test runs... but so far so good! DaVinci Resolve also loaded well and the playback was smooth. However, it did freeze up twice after having the application up for about 40 minutes to an hour.. I was adding a few visual effects such as color correction and trimming down a few clips. I don't know what to think of this just yet, because these were really all simple quick tests but I will be back to update this review after it's been a few more weeks and I've actually made real attempts to utilize each program on a more in depth level. The download speeds are fast and the battery life is long lasting as well. This laptop is sleek and the keyboard is easy to type on. The laptop's track pad has a stiff click, which I admire very much. It's not mushy like my Google Chromebook. The touch screen is responsive and I've even managed to draw a few illustrations on Windows Paint 3D. The fingerprint scanner reads my finger well too, which inevitably makes logging into my computer a fairly quick process. I am EXTREMELY satisfied and thankful that Lenovo released such a well rounded laptop with modern tech features for such a reasonable price. Not too mention is has a premium and durable feel to it as well. This is easily a rival to the 2020 Macbook Air... and I say that loosely because there's really no competition at all when you compare the performance to price ratio in contrast to the Air 2020. I love it!

Solid laptop. No complaints so far. Use it everyday for browsing the net, sending emails, watching videos, video and voice calls etc. Bluetooth enabled so can connect many devices to it such as headphones and smartphone. Touch screen and finger pad are responsive and I like the back lit keyboard option. Fan noise is barely noticeable and remains really quiet. Laptop does not seem to get hot. Battery life is average. If using laptop out and about where a wall socket is not available to charge, I would recommend investing in a laptop power bank with at least 65 watts. Overall happy with my purchase and would recommend to anyone who wants a reliable functioning laptop for general use. I hope it continues to work great and I don't run into any problems in the future, as sending it back to America for warranty claims would be a hassle considering I live in Australia. Lenovo has offices in Australia but I am unsure if warranty claims are covered here for American laptops.

After month off use or less the camera is broken, can't be detected anymore, the rotation of the screen doesn't work as well. With seller for repair. Edit: Seller replaced the broken product with the new Lap Top. It took some time but they did what they promised, thanks to brand manager Mr. Chandan .I will test it for a next month and update product review.

I love this laptop for the value it has, my only complaint is there's no good place to put the stylus besides the stupid USB pen holder but its not that big of a problem if you have a laptop bag.

You'll need to be able to do self-support if you buy this ... Overall the machine is fast. 16G RAM is fantastic. AMD Ryzen 5 cpu is no worse than the i5. The sound of this laptop is fantastic, one of the best in it's class ... Have bought it for about a month and there's been 1 weird problem though, quite a major one ... Recently the machine became very very slow when plugged in the power supply. During unplug/on battery, it's a breeze ... Have checked all settings and researched on web but still not much help. Finally resetting the Windows 10 (keeping user data) has resolved the problem. Have since reinstalled back all user apps one by one with 2 days in-between for testing. [Update Oct 15] Just to add, only thing "not too good" is that the screen is relatively dim; not bright enough. Generally it's not a problem when you spend most of your time indoor. But for some night-scenes in movies/dramas etc, it's a strain to watch ... Can't imagine how it could work in bright outdoor environment ...

I saw some slightly frightening reviews about this laptop, like most products online. I can confirm they were all wrong- this laptop is one of the best I've ever used, and feels on par with my $1500+ laptops or better in some aspects! I split up my review into sections about the laptop, if you're interested or unsure about a specific part of the laptop. Keyboard: Very responsive, thin, keyboard. Feels similar to the very expensive butterfly keyboard found on newer macbooks (awesome value for money here). Backlighting is very useful, and easy to turn on and off, only downside is that there is no dedicated number pad. I'm usually very picky about keyboards, but I find this one amazing. I'd rate the keyboard 10/10. Camera: One drawback to the laptop is the Camera, which is very pale, and doesn't capture skin tone accurately at all. Although there are no built in camera settings to be found on Windows 10, a quick fix is to download Skype, and use the built in Camera Settings in-app that let you change hue, brightness, and most importantly, saturation. You might be thinking: "that's a bad fix, I don't use Skype", but for one reason or another, the camera settings in Skype apply to the system camera, so any changes will apply to any video meet service (zoom, google meet, etc). Based on this simple fix, I'd rate the camera a 7.5/10. Nothing to write home about, but does the job well. Screen: I saw that some people were picky about colour accuracy, which I didn't find to be a problem. It might be slightly less accurate then many very expensive laptops, but at this price point (with an IPS anti glare display), its amazing. Bezels are also very think on top and on the sides. I'd rate the screen 9/10. Touchpad: The touchpad is a bit of a downside for me, as I prefer a firmer touchpad. It's clicky, if you're into that, but also very responsive if you're not. I'd rate the touchpad 7.5/10. Specs / Performance: Absolutely. Amazing. You can't go wrong with this new Ryzen processor (4000 series). It's faster than any comparable processor at this price point, or even well above it (faster than my i7 and i5 10th gen intel processors). 16GB of RAM was more than enough, and again, above what you would normally get at this price point (8-12GB). The integrated AMD radeon graphics worked pretty well for me- certainly not as good as an NVIDEA dedicated graphics card, but good enough for medium gaming. At this price point, you can't get anything better by a long shot. I'd rate spec / performance 9.5/10. Cooling: Last but not least, a very important aspect on every laptop. I read some stories about overheating in the reviews, but I'm happy to mention that I haven't experienced any issues with cooling or fan noise. The fan can only be SLIGHTLY heard when running higher end gaming (which can be highly expected on a laptop), and only slightly heats up when running higher end gaming. I'm happy to report that *almost* none of the heat is conveyed through the keyboard / upper, but comes out the sides and the back. I'd rate cooling a 9.5/10. Touch screen and pen: I personally don't use these 2 features, but when testing them, they performed about the same as my iPad Pro in drawing, and handwriting. The screen might get some fingerprints if you're using it as a tablet though. The pen itself doesn't feel too premium, just some higher quality plastic with 2 buttons, but the ballpoint definitely isn't cheap, as it feels really nice when writing or drawing. I'd rate the touch screen and pen an 8/10. Build quality + hinges: I found the build quality to be very similar to very expensive laptops that cost over $1500. The finish is a metal, but almost slightly grippy / rubberized texture. It feels very premium, and definitely looks much better aesthetically than regular plastic on a cheaper laptop. The hinges are very sturdy, and are made out of a sleek finish metal, which seem to be built at a high expense by Lenovo. I personally don't flip it around very much, but if I did, I'd imagine that the hinges would last a very long time, as they're very high quality. The laptop looks and feels great, I'd mistake it for a very high end laptop any day of the week. I'd rate the build quality + hinges a 9/10. Some negatives about the laptop: -Like mentioned in some reviews, the warranty is a US warranty, so if you'd have any issues, you'd have to ship it to the US to get fixed (only an issue if you're in Canada), but it is extendable+upgrade able, and came with a 15% off discount on warranty extensions or upgrades. -Ports: might not be enough for some people, but definitely covers the minimum / average that most people would use. One downside is that the included charger is USB-C, rather than the dedicated charging port charger. Haven't found it to be an issue, as most of my accessories are regular USB. Conclusion: 100% buy this laptop if you're in a price range of 800-1000+. It feels very premium in almost every sense, from screen, to build quality, to performance. The value is unparalleled in 2020, much better than any dell Inspiron or Acer at this price. I hope this review was helpful, as it took me a bit of time to write, but I like when a product has a super detailed review, so I hope this will help some people who weren't sure about the laptop!