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

Quick update 11/20/21: Cord died, meaning, it wouldn't power/communicate w/laptop. As directed by seller, it was under warranty and I called Lenovo. Turned out to be an easy fix that I want to share with everyone. They said it was because it was overcharged and that caused static interference with the connection. The solution was to turn off the laptop, unplug the cord from the laptop, then turn on the laptop and hold in the 'on' button for 30 seconds. Then re-plug the cord into it. That worked. Note: For me, the reason of overcharging was not the case; I had been using the laptop while reclining in bed for hours and only had 2 hrs of juice left. What I do know is that static cling does occur with my blankets (I'd seen the sparks before) - so I think that was the true culprit, caused the same problem w/fix. FYI. Original Post: I like the weight of it; makes It feel like a better quality product. Nice design. I love how fast it starts up, shuts off, the battery life, the touchscreen feature and Pen. Pen comes with a pdf manual lol. I’ve been used to a smaller keyboard space and frankly I bought an HP a couple years ago and I couldn’t stand it because it was too big and felt cheap underneath my fingers. This one doesn’t. Sometimes the screen (web) looks a little blurry and some of my screenshots. My docs & 99% of the web are fine. I feel it’s a great buy $$ wise. very happy.

I purchased this laptop from Amazon. The computer has a premium feel even though the case is plastic. I also use a Microsoft Surface Pro 7 with an Intel i5-1035G4 chip (4 cores) and 8GB of RAM. This machine has an AMD Ryzen 4500U chip (6 cores) and 16GB of RAM. Both are current generation chips. As others have pointed out, the box includes a pen. One negative is that there is no storage place for the pen like the more expensive thinkpad models. There is a clip but using it will block off access to some of the slots. Based on Geekbench 4, this machine scored about 10% better than the MSP in multi-core score but MSP scored about 10% better in single-core score than this machine. Although there is a normal round hole for the power supply, the power brick from the box uses USB-C connector. So you cannot use this slot when you are charging the machine. The screen is nice enough to use indoor but likely not bright enough for outside usage. Given that MSP is almost 4k while this is 1080p in resolution, the MSP is better. Nevertheless, for a 14" screen, I think a 1080P screen is sufficient. The Lenovo Vantage software allows you to choice the performance level which affects battery life and how often the fan is on. I really hate fan noise. The machine does activate the fan quite often. However, I learned from a youtube video that when it is on battery power, the fan came on less often. Based on my experiment, this is true. There are minimal bloatwares to uninstall. Although I expect only 12 months warranty, it seems that I have 14 months. There is a fingerprint sensor but I did not use it. The camera works as expected. I have read some complaints about the WiFi chip is not that highest quality. I did not observe any issues with it. There are also come complaints about the RAM soldered on the motherboard. Since I do not plan to do any grade as I think 16GB is sufficient for the next few years, it does not matter to me. This only comes with Windows 10 Home, so no bitlocker to encrypt the drive but one can use open source alternatives. So free. Overall, the only real negative is fan noise but given the price and other positive, I view this a very good product. Edit (Update): After using it for while, I observe that the wifi does not have as good of a range as my MSP. Also the warranty is indeed 1 year. At the beginning, it seems that I had 14 months, I guess the registration took some time to hit the system.

Overall I am simply amazed at what Lenovo has accomplished at this price point. I bought this in tandem with a new 2020 Apple Macbook Air and am returning the Air, not because it's not a great device, but it's simply not better (in fact it's not quite as good in terms of overall power and a healthy balance of office work + lite gaming, which is my use case) at $400 more ($300 as of this review) for with half the ram. A few things to note since they seem to come up in some of the other reviews. It does seem like like some buyers are seeing certain quality control issues, which is too bad, but I am very happy to report I have not had them. Touchpad: The touchpad on my unit is solid - not loose and no wiggling or movement at all unless you purposefully click it. I know exactly what others are talking about though as I formerly owned a Lenovo 730s which had that issue. It's not a big deal and you get used to it, but it does make you feel like the touchpad isn't quite as high quality as the rest of the machine. Screen: I have the same experience as most here. I am writing this review from the Flex 5 in a well lit room (with light directly overhead) and the screen looks great and is certainly bright enough, but is also maxed out. At 250 nits, there are relatively few occasions in which the screen *won't* be maxed out, but that's fine! Another note on the screen - IPS "bleed" is a well known phenomenon, and I am very happy to report the screen on my unit has very little - in fact it's so hard to even notice unless you know what you're looking for that I couldn't capture an actual image of it. No dead pixels on this unit, and overall I am very happy with it given the price. Performance See all the other reviews - the Ryzen 4500 with iGPU is simply fantastic for everything from low-power office work and streaming videos to lite gaming. It's amazing. Buy a Ryzen machine. Battery You can see my use case is essentially office work (lots of Word docs open at once, sometimes excel, Edge (sorry, Chrome) with usually 6-10 tabs, and Slack, and I'm seeing around 7-8 hours of battery life. Really not bad. Webcam The 720p webcam...isn't amazing. But it's enough for Zoom calls and who honestly wants an ultra high resolution cam these days (none of us are looking our best ;D). That said, my ONE quality control issue is that the actual sensor is *slightly* off behind the protective glass of the screen. See the first image I've included. This does not affect the camera functionality in any way - it doesn't block the image or anything - and the well-designed privacy slider works perfectly (see second image). Keyboard If you've used a recent Lenovo keyboard - this is the same. They are excellent and I only wish they required a *little* more pressure to press (maybe I just have heavy hands). Otherwise the keyboard is perfect, without issue, and Lenovo has figured out a smart modified system for the function keys that allow some of the most commonly used things (like Windows settings, calculator, screenshot and lock screen) to work with a single tap. Sound, brightness and other common settings are there, too. Sound: Haven't experienced any of the sound popping issues others have - either through the speakers or headphones. No issues at all. Sounds isn't incredible, but it's good. All in all - I can't believe this is $600. Buy it - you won't regret it.

First off, this computer is pretty great. It's fast, has good storage, I like the trackpad, it's got decent sound, and decent brightness for indoor use only. However like most laptops, it seems like finding the perfect one can be tricky. I went through three. It's not a "Lenovo" problem or this particular model problem, so much as a laptop problem. I've had the same issues with multiple brands. The first one had screen separation at the top left corner. It popped out of the case. It seems like this isn't the sturdiest design in that regard, but we'll see. Returned. The second one had funky colors and did not get bright enough. I tried calibrating the colors for hours. Nothing worked. Everything was just off and the screen didn't get as bright as my first one did. Returned. The third one I bought used. At this point I was done with paying the full price, but I liked the computer if I could just find a good one. This one isn't perfect either, it has the right side of the screen slightly darker than the left side. I'm sensitive to these things and I can notice. Some people won't or can't. Probably a bulb out. But I bought this at a great price used so I'll live with it. This one also had a sound issue. It just wasn't loud enough. But, it turns out this was a result of a bad reset and not the PC itself. A proper reset restored the sound. FOR THOSE HAVING LOW SOUND: Click on the windows button at the bottom left of your screen. Scroll and make sure "DOLBY" is an option to click on. It wasn't for mine. I had to reset my computer fully and then the drivers I needed were installed and the sound is much better. If it is there, then sorry can't help you. I know I'm sounding really negative, but I feel it's important to know possible defects when you are paying this much money. I'm happy with my laptop, I think it's pretty amazing and I have no other complaints. PROS: The sound is good for a laptop. It's not great, but it does the job. Make sure Dolby drivers are installed. The brightness is good for a laptop. It's not great. You won't be able to use it outdoors very well but indoors it has good brightness. It's fast. It loads up in mere seconds. It takes having several browser tabs and programs open to see a slowdown. But my use is not very typical, I really put it to the limits. Resetting the browser fixes any slowdown. Battery is good. I can get a few hours out of it. But I don't use it off battery very much. Back lit key board is great. Nice large keys. No 10 key though. Trackpad is fine. I recommend disabling everything except two finger scrolling. Settings. Devices. Trackpad. Turn off everything else. No Graphics card so this is no gaming PC but it will play your non next gen games well enough on low settings. Solid build for the most part, but be on the look out for screen separation. Comes with a neat pen. These sell for at least $30 bucks individually. But I won't personally use it, but I could always sell it if I wanted. Not too heavy, but too heavy to use this as a tablet where you have to hold it in your hands. It has a massive battery and batteries have a lot of weight. But, flipping it and sitting it up to use it as a tablet works. For the price the specs and features are great. Just be aware that this sells on Amazon occasionally new for $599. Just keep an eye on it and you might get lucky, Amazon lists a few for that price now and again. They also sell used units for even less than that if you are patient. CONS It's important to make sure your PC has no defects. Could be louder, could be brighter, like most laptops. Comes only with a USB C charger and not a separate charger, which means you can't use the USB C port other than to charge the computer unless you buy another charger. Check for screen separation. Colors and brightness seem hit and miss. No new wifi 6. Just the standard wifi 5. The wifi card just isn't that great. If you are a decent distance from the router, do yourself a favor and buy a wifi 6 card for less than $20 on Amazon (You also need a wifi 6 router). It's pretty easy to install, just youtube the directions. You can do it in 10 minutes.

This laptop has A LOT going for it at under $600. It's not a no compromise unit like you'd expect for double the price, but this unit has a lot to like. First the things I like about this unit: It comes with 16 GB of DDR4 memory, while other laptops in the price range are still trying to get away with the same amount of memory that came in mid range laptops 10 years ago. The screen is IPS and touch enabled. It's not a very bright screen and the color gamut is on the small side, but it's reasonably well calibrated out of the box and is bright enough for indoor use. It comes with a stylus. I don't know how much use anyone will get out of it, but it's in the box for those that want to do some drawing on the touch interface. The CPU is very good. In this price range you'll usually get one of the older gen CPUs or a very slow intel i5. The 4500u in this unit has 6 full cores and they're fast and efficient. It comes with nvme storage. It's not uncommon in the sub $600 range to still find a HDD instead of an SDD. The SDD in this isn't cutting edge, or anything, but when put together with the rest of the package it helps support the overall balanced good performance of this unit. Now for the things I didn't like about this unit: The charger it comes with plugs into the USB C port. I'm not sure why Lenovo is doing this since the unit also has a barrel plug. Just include a barrel plug charger so that people can have the USB C port open for peripheral use while the charger is plugged in. This is probably the most annoying thing about this laptop. The laptop also doesn't have any optical drive. It's becoming standard and expected that units don't have optical drives anymore, and it probably contributes to keeping the size and weight down on the unit, but I'm someone that still likes the idea of getting an optical drive in a laptop. This laptop doesn't have an ethernet port. This is probably the second most annoying part after the USB C charger, since the base of the unit is thick enough to have an ethernet port. I picked up a $12 tp-link USB 3 to ethernet adapter to go with the unit, but it probably would have added less than $5 to the bill of materials cost for this unit to sell it with an ethernet port built in. With the pros and cons noted, I'll add that the unit has a pretty solid feel for being housed in plastic, and is very snappy in use. The keyboard is decent, and the overall usability of the unit is very good. For the price I'd say the level of hardware included makes it a good value that probably only lags behind laptops costing twice as much in very minor ways for most users.

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 really wanted to like this laptop. It has great specs at an attractive price point. I set it up and shortly thereafter I noticed the camera wasn't detected. Also noticed that laptop wouldn't respond from sleep and the fan was going crazy about half the time. Went though troubleshooting steps, then contacted Lenovo, Microsoft and Amazon for support. Microsoft gave me some things to try - all to no avail. Lenovo support was a joke. The number listed on the support site didn't support this model. I input a web ticket and they indicated 30 minutes callback. Four days later...not a peep from them. Finally contacted Amazon support. They did troubleshooting and planned to connect me to Lenovo support, until they figured out that Lenovo doesn't have a support number for this model. Ended up processing a return. I would pause before purchasing a product from Lenovo. I have a Thinkpad for work which is falling apart and my support experience on a consumer device makes me think twice about replacing it with a Lenovo. UPDATE: After putting in a support ticket I did finally receive a call back from Lenovo after FOUR days (not 30 minutes). The woman spoke barely decipherable English and told me that there was a slide to open the shutter over the camera (really?). I told her I was aware of that and she searched for another "solution." Realizing that this was going to go nowhere fast, I told her I had returned the laptop to the seller and she said she would close the ticket. I still had the laptop in my possession and decided to follow through with the return. Got a new laptop and within a year the camera and microphone stopped working. System reboots randomly with no rhyme or reason. I have attempted to troubleshoot though driver updates, review of the event logs, but the system doesn't recognize the camera or microphone hardware, and the rebooting is still unexplained. Occasionally the screen will go black when using it, and a Win+CTRL+B grahpics card reset only sometimes fixes it. I read that there's possibly an issue with Lenovo and the AMD chipset, but I would avoid purchasing this laptop. My ThinkPads are rock solid, but this Ideapad is a POS and I want to get rid of it.

There are tons of reviews raving about how good this is and.. I agree! Here are my own insights into this device: 1. Great battery performance. Seriously this thing packs about 6 or 7 hours battery life under light use. Obviously if you are gaming or doing other CPU intensive tasks the battery will drain faster but for everyday usage this is perfect. 2. 16 GBs of RAM is essential. I cannot stress this enough. This is one of the only laptops (if not the only one) with 16 gigs of RAM at this price-point. For college use this is fantastic! This means you can have multiple web pages, Word, PowerPoint and other utility programs open and this thing (coupled with the fantastic Ryzen 5 4600 chip) will devour those tasks for you. You can probably find more "premium" laptops with better screens and storage at about a 200/250 price increase but for college use those things are not really essential. For more storage simply buy and external HD or swap the SSD. 3. Speaking of the screen, this one is just fine. Others reviewers say it's way too dim, 250 nits is not enough, it sucks outdoors, but imo this isn't really an issue. I assume most of your work will be done indoors anyways, so a screen with those minor drawbacks should not really be an issue for most. Indoors the screen is bright and crystal clear, and if your upgrading from a laptop that came out 4 or 5 years ago, (like me) the screen will probably look amazing to you. 4. CPU/GPU: it's Ryzen what else could you ever ask for? The new mobile processors are fantastic, energy efficient, and offer great performance at lower cost than Intel. Why would you use Intel at any price-point when Ryzen has an equivalent at a cheaper cost to your wallet? As for the GPU, this comes with integrated Vega 6 graphics which I was surprised as to how good they performed Temper your expectations of course, this won't run AAA games at high or even medium settings, but that's not where these laptops excel. For indie games, Civ 6, Sims 4 and games of similar graphical intensity this laptop will perform amazingly. Currently playing Rimworld, and FM2020 and the performance has been excellent. Can't really think of any major drawbacks. For what I paid this laptop offers anything I could need and doesn't break my wallet like other devices would. This is absolutely the best sub 600 dollar laptop in the market right now. Update 8/5/20 POTENTIAL HUGE ISSUE So after a month of having this I found an issue that has not been mentioned by anyone else in the review section. The laptop has an option that allows it to be turned on by flipping the screen open without pressing any bottons. I don't remember if it was on by default, or if I turned on myself, but DO NOT USE THIS FEATURE! The laptop has an issue where any slight movement to the screen will register as lid open. This includes slight touches to top section of the device, if you press the lid down slighty, or if you carry it arround in a bag or backpack were it will constantly come in contact with other objects (books, binders etc). YOU do not want this on. If your laptop turns on and you have it in a close down space it will heat up. It won't happen quickly, but after an hour or so of being fully powered, with little air flow the machine will start to heat up. It happened to me but thankfully I caught it before it burned out the system. TURN OFF THIS SETTING. Go to the Lenovo vantage application>power settings>flip on. Turn this option off. This is a structural design issue with the laptop, the setting is probably fine in other devices. This could be a deal breaker for many, otherwise this laptop has excellent performance for this price-point.

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 ...

Me sorprendió Lenovo, es una muy buena computadora, la pantalla se ve excelente, el sonido es bueno, tiene Dolby. En cuanto a la pantalla touch, todo bien, puedes usarla con la pluma o con los dedos. El procesador es excelente, apesar de que no tiene una tarjeta gráfica corre Word Of War Z sin problema, se calienta un poco cuando juego pero es algo que se controlo comprando un ventilados pequeño. Lo único que me afecta es el disco duro, es muy poco espacio y solo le cabe un disco duro compacto que son mucho más caros, pero si le quieres invertir vale la pena.

the laptop is great, the display looks sharp and looks great, the keyboard is a little too flat and the keys are not so ergonomic. thats one main drawback. other than that the battery life is great and lightweight makes it easy to carry it around.