LenovoFlex 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

I was in need of a new laptop because my Macbook Pro was on its last legs. I couldn't justify the expense of a new Mac so I started browsing around and when I read the specs on this laptop, I knew I had to have it. Six hundred bucks for 16 gig of memory, a good keyboard, a touch screen, and a decent amount of processing power? I'm in.I had to wait for a new shipment of these to arrive at Amazon's warehouse. These made the 50 most popular items list in November here on Amazon, so I guess some companies have been buying them at 600 and selling them at 700 or more. (Or they got their own shipments from Lenovo. Who knows?)But when that next shipment came in, I pounced and had my new laptop in a few days. I put the $100 savings toward a 1TB SSD. I cloned the 256G to the new SSD, opened up the case, and swapped the drives. Wasn't too much work and when it powered up, I had four times the disk space that the thing originally came with. (It would be nice if this shipped with some different disk space offerings.)I partitioned the disk into two and put Ubuntu 20 on the second partition. Now it boots into a menu where I can choose between Ubuntu or Windows. Ubuntu does everything I want it to on this laptop (though I haven't found a good solution for implementing the track pad gestures like pinch or stretch.) I don't think the fingerprint reader works, either. But the touchscreen works well on Ubuntu, and I love the keyboard.I switch back and forth. Ubuntu for work and other tasks where Linux is more suitable. Windows is good for some of the games I like. It's a good size, not as small as I expected.One drawback is the screen. Having been used to big bright monitors on my desktop and that Macbook Pro and its retina screen, this laptops screen is comparatively dim. But after a month or more of using it, I no longer see the dimness. So one gets used to it. I guess that and the small SSD size helped get Lenovo to the $700 price point. In the end, I'm okay with that.I'd give it 4.5 stars if possible for the dim screen, but other than that, I love this thing. Runs Windows well, runs Ubuntu well, it's a nice, elegant looking package that's not heavy. And it's a bargain at $700.

TL;DR Overall a very nice laptop, would recommend <$700I'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_tricksFreeBSD 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.

Everything is great, battery life, and so performance.In emulation case for example you can emulate using CEMU games like MK8 at 720p almost perfect 60fps without speed hacks, honestly it was surprising, it doesn't even heat that much but it does make the fan kick in and aren't that loud honestly, it could play games like mgs5 at 48~55fps at mid high settings.I'll recommend changing the ssd nvme to a 1tb at least, other than that the laptop is amazing, the pen is responsive and really useful for art and stuff though I'll probably buy a digital pen with a more rubbery tip cause the one include its kind of... Well hard plastic, still the screen is kind of like glass like a smartphone one so it might be fine and all, something good is that it have fast charging with the included usb type c power cable which is amazingly great, in web search use could give around 10 hours without any battery saving mode.The screen does have some light leaks but is something normal for lcd/ips panels anyway, not a big deal for movie watching honestly.Overall is a 10/10 for emulation gaming and web or office related stuff.