Lenovo Flex 5 14 Laptop, 14.0 FHD Touch Display, AMD Ryzen 5 5500U, 16GB RAM, 256GB Storage, AMD Radeon Graphics, Digital Pen, Windows 10H

I use this laptop when I travel, mainly for checking email, weather, and watching movies. I dont use it for anything that needs extensive processing power, so I cant speak to that, but it suits my needs very well.

This laptop is decent but there’s nothing inherently great about it.

THE GOOD:

PROS:

For home use only, size and weight are excellent; not completely set up yet; dont use touch screen much; dont know yet about battery life; live with spouse , so dont need fingerprint feature, although it might be useful for some.

First off, great price from seller conputersUSA. Screen looks great in 1080p, touch screen works nice and the amd is plenty enough power for my sons gaming needs on steam. Perfect size and flexibility

So the first thing I noticed when setting it up, was how fast it went to the windows setup screen on initial boot. Being someone who fixes and builds PCs and laptops I really wasnt expecting that. Knew right there that it must be that 5500U rockin it. The laptop comes preinstalled with Windows 10 20H2 which is the latest version as of this review date, so that is a plus. The screen was a bit dim at first and I had noticed in the reviews that another said it was too dim. After adjusting brightness under Windows mobility, it looked much much better, though could honestly be just a bit brighter but not horrible. The colors were off a bit and I had to do some calibrating in Photoshop settings to account for this. I noticed during Windows updates that the cooling fan would ramp up quite often & is somewhat noisy. This ramping up concerned me a bit so I did some additional testing. I tested both Heaven and Cinebench while running HWMonitor in the back ground. The results I got were 38c at idle and 94c under semi-heavy load. I wasnt too impressed by either the idle temp or the high temp. I did see a bit of throttling occur because of this. So while you CAN game on this quite nicely, Id honestly suggest a cooling pad underneath for a little extra protection. Tablet mode/flipping the screen works quite nice, and as I stated in the headline, this is great for Photoshop. My daughter, being a digital artist, uses a pen tablet at her desk to draw on, so I gave this one to her. She was absolutely tickled pink to have a Windows 10 laptop/tablet to run Photoshop on while on the go. Going to hand down her old laptop to her aunt. Overall, I think this is a pretty Bad-azz laptop with alot of power and alot of punch, but because of the thermal issues Im seeing, Im going to deduct 1 star. The thermal issues I saw do not at all make this a bad laptop and do not reflect what one would commonly see with casual use. I simply took it to a higher thermal point on purpose for informational purposes. So even though I am deducting 1 star for my own personal reasons, I absolutely would still recommend this laptop if you are looking for a flip type tablet with lots of processing power on the go as long as you dont mind an occasional ramp up of the cooling fan during heavy loads.

The laptop is decent albeit somewhat flimsy, but overall the worst part is the implementation of the stylus holder. Not only does the holder clip open constantly under its own tension, but it plugs into an actual usb port. Its point of weakness is the structural integrity of a usb port, and it breaks than you break your USB port as well.

This Ideapad Flex 5 is a very powerful laptop/tablet convertible for the price. It offers tons of flexibility and options in a nice looking system that will satisfy most users. The use of a Ryzen 5  5500U is a welcome addition. I would have liked to see the more efficient Ryzen 5 5600U based on Zen 3 instead but that would have raised the price some. There are definitely a few issues that I have with this laptop, most notably, the screen and USB-C port. If these two issues could be addressed, this laptop would be a sure-fire winner.

Managed to get it for $600, what a steal for the price !