Reviewed in the United States on September 20, 2020
Update 10/7/20: Installed an Intel AX200 wifi card, wifi is now connected when I sign in already instead of having to wait a second or two. Just a bit more reliabillity. Also installed a 1TB 970 EVO (used a TDBT external nvme enclosure and Samsung Migration to clone old drive). The drive speeds seem a little better than the old drive while on battery (old: 1800/900, new: 1800/1800), but you don't get the full speed (3500/2500) unless it's plugged in. There's little functional difference between the three, but the capacity upgrade is still worth it, and it is recommended to go with a better known brand for reliability, as this is the only drive in the machine.
Original: I bought the Flex 5 to upgrade from an old Bay Trail tablet. I primarily used that to read digital comics because with 2GB of RAM and a weak atom CPU, it couldn't do much else. I was about to spend a few benjamins on a random chinese tablet until the Flex 5 went on sale and I made sure to grab it while it was in stock, because I knew it wouldn't last long. I use it in tablet mode most of the time, which makes this a great deal for a 2-in-1, but even if you only use it as a laptop I still think the value proposition is too good to pass up.
In the box you get the laptop, the 60W type-c power adapter (which is great as I can use it for my phone as well), and the 2-button stylus (which comes with a usb holder). Although there is a barrel jack on the laptop for power, the included adapter is type-c, so if you want to use that port while charging, you'll need to find a compatible barrel jack charger from Lenovo. The included stylus is quite nice. It uses a single AAAA battery (included) and has two buttons whose functions can be customized in the Lenovo Pen app and Windows Ink settings. The touchscreen/pen supports I believe 4096 levels of pressure sensitivity, and it has hover detection. The only real knock there is that there is nowhere on the device to store the pen. There is a usb pen holder included, but it fits real tightly into the port, takes up one port, and with the pen covers the other port. Useful for carrying/travel, but not once you actually start using the device (unless you aren't using the usb ports in which case it's just fine!).
Now for the actual laptop itself. The specs are fantastic:
CPU: AMD Ryzen 4500U, 6c/6t, up to 4GHz all-core. On max performance in Windows/AC power, benches around 2400 in Cinebench R20, similar to my desktop's 5820K@4GHz! Of note is that while it's a 15W chip, with max power draw usually 25W, because of Lenovo's efficient cooling they allow it to hit 35W, which is why you'll get better performance out of this laptop than other 4500U laptops, and even get close to 4700U performance at times. Even when pushed, does not make the laptop get too hot to use comfortably. Because it's so powerful and so low power, many tasks can be done without hearing the fan spin up at all, giving the laptop an effectively silent profile when you're just web browsing, reading, or doing other light tasks.
RAM: 16GB DDR4 3200, dual channel. Unfortunately not upgradeable since it's soldered, but 16GB should be plenty for this machine and the speed is a plus.
iGPU: Surprisingly capable, this is what really helps these Ryzen chips shine. While not a gaming laptop, you can certainly play esports titles very well, and even bigger games--GTA V can run at respectable frames at 1080p, and if you're crazy, Red Dead 2 can be played at ~30fps on 720p/low settings. If you don't mind lowering the resolution/settings, or playing at 30fps, you don't have to ask yourself if it will run a game, but how well. That's a big improvement in the iGPU space and at this pricepoint, where you're not likely to get much of a GPU, especially in a 2-in-1.
SSD: 256GB nvme m.2. Speedy drive for sure, gets into Windows in seconds. Have no real issues with this drive, although the size is a little low. Luckily, this part is upgradable, although there's only one single m.2 port and nothing else, so if you choose to upgrade, I would make sure to get at least a 1TB to make it worthwhile.
Screen: 14" 1080p touchscreen, 250nits. I've seen a lot about how this screen has poor color accuracy, and while that may be true, that doesn't stop it from looking really good anyway. You may not be able to do professional color work on it, but in any other use case I think it looks really nice and vibrant. The touchscreen is nice and responsive, and because of how fast this laptop is, I haven't had any lag issues dragging things around or drawing. The pen is nice to use on it as well, although admittedly I'm not an artist so I can't speak too strongly on that topic.
Keyboard/Trackpad: Standard Lenovo keyboard as far as I can tell. Decent travel, not the best typing experience, but I like it. The function shortcut keys are good, they are different on the laptop I received from the product pictures on Amazon. They're more useful though as the Amazon pic shows a webcam toggle button which is useless as the webcam has a built-in privacy shutter. The keys are backlit as well with a couple levels of brightness. The trackpad is nice, it clicks in and supports multi-touch gestures such as pinch-and-drag, and three/four finger gestures, which are customizable. I use those for media controls and task switching, which improves productivity a bit! There is also a fingerprint reader just below the keyboard. This works in Windows Hello and it's quite speedy. It also works while the screen is folded back past 180 degrees, even though the keyboard/trackpad is disabled, so you can still login in tablet mode easily.
Speakers: The speakers are on the sides of the keyboard and a Dolby Audio app is preinstalled. I find that it makes the speakers louder and clearer, so I recommend keeping it on. You'd think the speakers would sound muffled or bad when you lay the keyboard flat on a table (in tablet/stand mode), or when the laptop is closed, but actually you can still hear the sound loud and clear in both situations. It's not an audiophile speaker setup, but it works really well, no complaints here.
Battery: Included is a 52Wh battery. I find that with basic browsing, listening to music, or reading, and medium brightness, you can easily stretch about 8+ hours out of it. If you are running some intensive programs or games using all the power they can, you might get 2-3 hours. The upside is the fast charging from the included Type-C power adapter. The fast charging is real, you can go from 0-full in under 2 hours. It also sips power in sleep mode, so if you only use it for a couple hours a day, you can get a few days of use before having to recharge, and even then you only need an hour or two to charge.
I/O: The USB-C port is sadly not thunderbolt, and does not do display out. But it does do power delivery and data. Otherwise, there's HDMI, 2 USB-A ports, an SD slot (not spring-loaded, and SD cards stick out quite a bit, I recommend a low profile adapter such as the PiDrive for keeping microSD cards in the slot), and a headphone/mic combo jack. Would have loved to see a hinged ethernet port, but otherwise, the port selection is quite good, especially if you consider this laptop versus dedicated tablets which usually have anemic I/O. I'll also throw in here that the included network card is upgradable. I had some connectivity issues until I installed later realtek drivers that I had to get from their website. Afterwards it's been fine. However, if you would like to take advantage of Wifi 6 or BT 5, you can pick up an Intel AX200 card for around $20 and install that.
Bugs/Fixes: There aren't many issues, but there are a few things to know about. The fan does spin up quite noisily while you set up Windows and install updates for the first time. This isn't really a bug, but something I've seen in other reviews. Some things will run in the background so you won't know Windows is still working, but after the first hour or two, things should be back to normal and fan noise should pipe down. There is an audio stutter problem where occasionally the audio cuts for maybe a half second. The fix there is to disable Dolby audio in the Dolby app, although I find that this reduces audio quality/loudness, so I leave it on. The little stutters aren't frequent and while a little annoying, they're not a big deal. Hopefully this gets fixed in a future software patch. Recently, after a Windows update, the fingerprint reader stopped working. I went into Device Manager and disabled/enabled it, afterwards it has been working fine. The Onekey battery function (lets you check the battery by hitting a key on the keyboard while the machine is off) has had issues that prevents it from booting, so I recommend keeping it off.
Overall, the features and specs packed in the box for $599 makes this laptop an absolute steal. If you're not wanting to shell out for a laptop with a dedicated GPU, I don't think you'll have any regrets purchasing this machine!
