The Lenovo Flex 3 enters into the competition with the promise of being an ideal desktop replacement laptop with more to offer compared to its competitors in the same category. The convertible laptop is fast enough to keep up with your everyday tasks, heavy work, multimedia purposes, personal use; but the dated design holds from making it to our best laptops for college list. Powered by the new Intel Core i5 processor, 8GB of RAM and hybrid hard drive gives it the power to handle multitasking with ease.
The 360-degree hinge design allows you to flip the screen within a second to 360 degrees. As such, you have a number of viewing modes from being in laptop, tent, stand, and tablet modes. The Lenovo flex comes with a full HD display for a variety of multimedia tasks on the 15.6″ full HD screen enhanced by Intel HD Graphics.
Lenovo Flex 3 Specs
- 2.4GHz Intel Core i7-5500U Dual-Core CPU
- 8GB of DDR3L RAM
- 14″ Multi-Touch IPS Display
- 1920 x 1080 Screen Resolution
- Integrated Intel HD Graphics 5500
- 1TB 5400 rpm HDD with 8GB SSD Cache
- 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0
- 360° Hinge
- Laptop, Stand, Tent, & Tablet Mode
- Windows 10 Home
Design
The Lenovo Flex 3 comes with Windows 10 pre-installed, meaning you can use it straight out of the best and experience the newest Operating System in town from Microsoft that promises to change your touchscreen user experience. Let’s have a closer look at this system before making our conclusions on its eligibility and superiority in this category to make it the editor’s choice.
The system measures 15.16 x 0.87 x 10.04 inches (LxHxW) and weighs in at just 4.6 pounds with a sleek design. The lightweight makes it convenient for road users as it also offers up to 4 hours of battery life on a single charge.
The Lenovo Flex 3 is equipped with a 15.6-inch Full HD LED-Backlit Antiglare Touch display that delivers rich colors and brilliant visuals for your movies, pictures, and videos in 1920 x 1080 resolution and 16:9 aspect ratio. As such you can play your 1080p resolution videos without the worry of downsizing them.
It has its image quality enhanced by Intel HD Graphics 5500 Series which provides smooth graphics performance and stunning visuals for multimedia capabilities. To add the icing to the cake, it has Dolby Home Theater technology-enhanced audio quality with built-in 1.5W stereo Speakers which delivers rich audio and immersive sound experience for your music and movies.
Connectivity
Its connectivity options include two USB 3.0 ports and two 2.0 USB ports for connection to your accessories and other peripherals, a 4-in-1 card reader, an audio port, an HDMI output port for displaying images on larger screens, an HD webcam, and an array of microphone jacks.
It also features the latest 802.11A/C wireless technology and Ethernet port which supports up to 1000Mbps for accessing web content, downloading files, and online games. It features Bluetooth 4.0 which makes it easy to sync the device with a smartphone or tablet.
Performance
The Lenovo Flex 3 is powered by an Intel Core i5-5200U that is a medium-level dual-core processor with an ultra-low voltage platform of 5th-generation of Broadwell architecture. The processor clocks at moderate 2.2GHz and there’s a turbo boost taking the clock frequency to 2.7GHz. This makes it ideal for handling heavier tasks for techies and IT professionals or if you have to run programs that require more from the system than a mere web browser.
The notebook comes with 8GB DDR3L memory that is not expandable, however, that is still plenty of memory to run most programs including your picture and video editing projects. In terms of storage, the Flex comes with 1TB space that is enough for your music, videos, and files with a speed of 5400rpm.
We expected a solid-state drive for faster system performance as seen in the 13-3-inch ASUS Zenbook UX305LA, but, all in all, the hard drive can be replaced if you feel the performance is getting sluggish over time. The device wouldn’t be the best friend for a gamer since it lacks the graphics that gamers shop for as it features a slow graphics engine, integrated Intel HD 5500. It only allows one to play several games with moderate resolutions and settings.
For instance, you will get 25FPS with Battlefield 4 if you have medium graphics settings and 720p resolution. GTA 5 will be in a similar, perhaps a bit lower 20FPS range using the same settings. Minecraft should generally have over 30 frames per second, even if you used Full HD resolution.
The Bottom Line
The 15.6-inch Lenovo Flex 3 (80JM002BUS) offers multimode functionality in an attractive chassis, a responsive touchscreen making it a good candidate for users looking for a 2-in-1 system that can pull through daily computing needs in multimode use and functionality.
If you are looking for a new laptop for the convenience of your business, office, or play. This machine is a recommendable choice for people who are always on the move yet need powerful performance thanks to excellent performance, stunning Full HD image, and lot of great features at a reasonable price.
The Lenovo Flex 5 (81X20005US, model) remains our Editors Choice for budget 2-in-1 laptops, offering better hardware and performance over its predecessor, including AMD Ryzen 5 4500U processor, 16GB RAM, and 256GB SSD storage.
