Hands-on: Lenovo Flex 5 promises Ice Lake-shattering performance at an affordable price

[Redaktion]

Lenovo's Flex 5 is one of the cheapest Renoir-powered laptops available right now. While this laptop features a Ryzen 5 4500U for only $600, 360-degree hinges, and stylus support, are the compromises overwhelming, or is this a real sleeper PC?

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Hands-on-Lenovo-Flex-5-promises-Ice-Lake-shattering-performance-at-an-affordable-price.469436.0.html

[reader]

currently reading this article with 1 year old lenovo yoga 520 with broken hinge. Rarely used the x360 feature, yet it still broke

[dasdjasdjasl]

That Flex in the name means it has a lot of flex, right?
Now on a serious note, you know that there are also laptops with 1065G7 that cost ~700$, right? Same quality, maybe even better and performance of 4500U seems to be in the same ballpark as 1065G7. So this laptop is not the "killer" you portray it to be.

[neblogai]

Now on a serious note, you know that there are also laptops with 1065G7 that cost ~700$, right? Same quality, maybe even better and performance of 4500U seems to be in the same ballpark as 1065G7. So this laptop is not the "killer" you portray it to be.

Are we talking the same, 2in1 chassi, with touchscreen and pen? Here in Europe, the same model with 1065G7 (16GB) costs €999, compared to ~€729 (8GB) for the 4500U one. And that is with both CPU and GPU in 4500U being faster than the 1065G7. So Renoir is definitely a gamechanger- even the cheap 6c/6t 4500U is already beating the competition- but there is also a 4600U, 4700U, and 4800U- with 16 threads, and much more capable graphics (x1.6 TFLOPs).

[Gump]

I can report the same behaviour on battery with a HP Envy 13 x360 and the R7 4700U.

From what I've seen on reddit and the difference of performance between other manufacturers using Renoir chips, Lenovo is using a 35 max sustained power draw for the its low consumption Renoir... (25 W on HP and Acer)

You can find my results on reddit "HP Envy x360 13 R7 4700U 16Go RAM | Power mode explored (Cinebench 20 + monitoring T°, W, GHz)"

A shame there is not too much 4600U out there because I think it might be an interesting chip if well priced vs the R7.

[Loki Rautio]

I can report the same behaviour on battery with a HP Envy 13 x360 and the R7 4700U.

From what I've seen on reddit and the difference of performance between other manufacturers using Renoir chips, Lenovo is using a 35 max sustained power draw for the its low consumption Renoir... (25 W on HP and Acer)

You can find my results on reddit "HP Envy x360 13 R7 4700U 16Go RAM | Power mode explored (Cinebench 20 + monitoring T°, W, GHz)"

A shame there is not too much 4600U out there because I think it might be an interesting chip if well priced vs the R7.

Took a look and it does seem there is similar behavior on the HP Envy, although the throttling its doing is a lot more appropriate. What Lenovo is doing in this situation is pulling the power limit down to basically nothing for a few moments in some desperate attempt to cool the system down, then releasing the power limit back to 35-38w. It's bizzare. Also-- yeah, I'd love to see more smt-enabled laptops.

[Nate]

My wife has an older version of this laptop and it has the same hinge design as what you depict in this review. I know because the hinges broke for exactly the reason you predict after only one year. The longevity is indeed very poor. Then the touchscreen broke a few months ago.

Regardless of on-paper specs, I would recommend giving this model a pass as the build quality is simply not very good. Stuff breaks way sooner than it should. Spend a few hundred dollars more and get something designed to last longer than a year.

[Peter123456]

From a laymen's view it Looks like the hinges were more solid on its predecessor ,see youtube.com/watch?v=TiMInFEYqHc .
The performance results being shown here are impressive, I doubt it can sustain these values over time, as all ideapads thermals so seems to be limited to  60degrees after 10minutes or so(fron predecessor ideapad reviews)