Lenovo Flex 5 14 Verdict From Real Users: Worth It?

Have the 4500u version. Also note to buyers, Lenovo has this flip to start setting in their preinstalled app that kills battery life, do yourself a favor and turn it off, caused me to end the day at 60% battery vs 20% at the end of the school day. In the Microsoft Store app, there is an application called Lenovo Vantage. Under the dropdown menu called Device in the app, there is a device setting called power.

In my experience, stay away from this laptop. The physical build quality is not built to last. A lot of people have had issues with the hinges on this laptop due to them being glued onto the screen. My screen started to pop out because the right hinge pulled away from the top cover. I treated this laptop with a lot of care but the glue will break eventually. For me it took 10 months in college. You will not get support if you use the basic warranty from Lenovo.

I have this laptop currently, it comes with the Lenovo Pen and a USB-C 65W charger which charges quickly. The colors are fine by my standards. I am used to TN panels on my desktop so it works well for me. During the day, as long as I am inside, I have it on 3/4 brightness. 250 nits is plenty for the brightness indoors.

Actually the Vega 7 apu is only a couple of frames worse than the mx150 which is nearly equivalent to the mx250. This means the vega 7 actually performs better than the mx230 even though it is a dedicated gpu. The ryzen one is by far the better deal especially since the cpu outclasses the intel.

I've been watching r/LaptopDeals for about 6 months now and since it's come out at $599, it's been consistently restocked at that price. As much of a "deal" it has been at that price (notably due to the sheer price/performance of the new Ryzen 4000 series), there has been a tremendous amount of stock of the Flex 5. I bought one in May and it stayed in stock for at least 3-4 weeks.

Ok, first of all, even easiest tasks makes it throttle like mad. Like if I sharing my screen and trying to do anything remotely demanding, like opening big google docs document, it just throttles to 0.9Ghz (I am not kidding), same time as CPU temp is ok, like 70 degrees. As you can imagine, while working on anything remotely demanding this laptop becomes unusable.

Just as an update to anyone concerned about the usb c port: I was able to output display (using DisplayLink driver) from both the usb c port as well as the usb a port using a dock.

I do not think the extra $150 is worth. Ryzen 4500u is far better CPU than i5 10210u. MX230 is definitely better GPU than having integrated GPU, but looking at the performance difference compared to a Vega7 graphics on 7nm lithography, I cannot justify spending extra $150 for it.

If this is anything like the model that had the 3500U, then it's a very solid laptop. There are two major issues that clash with each other though: the brightness and the battery. The screen isn't very good in terms of being bright outside of 80% or above, which makes you crank up the brightness during the day a lot. Then you run into the issue that the battery is mediocre and the high brightness kills it fast.

First thing i've noticed is the Realtek 8822CE Does NOT like my TP-Link 1750; went out and bought the wifi 6 TP-Link 1500 from wal-mart, fixed all issues.

For what it's worth, I had the 4500U version and it was a champ. I got 10 hours of battery with normal mixed university level usage. It was great from long coding sessions, I was never hugely locked down to the outlet. It even ran an emulator, IDE, and chrome (youtube while waiting) while compiling a project for OS.

As someone who had the older version and LOVED it, then got this one in 2022... I understand where you're coming from. The newer models are NOT as good as the older models! I have decided I won't be getting the same one again come next upgrade. It's also ANNOYING because the 1 USB-C port is also not thunderbolt, so no extended displays other than the 1 HDMI.

I have this laptop and use it everyday for uni, the system is not bad but it constantly over heats and the touch screen has just stopped working and I have done everything online to try and get it to work again but with no luck. I do not recommend this laptop.

same here man after using for almost 4 years the hinges broke without any reason while just opening the screen first the left one broke and then almost an year later few days back the right hinge also broke it was caused bcz the hinges became super tight and wont turn easily and why i dont know

I know this post is a little old, but I have this EXACT same computer and also hate it. I get made fun of in my workplace for my poor performing laptop. I am not a tech savvy person, but I did a lot of research and consulted with many people I know who are into computers and they recommended this one to me (plus I got it at a good price from my local store). Very disappointed. This is my first lenovo too. I used to be pretty loyal to HP but thought lenovo would be more reliable lol.

I was stuck between these two last night and I went for the Flex while it was still in stock. If they're both gonna have soldered ram I'd rather have 16gb than 8gb. The other differences aren't too big IMO, and I preferred the form factor and style of the Flex more.

100% Agree. Lenovo 2-in-1's hinges from 2019 onwards have been absolute garbage. The hinges from the second gen Yoga type builds (2013-2016) were built so strong that the surrounding case was often the failure point rather than the hinge. It really seems like Lenovo took that to mean that they could cheapen out on the hinges and they have gotten worse with every iteration.

TLDR: I think this laptop is incredible value for its cost, and I've really been impressed with it. Nice screen improved with color calibration, nice bezels, terrific keyboard, loud clear sound, no bass, attractive design, CPU is amazing. I do consider this laptop pretty amazing for what I paid for it, which was the one offered on Amazon that includes the pen, 16 gigs of ram and the 256GB SSD, and AMD Ryzen 4500u for $599 dollars.

I've been using it for work and it doesn't even get hot anymore while doing web dev tasks. I love it. Only thing that bugged me was that the USB C port only worked for data, no video out. Other than that and the lack of solution for pen storage, it's a major win in my books.

If you are not doing color correction work, the screen is perfectly adequate. I have this laptop for several months now running Linux and it is a joy to work on.

It doesn't "kill" battery life. It allows the laptop to stop charging at 60%, which is a good thing for people who keep the laptop plugged in most of the time, and/or don't need to use it away from a charger for most of the day. This gives the battery way more life over time instead of incurring the damage that lithium-ion batteries get from repeatedly charging up to 100%. I totally get the frustration with it being on by default though.

This laptop is great, but I'd rather go for at least 8GB of RAM and 256GB variants.

I don't comment much but you're an absolute legend! This was really starting to get under my skin haha. (Referring to the Realtek audio fix: Go to realtek audio console > device advanced settings > playback device, choose mute the internal output device when external headphone plugged in — fixes stuttering.)

i am fairly happy with mine (the base 14", 16gb ram amd model with the 1tb ssd upgrade), i dont draw on it though, i use it for notetaking and stuff for college (engineering), i was in a discord call, and shared the screen to word, browser and onenote no problems, even did some 3d rendering, also did that just fine, although it got louder then (under normal use the fan is off), but not crazily so. idk why people even buy the intel models anymore, except for thunderbolt, which few people ACTUALLY need.

I have had it for 2 years also, I had a significant performance dip the week the warranty ended. for some reason, it is very snappy with ubuntu. but with windows, it is torture. cant figure out the problem.

I ended up buying mine used from marketplace for $300. 2022 14 inch ryzen 5 512 gb 16 gb ram and for the most part I do enjoy it. I use it for coding and it's been fine. However recently it's been getting hot so been looking into repasting the cpu to see if it helps and also expanding the storage.

I hate mine. it's not even a year old. it gets hot my internet just drops and disappears from my laptop. if I go into setting and click network and internet the entire laptop freezes and I have to hold the power button to turn it off and back on. lenovo support wants me to wipe my entire laptop to "see if that helps" I said are you giving me an external hard drive to safe all my files they said nope. I do not recommend.

I have this Ideapad. Bought in 2024. Had one hinge break in 2025. Another one in 2026. I paid $100 to get the first one repaired. I use it lightly, don't flip it to a tablet. I am very unhappy with the purchase.

I love this machine. One issue that I am having, when connected to an external monitor, the screen will just go black. This problem is usually produced when I project the screen to the external only. Never seem to have the issue when I am "Mirroring" the display.

I had an older version and it gets really fucking hot. Also runs like poop. Even swapped the nvme drive.

Sort of. It has pretty decent build quality and a good keyboard but if you are looking for a solid alternative you can simply go for the 4500U instead of the 4700U. Both will last you quite a while considering their selling point is the excessive cores. I don't really see a situation in which a student or office worker will ever use 8 cores practically so "downgrading" to a 6 core is justified if you want to save on cash.

For what it's worth I really love my Flex 5! I want to make a subreddit for it for people to share their usage.

I have the coil whine when plugged and fully charged issue and idk if i should replace my laptop. it is faint most of the time and will be covered by the sound of any media or even keyboard button sound.

I would suggest not buying it. I had it for a little under 2 years and it is full of problems that you can't fix and you just have to know computers really well and linux to use it daily. If you still want it, the battery life is great (about 5 hours minimum for normal tasks and 30 minutes for demanding tasks) and the screen is also great with the touch that works fine.

I did buy it, and couldn't be happier! Very impressed with it, coming from a Motile M142 (cheap Ryzen 3500U-based TongFang laptop). The screen I was decently impressed with too.

I've heard and read that the build quality of the ideapad is a bit more solid (less screen and deck flex, screen wobble). Unless you get the flex with a higher end screen, the ideapad has a slightly brighter screen (300 vs 250 nits). I'd assume that the ideapad would have better thermals too. Less chance of hinge related issues too.

Oof, I was really considering to buy this laptop but 60% sRGB. Do you think they will update it with a better screen soon?

I bought mine with a 4700u because it was actually cheaper than the 4500u version, crazy times

I did actually get Ableton working! It turns out it runs Ableton great - I used the Live 10 demo project as a test and was able to duplicate all the tracks 3 times and run them at 128 buffer using ASIO4ALL with no stutters. It was a dumb error on my part - I was playing on the built-in speakers at first when it was constantly glitching, but when I tested the next day using headphones all the glitches went away.

In that case, it's a pretty low end machine. Was hoping it would at least have empty slots so you could just toss in an extra sodimm stick or Sata/nvme drive but in its current state, I guess it's nothing more than a basic browsing, email and light media consumption machine.

I've the same laptop, but a little worried about the hinges. I do a lot of reading and writing so is it okay if I flip it everyday although not so often. Are they sturdy enough?

Ram is soldered in and no empty second slot like other laptops. SSD is upgradable but why bother. This needs to be converted to Chrome OS or Linux to be any good because Windows 10 uses 3Gbs of ram by itself.