Sometimes the middle of the road is a good place to be.
When you’re looking for a new laptop, you might not want to spend thousands of dollars, and you might want to stay away from the very low end of the price scale as well.
I’ve been testing the Lenovo IdeaPad Flex-14 (AMD), a midsized 2-in-1 touchscreen laptop powered by AMD’s Ryzen processor.
The 2-in-1 designation means the laptop’s screen rotates back almost 360 degrees so the screen is flat against the back of the base and you can use it like a tablet.
Cool features
The IdeaPad Flex ships with a small sticker on the palm rest that highlights three features: its extended battery, convertible PC (tablet mode) and the privacy shutter.
Lenovo says you’ll get seven hours of run time from the 45 watt-hour battery, which I found to be true. I was impressed to find such battery life from a midpriced laptop. The IdeaPad Flex is a fast charger; the battery can charge from empty to 80 percent in an hour.
I have to admit, I am a serious laptop user, so that’s how I did most of my testing.
But for this paragraph, I did flip the screen around and use an on-screen keyboard in tablet mode. I can’t think of a good reason to type on the screen when you have a perfectly good keyboard, so I am switching back. If anyone can tell me a good reason to use tablet mode on such a big laptop, I’d love to hear it.
I do like the touchscreen for making selections with my finger to launch or switch apps. The tablet mode works well for web browsing or watching YouTube or Netflix.
As an IT guy, I run across people every week who cover the webcam built into their laptops with a piece of tape. People are protective of their personal space, and I guess they’ve been scared by online accounts of webcams being used by hackers to record them without their permission.
I’ve never felt the need to cover my laptop’s camera, but Lenovo recognizes that fear and installed a small cover for the camera. Slide the plastic shutter over the camera for instant privacy and peace of mind.
Specs
The IdeaPad Flex 14 I reviewed is powered by a 2.1Ghz AMD Ryzen 5 3500U CPU with 8 gigabytes of RAM and a 256 GB solid state drive.
The 14-inch LED touch screen display has a resolution of 1,920 by 1,080 pixels, and it’s powered by a Radeon Vega 8 graphics processor. It also has an HDMI port with a maximum resolution of 1,920 by 1,080 pixels on an external display.
The touch screen supports Lenovo’s Active Pen for stylus input.
The Flex 14 has 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.2.
Onboard ports include two USB 3.1 ports, one USB-C 3.1 port, one HDMI output, a headphone jack and an SD card reader. There is no optical drive or ethernet port.
It also has a fingerprint reader for biometric sign-in and a 720p webcam with privacy shutter.
The operating system is Windows 10 Home.
The keyboard is backlit, the touchpad and touch screen both support multi-touch input and the speakers have Dolby Audio.
The IdeaPad 14 measures 12.91 by 9.01 by 0.7 inches and weighs 3.64 pounds.
Feels solid
The IdeaPad 14 feels solid, and tasks like internet browsing, email and watching videos are plenty fast. The hinge works smoothly, and every time you rotate it past 180 degrees it will ask if you’d like to change to tablet mode, which disables the keyboard and touchpad.
The touch screen is very responsive and bright
I didn’t care for the touchpad. It felt a bit slow, and I wasn’t comfortable with its right click.
I had a much better experience when I used a mouse.
The IdeaFlex 14 is available from Amazon starting at $529. If you look on Lenovo’s website, you’ll see that it’s not available, but I’ve been told that’s because it sold out during a recent sale and there are more on the way. You can also pick one up at Office Depot for $599.
