With a touchscreen and tablet capability that’s suitable for students or kids, the Flex 3 is truly versatile. The most obvious is the Flex 3’s 11-inch screen. How to Free Up Space on Your iPhone or iPad, How to Save Money on Your Cell Phone Bill, How to Find Free Tools to Optimize Your Small Business, How to Get Started With Project Management, Testing the Flex 3: Average Chromebook Performance, A Slate of Strengths...and One Key Weakness, Read Lenovo Chromebook 3 (11-Inch) Review. This compact and affordable convertible laptop is built for pupils and students and is especially interesting because of its … It’s full-function 2-in-1 with an 11-inch IPS display and excellent build quality. The Flex 3's main drawback is its cramped, dim, low-resolution display, which keeps it from an excellent rating. That’s true all-day battery life and it’s the kind of performance you’d never get from a budget system with a full fat Intel Core process. They could be an advantage. The only thing holding it back from excellence is the lack of a high-quality display—buyers on extreme budgets can't have everything. Where to buy PS5: restock tracker to find PS5 on sale during Black Friday, With cyberattacks through the roof, endpoint protection is more important than ever, FIFA 21 on PS5 sounds way more fun than the Xbox Series X version, More PS5 stock promised as Sony confirms its biggest console launch ever, 5 amazing Black Friday gaming accessory deals from Currys PC World, Sony sold more PS5s during launch week than the Xbox Series X/S combined. The lower chin, in particular, is enormous. You’re after a fantastic value 2-in-1 Chromebook But the core functionality is all present. Receive news and offers from our other brands? You’re looking for a device with true all-day battery life That’s a dual-core chip derived from Intel’s low-power and low-cost Atom line of processors, rather than the premium high performance Core family. The limited 1,366 by 768 screen resolution adds to that impression. There's no support for the latest Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) wireless standard. The 1,366 by 768 pixel native resolution of the screen is likewise a reminder of an earlier era. Mozilla Kraken: 2,109ms Meanwhile, alternatives such as the Asus Chromebook Flip and HP Chromebook X360 demonstrate what a little more cash will buy. It can even be used as a tablet PC of sorts, with its keyboard folded completely underneath the screen. New York, At the other hand of the spectrum is the Acer Chromebook Spin 713, an Editors’ Choice winner in the $600-plus price range. But when you factor in price, the Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 3 Chromebook is both surprisingly effective and appealing. Processing power comes from an Celeron chip with Intel’s cheaper, lower power Atom-derived cores rather than high performance Core items. Of course, there are now numerous affordable 2-in-1 Chromebooks to choose from, including the Acer Chromebook Spin. Lenovo pioneered the 2-in-1 concept, and some of the excellent design from its more expensive models is apparent on the Flex 3. The immediate consequence is a device a full size larger than it would be with more modern bezels. The Flex 3's screen is also flanked by enormous black borders or bezels. The Flex 3's main strengths are its above-average build quality, attractive styling, and wallet-friendly price. This is a very solid feeling device, especially given the price point, with a remarkably rigid body. The Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 3’s Intel Celeron N4020 CPU is not normally something to show off about. However, the touch functionally is reasonably responsive. On our theoretical benchmarks, the Flex 3 performs about as expected for an entry to midrange Chromebook. There are far, far more expensive laptops which lack keyboards of this quality. Please refresh the page and try again. This is not a high performance device. All told, it’s a pretty unimpressive technical line up that represents a bottom-rung Intel-powered solution. It lasted for a bit more than 10 hours in our video rundown test, which involves playing a locally stored video file with Wi-Fi turned off. JetStream: 59.311pts But it is small, it’s not terribly bright, and it’s pretty low resolution. There’s also only 4GB of RAM and just 64GB of local storage in sub-optimal eMMC configuration. The Flex 3 is good for working mains free or surviving a long-haul flight with over 16 hours of video playback and well into double figures even for the most demanding workloads. Not so much, thanks to some hugola bezels including an exceptionally elephantine chin. More demanding web pages, such as Google Drive, do occasionally feel a little laggy. If the sheer quality of the Flex 3 is surprising, its core specifications are less so. Most Chromebooks have cramped internal drives, and the 64GB of eMMC flash storage in the Flex 3 is no exception. However, it surely contributes to the fairly epic 16 hours-plus of video playback. Not only is the Flex 3 sturdy and good-looking, but it’s also without unnecessary heft and size. Arguably, that’s not ideal for a device that also doubles as a tablet. Lenovo painted the metal finish with an almond color, which helps the Flex 3 stand out in a sea of plastic and occasional gray-aluminum chassis that typically make up the budget-laptop set. Please deactivate your ad blocker in order to see our subscription offer, We check over 130 million products every day for the best prices. Storage: 64GB eMMC SSD All of which means that the subjective experience is much better than you’d get in the Windows environment with the same hardware. Graphics: Intel UHD Graphics 600 Apple MacBook Pro vs. Microsoft Surface Laptop 3: Which 13-Inch Premium Laptop Is Tops? Notebookcheck reviews the Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 3 11IGL05. Ports: 2x USB-C with charging, 2x USB-A 3.1 Gen1, microSD The Flex 3’s 11-inch panel is totally tragic. As does the general design aesthetic. The Flex 3 also looks a little dated. https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/lenovo-ideapad-flex-3-chromebook. It makes the likes of Google’s now defunct Pixelbook look incredibly expensive. While the Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 3 copes fine with daily web browsing and media streaming, it would be a poor choice for anything more demanding. Cyber Monday deals: see all the best offers right now! There's even a microSD card reader, a key feature for Chromebook users who need extra local storage. In his spare time, he's written on topics as diverse as Borneo's rain forests, Middle Eastern airlines, and big data's role in presidential elections. Before that, he worked for PCMag's sister site, Computer Shopper, where he occasionally dunked waterproof hard drives in glasses of water. The same can’t quite be said of scrolling around apps and web pages. It includes a power button on the right edge in lieu of one in the keyboard, which is handy for waking up the laptop when its keyboard is lying face-down on the desk. Your subscription has been confirmed. But what it doesn’t feel is cheap. But then you’re not going to get 8GB of system memory, a large M.2 SSD and a premium processor in a 2-in-1 device without paying far, far more. A headphone jack and a receptacle for a physical lock to prevent someone from stealing the laptop round out the port selection.