Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 14 Review By MobileTechReview

This is Lisa from mobile tech review, and today we're gonna look at the yoga's little brother, well, not little, but a little lower in price. This is the Lenovo IdeaPad flex and yet to have a sort of yoga hinge about three-quarters of the travel of the full yoga, and it's at three-quarters of the price. We're gonna look at it now. So this is a Lenovo IdeaPad flex 14, like I, said also available in the 15-inch model, you're looking basically the same thing, only an inch difference in size between those two now the appeal of this is that it starts pretty cheap. If you get a very base, configuration fourth-generation has well core i3 machine. The four gigs of ram and the spinning hard drive will start at five hundred and fifty dollars or so and Lenovo's website.

Now their list prices are higher, but you know they always have specials. They always have coupons that makes pricing kind of a moving target with them, but I would say around 550 for the base model. There's also a seller on just don't get it. It's gonna, be so slow. Just do not get it even though it's a little cheaper.

Now our model has a core i5, eight gigs of RAM and 128 gig SSDs, and it lists for $9.99 and which price I probably would recommend it, but it really sells for about seven hundred and eighty dollars so compared to the thousand dollar yoga pro 2 that just came out. You do save some money. Now, it's not as ritzy as the yoga right here. You have a 1366 by 768 touchscreen 10 points of touch, sensitivity, contrast and colors are not too bad they're better than some of Lenovo is even lower level IdeaPad systems, certainly, but for you know, eight hundred dollars or so you should get a pretty decent screen. Don't you think I think so? But if you get the yoga2pro and in some ways, I swear, this model is just the upsell to convince you to get that 2 ma you get 3200 by 1800, despite fantastic panel.

Some big difference there for your $200. So for those of you who are thinking about both of these keep that in mind now. How is this different from the yoga2pro? Well, obviously, it's a bigger machine, 14 inches versus thirteen point three point: seven inches isn't a huge difference, I, don't think for most people in terms of usability, but it's also available in a 15-inch Mel. So it does give you well the size versatility for those you can really don't want to go down as low as thirteen point three inches keyboard, nice and spacious. It's a little Radley a little flex.

Actually, the yoga2pro is a little firmer, no backlighting on this keyboard, but creature comforts are a bigger machine, are more ports for starters and also a removable battery, which is always a nice thing. For us. We look at the ports right here. One USB 3.0 port, full size HDMI. We have Ethernet right here.

This is Lenovo's new rectangular style charging connector. Obviously these are some vents for cooling and on this side we get two more USB ports. These are just USB 2.0 that remember. This is still an idea pad line model. Lenovo doesn't like to fill up with a lot of USB 3.0 ports. They'd like you to get a think pen line.

Instead, to do that, SD card slot right here are 3.5 millimeter, combo, audio jack notice, there's volume controls on the side and there's a power button on the side, even though this doesn't go to full tablet. So there's the other difference see the hinge design right here, certainly different from our friend of yoga, and we'll bring that in for a minute to refresh your memory and this area right here. This is the removable battery good times. It's getting hard to find that in laptops these days, even some slim 14 inches like this has sealed batteries. So battery is accessible.

If you take the bottom off lots and lots of Phillips head screws here, including you have to remove these little wedgie feet over here, you can get to the internals two-and-a-half inch standard, SATA Drive base I'm not too hard to find a drive for that. It also has one RAM socket ddr3 low-power 1600 megahertz, so you can upgrade that as well, and the wireless card is pocketed as ever with Lenovo and their idea pads. It's single band, Wi-Fi 2.4 gigahertz only we would love to see dual-band. What keep saying it until they start doing it for $800 again would be nice. The wireless module here is the Intel 70 to 60 they've, been using that a lot of their IdeaPad models lately, so nothing wrong with that module.

It's a good module. It's just it'll get faster speeds with dual-band Wi-Fi and you can avoid the 2.4 gigahertz band. That's so polluted with all your neighbors access points, Bluetooth microwave ovens, they're all on 2.4 gigahertz, so the 5 gigahertz that you Robin would be a nice thing, lots of cooling vents over here. Obviously- and these are our speaker grilles up top- this runs on UV CPUs, just like an Ultrabook, so they're low power, low heat. So really that's a lot of cooling actually for that kind of processor.

What's inside here and as a result, the machine does run quite cool you'll hear the fans kick on once in a while. Nothing too horrendous, though so, while the yoga2pro opens up like a laptop folds, all the way back like a tablet, this one will go into presentation mode. Obviously you can also lay it just straight flat. So you can go keyboard down, just like you would the yoga there's our keyboard, and you can use it in presentation mode that brings the screen closer to it. Actually is a lot easier to the touch than when you're reaching across a keyboard or if you want to turn it around and give a presentation aiming at your kid a minute somebody you're giving presentation to it works, and this is as far as it goes.

If you want to tip it back, which I think is a fairly friendly angle for a lot of people, but if you're putting in a very low table you might wish it went even further. So for comparison, here's our yoga2pro, obviously a little thinner a little smaller, but laptop mode presentation mode, just like that guy. But you can keep going any angle you want, and you can use it in tablet mode. So there's the difference between these two. This is the yoga hinge and that's the flex hinge and there's the difference in size and thickness.

You can see our yoga being the Ultrabook II kind of guy and the flex being I got a swim in light. Portable weighs 4 pounds by the way, and obviously it's not too thick either it's fairly slim. This has a soft touch finish on its available in your choice of black, with the silver accent or black, with orange accent, for which you're going to pay more money right now on Lenovo's website, anyway, plastic materials, mostly on the outside. It's not a bad looking notebook I, don't think it's a stunning looking notebook by any means, certainly serviceable it's taper to it. We open it up.

You'll, see a nice metal, wrist rest area, so this deck right here, a little cool to the touch. This is brushed metal, and we have a large track that works quite well. Very responsive, typical Lenovo smile, shaped keys, like I said, though, a bit of flex on the deck more than I would like. The keys are a little rattle II as well. No backlighting, it's okay, it's not Lenovo's best.

It's certainly nothing pad keyboard, but there are certainly worse on the market. It's not a terrible or anything like that in terms of key relief. Furthermore, it is a thin machine, so they don't have room for a lot of travel, and you can see if you press down on the keys. Obviously it's running Windows 8. This is Windows 8 64-bit.

Now it should be shipping Windows 8.1. We had ours for quite a while now, so we actually upgraded it from 8 to 8.1 ourselves, but 601 half-a-dozen than the other, as they say standard desktop right here you have full access to Metro apps. This has all the power of an Ultrabook with UV CPU, starting with that 1.6 gigahertz core i5 4200 you that we have here, you can get a core i7. You could go down to a core i3 and lose your turboboost as well. Certainly it can handle some video, editing, Photoshop, editing, MS, Office, no problem web browsing multiple tabs in Chrome, just fine, it's your every day, capable PC! You can get the machine with for our 8 gigs of ram.

That's up to you again. There is one RAM slot in there and the lower end models have 500 gigs, spinning, spinning conventional 5400, rpm hard drives, or you can get SSD drive. Ours has a hundred twenty-eight gigs Samsung made SSD Drive, and again it's a standard, 2.5 inch, SATA low profile, 7 millimeters, so you have to get seven millimeters or thinner if you're going to upgrade the hard drive yourself later, our the SSD drive in terms of benchmarks. It falls right in the middle of where we would expect for a core i5 with Haskell 44:34 on a PC mark 7 and w prime a computed PI in twenty-three point: six nine seconds so perfectly average performance for a perfectly middle-of-the-road, Ultrabook kind of CPU and GPU inside Intel, HD, 4400, graphics, no dedicated graphics option on this guy 1366 by 768 is a display resolution. That is also the only option there is no full HD or higher resolution.

Lenovo would love you to get to yoga2pro. Instead, if you want something like that, or what are they thinking pads that are running at higher resolutions? This is not an IPS panel. It is a TN panel, but, like I said, as TN panels go, it's mailed the road, it's not hideous by any means. It's not fantastic, like an IPS panel, but it's fine. If you, if you tilt it you'll see besides reflections, it's going to start losing contrast, particularly side-to-side can be better than going forward or back though we have a Ford SEL 48 watt hour of battery again, like I, showed you that is removable, just pops out the back refreshing that is, and Lenovo claims up to nine hours of battery life.

Now that is pretty ambitious. You know. Manufacturers often overshoot a bit, but we're finding eight hours pretty easily. If we leave auto brightness on- and you know it's not terribly bright at that- but I know some of you can tolerate dim this pretty well, but with auto brightness on Wi-Fi on and active, we have managed to reach eight hours with this. So as it all de companion to go to school Authority to take to work without being plugged into AC, that's pretty darn good helps it has those UV CPUs instead of full mobile CPUs, that you might also find in a fourteen or fifteen inch machine, because those consume more power, and they also make more heat.

So how about video playback, obviously Core i5 here until HD, 4400 graphics, not going to be a problem, but let's hear how those speaker sounds see how the display looks now we'll look at the yoga2pro video and play that video review. So you can see certainly reasonably clear.1366 by 768, obviously is not wicked high resolution. This is not for those of you who really want a super high resolution display, but it's readable enough and the contrast is sufficient. This is Lisa from mobile tech. Reviewing a look at one of the highest convertibles of 2013, and we're gonna look at it now.

So it's finally here Lenovo yoga -. So that actually looks pretty good and those speakers are only a 55% volume in terms of audio you'll have no trouble filling a room with sound, be it music or movie audio track, and you know it's not too tinny. It's not grating either. So it's very good in terms of bloatware Lenovo has good self-control when it comes to bloatware. So there's not a lot on here, mostly Lenovo's old own webcam.

You tell these things like that. A couple of webs shortcuts their own management stuff. One strange thing that did you at the SSD Drive is a partitioned into I. Don't know why they don't usually do that. So you can see.

Are we have a C Drive and a D Drive and the D Drive is just there I guess they think for to put data files on say: Windows is on the C Drive, and it's just a little oddity really doesn't matter so much and add the box? If you do the math, you can see, we have about 70 gigs of storage free on our 128 gig SSD, which isn't too bad. As these things go. So the IdeaPad flex 14, is a nice machine and now that Lenovo's bringing it in close at $800, it's looking more attractive than when it first came out, and they were shooting for $9.99 on this because there's a lot of competition in this size range, particularly a sews, is pretty aggressive. With their 550 miles, you can go up to full HD display, so they're around the same price, so against the other brand competition Lenovo has some stiff goings there, but I think in the end, really they want you to buy the yoga2pro. If you want to move up the food chain in terms of quality, that is, unless you really sold on, say a 15-inch machine again, this is the 14, but some folks really like bigger display, understandable.

That's a nice thing. You're going to get with a yoga2pro, so that's the Lenovo, IdeaPad flex, 14 and also available the 15-inch model and I for the price. It's not too bad, and it certainly has it innovative kind of hinge here. The question is: do you find this position particularly useful? Certainly the standard laptop position is very useful. Does bring some good things to the table that the yoga 13 doesn't like the added USB ports in the Ethernet port? So it really depends on what you're looking for in a laptop? Do you need an Ultrabook, or do you need a fairly compact, portable laptop that has some display versatility, I'm Lisa from mobile tech review, be sure to visit our website for the full review of the Flex 14 and don't forget to hit that like button?.

Source : MobileTechReview