Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5i review: a budget laptop that’s worth it?

There are two configurations of the IdeaPad Flex 5i, both of which are available at Best Buy. Right now, you can buy the entry-level configuration with an Intel Core i5-1235U, 8GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD, and a 14-inch FHD+ IPS display for $500. That’s on sale from a list price of $680. The other configuration, which isn’t available right now, is $550 list for just 256GB of storage.

The IdeaPad Flex 5i is made of plastic (with glass fiber), something that’s increasingly unusual lately. Or, at least, you’ll only find it in the least expensive laptops where at one point you could spend $1,000 and still not get an all-metal laptop. In this one, it’s just fine, without any flexing in the bottom chassis or keyboard deck and just a little bending in the lid.

The Lenovo IdeaPad 5x 2-in-1, which is a couple of hundred dollars more expensive, it’s a mix of metal and plastic but it wasn’t meaningfully more robust. Of course, if you spend a lot more, you can get a laptop that has no bending or flexing whatsoever, but there’s nothing wrong with Lenovo’s effort at these prices. And the Zenbook 14 OLED is equally as well-made and just a little more expensive.

For a 360-degree convertible 2-in-1, the IdeaPad Flex 5i has reasonably small bezels, particularly in the bottom chin. So, it’s not overly large in width and depth. It’s a little chunky, though, at 0.70 inches thick, which is a little more than most laptops I’ve reviewed lately. And it’s heavy at 3.42 pounds, which is a little surprising given the plastic construction.

As a 360-degree convertible, the weight and thickness matter more, because the IdeaPad Flex 5i is meant to be used as a tablet along with clamshell, tent, and media modes. It’s entirely possible to use it with the optional active pen for writing and drawing on the display, but you’ll need to prop it up.

Aesthetically, the IdeaPad Flex 5i is minimalist but attractive enough. It’s a simple all-gray colorway with only a couple of chrome logo badges. The lines are simple and the laptop doesn’t stand out, but that’s fine. You can get better-looking laptops if you spend a lot more money, but that’s likely to be a good enough reason to do so.

The keyboard is Lenovo’s usual version with large, sculpted keycaps and lots of key spacing. The switches are reasonably snappy and have a precise bottoming action. It’s not the best I’ve used, such as Apple’s Magic Keyboard or those used in HP’s OmniBook lineup, but it’s more than good enough. I had no problem typing this review, which is enough to demonstrate its comfort.

The touchpad is OK. It’s mechanical, which is unsurprising for a budget laptop. The button clicks are a bit loud and harsh, and it could be a little bigger. But it’s fine. The display is pen- and touch-enabled, and weirdly I did have more problems with using touch than is typical. Some touches didn’t register, which is unusual. The active pen is optional, so I couldn’t test that.

I haven’t reviewed a laptop in quite some time with a 12th-gen Intel CPU. It’s not unusual that a budget laptop will use an older chipset, and here we have the Core i5-1235U that’s not only two generations behind Intel’s latest Lunar Lake but also a very old-school design. It’s a 9-watt chip and so should be fairly efficient, but as we see below that’s not the case.

With 10 cores (two Performance and eight Efficient) and 12 threads, it’s not a high-performance chip. That’s particularly true given that we’re talking about older cores here. And we can see it in our benchmarks, where the IdeaPad Flex 5i is a lot slower than modern chipsets. That includes the Core Ultra 7 258V, a Core Ultra Series 2 chipset that’s meant to be this generation’s low-power parts. This is one area where the Asus Zenbook 14 OLED isn’t an improvement.

It’s not that the IdeaPad Flex 5i can’t get any work done. It can, particularly typical tasks like web browsing, productivity apps, and media consumption. But it’s not going to feel very fast. And its graphics performance is just really bad.

I posted a table with contemporary battery life results to highlight the dramatic difference between today’s Windows chipsets and past versions. The IdeaPad Flex 5i has a relatively small battery at 52.5 watt-hours, where many 14-inch laptops are at least 60 watt-hours. But it also has a reasonably low-power FHD+ IPS display. So, those two factors balance out somewhat against the laptops I’ve reviewed lately with larger batteries but more power-hungry OLED displays.

But it really doesn’t matter. As you can see, the IdeaPad Flex 5i has terrible battery life. It’s unlikely to make it to lunchtime even when running a lightweight workflow. If you’re using it to get real work done, you might get a couple of hours. I haven’t seen results this bad in quite some time, and that’s even accounting for gaming laptops and other machines with extremely powerful components. Once again, the Asus Zenbook 14 OLED is a much more attractive option.

It’s not uncommon for budget machines to hit their budget prices by using an inferior display. Quite often, that means poor brightness, bad colors, and blacks that look more like grays. I didn’t get a bad impression of the IdeaPad’s Flex 5i’s 14.0-inch FHD+ (1920 x 1200) IPS display when I pulled the laptop out of the box, but I was looking forward to seeing what my colorimeter had to say.

When I ran the tests, I was pleasantly surprised. Brightness was quite high at 370 nits, well above our usual (and increasingly out-of-date) 300-nit threshold. Contrast was also excellent at 1,710:1, well above our 1,000:1 preference. It’s not OLED-level blacks, but still more than good enough. Colors weren’t very wide at 68% of sRGB, 51% of AdobeRGB, and 51% of DCI-P3, which is below the average IPS display results of 75%, 100%, and 75%, respectively. But the colors were reasonably accurate at a DeltaE of 2.19 — less than 2.0 is more than good enough for productivity work, so this display was close enough.

Ultimately, the display punched above the budget price for everyone except creators who need more accurate colors. Subjectively, the display was fine for productivity use and media consumption. The two-speaker audio system didn’t stand out as either better or worse than typical.

A great laptop under $600 is tough to make without some severe compromises. The IdeaPad Flex 5i gets very close to hitting that mark, with its well-built chassis, solid keyboard and touchpad, and good-enough performance.

However, its battery life is very disappointing, particularly by modern standards. The real problem is the Asus Zenbook 14 OLED, which costs only $64 more, despite having a better OLED display and much longer battery life. Know that the IdeaPad Flex 5i isn’t a bad laptop for the money, but I have a hard time recommending it when the Zenbook 14 OLED is right there on offer.