This $500 Chromebook Plus Has Better Performance Than Some Pcs I've Tested

5 days ago

ZDNET's cardinal takeaways

The Lenovo Flex 5i Chromebook Plus is connected waste for $499.
It excels arsenic an inexpensive activity laptop acknowledgment to its comfortable keyboard and useful features successful ChromeOS.
Its lower-end touchscreen will limit usability for some.

I've been really funny to spot really things person changed since my past Chromebook review, which was nan Acer Chromebook Plus Enterprise 515 past year. I precocious had that opportunity pinch nan Lenovo Flex 5i Chromebook Plus a machine that I would now urge complete Acer's device. Not only is it cheaper, but it performs better, too.

Also: This Lenovo Chromebook easy replaced my Windows laptop for activity - and I can't spell back

Lenovo's exemplary isn't flashy -- it's a demure laptop clad successful a acheronian grey aluminum chassis. The closest point to a flourish is nan two-tone shape connected nan back. The Flex 5i makes up for its deficiency of pizzazz by being a dependable activity machine, starting pinch nan keyboard.

Reliable and comfortable

According to nan company, nan laptop sports a "drop-down hinge," positioning nan keyboard astatine a flimsy angle. I noticed this does 2 things. First, it places your hands successful a much comfortable position, and secondly, it pushes nan edges of nan wrist remainder away, truthful they're not poking your arm. You tin type distant for hours and hardly announcement immoderate strain.

Below that is simply a freely trackpad. It's large capable that you tin resistance nan cursor from 1 broadside of nan surface to nan different without having to assistance your finger. The trackpad is coagulated overall, though I wish it were somewhat disconnected to nan side. I've recovered having nan trackpad off-center to beryllium much comfortable.

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On either broadside of nan keyboard are a brace of perfectly placed 2W speakers. They whitethorn not beryllium a high-end sound system, but nan drivers person been optimized by Waves MaxxAudio to guarantee awesome output. I played a jazz livestream from YouTube, wherever I recovered myself instantly surrounded by music. The value is good; particularly for a Chromebook.

Design tradeoffs

Lenovo's Flex 5i is simply a chunky Chromebook. At 3.5 pounds, it's not ace heavy, but it is astir an inch heavy erstwhile closed -- it feels for illustration nan machine tin past a driblet aliases two. If you ever get nan opportunity to clasp this, you'll spot what I mean. Port action is not excessively shabby, either. The array consists of 2 Thunderbolt inputs (both of which support information transportation speeds up to 10Gbps and DisplayPort 1.4 for outer monitors), a USB-A port, a microSD paper reader, and a headphone jack.

The Chromebook's creation is solid, though I didn't for illustration a fewer things. Lenovo placed power vents connected nan bottommost of nan laptop, blasting lukewarm aerial straight toward your legs. Then, location is nan touchscreen: ocular output is noticeably dull.

Admittedly, I wasn't expecting excessively overmuch from this value point. Lenovo's instrumentality houses a WUXGA (1,920 x 1,200) show pinch support for 45% of nan NTSC colour space, resulting successful mediate of nan roadworthy colour accuracy. What's worse are nan heavy bezels astir nan glass, further restricting nan display's wide area. Such are nan tradeoffs for a 2-in-1 astatine this price.

AI that's really useful

My reappraisal portion housed an Intel Core i5-1334U processor on pinch 8GB of RAM. Lenovo's Flex 5i isn't a super-powered instrumentality by immoderate means, but it gets nan occupation done. The hardware was capable to grip 50 unfastened browser tabs consisting of Amazon listings, 15 ZDNET reviews, and aggregate 1080p YouTube unrecorded streams (among different things) without breaking a sweat. If you're utilizing this instrumentality for multitasking and web browsing, it does it rather well.

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Like a batch of Google hardware, nan IdeaPad Flex 5 comes preloaded pinch generative AI successful ChromeOS. Although I'm not typically impressed pinch pre-loaded AI features, I did bask playing astir pinch NotebookLM. It's a useful instrumentality that takes PDFs, Google Docs, and integer documents to create an easy accessible reservoir of information.

The instrumentality tin besides summarize documents, which proved itself rather useful erstwhile I asked it to condense respective laptop reviews that I've written into a fewer paragraphs. This process took nan Chromebook little than a infinitesimal to complete.

Another point I bask astir nan Chromebook is its convenience. Setting it up is really easy; you tin link your Google Account to quickly transportation complete Chromebook apps, bookmarks, passwords, and much from your aged device. It took conscionable a fewer minutes to transportation everything from my profile.

I besides appreciated really ChromeOS instantly detected my Soundcore Space Pro headphones while I was wearing them, allowing maine to link my headphones without moreover opening Bluetooth settings. Like pinch nan apps, this was made imaginable by nan Google Account connection, arsenic nan headphones were already registered to my account.

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Regarding artillery life, I had nan Chromebook connected Battery Saver, and it lasted for astir 9 hours while moving ZDNET's laptop tests. That's not a ace agelong time, but it is capable for a afloat activity day.

ZDNET's buying advice

The Lenovo Flex 5i Chromebook Plus is connected waste for $499 connected Amazon. I'd urge it to anyone looking for a caller Chromebook for pinch a very budget-friendly price. It performs amended than immoderate higher-end laptops while providing a soft keyboard and large speakers. If show value is important to you, however, I would alternatively propose nan Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Plus from 2024. The solution is nan same, but it has an AMOLED sheet that provides much vibrant colors.