Lenovo Chromebook Flex 3: At First Glance
In recent years, students and small business owners have been transitioning to Chromebooks due to their affordability and basic functionality. This makes the number of Chromebooks in the market keep increasing every now and then.
In that regard, Lenovo released the Chromebook Flex 3 in 2020. This Chromebook isn’t like most Chromebooks out there – it is a 2-in-1 convertible Chromebook, meaning you can use it in different forms.
Nevertheless, despite being a convertible Chromebook, the Chromebook is still as inexpensive as other Chromebooks on the market. Precisely, as of the time I published this review article in June 2022, the Lenovo Chromebook Flex 3 had a start price of $167.98.
However, to keep this Chromebook as cheap as possible, Lenovo had to make a few compromises. Do you wish to find out about these compromises as well as more about the Lenovo Chromebook Flex 3?
Well, you have to read the subsequent sections below.
Lenovo Chromebook Flex 3: Design, Display, Ports, and Connectivity
Impressively, despite being inexpensive, the Lenovo Chromebook Flex 3 comes with a good-looking design. To give more details, unlike the plastic chassis that dominates the Chromebook market, this laptop features a metal chassis.
Hence, it should be pretty sturdy and be able to withstand a reasonable level of rough handling. In terms of color, this Lenovo Chromebook comes in almond color.
This color gives the laptop a unique and stunning appearance, making it stand out among other Chromebooks. Besides, the “Lenovo” inscription at the top left corner of the laptop’s lid also adds to its elegance.
Moreover, the lid is connected to the base of the laptop by dual hinges. These hinges are quite solid and are strong enough to prevent the lid from wobbling when nudged or pushed.
Also, as a 2-in-1 Chromebook, the hinges permit the lid and display to bend up to 360 degrees. As a result, you can use the Lenovo Chromebook Flex 3 in four different modes.
These modes include laptop mode, tablet mode, tent mode, and stand mode. Thankfully, the laptop’s hinges aren’t too tight; hence transitioning from one mode to another should be seamless.
Moving on, the Lenovo Chromebook Flex 3 features an 11.6-inch display with an HD (1366 x 768 pixels) resolution. This resolution allows the display to render decent and colorful picture quality.
In addition to the HD resolution, the laptop’s display also comes with an IPS panel for wide viewing angles. Thus, you can decide to watch the display from the sides and won’t notice any loss in picture quality or color distortion.
That aside, the Lenovo Chromebook Flex 3’s display offers a maximum brightness of 250 nits. Even though this maximum brightness isn’t enough for outdoor usage, it is more than enough for usage in moderately-lit areas.
Besides, as a 2-in-1 Chromebook, this laptop’s display is a touchscreen. As a matter of fact, the display supports 10-point touch.
This implies that the display can recognize and respond to up to ten simultaneous points of contact. Hence, you can seamlessly perform multitouch gestures on the display.
However, surrounding this laptop’s display are bulky bezels. Honestly, these massive bezels are a turn-off for displays as they, most time, cause distraction during video streaming sessions.
Notwithstanding, the Lenovo Chromebook Flex 3’s top bezel creates room for an HD 720p webcam at the center. This webcam offers reasonable performance for conducting video calls and taking selfies in well-lit environments.
Coming down to the deck of the Lenovo Chromebook Flex 3, you will find an attractive keyboard with smiley-shaped keys. Sadly, this keyboard has shallow key travel of 1 millimeter, which might not impress fast typists.
In fact, you can only hit 50 words per minute, according to the 10FastFingers.com typing test. By the way, key travel is the distance between a key at rest and when it hits bottom.
Nonetheless, this laptop’s keyboard should offer an overall decent typing experience. Looking below the keyboard, you will see the Lenovo Chromebook Flex 3’s touchpad.
This touchpad measures 105 x 62 mm and features a smooth surface with two integrated click buttons. Due to its smooth surface, navigating or controlling the cursor with this touchpad should be seamless and problem-free.
Moving on, despite being an 11.6-inch laptop, the Lenovo Chromebook Flex 3 offers a decent amount of ports. Specifically, the right side of the Chromebook houses one USB 2.0 port, one USB 3.0 port, one Ethernet port, and one HDMI port.
The left side, however, features another USB 2.0 port, one SD card reader, and a headphone jack. For wireless connectivity, the Lenovo Chromebook Flex 3 comes with WiFi 802.11 ac (2 x 2) and Bluetooth 4.2.
Having said all that, let us discuss the laptop’s weight and dimensions. The Lenovo Chromebook Flex 3 weighs just 1200 g and measures 285 x 202.7 x 17.5mm (W x D x H).
Clearly, this laptop is compact and light enough to be carried around with ease. Moreover, compared with most of the Chromebooks in its category, the Lenovo Chromebook Flex 3 weighs less.
For example, the Dell Chromebook 11 3180 weighs 1270 g and measures 303.3 x 206 x 20.7 mm (W x D x H). Also, the Acer Chromebook R13 weighs 1500 g and measures 326 x 228 x 15.50 mm (W x D x H).
In conclusion, the Lenovo Chromebook Flex 3 offers a decent design and a sturdy build. Also, the laptop features a touchscreen display that offers wide viewing angles.
However, the keyboard of the laptop isn’t the best out there. Considering all these, I will rate the Lenovo Chromebook Flex 3 an eight out of ten in this design review section.
Lenovo Chromebook Flex 3: Processor (CPU) Performance
The Lenovo Chromebook Flex 3 features a MediaTek MT8183 processor. This processor is an 8-core processor with a cache memory of 2 MB.
In terms of speed, the CPU has a standard frequency of 2.0 GHz. Performance-wise, this processor is a low-end processor mostly found in Android-based tablets and is only capable of handling basic computing operations.
Thus, with this CPU, the Lenovo Chromebook Flex 3 won’t be able to handle demanding tasks like video editing or heavy multitasking. Nonetheless, the laptop should be able to seamlessly handle word processing, web browsing, and other simple tasks.
For a better assessment of this laptop’s processor, let us consider its Geekbench 5.3 test result. Briefly, Geekbench 5.3 is a benchmark test that evaluates the overall performance of a computer’s processor.
It achieves this by putting the processor’s cores through a series of intensive workloads. In doing so, producing a single-core score and multi-core score.
Moreover, the single-core score is generated when only one of the processor’s cores is utilized. Meanwhile, the multi-core score is generated when all of the processor’s cores are being used.
By the way, the higher the single-core and multi-core scores, the better the processor’s performance. With that in mind, at the end of the Geekbench 5.3 test, the Lenovo Chromebook Flex 3 delivered a single-core score of 260 points.
Meanwhile, for the multi-core score, the laptop delivered 909 points. In comparison, this laptop was significantly surpassed by most of its competitors.
For instance, the Apple iPad 10.2 2020 with an A12 Bionic processor delivered an 1116 points single-core score and 2772 points multi-core score. Also, the Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 Lite with the Exynos 9611 processor recorded a single-core score of 345 points and 1207 points multi-core score.
After thorough consideration, I will rate the Lenovo Chromebook Flex 3 a seven out of ten in this processor review section.
Lenovo Chromebook Flex 3: Memory (RAM) Performance
The Lenovo Chromebook Flex 3 comes with an onboard 4 GB LPDDR4x 1866 MHz RAM. Unfortunately, because this memory is onboard, it cannot be removed or upgraded as it is soldered into the laptop’s motherboard.
Hence, you are stuck with just 4GB RAM on the Lenovo Chromebook Flex 3. Although this amount of memory isn’t enough for heavy workloads, it is sufficient for the laptop to carry out basic tasks.
Thus, this Lenovo Chromebook should have no problem streaming videos, browsing the internet, or working on Microsft Word. As a matter of fact, the laptop should be able to handle light multitasking.
Speaking of which, the Lenovo Chromebook Flex 3 should be able to run about 8 Chrome tabs simultaneously without lagging too much. However, when transitioning between the tabs, the laptop’s performance might slow down.
Having said that, let us talk about the laptop’s result on an Octane V2 benchmark test to further evaluate its memory performance. For clarity, this benchmark test is a web-based benchmark test that measures how fast a Chromebook can load web pages.
Moreover, a high score on this web-based benchmark test equates to good performance. Thus, based on the test result, the Lenovo Chromebook Flex 3 delivered a score of 9822 points.
Impressively, this score is above the category average of 9510 points. Also, the laptop’s score surpassed the 9521 points gotten by the Amazon Fire HD 10 Plus 2021.
In conclusion, even though the Lenovo Chromebook Flex 3’s memory isn’t upgradeable, it offers decent multitasking performance. Also, the laptop delivered a good result on a web-based benchmark test.
Hence, I will rate the Lenovo Chromebook Flex 3 a seven out of ten in this memory review section.
Lenovo Chromebook Flex 3: Storage Options and Performance
To start with, the Lenovo Chromebook Flex 3 comes with a 64 GB eMMC storage drive. Apparently, this amount of storage space won’t be enough for most users to save multimedia files.
As a matter of fact, there are numerous smartphones that offer larger storage space. A few examples of such smartphones include Samsung Galaxy S10+ and Google Pixel XL.
Thankfully, apart from their local storage, Chromebooks usually come with 15 GB of Google Drive cloud storage. As excepted, the Lenovo Chromebook Flex 3 isn’t an exception.
In fact, this Chromebook also offers an optional 100 GB of Google Drive storage that is free for one year. To learn how to activate this free 100 GB cloud storage, check the “References And Further Reading” section below.
That aside, the Lenovo Chromebook Flex 3 also features an SD card reader for storage expansion.
Having said all that, I would have loved to share the CrystalDiskMark benchmark test result of this Chromebook to know its storage performance. However, because the Chrome OS that Chromebooks use doesn’t support this benchmark test, I wasn’t able to obtain the laptop’s result.
Hence, I will be rating this Chromebook based on the storage options that it offers. Thus, I will rate the Lenovo Chromebook Flex 3 an eight out of ten in this storage review section.
Lenovo Chromebook Flex 3: Graphics Card Performance
The Lenovo Chromebook Flex 3 comes with an integrated ARM Mali-G72 MP3 graphics card. This graphics card has a standard frequency of 850 MHz.
However, because it is an integrated graphics card, it is embedded into the laptop’s processor. Due to this, it lacks a dedicated VRAM and shares the system memory with the CPU to perform graphics-related tasks.
Hence, the Lenovo Chromebook Flex 3 will not be able to handle graphics-demanding apps like AutoCAD. Also, the laptop won’t be able to play high-end games or title AAA games.
Nevertheless, simple Android games should run smoothly on the laptop. For example, while playing World of Tanks Blitz (2018), the laptop delivered an impressive 60 fps (frame per second).
Moreover, the laptop should also be able to deliver 60 fps while playing Shadow Fight 3 (2018).
For a better analysis of the laptop’s graphics card, I will now present its 3DMark benchmark test result. Briefly, the 3DMark test is used to evaluate the 3D graphics rendering ability of a computer.
In addition to that, on this benchmark test, the laptop with the highest score is regarded as the best. In essence, the higher the score on the test, the better.
Having known that, the Lenovo Chromebook Flex 3 scored 2563 points on the benchmark test.
In comparison, this laptop was beaten by the Acer Chromebook Spin 713, which uses an Intel UHD Graphics 620. To be more specific, this Acer Chromebook scored 5418 points on the 3DMark benchmark test.
Hence, to wrap up this graphics card review section, I will be rating the Lenovo Chromebook Flex 3 a seven out of ten.
Lenovo Chromebook Flex 3: Battery Life and Performance
The Lenovo Chromebook Flex 3 runs on a 3-cell 42 WHr lithium-ion battery. According to Lenovo, this Chromebook has a battery life of 16 hours.
To find out if this claim is true, I will be sharing the battery rundown test result of the laptop. This battery rundown test involves continuously surfing the internet via a Wi-Fi network until the battery of the laptop dies.
With that being said, according to the battery rundown test, the Lenovo Chromebook Flex 3 can last up to 13 hours and 15 minutes. Although this battery life isn’t on par with Lenovo’s claim, it is really impressive.
In actual fact, the laptop has longer battery life compared with most of its competitors. For instance, the HP Chromebook x2 11-da0023dx can last up to 9 hours and 38 minutes, based on the same test.
Also, the Acer Chromebook Spin 311 can last up to 13 hours.
All things considered, I will be rating the Lenovo Chromebook Flex 3 a nine out of ten in this battery review section.
Frequently Asked Questions
The Lenovo Chromebook Flex 3 was released in 2020.
Absolutely! The Lenovo Chromebook Flex 3 runs on the Chrome operating system, which is owned by Google.
Hence, it comes with the Google Play Store.
During the period I wrote this review in June 2022, the Lenovo Chromebook Flex 3 has a starting price of just $167.98.
Yes, the Lenovo Chromebook Flex 3 comes with Bluetooth 4.2 for wireless connectivity.
Sure. As a 2-in-1 Chromebook, the Lenovo Chromebook Flex 3 features a touchscreen display.
Conclusion
The Lenovo Chromebook Flex 3 is a 2-in-1 Chromebook that is best suited for performing basic productivity tasks. Basically, this laptop offers a low-end processor and limited memory.
Nevertheless, as a 2-in-1 laptop, this Chromebook can be used in various modes and features a touchscreen display. That’s not all; the laptop offers a long battery life and an attractive design with a sturdy build.
Hence, if you are a student or need a laptop for carrying out simple computing workloads, the Lenovo Chromebook Flex 3 is worth considering.
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