Lenovo Flex 11 Chromebook - Review 2022

You lot can still find cheap Chromebooks with 11.6-inch non-affect screens for $199, but the market's moved upscale. Models like the $449 Samsung Chromebook Plus and $499 Asus Chromebook Flip C302CA are 2-in-one laptop/tablet convertibles with bigger, college-resolution touch displays in sleek aluminum cases—perks that assist the Asus nab our Editors' Choice for consumer chromebooks. The Lenovo Flex 11 Chromebook ($279) is plastic, non aluminum, and it has an 11.6-inch display with simply 1,366-by-768 rather than 1080p or higher resolution. But it's an IPS touch screen in a flip-and-fold convertible chassis. Straddling the consumer and classroom realms with vigor and value, the Flex almost unseated the Asus Chromebook Flip as our favorite mass-market Chromebook, until information technology sputtered in one torture test.

Fully Flexible

Besides being priced $70 below a comparably equipped Dell Chromebook 3189 Education ii-in-1, the Flex is slightly more compact at 0.eight past 11.vii by 8.1 inches (HWD) versus 0.8 by 12 by 8.2 inches. It weighs two.9 pounds, lighter than the Dell's 3.16, but heavier than the Asus'south 2.43 pounds despite the latter's larger 12.5-inch full HD display. Fifty-fifty so, it'south no burden in a briefcase or backpack, or at home on a lap or on an airplane tray tabular array, even if you find yourself stuck in a heart seat.

The convertible is clad in gray plastic with a silverish palm residual. The familiar 4-color Chrome logo and a Lenovo logo decorate contrary corners of the chapeau, and a rubber bumper borders the outside just as a thick blackness bezel borders the glossy, reflective screen. A slightly grainy webcam centered to a higher place the screen serves for Google Hangouts (the Chrome Os counterpart to Skype chats).

Two rounded hinges let the 11.6-inch screen curve through the four operating modes familiar to users of Lenovo'southward Yoga Windows systems: laptop style; an easel-fashion stand mode, with the screen tilted back and keyboard confront downwardly on a desk; an A-frame tent fashion, with screen and keyboard forming an inverted Five; and tablet mode, with screen and keyboard back to dorsum. Stand fashion is handy for giving presentations or sharing your work, while tent way lets you swipe at touch-screen apps in confined spaces. As with all convertibles, the keyboard is disabled every bit the display swings past 180 degrees, and so your fingers holding the underside of the tablet don't type gibberish.

Though not MIL-SPEC rated for ruggedness like the Acer Chromebook 14 for Work, Lenovo says the Flex 11 is built to survive crude treatment such as drops from two.iv anxiety (75cm) and spills of near one cup of liquid. Except for the screen flopping flat or open on bear on, our exam unit shrugged off a dozen drops, and kept running later nosotros splashed half a drinking glass of water on the keyboard. When we shut down subsequently the spill test, nevertheless, the system didn't desire to switch on again until given a weekend to dry, after which it worked fine.

What's on the Outside?

While the Dell 3189 lacks a USB-C port, the Flex eleven has i—also used for charging the laptop via the supplied Ac adapter—on its left edge. On that side, you'll likewise discover a USB 3.0 (Type A) port, an HDMI port, and an SD carte slot. The right edge holds just an audio jack, book rocker, power push button, and cable lock slot. Nosotros found information technology all too piece of cake to accidentally hit the power button when grasping the Lenovo to lift information technology off our lap, only fortunately the push button merely puts the convertible to sleep instead of shutting it down and possibly losing work.

The keyboard follows the standard Chrome layout, with a search instead of Caps Lock key and browser and system command keys (such equally volume and brightness controls) instead of role keys up meridian. Information technology'due south not backlit for typing in dark rooms, but it is full-sized (the A through apostrophe keys span the desktop-regulation 8 inches). Typing feel is apartment and firm, with somewhat shallow central travel but good feedback and a laudable lack of flex in the keyboard tray; we were typing swiftly and accurately with only a little do. The buttonless touchpad glides smoothly and responds crisply to one- and two-finger taps (the equivalent of left and right clicks).

The 1,366-by-768 screen offers broad viewing angles and ample brightness for routine work—typing in Google Docs, we routinely turned information technology downward three or four notches to help conserve bombardment life—but proves a little dim for video viewing; even with brightness turned upward, shadowed areas of YouTube movie trailers await murky. Colors in presentations and games, withal, are articulate and bold, as is audio from the Lenovo's bottom-mounted speakers: The niggling convertible easily pumps out plenty sound to fill a medium-sized room, though bass is predictably muted.

Waiting for Android

The Flex eleven features a MediaTek 8173C processor—a two.1GHz ARM quad-core—along with 4GB of RAM and 32GB of eMMC flash storage for downloads. These specs should brand it a natural when, as Google has promised and as the Samsung Chromebook Plus has already previewed, Chromebooks get access to the thousands of Android apps in the Google Play Shop, an advance Lenovo describes only as "coming soon in 2022."

Meanwhile, of class, the 2-in-i happily runs Google Docs, Microsoft Office Online, and the legions of apps in the Chrome Web Store. Most of these run in tabs in the Chrome browser, only a respectable number likewise perform offline, syncing your work when your Wi-Fi connection returns. Similar about all Chromebooks, the Lenovo is eligible for 100GB of gratis Google Drive cloud storage (plus unlimited Google Docs file storage) for two years.

Chromebooks don't run our Windows-based performance benchmarks, but we had no complaints with the Flex xi's multitasking: We easily opened and switched among more than a dozen tabs, including video playback sessions, without hesitation, although we were able to force some stumbling and stuttering past playing three 4K videos at once. And in our battery rundown test, where we play a locally stored MP4 video of The Lord of the Rings at full screen with effulgence set at 50 percent and volume at 100 percent, the Lenovo excelled, lasting for 12 hours and 13 minutes—one-half an 60 minutes longer than the Dell 3189 and about two hours longer than the Asus Flip.

A Nicely Outfitted Deal

Chromebooks come up in all shapes and sizes. A few, similar the Acer Chromebook 14, are fifty-fifty tougher than the sturdy Flex 11. A few have extra features, like the Asus Flip's backlit keyboard or the lite on the Dell Educational activity two-in-1's lid that a student can use to signal a teacher at the front of the classroom. Simply as a well-equipped performer priced barely above a bare-bones non-convertible, the Lenovo is a flat-out bargain. We'd keep it away from liquids, merely requite it a solid recommendation.