Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5i Chromebook Plus 14″ FHD+ 2-in-1 Touchscreen Laptop (Intel Core i3-1315U, 8GB RAM, 256GB Storage), Home, Students, Backlit, FHD Webcam, Chrome OS, 2TB of Cloud Storage, Grey

Exceeded Expectations
Within our household, three children are gamers alongside two adult gamers. It’s getting a little expensive now tbh lol. Over Thanksgiving break we all landed on Stardew Valley as a video game we enjoy playing together as a family, but our youngest sons’ 12 yr old entry-level gaming laptop is dying, even with upgrading ram and a reset on that machine it can’t handle most games anymore. So he wasn’t able to play with us on his own rig. We took turns, but it just wasn’t as fun.Enter the Lenovo Flex 5i. I took the time to enable the Linux Beta, went through the process of getting steam set to 32-bit, and downloaded Stardew Valley. It runs smoothly, with no glitching/lag. I did make the Linux portion of the HD take more of a share than was suggested, 30 Gb vs 10 Gb to accommodate adding more demanding games. It runs Terraria and other similar titles beautifully. But this Chromebook doesn’t stop there for us, we’ve been using it for web surfing, streaming movies, and as an extra device for homework when the school Chromebooks are slow/acting up. It’s filling a niche that we truly didn’t realize we needed in our home.Overall: If you are looking to play some low-demand (side scrollers, dungeon crawling 32-bit games) steam games via Linux, then this is a great option. If you just need something to watch movies/youtube/surf the web it’s more than powerful enough to handle that with ease. This Chromebook is sleek, peppy, and feels expensive even though we got it for under $300. My only minor complaint so far is the matte finish is prone to showing every fingerprint on the outside of the case, but at the same time, it lets us see how often it is being used and reminds us to clean it often.But as a final note, for us, this Chromebook is a stop-gap/multi-purpose item to fill in when we need it. In late winter/early spring, our son will probably get a mini gaming PC since he isn’t as big of a gamer as the rest of his siblings but may want to play more robust games. This Chromebook gives us some breathing room over the winter to research & shop for his future rig while allowing us all to play games together as a family.

Worrisome bootup
I got this as a replacement for an earlier model, the Lenovo 330c (which I still use after 4 years). The 330c had two issues: 1) The case was plastic, and the lid developed several large cracks from hinge stress, and 2) It struggled to play videos, especially from facebook and news sites.This newer model has a metal lid which should solve the cracking problem. It is also notably faster and has no problem so far playing any videos. One the downside, the battery life seems to be much less, and it is slow to wake up from sleep mode, including that it seems slower to reconnect to the wifi than the older model. UPDATE: Today, less than 30 days in, the unit would not start up. The white light on the power button just kept blinking after I closed the lid to move from the kitchen to the living room. I couldn’t find any official Lenovo support online, but I did find a YouTube which sent me to try recovery mode (esc+circle-arrow fcn key+ power button) and I was able to power off. Powered up again OK. Worrisome. This unit does not sleep well.The lighted keyboard is a nice new feature. I also like that the power cord can be attached from either side, since the nearest outlet always seemed to be on the ‘wrong’ side (and the left-side plug on the old model was always a bit in the way for left-handed folk like me). There’s no HDMI port, but I only used that occasionally and it’s addressable with a dongle.Most things synch up pretty well making for an easy setup. I’m a bit old school and keep a lot on the machine memory rather than the cloud. This has plenty of storage for that, but of course that stuff doesn’t synch and needs to be transferred. This won’t open my Open Office files unless I upload them to the cloud, convert them, and download them back down. A bit of a hassle but not a deal killer.A good purchase overall, and good enough to become my only computer. I’m going to shed my old desktop tower.

No regret getting this laptop. Sound is good and also screen is plesent to look. Will definetly get it again

arrived on time in good condition and pretty good as i’m replacing my window