Lenovo Flex 3 (11-inch, 1120) display analysis – low color gamut coverage makes it suitable for casual use only
With convertibles gaining steady attention from the general public, manufacturers are making more and more of these devices. The new Lenovo Flex 3 11 is in this category as well and, like many others, it uses a standard TN panel with a resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels that doesn’t offer very good color reproduction, but for its low price, it is still a decent display for casual activities.
Brightness and PWM
The display of the Flex 3 has a maximum brightness of 204 cd/m2 that is excellently distributed over the screen with a maximum deviation of just 4%. The brightness is not too high, but still good for working in a bright room. The bad news is that it has pulse-width modulation (PWM) for all levels but the maximum, so if you are using it in a darkened environment and you lower the screen brightness, there will still be flickering at a low frequency (200 Hz) that is bad for your eyes.
Color reproduction
On the color reproduction front, things are not too good either. The 11-inch Flex 3 has DeltaE76 of 3.19 which is an average value for low end machines. The display offers 58% sRGB coverage which means you will not be able to see 42% of the web colors. You can see the reference values (the colored circles) that should be the reproduced colors, compared to the colors that are actually shown on the display (the white dots). The white arrows show the difference between the colors that have the biggest reproduction error. There are some pretty big deviations in main color reproduction, a big part of the reds and purples are missing and are thus shown inaccurately on the screen.
After profiling at 140 cd/m2 brightness with the native color temperature, we ran the color reproduction test. The test consists of the most commonly used colors used for light and dark human skin, grass green, blue sky, etc. Most of them are in the middle of the color gamut where the notebook’s colors are most accurate, so the display is suitable for everyday use.