Lenovo Ideapad Flex 3 (11) review – if possible, go for the SSD-equipped models

Okay, guys, today we have something very portable in our office. It is not your ordinary laptop, and not because it has a 360° hinge. The reason for that lays more in its size and purpose. We are talking about none other, but the Lenovo Ideapad Flex 3 (11).

Ultimately, it sits in a very weird place on the market. Somewhere beneath large tablets, and small laptops, but more importantly – it is aimed at a younger user base.

Obviously, it packs touchscreen support, but there are no mentions of stylus support or a Pen inside of the package. Also, the hardware relies on 6W TDP processors from Intel (there is an AMD version, as well), so it won’t be a powerhouse, either.

But its key features should make your day-to-day experience a little bit easier. For example, there is a FullHD IPS option. Also, the small screen size, combined with the low power consumption processors, will most definitely result in great battery life. Without further ado, let’s crack the box open, and take a look at the Ideapad Flex 3 (11).

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/us/series/lenovo-ideapad-flex-3-11/

Contents


Specs Sheet

Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 3 (11") - Specs

  • Innolux N116HSE-EBC (CMN1137)
  • Color accuracy  11  6.0
  • HDD/SSD
  • up to 256GB SSD
  • RAM
  • up to 4GB
  • OS
  • Windows 10 S, Windows 10 Home, Chrome OS
  • Battery
  • 37.5Wh, 42Wh, 3-cell
  • Body material
  • Plastic / Polycarbonate
  • Dimensions
  • 281.7 x 198 x 17.5 mm (11.09" x 7.80" x 0.69")
  • Weight
  • 1.13 kg (2.5 lbs)
  • Ports and connectivity
  • 2x USB Type-A
  • 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps)
  • HDMI
  • 1.4b
  • Card reader
  • MicroSD
  • Wi-Fi
  • 802.11ac
  • Bluetooth
  • 5.0
  • Audio jack
  • 3.5mm Combo Jack
  • Features
  • Fingerprint reader
  • optional
  • Web camera
  • HD
  • Backlit keyboard
  • Microphone
  • Single Microphone
  • Speakers
  • 2x 1.5W, Dolby Audio
  • Optical drive

All Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 3 (11″) configurations

#CommissionsEarned

What’s in the box?

Inside the package, there is nothing of particular interest – only some paper manuals, and a 45W power brick.


Design and construction

As we said, this notebook is extremely portable. In addition to its small footprint, there is a 17.5mm profile and a weight that sits at 1.13 kg. Ultimately, the chassis is not strong, in fact, it is fairly twisty, and not structurally sound, However, the lid portion is built like a tank, mainly thanks to the glass cover on the display.

Regarding the build materials, the entire laptop is made out of plastic. Perhaps, expectedly, you won’t be able to open the lid with a single hand, and on the inside, you will see one of the largest bezels there are in 2021. Thankfully, the top one houses an HD camera with a privacy shutter, but the biggest tradeoff it provides is found down at the base.

Yep, we are talking about the keyboard. Because they put such big bezels around the display, Lenovo is ultimately emulating a larger device, thus being able to include a somewhat normally-sized keyboard. Yes, the keycaps are a fraction smaller than that on larger devices, but it feels particularly good when typing, with its long key travel and clicky feedback. Unfortunately, there is no backlight to be found, but for that price, take it or leave it, we suppose.

A bit down below, there is the Mylar-surfaced touchpad, which offers surprisingly good tracking and decent gliding. Yes, if you press hard in its top half portion, this will result in a fairly prominent bending from the chassis, but this is true for the keyboard, as well.

And on the bottom panel, there are only the speaker grills… but wait, where are the fan vents? Well, there are none, because this laptop lacks a fan inside, making it completely silent.

Ports

In terms of I/O, on the left side of the device, you will find the barrel-style charging plug, a USB Type-A 3.2 (Gen. 1) port, an HDMI 1.4b connector, and an Audio jack. Switch sides, and you’ll see another USB Type-A 3.2 (Gen. 1) port, a MicroSD card reader, and the Power button. This setup completely obliterates most of the Chromebooks on the market.


Disassembly, upgrade options and maintenance

Let’s get that straight, you will be able to upgrade your laptop only if you have purchased a version, that comes with an SSD. If you get the 64GB eMMC model, you will not be able to upgrade it internally, as explicitly mentioned by Lenovo. However, if you need to get inside of the laptop, just undo all five Torx-head screws, and slide the bottom panel downwards.

Once you are inside, you can see the passive cooling setup in its full glory. There is one heat pipe that drives the heat away from the CPU, towards a metal sheet of paper in the middle of the chassis, which will naturally dissipate the heat away. Also, there is something that looks like a copper bracket around the processor, which should further enhance the thermal efficiency of the cooling solution.

When it comes to the battery, though, Lenovo has put a 37.5Wh unit, which should be enough, considering the display size, and the power efficiency of the processor.


Display quality

Lenovo Ideapad Flex 3 (11) is equipped with an IPS panel, model number Innolux N116HSE-EBC (CMN1137). Its diagonal is 11.6″ (29.5 cm), and the resolution 1920 х 1080 pixels. The screen ratio is 16:9, and we are looking at a pixel density of – 190 ppi, and a pitch of 0.13 х 0.13 mm. The screen turns into Retina when viewed at distance equal to or greater than 46cm (from this distance one’s eye stops differentiating the separate pixels, and it is normal for looking at a laptop).

Viewing angles are excellent. We offer images at 45° to evaluate image quality.

The measured maximum brightness of 344 nits in the middle of the screen and 323 nits as an average for the whole area, with a maximum deviation of 10%. The Correlated Color Temperature on a white screen is 6100K – warmer than the optimal for the sRGB standard of 6500K.
In the illustration below you can see how the display performs from a uniformity perspective. In other words, the leakage of light from the light source.

Values of dE2000 over 4.0 should not occur, and this parameter is one of the first you should check if you intend to use the laptop for color-sensitive work. The contrast ratio is fine – 980:1.

To make sure we are on the same page, we would like to give you a little introduction to the sRGB color gamut and the Adobe RGB. To start, there’s the CIE 1976 Uniform Chromaticity Diagram that represents the visible specter of colors by the human eye, giving you a better perception of the color gamut coverage and the color accuracy.

Inside the black triangle, you will see the standard color gamut (sRGB) that is being used by millions of people on HDTV and on the web. As for the Adobe RGB, this is used in professional cameras, monitors, etc for printing. Colors inside the black triangle are used by everyone and this is the essential part of the color quality and color accuracy of a mainstream notebook.

Still, we’ve included other color spaces like the famous DCI-P3 standard used by movie studios, as well as the digital UHD Rec.2020 standard. Rec.2020, however, is still a thing of the future and it’s difficult for today’s displays to cover that well. We’ve also included the so-called Michael Pointer gamut, or Pointer’s gamut, which represents the colors that naturally occur around us every day.

The yellow dotted line shows Lenovo Ideapad Flex 3 (11)’s color gamut coverage.

Its display covers only 46% of the sRGB/ITU-R BT.709 (web/HDTV standard) in CIE1976.

Our “Design and Gaming” profile delivers optimal color temperature (6500K) at 140 cd/m2 luminance and sRGB gamma mode.

We tested the accuracy of the display with 24 commonly used colors like light and dark human skin, blue sky, green grass, orange, etc. You can check out the results at factory condition and also, with the “Design and Gaming” profile.

Below you can compare the scores of Lenovo Ideapad Flex 3 (11) with the default settings (left), and with the “Gaming and Web design” profile (right).

The next figure shows how well the display is able to reproduce really dark parts of an image, which is essential when watching movies or playing games in low ambient light.

The left side of the image represents the display with stock settings, while the right one is with the “Gaming and Web Design” profile activated. On the horizontal axis, you will find the grayscale, and on the vertical axis – the luminance of the display. On the two graphs below you can easily check for yourself how your display handles the darkest nuances but keep in mind that this also depends on the settings of your current display, the calibration, the viewing angle, and the surrounding light conditions.

Response time (Gaming capabilities)

We test the reaction time of the pixels with the usual “black-to-white” and “white-to-black” method from 10% to 90% and vice versa.

We recorded Fall Time + Rise Time = 23 ms.


PWM (Screen flickering)

Pulse-width modulation (PWM) is an easy way to control monitor brightness. When you lower the brightness, the light intensity of the backlight is not lowered, but instead turned off and on by the electronics with a frequency indistinguishable to the human eye. In these light impulses, the light/no-light time ratio varies, while brightness remains unchanged, which is harmful to your eyes. You can read more about that in our dedicated article on PWM.

Lenovo Ideapad Flex 3 (11)’s backlight uses PWM for brightness adjustment up until 87 nits. However, its high frequency makes the experience comfortable even during long working sessions and can be considered safe in this aspect.

Blue light emissions

Installing our Health-Guard profile not only eliminates PWM but also reduces the harmful Blue Light emissions while keeping the colors of the screen perceptually accurate. If you’re not familiar with the Blue light, the TL;DR version is – emissions that negatively affect your eyes, skin, and your whole body. You can find more information about that in our dedicated article on Blue Light.

Conclusion

Lenovo Ideapad Flex 3 (11)’s touchscreen IPS panel has a Full HD resolution, comfortable viewing angles, decent contrast ratio, and adequate default settings. Moreover, its backlight doesn’t use aggressive PWM. Unfortunately, its color coverage is horrid with only 46% of the sRGB gamut, and the color accuracy is way off, as well. This display is not suitable for professional work by any means.

Buy our profiles

Since our profiles are tailored for each individual display model, this article and its respective profile package are meant for Lenovo Ideapad Flex 3 (11) configurations with 11.6″ FHD IPS Innolux N116HSE-EBC (CMN1137).

*Should you have problems with downloading the purchased file, try using a different browser to open the link you’ll receive via e-mail. If the download target is a .php file instead of an archive, change the file extension to .zip or contact us at [email protected].

Read more about the profiles HERE.

In addition to receiving efficient and health-friendly profiles, by buying LaptopMedia's products you also support the development of our labs, where we test devices in order to produce the most objective reviews possible.

Office Work

Office Work should be used mostly by users who spend most of the time looking at pieces of text, tables or just surfing. This profile aims to deliver better distinctness and clarity by keeping a flat gamma curve (2.20), native color temperature and perceptually accurate colors.

Design and Gaming

This profile is aimed at designers who work with colors professionally, and for games and movies as well. Design and Gaming takes display panels to their limits, making them as accurate as possible in the sRGB IEC61966-2-1 standard for Web and HDTV, at white point D65.

Health-Guard

Health-Guard eliminates the harmful Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM) and reduces the negative Blue Light which affects our eyes and body. Since it’s custom tailored for every panel, it manages to keep the colors perceptually accurate. Health-Guard simulates paper so the pressure on the eyes is greatly reduced.

Get all 3 profiles with 33% discount


Sound

Lenovo Ideapad Flex 3 (11)’s stereo 1.5W speakers produce a sound with decent quality, but rather low maximum volume. Also, there are some slight deviations across the entire frequency spectrum.


Drivers

All of the drivers and utilities for this notebook can be found here: https://pcsupport.lenovo.com/us/en/products/laptops-and-netbooks/flex-series/flex-3-11igl05/downloads/driver-list

Battery

Now, we conduct the battery tests with Windows Better performance setting turned on, screen brightness adjusted to 120 nits, and all other programs turned off except for the one we are testing the notebook with. This notebook’s 37.5Wh battery delivers 9 hours and 43 minutes of Web browsing, and 10 hours and 15 minutes of video playback.


CPU options

This notebook features a choice of four low-powered CPUs. Two of them are dual-core – the Celeron N4000, and the Celeron N4020, while the other two are quad-core ones – Celeron N4120, and the Pentium Silver N5030.

CPU BenchmarksOctane V2Mozilla Kraken 1.1 (lower is better)Sunspider 1.0.2 (lower is better)BasemarkMotionMark
Lenovo Ideapad Flex 3 (11)165272178 ms472 ms310.97149.78
Microsoft Surface Go 2149722422 ms547 ms381.38164.32
Acer TravelMate B1 (B114-21)47386773.0 ms571.2 ms44.0831.31
Acer Chromebook 314 (C933)210111988.7 ms

GPU options

As there are obviously no dedicated graphics options, you are stuck with either the UHD Graphics 600 or the UHD Graphics 605, with the latter only being available with the Pentium Silver N5030.

GPU BenchmarksGFXBench Manhattan 3.0 (1080p offscreen)
Lenovo Ideapad Flex 3 (11)17 fps
Microsoft Surface Go 243.6 fps
Acer TravelMate B1 (B114-21)15.2 fps
Acer Chromebook 314 (C933)20 fps

Temperatures and comfort

Max CPU load

In this test we use 100% on the CPU cores, monitoring their frequencies and chip temperature. The first column shows a computer’s reaction to a short load (2-10 seconds), the second column simulates a serious task (between 15 and 30 seconds), and the third column is a good indicator of how good the laptop is for long loads such as video rendering.

Average core frequency (base frequency + X); CPU temp.

Intel Celeron N4020 (6W TDP)0:02 – 0:10 sec0:15 – 0:30 sec10:00 – 15:00 min
Lenovo Ideapad Flex 3 (11)2.69 GHz @ 46°C @ 8W2.69 GHz @ 48°C @ 8W2.69 GHz @ 61°C @ 8W

As you can see, the 6W CPU here is working on the whopping 8W of power. This, however, is nowhere near the full potential of the passive cooling system of this notebook, and the temperature is extremely low.

Comfort during full load

As we said, there is a passive cooling inside of this notebook, which makes it practically silent during every type of load. Additionally, the temperature on the outside barely passes the 30°C mark.


Verdict

Well, we think we have put that straight at the beginning of this review, but we’re going to say it again – this laptop is not meant to render complex 3D objects, nor to enable you to play any AAA title out there. Instead, you would want it for an unpretentious daily driver, which also works as a tablet.

So, naturally, it comes in two iterations regarding the storage. Stay sharp, this is important. You are either getting a 64GB eMMC drive or a 128 (or 256)GB SSD. If you chose the first option, and you shouldn’t, you are left with what you’ve got. Lenovo has decided to put an actual M.2 SSD slot only on the laptops that already come with one. It’s a bit bizarre, but there is nothing you can do. Also, it comes in versions with Windows 10 (64 bit), or Windows 10 in S mode, which is also something you wouldn’t want, but will be inevitable if you opt for the 64GB eMMC storage.

Lenovo Ideapad Flex 3 (11)’s touchscreen IPS panel has a Full HD resolution, comfortable viewing angles, decent contrast ratio, and adequate default settings. Moreover, its backlight doesn’t use aggressive PWM. Unfortunately, its color coverage is horrid with only 46% of the sRGB gamut, and the color accuracy is way off, as well. This display is not suitable for professional work by any means.

Thankfully, the battery life is good with 9 hours and 43 minutes of Web browsing, and 10 hours and 15 minutes of video playback, somewhere in the neighborhood of what Lenovo is expecting.

And considering the fact that the laptop is competing mostly with the Chromebooks of the world, its I/O is great, although it lacks the now-so-popular USB Type-C connector.

Now, the manufacturer hasn’t used the most premium materials out there, as the build quality of the base is somewhat hindered by the plastic chassis. It bends and twists like crazy, which is not great.

Nevertheless, if you are in the market for inexpensive 11-inch convertibles, the Ideapad Flex 3 (13) is not a bad choice, just remember what we said about the storage options, and you will be fine.

Pros

  • Great keyboard, considering the size
  • Wide I/O with a MicroSD card slot
  • Doesn’t use aggressive PWM for brightness adjustment (SHP14D2)
  • Good battery life
  • Completely silent thanks to the overkill passive cooling setup


Cons

  • Only 4GB of nonupgradable memory
  • 64GB eMMC version lacks an M.2 slot for storage
  • Covers only 46% of the sRGB color gamut
  • No USB Type-C port

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/us/series/lenovo-ideapad-flex-3-11/

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BONNY BABU ONAT
BONNY BABU ONAT
2 years ago

This is a good laptop for USD 350. I got the one with 128 SSD, Celeron N4020, 4GB, HD Display, and Windows 10 Home in S mode to replace my aging Acer Aspire 5750G Performance is just on the borderline of being bit sluggish, but overwise its acceptable for light web browsing on the awesome Microsoft Edge, Office 365, and using UWP + PWA apps (Mail, News, Weather / YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter). If you don’t use Zoom much, I suggest keeping the S mode on for the sake of performance and security. The icing on the cake is the… Read more »

BONNY BABU ONAT
BONNY BABU ONAT
2 years ago

This is a good laptop for USD 350. I got the one with 128 SSD, Celeron N4020, 4GB, HD Touch Display, and Windows 10 Home in S mode to replace my aging Acer Aspire 5750G Performance is just on the borderline of being bit sluggish, but overwise its acceptable for light web browsing on the awesome Microsoft Edge, Office 365, and using UWP + PWA apps (Mail, News, Weather / YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter). If you don’t use Zoom much, I suggest keeping the S mode on for the sake of performance and security. The icing on the cake is… Read more »

Eric Young
Eric Young
2 years ago

My fav collab has to be the one with Lenovo and Mediatek. They really know how to make some kickass chromebooks.