lenovo-flex-3-chromebook-review:-good-price,-bad-screen

Lenovo Flex 3 Chromebook review: good price, bad screen

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Lenovo’s Ideapad Flex 3 Chromebook is one of the tiniest Chromebooks I’ve ever used. It’s also one of the cheapest, retailing for just $349.99.

Any laptop that costs that little is going to have some serious drawbacks — and the Flex 3 certainly does. On the other hand, if you’re the sort of shopper who’s willing to set those aside, this little IdeaPad also has a number of pleasant surprises up its sleeve. There are even a few areas (in particular, the battery life) where it gives significantly more expensive devices a run for their money.

I’ll start with the pleasant surprises. The Flex 3 offers a more modern port selection than I’d expect at its price point — there are two USB 3.1 Type-C Gen 1 ports and two USB 3.1 Type-A Gen 1 ports (one on each side, which is really handy for charging and connecting accessories), as well as a microSD reader, an audio combo jack, and a lock slot. There’s a 720p webcam that works decently well if you’re not in low light. And the touchpad is surprisingly sturdy — I often find that touchpads in this price range feel plasticky. The Flex even comes with a Google Security H1 chip, which encrypts sensitive on-device data.

There’s a power button on the side, as well as a volume rocker.

There are two features that really impressed me (in addition to the battery life, which I’ll discuss later on). First, I can’t stop talking about the keyboard. It’s great, with tons of travel and a satisfying click. The keys have a slightly rough texture that really grew on me. I got one of the highest scores I’ve ever gotten on my usual typing test, with almost no errors. The only note is that it lacks backlighting, a feature you’ll find on more expensive devices like Acer’s Chromebook Spin 713 (our current top Chromebook pick) and Lenovo’s Flex 5 Chromebook.

God, I love a good keyboard.

Second, audio. The balance and volume that these 2W stereo speakers deliver are on par with those of any number of more expensive Chromebooks. They easily beat the Spin 713, which sounds tinny and thin. There are caveats, of course: There’s very little bass, percussion is weak, I heard a bit of distortion at max volume, and you’ll want an external speaker for any crowded setting. But the Flex is great for video conferences and regular music-listening, and certainly beats what I’ve heard from all kinds of Windows laptops that are over $1,000.

Now, for the major drawbacks. First, this thing is a clunker. It’s not too heavy, at 2.65 pounds, but it’s 0.7 inches thick, and it’s not too far from the size of many modern 13-inch laptops despite having just an 11-inch screen. My main turnoff, though, is the bezels. Good lord, the bezels are enormous. When I’m using the Flex 3, I feel like I’m looking at a small window of screen floating in an abyss of black. It looks like a device you’d have bought in 2014.

I wish Lenovo had sprung for a better screen.

I do like some things about the chassis, though. It doesn’t feel at all flimsy, with an aluminum cover and a non-plasticky finish. The display and keyboard are free of flex (despite the laptop’s name). And the 360 hinge is sturdy, with very little wobble.

Speaking of the display, though: That’s the second major drawback here. It’s cramped — I often use two windows side-by-side and I’ve been squinting at tiny text in order to make that work on the Flex 3. Moreover, it’s dim (maxing out at 250 nits), kicks back a ton of glare even indoors, and is quite low-resolution (1366 x 768). I’m gonna be real: It’s pixel-y to look at. I’ve been using the Flex 3 as my primary driver for a week, and while I will miss the keyboard and audio when I send it back, I can’t wait never to have to look at this terrible screen again.

That’s the lowdown on the chassis — let’s look inside. This Ideapad Flex 3 Chromebook configuration is powered by Intel’s dual-core Celeron N4020. That’s the bottom of the barrel as Intel processors go, and it comes with just 4GB of memory (LPDDR4-2400, soldered) and 64GB of eMMC 5.1 storage.

On a Windows machine, these specs would be a hard pass. But Chrome OS is a lighter load, and I can vouch that the Flex 3’s screen is a bigger limit on multitasking than its horsepower is. I was able to use the laptop for a substantial workload, jumping between dozens of Chrome tabs and some apps, but the experience was cramped enough that I wouldn’t recommend it.

The color is called “almond”.

Scrolling got a bit sluggish when I tried to work on top of a Spotify or YouTube stream, and the transitions between laptop and tablet mode were a bit slower than I would’ve liked. The only task where I ran into real trouble, though, was sorting through a batch of shots in Google Photos (with a couple other apps running on the side). The Flex 3 did get the job done, but it was quite slow. The one Zoom meeting I tried (on top of some other tabs I needed) was also a bad experience — audio randomly cut out a couple times, and video was stuttery throughout.

Overall, this device is best if you’re looking to do basic office or school tasks, and don’t think you’ll need to have more than a few things open at a time. (And in case this doesn’t go without saying, you’ll want to stay far away from this thing if you plan on doing anything fancy with Linux.)

The flipside of the weak processor is that the Flex 3 has excellent battery life. I averaged eight hours and 45 minutes to a charge with brightness at 50 percent — and I was pushing the thing harder than most people probably will be, as noted above. You can expect that this thing will last all day, and certainly longer than many more powerful Chromebooks. The 45W charger is acceptably quick, juicing the device up to 60 percent in 52 minutes.

Six rows of keys.

The Flex 3 runs Chrome OS, which means it can run Android apps natively. Some of these have improved since the last time I used this operating system — Messenger is now functional and no longer a complete disaster that bricks the machine, for example. But most of the services I use daily (Slack, Twitter, Gmail, Reddit, etc.) are just better experiences in a browser, so I didn’t use the dedicated app functionality all that often. There’s also still a double-notification problem — every time I got a Slack message, I got a notification both from the Slack Android app and my browser.

The Flex 3 also supports Chrome OS’s tablet mode, which has gotten quite good. It supports Android-esque gesture controls, which should help flatten the learning curve for new Chromebook users (though they were a bit sluggish on this device).

Deciding whether to buy a $350 Chromebook comes down to understanding what the big drawbacks are. In this case, there are two: The screen is cramped, and the processor is weak. So the question to ask is: Given those caveats, can you get your stuff done?

If you’re just using this device to pay bills, email people, and run some YouTube videos, I would say you can. It’ll be a little cramped, but you can. And if you can stomach that, the Flex 3 does deliver some great benefits in other areas, from the great keyboard and convenient ports to the outstanding battery life and respectable audio. In these categories, it rivals or surpasses our top Chromebook pick (the Spin 713). If you’re okay with its flaws, you’ll find that the Flex 3 offers quite a bit for its budget price.

Photography by Monica Chin / The Verge

leaked-pictures-claim-to-show-liquid-cooled-amd-radeon-rx-6900-xtx-graphics-card

Leaked Pictures Claim to Show Liquid-Cooled AMD Radeon RX 6900 XTX Graphics Card

(Image credit: AMD)

Two newly leaked images suggest that AMD considered building an extreme flagship for its Big Navi family featuring a liquid cooling system and called Radeon RX 6900 XTX. The Navi 21 GPUs already rank near the top of the best graphics cards, and also place high on our GPU benchmarks hierarchy. Adding liquid cooling to the mix, similar to what’s been done in the past with the RX Vega 64 Liquid, R9 Fury X and R9 295X2, would allow AMD to reach higher clocks and performance.

A member of the Chiphell forums published two pictures claiming to be the reference design of AMD’s Radeon RX 6900 XTX graphics card. The images were then republished by a Weibo user. The images show a board with a large heatsink with the letter “R” on its shroud, hiding a waterblock underneath.

(Image credit: bswvae/Weibo)

The shroud also has red accents and the ‘Radeon’ inscription on its side, which is very similar to those on the reference Radeon RX 6800 XT and Radeon 6900 XT graphics cards. 

But unlike the 6900 XT, the so-called Radeon RX 6900 XTX does not have a backplate (not that it is particularly surprising for a pre-release product). The board also appears to come with a 120mm radiator and one fan.

(Image credit: bswvae/Weibo)

While AMD has not yet released a Radeon RX 6900 XTX product, it has worked to deliver the ultimate version of the 6900 XT with 5,120 stream processors and very high clocks. AMD Recently started supplying partners with its “unlocked and unleashed” Navi 21 XTXH silicon that can boost all the way to 2.73 GHz on Sapphire’s Toxic Radeon RX 6900 XT Extreme Edition, and to about 2.50 GHz on AIBs by ASRock and PowerColor (up from 2.25 GHz recommended by AMD). 

Assuming AMD did play around with a RX 6900 XTX card, it’d be interesting to know how far it was willing to push the GPU. Some of the extreme cooling systems designed by AMD’s partners seem more capable than its liquid cooler at first glance. 

In general, while the Radeon RX 6900 XTX speaks the same design language as AMD’s reference Radeon RX 6800 and 6900-series graphics cards, it’s unclear if the card in the images was meant to be a commercial product, a sample for game developers, or a one-off prototype.

AMD is not new to liquid cooling. The company offered the Radeon R9 Fury X and Radeon Vega 64 Liquid Cooling boards with a closed-loop liquid cooling system. Ultimately, the company moved to a triple-fan cooler with a large heatsink as a more practical cooling solution.

World’s Fastest Radeon RX 6900 XT Graphics Cards
Sapphire Toxic Radeon RX 6900 XT EE PowerColor Liquid Devil Ultimate RX 6900 XT ASRock RX 6900 XT OC Formula Radeon RX 6900 XT
Base ? ? 2,125 MHz 1825 MHz
Game 2,375 MHz 2,305 MHz 2,165MHz ?
Boost 2,500 MHz 2,375 MHz 2,295 MHz 2250 MHz
Performance Game 2,525 MHz 2,480 MHz 2,365 MHz
Performance Boost 2,730 MHz 2,525 MHz 2,475 MHz
Cooling System Hybrid Custom LCS Triple-fan Triple-fan

While we still don’t have hard proof of a 6900 XTX under consideration or in the works, it would make sense for AMD to allow its partners to release extreme specced Radeon RX 6900 XT SKUs that could push the Navi 21 silicon even further, especially with rumors of Nvidia planning to announce a GeForce RTX 3080 Ti in the near future.

Nvidia’s flagship GeForce RTX 3090 nearly always outperforms AMD’s Radeon RX 6900 XT, but a heavily factory-overclocked Navi 21 XTXH can successfully compete against a slightly cut-down GA102 that carries ‘only’ 12GB of memory. Whether either card will be available for purchase at reasonable prices this year is another matter entirely.