Pros & Cons
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- 1080p 10-point touch screen can fold back up to 300 degrees.
- Strong volume from speakers.
- Comfortable keyboard with numeric keypad.
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- Heavy.
- Short battery life.
Lenovo Flex 2 (15 inch) Specs
| Graphics Processor | Intel HD Graphics 4400 |
| Native Display Resolution | 1920 by 1080 |
| Operating System | Windows 8.1 |
| Optical Drive | Dual-Layer DVD+/-RW |
| Processor | Intel Core i5-4210U |
| Processor Speed | 1.7 |
| RAM (as Tested) | 6 |
| Screen Size | 15.6 |
| Tested Battery Life (Hours:Minutes) | 5:30 |
| Touch Screen | |
| Weight | 5.52 |
| Wireless Networking | 802.11n (2.4 GHz only) |
The Lenovo Flex 2 (15-inch) ($679.99, as tested) is a desktop-replacement laptop in every sense of the word. It is large, with a 15.6-inch touch screen, and offers plenty of connectivity and entertainment features, including a DVD drive. Due to its bulk and relatively short battery life, it's best placed on a desk in your den or even on your kitchen counter. The Flex 2's plethora of features, including a unique 300-degree folding touch screen, good performance on our benchmark tests, and reasonable price help it to earn our Editors' Choice for entry-level desktop-replacement laptops.
Design and Features
The screen hinge is a little beefier than usual. It's a larger iteration of the hinge concept introduced last year with the Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 14. You can push the screen back past the 180-degree mark to around 300 degrees, allowing you to position the system with the screen facing out and the keyboard facing down on a table. This lets you use the Flex 2 in Stand mode, with the keyboard portion effectively acting as a stand for the touch screen.
View All The black-on-black chassis is fairly sturdy, with a horizontal-etched texture molded onto the palm rest and keyboard deck. The backlit keyboard has somewhat convex-curved keys that make typing comfortable, though there's a hint of flex. Touch typists will enjoy the full set of keys, as well as the built-in numeric keypad to the right. The one-piece touchpad is easy to use.
The focus of the interface is the 10-point touch screen. It responds quickly, and is clear and bright enough to view in a well-lit room. The 15.6-inch display has a 1,920-by-1,080 resolution, with much more virtual real estate than the 1,366-by-768-resolution screens on the Lenovo Flex 14, the Acer Aspire M5-583P-6637, and the Acer Aspire V5-573PG-9610. The 1080p HD videos I viewed during testing looked clear and detailed, and the screen gives you enough room for large spreadsheets or school-project layouts. Putting the screen into Stand mode is a boon for playing games and viewing movies. The Lenovo Recommends app's pops up when you switch from Laptop mode to Stand mode, with a list of programs that work well in each one.
