The heyday of ultra-cheap Chromebooks has come and gone, but you'll still find some remarkably affordable models out there. Whether it's a flashy design, a helpful feature set, or snappy performance, it's not hard to find a decent ChromeOS laptop for under $400, but it's still a special treat to find a fair buy. The Lenovo Flex 3 Chromebook is one, being a well-made convertible for just $349. Its performance isn't top-notch but delivers a satisfying browsing and productivity experience; the port selection is better than expected; and the battery life is long enough for casual users. The Flex 3 isn't the finest budget Chromebook ever made, but it's a satisfying compact 2-in-1 and a genuine bargain.
Design: Fun and Flexible
Lenovo's plastic construction here isn't as premium as the aluminum builds of costlier Chromebooks, but Lenovo dresses it up in a charming color called Abyss Blue. Like other 2-in-1s, it lets you flip and fold the screen from laptop to tablet mode. You'll feel some unwanted flex in the chassis when you lift the laptop by a corner, but it manages to be sturdy enough so that you feel no no irritating bounce when typing.
(Credit: Molly Flores)Measuring 0.72 inch thick and weighing just 2.76 pounds, this Chromebook is also an ultraportable, with a compact design that easily slips into a laptop bag or backpack. With a 12.2-inch touch screen, the little convertible is roughly the same size as most paper notebooks. The Flex 3 is quite pleasing as a laptop, but may be even better as a tablet.
(Credit: Molly Flores)One utilitarian aspect of the Flex 3 design is that the top edge of the lid, which houses the 720p webcam and sliding privacy shutter, juts out to serve as a lip for easily opening the system with one hand. We've seen the same thing on other Lenovo 2-in-1s such as the Lenovo Yoga 7i 14 Gen 7, and we like it just as much on this inexpensive Chromebook.
(Credit: Molly Flores)The 12.2-inch touch screen is also a decent fit for the convertible design. Just a little smaller than an 8.5-by-11-inch sheet of paper, it's a fine size when held in the crook of an arm in tablet mode, on a table or desk in laptop mode, or propped up on your knees while reclining on the couch. With 10-point touch and 1,920-by-1,200-pixel resolution, the display looks sufficient and responds to every touch easily. Obviously, it's not as sharp or vibrant as a larger, high-res screen or OLED panel, but it's more attractive than you'd expect at this price. If you crave higher resolution, the processor and full-size HDMI port can drive a 4K external monitor.
(Credit: Molly Flores) (Credit: Molly Flores)Speaking of ports, the I/O of the Flex 3 is a balanced mix of new and traditional. On the left flank is a USB-C port that does double duty as a power jack, but you'll also find a USB 3.0 Type-A connector, an audio jack, and a microSD card slot. On the right are another USB-A port and the abovementioned HDMI monitor port. A security lock slot keeps the Chromebook from walking away from your desk, and power and volume buttons are readily accessible in both laptop and tablet mode.
Wireless connectivity is just as capable in this Chromebook, with Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.1.
Performance: Middle of the Road, But It Hardly Matters
Most under-$400 Chromebooks are outfitted with processors that are less familiar to laptop shoppers, such as Qualcomm or MediaTek chips. Some systems such as the Acer Chromebook Spin 514 use AMD CPUs, and a few Intel Celerons and Pentiums cling to life, but cheap chips are sort of the rule for value-priced Chromebooks.
Lenovo's Flex 3 doesn't deviate from this trend but it does introduce a new Intel CPU, the N100. The first of the silicon giant's N-series processors we've had a chance to test, it differs from Intel's Core series by ditching the multithreaded Performance cores (P-cores) and having only single-thread Efficient cores (E-cores). The N100 has four cores, reducing power draw to squeeze longer battery life out of the lightweight laptops for which it's designed. In other words, it's just about perfect for a Chromebook.
As for the Chromebook's other components, they're standard fare for this price: 4GB of memory and 64GB of eMMC flash storage. That's the same as the Acer Chromebook 514 and the Asus Chromebook Flip CM3. The HP Chromebook x360 13b is a similar convertible with a proper SSD instead of eMMC storage.
Productivity Tests
We test Chromebooks with three overall performance benchmark suites: One ChromeOS, one Android, and one online. The first, CrXPRT 2 by Principled Technologies, measures how quickly a system performs everyday tasks in six workloads such as applying photo effects, graphing a stock portfolio, analyzing DNA sequences, and generating 3D shapes using WebGL.
Our second test, UL's PCMark for Android Work 3.0, performs assorted productivity operations in a smartphone-style window. Finally, Basemark Web 3.0 runs in a browser tab to combine low-level JavaScript calculations with CSS and WebGL content. All three yield numeric scores; higher numbers are better.
Compared with the best-in-category Acer Spin 514, the Flex 3 didn't look like much, but when stacked against similarly priced budget Chromebooks like the Asus Flip CM3 or the MediaTek Kompanio-powered Acer 514, the difference was stark, with the Lenovo easily outpacing those bargain models in our CrXPRT and Basemark Web tests. The story was a little different in PCMark for Android, with the Lenovo, the Asus, and the Acer Chromebook 514 basically tied between the Acer convertible and the trailing HP x360 13b.
Component and Battery Tests
Two other Android benchmarks focus on the CPU and GPU respectively. Geekbench by Primate Labs uses all available cores and threads to simulate real-world applications ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning, while GFXBench 5.0 stress-tests both low-level routines like texturing and high-level, game-like image rendering that exercises graphics and compute shaders. Geekbench delivers a numeric score, while GFXBench counts frames per second (fps).
Finally, to test a Chromebook's battery, we loop a 720p video file with screen brightness set at 50%, volume at 100%, and Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting disabled until the system quits. For the Flex 3 and the other Chromebooks with only 64GB of onboard storage, we played the video from an external SSD plugged into a USB port.
Our Geekbench and GFXBench tests saw the same rough distribution of scores, with the Flex 3 near or at the back of the pack. Its performance was acceptable for daily browsing or even media streaming, but demanding apps or extensions or Android games may occasionally slow to subpar performance. The Lenovo was also in the middle of the field in our battery rundown, delivering a bit more than 8 hours and 30 minutes of unplugged operation. That's the second shortest time in the group and barely half the stamina of the HP, but it should be enough to get you through a day of work or school.
(Credit: Molly Flores)Verdict: A Fine Value With Helpful Features
The Lenovo Flex 3 Chromebook presents itself as a budget-friendly 2-in-1, and it fulfills that promise with a carry-friendly convertible design and impressive port selection. While its plastic construction and raw performance are no match for more expensive laptops, it's still a satisfying portable companion for casual users at a price that's hard to beat.
If you're looking for something with more power for demanding applications or games, you're probably not after a Chromebook to begin with. We've tested faster and more powerful ChromeOS laptops galore, but in an environment defined by online tools and Android apps, relatively modest performance isn't a deal-breaker. We wish the Flex 3 had a couple of hours more battery life, but it's nevertheless a compelling budget option.