Lenovo Flex 6 14 review

Flexing the concept of ‘mid-range’

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If you opt for the model we’ve reviewed here, you’re going to be pleasantly surprised by just how well the Flex 6 14 performs. 

Short of 4K video editing or gaming, this laptop will take pretty much anything you can throw at it. We were able to work on this thing with eight Chrome tabs and Spotify running in the background without it feeling like the laptop was under any pressure at all. 

Benchmarks

Here’s how the Lenovo Flex 6 14 performed in our suite of benchmark tests:

3DMark: Sky Diver: 3,742; Fire Strike: 920; Time Spy: 361
Cinebench CPU: 515 points; Graphics: 41 fps
GeekBench 4: 3,880 (single-core); 12,668 (multi-core)
PCMark 8 (Home Test): 3,118 points
PCMark 8 Battery Life: 3 hours and 44 minutes
Battery Life (TechRadar movie test): 6 hours and 28 minutes 

That’s mostly thanks to the sheer power afforded to it by its hardware. Thanks to the quad-core, 8th-generation Intel U-series processor packed inside, the Lenovo Flex 6 14 performed way better than we expected on our CPU benchmarks. It scored a very respectable 515 in Cinebench and a 12,668 in GeekBench’s multi-core test. 

However, don’t expect to be able to do much with the integrated graphics here. The Lenovo Flex 6 14 didn’t perform very well at all in 3DMark, only netting 361 points in Time Spy, 920 in Fire Strike and 3,742 in Sky Diver. You may be able to play some of the best indie games on this laptop, but any AAA game from the last five years is likely going to be completely out of reach. 

Essentially, for the price and its intended use case, the Lenovo Flex 6 14 features best-in-class performance. Honestly, you’re not going to find many better-performing 2-in-1 notebooks or Ultrabooks until you start hitting four figures. 

If you’re looking for a laptop to get some work done on the go, you won’t have to worry about this laptop freezing up on you or dying in the middle of a project.

Battery life 

When we were testing this laptop, we were kind of worried that the battery would be short lived. Thankfully, it turns out we had nothing to worry about.

During the TechRadar battery test, where we loop Guardians of the Galaxy at 1080p until the laptop shuts off – the Flex 6 14 lasted a very respectable 6 hours and 28 minutes. For some perspective, the Flex  lasted longer than the 2018 XPS 13 – a laptop, again, that is much more high-end. 

Even while doing some work, we were able to write for a few hours with the screen at 100% brightness (sometimes we like to spoil ourselves a bit) with the battery only reaching a 50% charge. If your judicious with your energy usage, you should be able to eke out a full day of work on this thing, easy.

Final verdict 

Frankly, the Lenovo Flex 6 14  deserves to cost way more than it does. When you take into consideration the aluminum finish, the beautiful display, comfortable keyboard and beefy hardware inside, you really can’t lose at $849 (about £640, AU$1,136).

Sure, it has less than ideal speakers and doesn’t have Thunderbolt 3, but we really don’t think that’s a huge deal here. You’re still getting one hell of a bargain.

If you’re looking for an inexpensive laptop that can get some work done without any high-end frills, we think the Lenovo Flex 6 14 has a lot to offer. This laptop earns our recommendation without any hesitation at all, with Lenovo having raised the bar for mid-range laptops in 2018. 

Bill Thomas

Bill Thomas (Twitter) is TechRadar's computing editor. They are fat, queer and extremely online. Computers are the devil, but they just happen to be a satanist. If you need to know anything about computing components, PC gaming or the best laptop on the market, don't be afraid to drop them a line on Twitter or through email.