Lenovo FLEX 2 14-Inch Convertible Touchscreen Notebook (Black) - (Intel Core i3-4030U 1.9 GHz, 4 GB RAM, 1 TB HDD, WLAN, Integrated Graphics, Windows 8.1)

I had been on the hunt to replace my almost 8 year old laptop with something a bit smaller and lighter. I wanted something with a 14" screen or less and preferably an Ultrabook. Having hunted around on Amazon, I came across this which seemed to fit the bill. I was not bothered about buying 'new' because I intended to swap out the hard drive for an SSD anyway, which from what I read about Lenovo, would most likely void any warranty.I came across this being sold by Amazon Warehouse and advertised as 'Used - Good' for a rather bargain price of £230 (May 2015), which I did not consider bad for a 2014 laptop. Fortunately, it also happened to arrive in almost mint condition too!Together with purchasing the laptop, I also bought a 4gb stick of RAM (~£20 at the time of purchase) and a 250gb Samsung SSD drive (~£80). So for £300 I was £100 below the £400 budget I had set myself.Now I appreciate not every laptop buyer will do this, but installing the SSD and RAM was not overly difficult once you watch a few videos on YouTube showing how to do this and it is definitely an upgrade I'd recommend doing.As a result the laptop boots Windows 8.1/10 in <10 seconds from pressing the power button to opening the browser. I also now have 8gb RAM vs. the 4gb it came with as standard, but I think the SSD made the biggest improvement moreso than the RAM. Incidentally, you can now (August 2015) get 8gb of RAM for around £35 and with the 4gb it comes with, you could have 12gb total which is ideal for say photo editing.Another advantage of installing the SSD was the need to put on a fresh copy of Windows. That rendered all the comments about the Lenovo bloatware/Superfish void. Again, this is not difficult to do as Microsoft even provide a tool now to create your own bootable USB installation of Windows 7/8.1/10.Advantages:1. Compact form-factor, fairly light-weight and touch screen thrown in.2. The ability to flip it around is great for reading back PDF documents.3. Runs very quiet and the fan hardly comes on if you are just browsing or reading documents.4. HDMI port instead of a Lenovo proprietary port (like they do on the Thinkpads)5. A USB 3.0 port6. No CD/DVD drive. Yes you read right! Don't miss having that at all.7. Fairly easy to open up and upgrade.Disadvantages:1. Battery life isn't great and I don't get more than 2.5 hrs from it.2. Wifi card is perhaps not the best because it does not operate on the 5ghz band (which is becoming more and more common with the Wireless N standard). This is particularly annoying when you have Bluetooth headphones that operate on the same 2.4ghz frequency and this interferes with the Wifi speed. You could upgrade this if you really wanted to.3. Screen is glossy, so in direct sunlight it is hard to see anything on the screen. A matt finish would be better, but then it might not be possible to implement that with the touch-screen either.4. Only the one USB 3.0 port.But overall, a great compact laptop from Lenovo!

I would highly recommend this laptop. It may seem a bit scary to go from Windows 7 to Windows 8.1 but this laptop has made the transition a joy with its easy to use touchscreen which makes navigation easy and allows fun interactions with different apps. The laptop has an attractive look and is very quiet, it is also light but reasonably sturdy. The foldout feature is actually very useful, it allows more space when needed and can allow the laptop to be used in cramped settings.The mousepad feels a bit sticky at first but with use, it begins to feel a lot smoother. The main thing that stopped me giving the laptop five stars is the battery life. The battery life could really be a bit longer, I find myself frequently plugging in the laptop to charge and while the laptop does charge quickly, it does not help if you need to use it for an extended amount of time away from a power socket. Besides this point, this product is absolutely wonderful. It runs my engineering software for university and at the same time is also fun to use.

It looked great - red. And I liked working with the touch screen and keyboard combination although the keyboard is not ideal for a typist, which I am, as the keys are a bit too close together, but I started to get used to it and probably would have coped ok. BUT..... I spent all afternoon setting it up. Then the screen froze and nothing I did would get it going again. Sent it back and got a refund, which is a real pain, because I still need a new laptop and have no idea what to get now.

This isn't all bad, but isn't really what I was hoping for.Firstly, the good:Really, really good screen. When at a higher brightness, this is crystal clear with very vibrant colours. Could not have asked for more with this. Great for watching films.Quite slim and not bad looking for a standard black laptop at this price range.Now the bad:Loads of Lenovo bloatware. Seriously, when will then learn? Has taken literally hours to get rid of all the rubbish they've pre-installed.Battery life really is not good. I get about 3 hours on a full charge, with the screen at about 2/3 brightness which is much less than expected. Not sure if this is related to the full HD screen?Keypad very average and has the annoying habit of randomly typing some letters twice.This is not fast - mine is the lower speed of the two available (i.e. not the i3), which is perhaps where I made my mistake, but can be frustratingly slow.Overall not really bad (2.5 out or 5 if I could but the disappointment has pushed it down to a 2). If I had the same choice again I'd pay a bit more and get something higher quality.

Please don't buy this laptop. Although I was initially very pleased with the Lenovo Flex 2-14, there is a known issue with this model where it gets irrevocably stuck in sleep mode. Nothing functions, except the power button light which helpfully pulses every 8 seconds so you know the laptop isn't completely dead. Normally in this situation I would remove the battery to reset the laptop. However, as the Flex 2 has an internal battery and removing it would invalidate the warranty, the only solution is to wait for the computer to run out of battery, which on a full charge can take several weeks. Alternatively, you could of course send it back to Lenovo which would take even longer...Lenovo support has been of no help whatsoever, and this appears to be an issue for which they currently have no solution. Unfortunately in my case this happened a few weeks after the Amazon product return period expired. The laptop is only about 10 weeks old, so well within the guarantee period, but it is still a massive inconvenience. I wish I'd bought an HP instead.