Lenovo IdeaPad 5X 2-in-1 Review: With Snapdragon X Plus

Qualcomm has been making waves since it introduced an ARM-based processor for laptops that is actually worth using. I’ve already used the top of the line X-Elite and this time we have the Lenovo IdeaPad 5X 2-in-1 that is sporting the midrange Snapdragon X Plus. I was very impressed with the Elite version of this chipset, and it made the Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 an excellent device.

Estimated reading time: 12 minutes

The Lenovo IdeaPad 5X 2-in-1 isn’t exactly the best looking or slimmest laptop on the market. But sometimes plain and simple is all some people want. Sure, this isn’t the ThinkPad X9, but it’s also more affordable and offers up the basics that most general users want. Let’s get into this review.

The Quick Take

The Lenovo IdeaPad 5X 2-in-1 isn’t going to win any design or size awards, if that’s what you’re looking for, then you’ll have to pay the price. No. This laptop is for the person who doesn’t want to pay over a thousand dollars for a laptop, but still have a solid performer with specs that can handle the day-to-day of general users. This is what you get with this Qualcomm-powered laptop. The Lenovo IdeaPad 5X 2-in-1 is an excellent choice for general users, students, and anyone who just wants to be connected. At Best Buy sometimes has sales, which make this laptop even more alluring.

Score and Bottom Line

Lenovo IdeaPad 5X 2-in-1 review

$859.99

Nailed it

• Solid build quality, this thing is tank
• Decent looking OLED display for this price point
• Windows 11 Home works great
• The Snapdragon X Plus is a solid performer
• Amazing battery life for this price point
• Excellent price and value
• Keyboard and trackpad were better than I expected for this price point

Needs work

• Not slim or lightweight, but the cost makes up for it
• Display does have a lot of glare
• Speakers are mid
• Webcam isn’t great

Overall, the Lenovo IdeaPad 5X 2-in-1 provides exactly what most general users need and want. While the design is plain and simple and the size isn’t exactly slim and light. The price point and performance are what really sell this laptop. It hits the perfect price point and delivers the performance students and general users will need. There are no bells and whistles, no impossibly thin design and no delicate materials that cost an arm and a leg. The Lenovo IdeaPad 5X 2-in-1 is a tank, and you’ll not only get the performance you’ll need, but maybe you’ll get something that’s durable as well.

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Specifications

The Lenovo IdeaPad 5X 2-in-1 has the following features and specifications:

• Screen Size: 14 inches
• Screen Resolution: 1920 x 1200 (WUXGA)
• Display Type: OLED
• Touch Screen: Yes
• Refresh Rate: 60Hz
• Brightness: 400 nits
• Processor Model: Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus X1P-42-100
• Number of CPU Cores: 8-core
• Number of CPU Threads: 8
• Neural Processing Unit (NPU): Yes
• Maximum NPU Performance: 45 trillion operations per second
• GPU Integrated: Qualcomm Adreno
• Storage Type: SSD
• Total Storage Capacity: 512 gigabytes
• System Memory (RAM): 16 gigabytes LPDDR5X
• Graphics: Qualcomm Adreno
• Display Connector(s): 1 x Thunderbolt 4, 1 x HDMI 2.1
• Battery Life (up to): 21.5 hours
• Battery Chemistry: Lithium-polymer
• 2-in-1 Design: Yes
• Backlit Keyboard: Yes
• Model Number: 83GH000MUS
• Color: Luna Grey
• Connector(s)
  • 1 x Thunderbolt 4, 1 x HDMI 2.1
  • Number of HDMI Outputs (Total) 1
  • Number of Thunderbolt Ports (Total) 1
  • USB Ports 2 x USB-A 3.2, 1 x USB-C 3.2
  • Number of USB Ports (Total) 3
  • Number of USB-C Charging Ports 1
  • Headphone Jack, Yes
  • Microphone Input, Yes
  • Wireless Connectivity, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth
  • Wireless Networking Standard, Wi-Fi 7
• Power Supply Maximum Wattage: 65 watts
• Battery Life (up to): 21.5 hours

What’s In The Box

• Lenovo IdeaPad 5X 2-in-1
• Lenovo Pen
• Power Supply and Cable
• Manuals and Documentation

Design

The Lenovo IdeaPad 5X 2-in-1 design flows with the many of the other Lenovo laptops on the market now. This one is a bit simpler and uses more common materials and easier to find components. The laptop comes in Luna Gray and the Lenovo logo is on the top of it.

The bottom houses a long vent for cooling the laptop and three rubber feet that do an outstanding job of holding the Lenovo IdeaPad 5X 2-in-1 on the table. Along the rear is another vent and the hinges that allow this laptop to fold into a tablet. Along the front of the lid is the assembly that holds the webcam and doubles as a lip to open the laptop. If you like to know if you can open this with one finger, no, you can’t. But since this is a 2-in-1, those hinges need to be a bit stiffer, which makes it harder to open with one finger.

Opening the Lenovo IdeaPad 5X 2-in-1 up, the OLED display greets you with a nice, bright and vibrant panel. The webcam is at the top, but there is no IR camera, no Windows Hello for face. But you do get a fingerprint scanner on the deck.

There are bezels on this display, but at least the display is edge to edge, and the bezels are under the glass. The deck houses a nice Lenovo keyboard, most all of their keyboards are great. This keyboard is good, not as good as a ThinkPad, but good for the price.

The diving board style trackpad is not bad, I am not a huge fan of diving boards but for the price point, I was expecting worse and this was actually usable. There are speakers on the deck that flank the keyboard, and the fingerprint sensor is just under the arrow keys. The Snapdragon X Plus branding is at the bottom left of the deck, and I actually dig their logo.

Overall, the design is very nice, albeit a bit bulky and heavy. But, considering the price point, it is understandable. I think the design and materials used here, are inline with the price.

Display

I was shocked to see that the Lenovo IdeaPad 5X 2-in-1 had an OLED display. Laptops in this price range are usually not packing an OLED display. That said. This display is a touch display and pen ready. The added layer to make all of that work does give a lot of glare in certain lighting conditions. I wouldn’t use this laptop in direct sunlight, and you might find yourself moving it to get overhead lights to stop glaring. It’s not horrible but enough worth mentioning.

Otherwise, the WUXGA OLED display in the Lenovo IdeaPad 5X 2-in-1 is really a nice experience. The OLED panel gets nice and vibrant, and I was shocked at how bright it was. Another thing many laptops skimp out on at this price point. But not this one.

The blacks are pretty good, though I think the glare of the touch display does wash them out a little bit. The Whites are great, clean and crisp with text popping off very well. The touch display works accurately and precisely, with touch input not being a problem at all. The Lenovo Pen works great, though I am not much of an artist and I rarely use pens. So, I’m not really one to say if it draws well for artists, it works great to write with and doesn’t have any evident lag. At least to my eye.

Overall, the display is excellent for this price point.

Software

The Lenovo IdeaPad 5X 2-in-1 is running Windows 11 Home, and there’s not a lot to say about Windows in general. It’s gotten better over the years, and I actually now prefer it over macOS. I actually think macOS has gone backwards and Windows is going forwards.

There are some AI-centric and Co-Pilot sorts of software that are worth noting.

• AI Integration: The Lenovo IdeaPad 5X 2-in-1 is among the army of AI-focused laptops that feature CoPilot. Microsoft believes that its AI-powered companion enhances productivity by assisting with tasks, providing helpful suggestions, and improving user interaction with the device.
• Better App Performance: This new chipset, with an integrated GPU and NPU, is supposed to improve battery efficiency but also performance, especially for apps designed or emulated for this ARM architecture. Though, some x86 apps may not function properly, even when the X Plus uses Prism emulation to run x86 apps.
• AI Creative Tools: The Lenovo IdeaPad 5X 2-in-1 features AI-powered enhancements in its software toolkit. Apps like Microsoft Paint have been upgraded with AI capabilities, which give the app more power in image manipulation and creation.
• Battery Optimization: New software helps the Snapdragon chip enhance the battery life of the Lenovo IdeaPad 5X 2-in-1. This includes efficient power management that complements the hardware design for prolonged use without needing a charge.

Overall, great software experience from Microsoft, Lenovo, and Qualcomm.

Performance

On the performance front, the Lenovo IdeaPad 5X is running Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon X Plus chipset with a Snapdragon Adreno GPU. Here’s what Qualcomm says about this midrange chipset.

This powerhouse processor takes your laptop’s performance to extraordinary heights. Snapdragon® X Plus’ powerful 10-core Qualcomm Oryon™ CPU allows users to optimize workloads for productivity without interruption. Say goodbye to lag with incredibly fast responsiveness. The integrated Qualcomm® Adreno™ GPU delivers graphics-intensive presentations and entertainment. All this performance runs with incredible power efficiency, so you can go longer on a single charge, with up to multi-day battery life.

I didn’t use this laptop as I normally would, that is with my content creation tools such as DaVinci Resolve and Affinity Photo. I used this as a daily driver for normal use cases, such as browsing, email, social media, docs, and things like that.

I had zero issues with performance in the day-to-day use, and there was never any fan noise or heat coming from this laptop. I do think you could probably run heavier programs, perhaps even video and photo editing programs, and it would handle it fine. Though, it may stress it more than a higher end laptop.

I wouldn’t use this laptop to game, but you most likely could do some light gaming on it. But keep in mind, this is an ARM-based processor. So some games and even some programs may not run properly on it. I don’t think a general user or student is going to run into this issue.

Overall, the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus paired with the Adreno GPU and 16GB of RAM did a fantastic job for my day-to-day use. I never had an issue with lag or slowness or any sort of performance issue.

Camera

The webcam on the Lenovo IdeaPad 5X, along with the speakers, are an area that needs the most improvement. That being said, given the price point of this laptop, it is understandable that some concessions had to be made. The webcam isn’t great, but it’s not horrible either.

But I am willing to forgive the webcam and speaker performance because the display and the hardware performance experience are great. If an excellent webcam and speakers are important to you, you might want to look elsewhere.

Battery Life

Battery life is advertised as (up to) 21.5 hours. The Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus does help in this matter. The new ARM chips are known for their battery life and efficiency. The Lenovo IdeaPad 5X gets excellent battery life and for students, this will be a great thing.

Battery life will depend on how you use your laptop and what power settings you use. I left the Lenovo IdeaPad 5X on balanced and went about my normal general use. I was able to get around 15 hours of battery life with general browsing, YouTube videos, email, docs, PDFs, and just what normal people do daily.

Overall, I wasn’t able to hit 21.5 hours, but I think believe you could get at least 17 or 18 hours if you turn down the brightness, and it also depends on what you’re doing with the laptop. I would say the battery life is excellent for this price point.

Speakers/Audio

The speakers on the Lenovo IdeaPad 5X are just okay. They’re nothing to write home about or get excited about, they are pretty mid. They’re not awful, but they do lack depth and body. This isn’t a surprise to me, at this price point some sacrifices have to be made. Just like the webcam, there has to be a give and take. I’d rather have the nice display and good performance and lose out on the speakers and camera.

Price/Value

The Lenovo IdeaPad 5X 2-in-1 price is under a thousand dollars, and sales sometimes bring that down even more. At the MSRP, the Lenovo IdeaPad 5X with Snapdragon X Plus is an excellent value. When this goes on sale, it’s even better. Perfect for students and general users who only need email, docs, video consumption, and just general use.

Wrap Up

Overall, the Lenovo IdeaPad 5X 2-in-1 provides exactly what most general users need and want. While the design is plain and simple and the size isn’t exactly slim and light. The price point and performance are what really sell this laptop. It hits the perfect price point and delivers the performance students and general users will need. There are no bells and whistles, no impossibly thin design and no delicate materials that cost an arm and a leg. The Lenovo IdeaPad 5X 2-in-1 is a tank, and you’ll not only get the performance you’ll need, but maybe you’ll get something that’s durable as well.