Any way to speed up Lenovo Flex 15D, or just replace?

elvisruns

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Feb 16, 2011
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Bought our daughter a Lenovo Flex 15D about 2-3 years ago. AMD A4 processor, not sure if there is 4 or 8GB of RAM, but there is a 256GB SSD. Having a hard time finding any other specs.
She's finishing her senior year of high school and looking at colleges, and like all 17 year olds, thinks she needs a Macbook to succeed. She's been complaining that the 15D is slow, and battery life is somewhat suspect, even by me. To be honest, I haven't looked at it in a while, but I know she doesn't have a ton of programs installed, and she doesn't do much more than use MS Word and use it for the internet, so it's not graphics heavy use or anything. I did install a few things a year ago to clean it up a bit (CC Cleaner, disabled some startup processes, etc). Is there any hardware I can consider replacing in this that might keep it in use for a bit longer, or should I just start looking for a replacement?
 
Solution
To be honest the Lenovo Flex 15d is "slow", the A4 series AMD APU are budget oriented and they do not perform very well compared to budget Intel CPUs. If I had it, I would simply smash it against the wall just as an excuse to buy something else.

There are plenty of new laptops you can buy that are good and less expensive than a Macbook. It basically depends on what your budget is and what specific things she is looking for in a laptop.

captaincharisma

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the battery problem is easy. you can always find a replacement battery from places like amazon and ebay, but if its still slow even with (claiming) there is an SSD drive in the laptop then i don't think much can be done other then seeing if you can more RAM to it. i really hope she doesn't believe she needs an overpriced apple laptop to succeed in college though
 
Is this the Lenovo Flex 15D you're talking about?
https://www.cnet.com/products/lenovo-flex-15d-15-6-a6-5200-4-gb-ram-500-gb-hybrid-drive/specs/

If so, when it was launched some time in 2014 it was designed to offer basic power to surf the internet and do basic productivity tasks (office suites and simple video editing). If your daughter's model has a 256GB SSD I would imagine it also has 8GBs of RAM. Going by specs alone, there's nothing wrong with it and it really should be perfect for college life. The only critical issues are battery life and weight.

Regardless of what the battery life was originally (I believe it was tested at 3:45 hours), after 3 maybe 4 years the battery will degrade to something like 20 per cent capacity. That's just how it is with laptop batteries. Also, at 5lbs it is rather heavy - especially considering the sleek and slim ultrabooks available in 2018.

So, even if you were to factory reset the whole thing (maybe gaining some speed), I suspect the battery will have degraded to 30 - 40 minutes of useful up-time. Apart from these concerns, the Flex 15D is still a decent productivity machine.

As for the future - and I mean yours - I'm afraid it's time to pony up the cash for a stylish 2017/2018 laptop with much better battery life. If you're put off by the high asking prices for Apple products, you could consider this 14" Lenovo Yoga 920 found on BestBuy at $1,300:
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/lenovo-yoga-920-2-in-1-13-9-touch-screen-laptop-intel-core-i7-8gb-memory-256gb-solid-state-drive-bronze/6061500.p?skuId=6061500

It comes with the latest quad-core 8th-gen i7 CPU and weighs in at 3lbs. Battery life is listed at 15+ hours, but that'll be closer to 10 in real life. 2K IPS panel and generous connectivity - USB Type-C and Thunderbolt.

On newegg you can get this 13" Dell XPS for $1,200:
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIADDT6EW4397&cm_re=dell_xps_13-_-9SIADDT6EW4397-_-Product

Battery life around 10 - 12 hours and weight at 2.9lbs. The specs are not quite up there with the Lenovo but it is a very stylish and popular machine.

On a final note, I haven't listed any MacBooks the reason being that it's going to be a case of 'same price, but poor specs or same specs, but horribly expensive'. If your daughter insists that a MacBook is the only way to succeed in college, she might consider a refurbished MacBook or chipping in with her own money.

Best of luck to both of you,
GreyCatz.
 
To be honest the Lenovo Flex 15d is "slow", the A4 series AMD APU are budget oriented and they do not perform very well compared to budget Intel CPUs. If I had it, I would simply smash it against the wall just as an excuse to buy something else.

There are plenty of new laptops you can buy that are good and less expensive than a Macbook. It basically depends on what your budget is and what specific things she is looking for in a laptop.
 
Solution

elvisruns

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Feb 16, 2011
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Well, solved part of that riddle - it's not an SSD it came equipped with - it's a 500GB 5400RPM HDD. DOH! My first inclination is to pick up a new SSD to replace the hard drive with and see if that will satisfy for a while. Macbook certainly not in my budget anytime soon. If she wants one, she'll have to pick up more hours at the ice cream shop!
 
A SSD will definitely give the laptop more "pep" because it will make feel more responsive due to fast read / write speeds. Processing performance will remain the same though. If the SSD can even give the laptop one more year of longevity, then at least you will already have a SSD on hand to install into a newer and more powerful laptop (but affordable) later on.