On my left, weighing in at 3.3 pounds is the defending 2-in-1 convertible laptop champion,
the Lenovo Flex 5. And on my right, weighing in at 3.5 pounds is the new challenger,
the Dell Inspiron 5406. Welcome to the 2021 ultimate 2-in-1 convertible touchscreen laptop
showdown. In this video I will put both these laptops through a 5 round knockout match. So
who will be crowned the champion and who goes home the loser, let's find out!
BTW I have already reviewed both these laptops here on this channel. You can find links to these
reviews in the video description below. Also if you are interested in finding the latest pricing
and availability information about these laptops, please checkout the country specific links that I
have put in the video description below. So without further ado, let's get started!
Lenovo Flex 5's top half is made from aluminium while the bottom half is built using a 30%
fibre glass reinforced polycarbonate. Dell Inspiron's top lid along with the entire
keyboard base and the palm rest area is also made from aluminium while the lower body is made from
injection moulded polycarbonate. In terms of structural integrity, both these laptops feel very
strong and resistant to flex. Both these laptops are using high quality metallic hinges that
transform them from a traditional clamshell device to a tablet and anything in between. Both laptops
use an island style backlit enabled keyboard that offers decent key-travel and satisfying clicky
feedback during typing. Both laptops come with a fingerprint sensor for passwordless login. Dell
has integrated the fingerprint sensor into the power button which I prefer over Lenovo Flex 5's
implementation where it resides under the arrow keys. I also prefer the larger 4.5 by 2.5 inch
trackpad on Dell Inspiron 5406 compared to the 4.2 by 3 inch trackpad on Lenovo Flex 5. Now
when it comes to styling, I dig the titan grey sand-blasted metallic finish on the Dell laptop.
It feels more premium than the platinum grey finish on Lenovo flex 5 which uses anodized
aluminium stamping. Now guys, this is a personal opinion. I am sure some of you may prefer the
look and feel of Lenovo Flex 5 over Dell Inspiron, and that's OK. So this is a very close round but
I will go with Dell Inspiron and declare it the winner of this round. It just feels more solid
and refined in my hands. I really appreciate how the palm rest and keyboard deck feels while
typing and I love its trackpad. So Dell takes this round and leads the contest 1-0 after round 1
Both Lenovo Flex 5 and Dell Inspiron 5406 have a 14" Full HD touchscreen display that supports
active stylus pen. Both these displays are using an LED backlit IPS panel that delivers
around 250 nits of brightness. Dell's display has a warmer tone compared to Lenovo Flex 5,
although both laptops offer software utility to calibrate the color temperature to your
liking. Both these laptops use a glossy panel which is great for watching movies,
streaming videos and looking at pictures. But they suffer from glares and reflection
when working in a bright lit room. Dell Inspiron 5406 uses "N-trig" screen digitizer which is the
same tech that Microsoft uses in their Surface Pro devices. Lenovo Flex 5 on the other hand
is using an active electrostatic digitizer technology from Wacom. Unfortunately these
technologies are incompatible with each other, so you cannot mix and match the Dell and Lenovo
Active pens. I like the fact that Lenovo Flex 5 includes an active stylus pen with the laptop.
Unfortunately the Dell Inspiron 5406 does not. So you will have to shell out extra money to
buy either Dell's official active stylus pen or a compatible third party pen. I have extensively
used both these laptops for note taking and sketching. They both offer good accuracy,
latency and palm-rejection. Both pens offer various levels of pressure sensitivity which
coupled with low screen latency results in a great note taking experience. But personally,
I prefer Lenovo's note taking experience over Dell largely because it has a better palm rejection.
So I will award this round to Lenovo Flex 5. After round 2, the score is now tied at 1-ALL
When it comes to CPU choice, Dell Inspiron 5406 restricts you to 11th gen Intel CPUs.
Lenovo Flex 5 on the other hand comes in both 11th gen intel as well as Ryzen 4000 series
CPUs. Here is a chart showing the key differences between these CPUs. The biggest difference is in
the core count. Intel Core-i5 and Core-i7 are quadcore CPUs while AMD Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 7
are hexa-core and octa-core CPUs. But Intel chips offer hyper-threading which doubles the
number of threads, and this feature is missing in Ryzen mobile processors. That means both
Core-i5 and Core-i7 offer 8 threads as opposed to only 6 threads in Ryzen 5 and 8 threads in
Ryzen 7. So how does all this translate into real world performance? Let's first take a look
at the Cinebench Single-Core benchmark. Intel chips are the clear winner here. Both core-i5
and core-i7 easily beat AMD Ryzen processors. But things look a little different in the
Cinebench Multi-Core benchmark. Here the 8-core Ryzen 7 4700u comes out on top but
the 4-core Intel Core-i5 and Core-i7 still manage to beat the 6-core Ryzen 5 processor.
Next, let's compare the graphics performance of Intel and AMD chips. In the iGPU FP32 benchmark,
Intel's Iris Xe integrated graphics easily beats out AMD's integrated Vega graphics. So
the bottomline is that Intel's 11th generation chips are definitely better than Ryzen 4000 in
both CPU and GPU performance. But since Lenovo Flex 5 is offering both Intel and AMD models,
I will award this round to Lenovo. So after Round 3, Lenovo takes a 2-1 lead over Dell
Both laptops come with a 720p webcam that offers around 85-degree field of view. It's
fine for a zoom conference call but if you want to step up the quality of your videos, I would
recommend picking an external 1080p USB webcam. They offer much better video quality and are tiny
enough to sit on the top bezel. I have linked some of my favorite 1080p webcams in the video
description below. Regarding ports, both laptops offer 2 USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, an HDMI port, WiFi 6,
Bluetooth 5.1, and a full size SD card reader. Both include 1 USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-C port. But
Dell supports display, data and power delivery via USB Type-C while Lenovo Flex 5 only supports data
and power delivery. So that means you can connect Dell Inspiron 5406 to 2 external monitors at the
same time using both the HDMI and USB Type-C port. Something that you cannot do in Lenovo
Flex 5. Lack of display over USB Type-C also means that you cannot use a USB Type-C hub to connect
all your peripheral devices and external monitor to Lenovo Flex 5 using a single cable. So Dell
takes this round and makes a roaring comeback. The scores are now tied 2-ALL after round 4
Lenovo Flex 5 ships with a beefy 3 Cell 52.5 Whr battery while Dell Inspiron 5406 comes
with a smaller 40 Whr battery. So it's no surprise that Lenovo Flex 5 delivers
a longer battery life. I got about 6 hours of battery life doing typical light-weight
browsing on Dell Inspiron 5406 while lenovo Flex 5 delivered closer to 8 hours of battery life.
Lenovo also includes a beefier 65-Watt USB Type C charger which juices up the laptop from 0 to 80%
in under an hour. Dell on the other hand ships with a smaller 45-Watt old-school barrel port
charger that takes longer to charge the laptop. Now regarding thermal heat dissipation, Lenovo
Flex 5 is using 1 large cooling fan and a dual pipe heat-sink mechanism to keep the CPU cool.
In my testing, the Intel version of Lenovo Flex 5 ran cooler than the 8-core Ryzen 7 4700u model
which got noticeably warm around the keyboard, trackpad and the palm rest area. Dell Inspiron
5406 on the other hand runs cool. Even the core-i7 model running at full load never throttles and
always runs above the base clock frequency. So, this is a tough round to judge. While the Intel
model of Lenovo Flex 5 runs cool, its Ryzen 7 model tends to run hot. Dell on the other hand
doesn't offer a Ryzen configuration, but their 11th gen Intel model runs cool. So in the end
it all comes down to the battery life. Since Lenovo offers a 23% larger battery capacity,
along with a 65 Watt USB Type-C fast charger, it narrowly beats Dell and takes this round.
So the final score is 3-2 in favor of Lenovo Flex 5. Now Dell Inspiron 5406 put up a spirited
fight but in the end it fell short and failed to dethrone the reigning champion Lenovo Flex 5
So which laptop would you have declared the winner of this contest? Let me know
in the comment section below. BTW I have put country specific links for both Lenovo Flex 5
and Dell Inspiron 5406 in the video description below. So please click on these links to get
the latest price and availability of both these laptops in your region. If you found
this video useful please smash the like button. It encourages the Youtube algorithm to recommend this
video and help grow this channel. Also checkout technopandareviews.com for more reviews focusing
on laptops and gaming PCs. Thanks for watching guys and I will see you in the next one. Bye!