Lenovo Legion 5 Pro (2021) Review

The Lenovo Legion five Pro features an innovative and high-quality display, combining with powerful components to evangelize an absorbing and impressive gaming experience. However, be aware of the disappointing battery life, and brand certain y’all have a USB mouse to hand.

Introduction

The Lenovo Legion 5 Pro is a mid-range laptop that delivers some surprising features, including a 16:ten display with a high resolution, and it promises to supply proper gaming power at a decent cost.

The model on review comes with a high-end Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 graphics core, just its UK price of £1499 is surprisingly reasonable. Its US and European prices of $1725 and €2099 aren’t awful either, considering the level of hardware inside this laptop.

This rings fifty-fifty more than true when you consider the competition. The Asus ROG Strix G15 costs £1699 / $1899 / €1999, if you lot’d like that machine with an AMD processor and the RTX 3070. Plus, it isn’t fifty-fifty possible to choice up the Dell G15 with the RTX 3070 – you lot’ll accept to either stick with a cheaper RTX 3060 model, or footstep up to a pricier Alienware m15.

I’ve reviewed the Pro version of Lenovo’s machine here, simply this device does a surprisingly decent job of competing with its standard stablemate. Look up the not-Pro laptop with the 5800H and RTX 3070, and you lot can expect to pay £1399 / $1829 / €1799.

On paper, then, there’s plenty to like, including a beefed-up specification for only a niggling extra cash – but how does the Lenovo stack up?

Design and Keyboard

• A robust design, although it’s heavy, thick, and requires a big power adapter
• Plenty of connectivity options, including always-on USB ports
• A comfortable keyboard and a trackpad with poor positioning

The Lenovo Legion five Pro design lives upwards to the Pro moniker. The Lenovo looks similar a serious gaming laptop, with a large, illuminated logo on the lid, RGB LEDs in the keyboard, and dark materials used to build the chassis. It isn’t equally outlandish as your average Alienware or Asus machine – some may fifty-fifty call information technology “drab” – but it’south platonic if you want a subtle laptop.

It’s robust, besides: at that place’s just slight movement in the wrist-residuum; the underside feels sturdy; and the screen is strong. This laptop uses a combination of aluminium and plastic, and the device is hands strong plenty to skid into a bag without concern.

On the right-hand side is a USB 3.two Gen ane port and a slider to conceal the webcam; on the left sits a USB 3.2 Gen two Type-C port that besides handles DisplayPort. Most of the connectivity can be found at the rear of the laptop, which is super-practical. The Legion offers a 2d USB-C port that adds power delivery alongside iii more USB 3.ii Gen 1 ports, one of which is ever on. There’s HDMI 2.1, also.

More USB 3.2 Gen two ports would have been welcome, and the AMD processor means in that location’s no Thunderbolt. Neither does the Lenovo include a card reader. Still, the port selection remains more practical than the competition – the Asus doesn’t feature e’er-on charging, and some Dell G15 models utilise USB 2.0.

On the inside, the Lenovo features the usual dual-ring Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.ane, and at that place are no surprises with the residue of the machine’s features. The 720p webcam doesn’t have Windows Howdy login, and the speakers are fine for media and gaming, although they’re too dirty in the mid-range.

The 16.1-inch form gene means the keyboard includes a numberpad, and the layout is adept – you get full-sized cursor keys, a double-height Return button, and the power push button is separated from the keyboard.

The concave buttons are comfortable, and they’re tranquility and fast in use. They’re hands good enough for mainstream gaming and typing, but aren’t particularly crisp.

Elsewhere, the keyboard doesn’t offering RGB LED backlighting, and the Lenovo’s touchpad disappoints. Information technology’southward large enough just it’s positioned too far left, and then your paw catches it easily when gaming. The push button action feels weak, too. Equally usual, anyone who wants to savor games should switch to a USB mouse.

The Lenovo is robust, with decent connectivity and a pleasant keyboard, just in that location’s 1 more issue here: the sheer size of this unit. It weighs 2.54kg, so information technology’s heavier than any rival, and its 27mm body makes it thicker, besides. Add in the 870g ability brick and you have a car that is likely to weigh you down.

Screen

• The aspect ratio, resolution and size provide an absorbing feel
• The huge effulgence level delivers the punch for any situation
• Accurate colours and a relatively wide gamut brand games expect great

The screen is the most notable feature of the Lenovo Legion 5 Pro. The 16:x aspect ratio provides more than vertical space than 16:9 laptops, and that means you can fit more of your game onto the panel. It also makes it easier to view documents and browser windows.

The slim screen bezel makes things more than absorbing, and this panel’s 2560 x 1600 resolution provides enough of pixels to play with. Ultimately, this brandish is more crisp, larger, and therefore more than immersive than your boilerplate gaming laptop brandish.

It offers superb quality, too. The Delta E of one.28 and colour temperature of 6244K are both excellent, ensuring colours are rendered accurately. In addition, this screen displays 95.9% of the sRGB gamut, then it will produce virtually every shade required past games.

The panel’south acme brightness level of 546 nits is vast. That’s too high for indoor utilize – it hurts your eyes inside a few minutes – simply it does mean that you can comfortably employ the Lenovo outdoors, or under the brightest lights. Happily, the contrast ratio of 1275:1 remains consistent no affair the brightness level, and it means you get impressive depth and vibrancy in all areas.

The superb quality, good resolution, and taller aspect ratio combine with a 165Hz refresh rate and Nvidia G-Sync to deliver butter-smooth, crisp performance in all mainstream games. You’ll merely want to look elsewhere if you lot need a 4K panel or a faster refresh rate for eSports. If that’s the case, the Asus has a 1080p panel that runs at 300Hz.

Performance

• The fast RTX 3070 will handle any game at the display’s native resolution
• AMD’s Ryzen 7 5800H is a reliably excellent content-creation option
• Is sometimes louder than other gaming laptops

Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3070 is one of the green team’due south almost powerful cores, thanks to its 5120 stream processors and 8GB of memory – and in this laptop it runs with a height ability level of 140W, which is every bit loftier as it can get.

Lenovo pairs the hefty graphics chip with an eight-cadre AMD Ryzen seven 5800H. It’s a reliably fantabulous chip, and it peaks here at 45W, which is in the middle of AMD’s designated range.

There are no surprises elsewhere. There’s the usual 16GB of dual-channel retention, and the 1TB Samsung SSD offers plenty of space for games alongside respectable read and write speeds of 3569MB/s and 2802MB/s.

It’south a powerful specification. The Lenovo ran Horizon: Zero Dawn at 2560 x 1600 and Ultimate settings at a butter-smoothen 74fps, and it swept Borderlands 3 aside at 55fps. Y’all’ll but demand the tiniest of tweaks to get the about demanding games to run at a consistent 60fps; most titles won’t require any changes.

The Lenovo doesn’t cramp at eSports, either – its Rainbow Half-dozen Siege score of 228fps at 2560 x 1600 means that it will easily handle the 165Hz display.

Lenovo’due south machine compares well to Asus’s rival. The Lenovo played Horizon and Borderlands at 88fps and 78fps when run at the bottom 16:10 resolution of 1920 x 1200. At a conventional 1080p resolution, the Asus delivered results of 77fps and 79fps. The Lenovo also had a slight advantage in 3DMark Time Spy – it scored 9984, while the Asus was a couple of hundred points slower.

This is about as quick as the RTX 3070 will get in a laptop, and you can add a few more than frames through Performance way – that option saw the initial Borderlands result leap from 55fps to 61fps. Conversely, the Quiet mode still leaves the laptop with enough ability for mainstream gaming, although y’all’ll have to dial dorsum the graphics in top games.

The AMD processor impressed, too. In Geekbench’s single- and multi-core benchmarks information technology delivered scores of 1395 and 7114. Both are marginally quicker than the aforementioned fleck inside the Asus, and the latter result outpaces any Intel Core i7 chip you lot’ll find in a gaming notebook. Information technology’south a superb selection for content creation, including photograph and video editing, and information technology will scythe through multi-tasking, dozens of browser tabs, and Office apps. You’ll only need more grunt for high-end pattern and 4K video piece of work.

The Lenovo produces similar dissonance levels if you lot play games in its Standard and Performance modes, and the Legion does sometimes create plenty of audible output – it’s slightly louder than many other RTX 3070 systems around. A headset will handle it, but y’all’ll notice the internals at piece of work if y’all push the components.

Component speeds are good, at least – no affair what I threw at this laptop, the graphics cadre hit speeds beyond 1600MHz and 1700MHz in Standard and Performance modes, and the processor attained top single- and multi-core speeds of 4.3GHz and 3.5GHz, which aren’t far backside its theoretical peaks.

Quiet mode is far ameliorate for dissonance, with modest fan output in any chore; but performance is restricted – the GPU is a couple of hundred megahertz slower and the processor speed was reduced. And, in all of these performance modes, the exterior remained relatively cool – there was a chip of warmth in the eye of the keyboard, just it was never problematic.

Battery

• Underwhelming in games – stayed connected if yous desire to play
• Not dandy results in media and work benchmarks, either

The hefty Lenovo Legion 5 Pro doesn’t have much to shout most when it comes to longevity. It lasted for 1hr 20mins during a gaming examination, which is a little worse than about gaming laptops. Also deport in mind that the GPU is restricted to 90W if you utilise the bombardment. As usual, you lot’ll have a far better time with this laptop if you stick to the power source.

Nonetheless, the Legion didn’t impress outside of games, either. Information technology lasted for simply over three hours when we played video and ran some moderate work tasks – less than half the lifespan of the Asus.

The car’south hybrid mode makes more use of its integrated graphics chipset to extend bombardment life, only fifty-fifty then it simply lasted 4 hours. Ultimately, this sixteen.1-inch machine is far better when plugged in.

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