Lenovo's Legion 5 Pro ($1,529.99 as tested) delivers the latest AMD and Nvidia technology in a chassis that's a bit of a throwback to the bulky gaming laptop days of yore. Given the power it possesses, however, you might not care that the Legion's more than an inch thick and that its design is a bit drab. It's built around an expansive 16-inch QHD (2,560-by-1,600-pixel) display with a 16:10 aspect ratio, which sits between more popular 15.6- and 17.3-inch panels with 16:9 ratios. The Lenovo teams an AMD Ryzen 7 5800H processor with Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 graphics, and off to the races it goes—it outclasses its Intel competition in multithreaded benchmarks and is also a step ahead of the Alienware m15 Ryzen Edition R5, which features the same CPU and GPU pairing. And it does so at an aggressive price. If you're more about speed and value than an elegant, complete package, it could be a better choice than our current top gaming laptop picks of similar size, the Alienware m15 R4 and the Acer Predator Helios 300 (2021).
Function Over Form
In a couple of significant ways, the Legion 5 Pro is the polar opposite of the premium-priced Razer Blade 15 Advanced Edition, a paragon among today's slick, thin gaming rigs. The sleek Razer is only 0.67 inch thick and weighs a highly totable 4.4 pounds, but it starts at $2,500 and quickly escalates from there. The Legion 5 Pro measures 1.1 by 14 by 10.4 inches (HWD), making it one of the only gaming laptops we've seen recently that's thicker than an inch.
(Photo: Molly Flores)
At 5.65 pounds, it's more than a pound heavier than the Razer Blade 15, with a bulky power brick that adds more than 1.5 pounds to the laptop's travel weight. Still, as chunky as it is, the Lenovo isn't the heaviest laptop we've seen this year: Despite its smaller 15.6-inch display, the Alienware m15 Ryzen Edition R5 is 5.93 pounds, while the 17.3-inch Alienware m17 R4 tips the scales at 6.5 pounds.
(Photo: Molly Flores)
There's nothing about the Legion 5 Pro's design that identifies it as a gaming laptop other than four vents on the sides and back edge, which provide some clue to the cooling demands of the high-powered components inside. The vents lack any visual flair or interesting design element like the honeycomb pattern of the vents of the Alienware m15. The Lenovo's plastic chassis is entirely dark gray in color with black keys offering a slight contrast. An illuminated Y logo is centered on the lid; it glows light blue when the laptop is plugged in, but you can't change its color to something more visually arresting.
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(Photo: Molly Flores)
Despite its heft and four large vents—plus a sizable vent area on its bottom—the Legion 5 Pro requires active and loud fans to stay cool when engaged in heavy graphics lifting. The laptop is fairly quiet during routine Windows work, but the fans crank up when running 3D games and media editing apps. It's no louder than competing gaming laptops, but I'd hoped that it wouldn't need to spin its fans at max RPM as frequently as it did, considering that Lenovo didn't try to squeeze the system into a svelte, Razer-like chassis.
(Photo: Molly Flores)
If you're determined to give the Legion 5 Pro a dash of visual appeal, you can customize the four-zone RGB keyboard backlighting. The keyboard itself is roomy and comfortable; the keys offer a firm feel with soft-landing switches that result in a satisfying and quiet typing experience. The laptop on the whole feels solidly built, with no flex to the keyboard deck when typing or frantically mashing keys during chaotic gaming. Lenovo also found room for a numeric keypad, and its addition does not result in any shortened or rearranged keys, although the number pad’s keys are narrower than those of the main keyboard.
(Photo: Molly Flores)
Below the keyboard is a large touchpad. It's centered below the keyboard, making it look offset to the left when you consider the number pad. I found its positioning felt natural, and its matte finish allowed for smooth gliding and accurate recording of gestures. You can press the F10 key to disable the touchpad when using an external mouse.
A Unusual Screen Size for a Gamer
Most gaming laptops, as mentioned, feature either 15.6- or 17.3-inch displays with 16:9 aspect ratios. The 16:10 ratio of the Legion 5 Pro's 16-inch screen gives it a slightly squarer shape. I didn't notice any appreciable difference when playing games on the Lenovo, but I certainly appreciated the added vertical space when browsing the web and working on large Excel spreadsheets.
(Photo: Molly Flores)
The display offers other benefits beside a bit less scrolling. Its image is crisp, bright, and fast with 2,560-by-1,600-pixel resolution, a brightness rating of 500 nits, and a 165Hz refresh rate. Colors in games and photos look vivid, and Nvidia's G-Sync technology matches the screen's refresh rate with GPU output for gameplay without tearing or stuttering.
Thin bezels frame the display on all four sides, creating a modern look despite the system's bulky chassis. Lenovo placed a 720p webcam above the display, but it lacks a sliding privacy shutter—you can, however, flick a switch on the right edge to cut power to the camera to ensure your privacy. It may not be as reassuring as a physical cover, but it should do the job nonetheless.
Given the Legion's bulk, I harbored some hope that its speakers would surprise me with dynamic output. They do get impressively loud at max volume, but the sound is muddy with the lack of bass response typical to almost all laptops. Gamers, keep your headphones handy.
The Legion 5 Pro features a useful and thoughtfully arranged collection of ports. Most are located on the back edge and helpfully and clearly labeled: an HDMI video output, three USB Type-A ports, one USB-C port (with power delivery and DisplayPort support but no Thunderbolt capability), an Ethernet jack, and the power connector.
(Photo: Molly Flores)
On the left edge, the laptop serves up another USB-C port and a headphone/mic combo jack, so you don't need to reach around back to connect your headphones, an external hard drive, or other peripherals...
(Photo: Molly Flores)
On the right edge, next to the webcam privacy switch, you'll find another USB-A port for connecting a mouse...
(Photo: Molly Flores)
Testing the Legion 5 Pro: Blazin' Ryzen
Our Legion 5 Pro test system will be available at Walmart at the end of June for $1,529.99. It features an eight-core, 16-thread AMD Ryzen R7 5800H processor, 16GB of RAM, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 graphics, and a 512GB solid-state drive. The closest laptop we've tested to this build is the Alienware m15 Ryzen Edition R5, which features the same component lineup except for trading the RTX 3070 graphics for a more midrange RTX 3060 GPU. Despite the step down in graphics, the Alienware costs $120 more ($1,649.99).
We also compared the Legion's performance to that of other gaming laptops with GeForce RTX 30 Series GPUs. The 14-inch Acer Predator Triton 300 SE ($1,399.99 as tested) is the only system that costs less than the Lenovo; it features an 11th Generation Intel Core i7 CPU and RTX 3060 graphics. The Razer Blade 15 Advanced Edition ($2,899) and the Alienware m17 R4 ($3,609.99) cost nearly double the Legion 5 Pro but supply Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3080, which is one rung up the ladder from the Lenovo's RTX 3070. For more on choosing a laptop processor, you can check out our mobile CPU guide, and we've discussed the nuances of performance variations among RTX 30 Series GPUs here.
Productivity, Storage, and Media Tests
PCMark 10 and 8 are holistic performance suites developed by the benchmark specialists at UL (formerly Futuremark). The PCMark 10 test we run simulates different real-world productivity and content-creation workflows. We use it to assess overall system performance for office-centric tasks such as word processing, spreadsheet jockeying, web browsing, and videoconferencing. PCMark 8, meanwhile, has a storage subtest that we use to assess the speed of the system's boot drive. Both tests yield a proprietary numeric score; higher numbers are better. (See more about how we test laptops.)
The Legion 5 Pro not only outpaced the other gaming laptops here, but it also posted the highest PCMark 10 score we've ever seen. It's one of only a handful of laptops to surpass the 7,000-point mark (we consider 4,000 points to equal excellent productivity) and has more than enough muscle to power through all manner of multitasking. The high base clock speed (3.2GHz) of the AMD Ryzen 7 5800H is likely the reason for its besting the Intel CPUs that also boast eight cores and 16 threads (the Core i7 in the Razer, and the Core i9 in the Alienware m17 R4).
Next is Maxon's CPU-crunching Cinebench R15 test, which is fully threaded to make use of all available processor cores and threads. Cinebench stresses the CPU rather than the GPU to render a complex image. The result is a proprietary score indicating a PC's suitability for processor-intensive workloads.
Cinebench is often a good predictor of our Handbrake video-editing trial, another tough, threaded workout that's highly CPU-dependent and scales well with cores and threads. In it, we put a stopwatch on test systems as they transcode a standard 12-minute clip of 4K video (the open-source Blender demo movie Tears of Steel) to a 1080p MP4 file. It's a timed test, and lower results are better.
We also run a custom Adobe Photoshop image-editing benchmark. Using an early 2018 release of the Creative Cloud version of Photoshop, we apply a series of 10 complex filters and effects to a standard JPEG test image, timing each operation and adding up the total. As with Handbrake, lower times are better here. The Photoshop test stresses the CPU, storage subsystem, and RAM, but it can also take advantage of most GPUs to speed up the process of applying filters, so systems with powerful graphics chips or cards may see a boost.
The Legion 5 Pro won or tied for first place in all three multimedia tests, thanks in large part to its AMD CPU. The Ryzen 7 and 9 5000 series chips have proven to be a bit faster than equivalent Intel Core i7 and Core i9 processors for media creation and editing. The Core i9-based Alienware m17 R4 tied the Lenovo in both Handbrake and Photoshop, but the Legion 5 Pro had a clear advantage in Cinebench, in fact posting the second-highest score we've seen in a gaming laptop. If you can't afford both a gaming rig and a workstation, the Legion 5 Pro is an able machine for content creation as well as playing games.
Graphics Tests
3DMark measures relative graphics muscle by rendering sequences of highly detailed, gaming-style 3D graphics that emphasize particles and lighting. We run two different 3DMark subtests, Sky Diver and Fire Strike, which are suited to different types of systems. Both are DirectX 11 benchmarks, but Sky Diver is more suited to laptops and midrange PCs while Fire Strike is more demanding and made for high-end PCs to strut their stuff. The results are proprietary scores.
Next up is another synthetic graphics test or gaming simulation. Like 3DMark, Unigine Corp.'s Superposition renders and pans through a detailed 3D scene and measures how the system copes. In this case, it's rendered in the company’s eponymous Unigine engine, offering a different 3D workload scenario for a second opinion on the machine's graphical prowess. Both the 720p Low and 1080p High presets report scores in frames per second (fps), which indicates the smoothness of onscreen animation. For lower-end systems, maintaining at least 30fps is a realistic target, while serious gamers crave 60fps or higher frame rates.
That the GeForce RTX 3070-based Lenovo topped the two RTX 3060 systems (the Predator Triton 300 SE and Alienware m15 Ryzen Edition R5) was no surprise, but the ease with which it did so was a bit of an eye-opener. It also topped the Razer Blade 15 and its RTX 3080 in both tests, although Razer likely throttled down its GPU to keep thermals in check inside the Blade's compact chassis. Only the big Alienware m17 R4 bested the Lenovo in these exercises.
Real-World Gaming Tests
The synthetic tests above are helpful for measuring general 3D aptitude, but it's hard to beat full retail video games for judging gaming performance. Far Cry 5 and Rise of the Tomb Raider are both modern, high-fidelity titles with built-in benchmarks that illustrate how a system handles real-world video games at various settings. We run them at the games' moderate and maximum graphics quality presets (Normal and Ultra for Far Cry 5, Medium and Very High for Rise of the Tomb Raider) at 1080p resolution. Far Cry 5 is DirectX 11-based, while we flip Rise of the Tomb Raider to DX12.
All five systems acquitted themselves well, posting high frame rates in both games. The Acer Triton 300 SE and Alienware m17 R4 bookended this group, with the Legion 5 Pro turning in results very close to the Alienware m15 and Razer. Since the Lenovo has the second lowest price in the group, often by a considerable amount, it clearly provides the best bang for your gaming buck.
I also ran the in-game benchmark of Rainbow Six: Siege using the Low and Ultra presets (both at 100% render resolution) at 1080p. The Legion 5 Pro averaged 316fps in Low and 262fps in Ultra, which should raise the eyebrows of esports athletes looking for a capable gaming laptop at an approachable price. This would keep the 165HZ screen on offer here well filled with frames.
Battery Rundown Test
After fully recharging the laptop, we set up the machine in power-save mode (as opposed to balanced or high-performance mode) where available and make a few other battery-conserving tweaks in preparation for our unplugged video playback test. (We also turn Wi-Fi off, putting the laptop into airplane mode.) In this test, we loop a video—a locally stored 720p file of the same Tears of Steel movie used in our Handbrake trial—with screen brightness at 50% and volume at 100% until the system quits.
The Legion 5 Pro missed the eight-hour mark in our battery rundown, conking out hours before both the Predator Triton 300 SE and Alienware m15 R5 and nearly an hour before the Razer Blade 15. It easily outlasted the huge Alienware m17 R4, but you aren't likely to lug the Lenovo on the road with much frequency.
Midrange Gaming Muscle in a Plain Chassis
The Lenovo Legion 5 Pro offers a winning AMD and Nvidia combination that delivers outstanding overall performance behind a uniquely roomy display. The 16-inch, 16:10 screen offers more visual real estate and pixels than a typical 15.6-inch, 1080p gaming laptop, and it is certainly larger than the 14-inch display of the Acer Predator Triton 300 SE. The Legion 5 Pro costs $130 more than that Acer, but it's money well spent for the bigger screen, higher resolution, and better performance.
(Photo: Molly Flores)
We just handed our Editors' Choice award for midrange gaming rigs to the 15.6-inch Acer Predator Helios 300, but it's a near-run thing. The Legion 5 Pro is a tempting alternative if you'd like something a bit less flashy but more offbeat and muscular for the money.
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June 23, 2021 at 08:01PM
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Lenovo Legion 5 Pro Review - PCMag
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