The Lenovo Legion 5 is the latest addition to the Legion series of gaming laptops. Lenovo is looking to make a splash in the gaming market with this product and it has certainly given its competitors a run for their money. The laptop has been priced more aggressively than its predecessors and comes with a good set of features and specifications. Prior to making a decision, make sure you consider what else the competition offers.
Case – Lenovo uses black plastic
The Legion has a black, hard plastic body (Phantom Black) and it also has rubberized pads running around the top of its base unit. One thing you’ll notice first is how differently this device opens than its other counterparts – unlike other devices which open at the back, the laptop has its hinges shifted forward by 25 mm. You’ll find a battery firmly placed inside that can’t be removed and there’s no access panel on it either. It bears resemblance to many other devices made by Lenovo in their gaming series – although they come with small changes.
The construction of this laptop is fairly solid; the gaps between all edges are even, and there doesn’t seem to be any protruding fabric. Sadly though, this laptop may not withstand as much weight as we’d hoped for. The base unit can only warp slightly before it starts bending, but both sides of the keyboard take up little force when pushed inward. Though these two pieces seem firm enough to hold the lid in place and enable one-handed opening from most angles, there are some parts where applying pressure on the backside of the screen changes things. It does show signs of wear too – such as in some places where indentations form under heavy hands.
Connectivity – No Thunderbolt 3 for this Lenovo
The Lenovo legion Y740 offers no surprises in terms of port selection. The device has 4 USB ports (3x Type A, 1x Type C) – all supporting the USB 3.2 Gen 1 standard. In addition, the type C port supports DPC via USB-C function (although you will need to purchase a separate adapter for this.) We would have loved for there to be a Thunderbolt 3 Port and we also noted that the Legion does not offer an SD Card Reader.
The ports are spread out on three sides; the ones on the left and right are positioned in the middle, leaving enough space for wrist rests.
Input Devices – crisp keyboard with backlighting
Keyboard
The Legion has a backlit chicklet keyboard. The concave keys are short-travel and have a clear pressure point. Though we would’ve preferred the keys to be slightly larger, they were still excellent keyboards. Unfortunately, we could only control two brightness levels of lighting through the function key – which seemed impractical. Even so, these are great keyboards that are perfect for general typing and everyday use.
Touchpad
A 10.6 x 7 cm (~4.17 x 2.75 in) ClickPad occupies much of the touchpad area of my computer monitor and offers enough room for me to use gestures while still being able to work with precision. The smooth surface allows my fingers to glide smoothly across its entirety, feeling an input when necessary without having too much room or giving off an error message when I’m doing something else entirely different from what it was designed for.
Display – 165-Hz IPS
The Legion features a 15.6-inch 1080p IPS panel with contrast ratio at 1158:1; however, its max brightness is too low at 277.3 cd/m2. The response rate on the monitor is acceptable for 165 Hz and we were pleasantly surprised to find out there was no Screen Flicker or Pulse Width Modulation when testing the screen’s LED backlighting system.
Performance – The Legion 5 makes full use of its hardware
Lenovo manufactures a 15.6 inch laptop that can smoothly run all modern games while still managing to do an adequate job when it comes to most computer applications. It’s available at around $1250 and there are many other configurations offered.
Processor
Lenovo has outfitted the Legion with a quad-core Core-i5-10300H processor. This chip is able to clock up to 2.5GHz and boost to 4.2GHz for four cores and 4.5GHz for one core (hyperthreading supported).
Cinebench benchmarks are processed using either four threads or one thread, depending on the type of test being run. The multi-thread tests were done at 4.2 GHz (on mains) and 2.5 GHz (on battery), while the single thread tests were done at 4.2 -4.5GHz(mains) and 3.5 -4.2 GHz(battery).
To see if the processor can sustain its turbo boost for a prolonged time, we ran the multi-threaded Cinebench R15 benchmark for at least thirty minutes. Results were consistent throughout the test which tells us that turbo mode was constantly being utilized.
There are several different temperature modes you can set on Lenovo Vantage. In CB15 loop in Balanced or Calm Mode, 530 and 540 points were achieved the first two rounds, but then only 420 points were scored for Calm Mode afterwards. Results for Balanced Mode were nearly equal to Performance Mode though.
The modes also impacted single thread performance with the balanced mode of the CB15 benchmark yielding 131 points while the calm mode yielded 108 points.
System Performance
The impressive speed my laptop has can be contributed to its powerful components – four cores, RAM running in dual channel mode and an NVMe SSD. It has great PCMark scores and would be perfect for other types of work besides just gaming.
GPU Performance
The GeForce RTX-2060 (some configs come with 1660Ti) is a high-end graphics card that supports DirectX 12 and has a base clock rate of 960 MHz. It can reach speeds up to 1200MHz if the conditions are right. Maximum clock rates were measured at 2117 MHz for The Witcher 3 benchmark test—a phenomenal achievement for such an affordable product! There’s also room for plenty of fast GDDR6 memory, capable of storing 6144MB worth of information!
The 3DMark benchmark test showed performance consistent with expectations. The laptop’s default graphics card, the Intel Integrated Graphics UHD-Graphics-G1, was active and could be switched out at will thanks to Nvidia Optimus’ availability. Turning off the iGPU is possible either through Lenovo Vantage in Windows or switching it off in the laptop’s BIOS menu.
The different performance modes available in the Lenovo Vantage affect how graphics-heavy games run. The 3DMark benchmark performs similarly regardless of what mode is activated but graphics performance takes a steep dive when Calm Mode is activated.
Gaming Performance
The CPU/GPU combination of the Legion 5 will run every game smoothly at Full-HD resolution and can be set to max or high graphics settings. Even higher resolutions are possible (requiring an additional external monitor) but for this you would need to decrease graphics quality slightly.
Temperature
The Lenovo Legion does not overheat. Even when subjected to high temperatures, such as those during a stress test for certain parts at 44°C/111°F, it was still only 36°C/97°F at the most during an Witcher 3 Stress Test and was completely fine during daily usage.
Verdict
The Lenovo Legion 5 offers a great deal for gamers, such as having an Intel Core i5-10300H processor and NVIDIA RTX 2060 graphics card which allows you to play any game smoothly at full HD 1080p resolution with high quality graphics. Furthermore, it remains cool even after long periods of time allowing you to keep playing without disruptions.
The Legion 5 enables users to activate or turn off the integrated graphics card.
With the press of a button, you can turn on or off the built-in UHD Graphics 630. Battery life will last much longer when using the iGPU, but will not go quite as far when running intensive games such as those powered by NVIDIA® GeForce RTX 2060.
Should the storage of the 512-GB SSD run out, users can expand the device either with a 2.5-inch drive or an M.2 NVMe SSD (2280). To insert the new hardware into place one has to open up the laptop and install it without a cover for easy maintenance access.
The Full-HD IPS display offers stable viewing angles and a respectable contrast ratio with decent colors, but it suffers from poor maximum brightness levels and color space coverage. For its hefty price tag of $1250, we expected much more out of this laptop’s display for certain aspects.
