Lenovo Legion 5 Review: Not Boring Gaming

What is a laptop for $1099 capable of? Lenovo Legion 5 Review

You can also read our Light, Thin, Fast: Lenovo Legion Y530 Gaming Laptop Review and RedmiBook 16 Ryzen Edition Review.

We do not take gaming laptops for reviews very often—pretty specific devices for us. But, actually, why not? Lenovo Legion 5 15ARH05 got to our studio lately. The company positions it as a gaming one. But first things first.

Lenovo Legion 5 Review: Let’s start with Design

I liked the look: minimalism, no flashy elements telling everyone that this laptop is gaming:

The black plastic of the case gets dirty easily. Unpleasant.

But there are a lot of connectors. The main part is behind—two USB-A on the back, one more on the side panels. Also on the back panel, there is one USB Type-C port, one full-fledged HDMI, an RJ45 connector and charging. The last connector is unusually rectangular:

The laptop very confidently passes the “MacBook test” – the lower part does not even hint at a rise:

But we must understand that the merit here is in the distribution of weight, where the “base” weighs quite a lot, and the screen is small. Also, I suppose, the hinges that Lenovo Legion 5 inherited from the Legion Y line played a role in the convenience of opening. This model is considered to be its successor. Therefore, she knows how to do this:

Why, however, open to the full, I do not really understand. But while lying on the bed, it is convenient to put the laptop on your lap and open the screen at 135 degrees:

The screen here is a standard size of 15.6 inches. It is an IPS with a maximum brightness of 300 nits and a Full HD resolution. The supported image refresh rate is 144 Hz. The response time is 3 ms. It copes with its function perfectly well. I did not notice any problems.

From a pure consumer point of view, I would like a higher resolution – I see pixels, and I’m not very happy about that. I understand that this will negatively affect gaming performance, but in basic moments like surfing, working with text and photographs, the resolution is not enough.

The keyboard is called Lenovo Legion TrueStrike. Someone will be glad that the number block remains on this laptop. This is really good, but we had to shrink the keyboard slightly during development. And this is inconvenient. Directly extremely inconvenient: you blindly click on the number 6, but seven is printed. Click on Backspace to delete a letter – a notification appears that you have disabled the Num keyboard block again:

That being said, if Lenovo made a full-size keyboard, everything would be great: it’s an excellent keyboard. But its size for me became too obvious a design flaw, which I could not come to terms with. In the end, after writing a couple of paragraphs, I returned to the Magic Keyboard.

It’s worth noting that the keyboard has two levels of backlighting brightness: high and medium. At the same time, there is no illumination of letters – each button is illuminated along the perimeter.

Two nice additions: the power button is highlighted with a separate button, and the front camera has a shutter (!!!). Top solution:

Now CIA agents will definitely not be watching me!

The trackpad is pleasant and comfortable to work with. But the speakers did not make me happy: there is no bottom end, and at maximum volumes, the limiter is turned on so as not to overload the speakers. As a result, the sound falls through with every loud bang, jumps and does not bring pleasure. The Harman logo does not help either – 2-watt speakers are downright strained by the way they sound.

The laptop weighs less than it seems – 2.3 kg. This is a lot, but for some reason, I thought that it would be completely overwhelming, and when I picked it up, I was pleasantly surprised!

Lenovo Legion 5 Review: How was my Gaming Experience?

A new laptop is not a top-end solution. He received AMD Ryzen 7 4800H – a chip built on the Zen 2 microarchitecture. Almost a top-end gaming solution, only AMD Ryzen 9 4900HS and 4900H are higher.

The processor performs well in everyday tasks, which is not surprising. It overtakes even the ninth generation Intel i9, which has a higher power consumption figure in many scenarios.

You can also read our Light, Thin, Fast: Lenovo Legion Y530 Gaming Laptop Review and RedmiBook 16 Ryzen Edition Review.

But the laptop card is not at all top: here is NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 with 4 GB of video memory. Interestingly, there is no such version on sale: the Ryzen 5 version comes with this card, and the version with Ryzen 7 comes with a GTX 1650 Ti. But in any case, the card is not new, and it can fall under the definition of “gamer” only if you are not playing very demanding games.

A similar version of mine is sold with a built-in 512 GB SSD.

I played Resident Evil III, and GTA V. What was unexpected for me was that the first game ran without any problems, showing stable 55–70 frames, but the “five” slowed down in places, not even on the “ultras”. For example, the car, in which I accidentally flew up and started spinning in flight, slightly jerked up, and the smooth picture ceased to be. 2013 game! The rest of the time, the game constantly jumped between 50 and 75 frames per second.

Even in the most difficult scenes, the laptop was quiet and calm. Here we should thank the cooling system built on aluminium radiators. And this is the simplest version. There are also copper radiators, as well as radiators with an increased number of blades.

Playing on a gaming laptop without plugging in is an odd decision. Power saving modes cut off the computer’s performance, which is why the same GTA V goes as if the computer is not capable of producing more than 15 frames.

If you work at a computer, then judging the operating time is also somehow strange. For example, ArchiCAD will have one run time, while Office programs will have another. In general, there is a battery with a capacity of 80 Wh. In the box, you will find a 170W PSU.

Conclusion: Should you buy Lenovo Legion 5?

My version of Lenovo Legion 5 15ARH05 costs about $1099. The laptop has not so many competitors. For example, ASUS TUF Gaming A15 with a similar processor and a more powerful card – GeForce GTX 1660 Ti. However, it is worth noting that it is called a rather noisy laptop, as well as with a rather screaming design with a gaming focus:

ASUS also released another variant. This is the ROG Zephyrus G15. He already looks much nicer. This laptop is also the more powerful GeForce GTX 1660 Ti, but the processor will be weaker, and the TDP is lower than that of Lenovo. Some more buyers scold the matrix of this computer:

Lenovo Legion 5 15ARH05 is not very suitable for modern games. At least at maximum speed, they will not start. But as a workhorse, you can sometimes remember not too demanding games or games of the past years – quite. Although I was surprised by the lagging GTA V., It may have had some not-so-good update on Steam recently.

But it should be borne in mind that the computer has versions with an RTX 2060, which should make an excellent batch of the Ryzen 7 4800H installed in the laptop.

As a workhorse, this computer is also difficult for me to use because of the reduced keyboard – here you need to remove the number block and make full-size buttons. But, probably, if you use the computer for a longer time, you can get used to the keyboard. True, when you need to sit down at a different keyboard, problems will start again. In general, I am in favour of standardization, and this step of Lenovo is very incomprehensible to me.

What really pleased me was the number of ports and their location – there are fast USB 3.1 Gen 2, HDMI, and RJ45 for a confident skating rink in online games.

I also noted the relatively low weight of 2.3 kg – visually, the laptop seems to be heavier than it is. I was also very pleased with the design’s minimalism: no coloured elements, with might and main shouting that the laptop was for gaming. The design without excess looks interesting and does not cause boredom.

You can also read our review of Light, Thin, Fast: Lenovo Legion Y530 Gaming Laptop Review and RedmiBook 16 Ryzen Edition Review