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Lenovo Legion 5 and 5i Full Review with pros and cons
The new Lenovo Legion series has 2 versions, the 5 and the 5i, the difference being the 5 has AMD hardware and the 5i has intel hardware, all other aspects remain similar across both th 5 and the 5i.
The Legion is one the most anticipated gaming devices of 2020 as the predecessor being the legion Y540 being very well received for its sleek and clean look with great performance.
Build and Quality
The design is very similar to last year’s model being very clean and mature looking. This is probably the most clean looking gaming laptop in this price range. The legion logo doesn’t light up anymore but it has a king of shimer when see in different lighting conditions.The laptop has an all plastic build which may seem cheap to some people, it certainly doesn’t feel so. The build feels sturdy, albeit not as much as one with an all-metal build, and there is not much screen or keyboard flex. The hingle feels sturdy and can be opened up to a full 180 degrees. The interior has this nice soft touch material which is really durable.
Ports, I/O and Connectivity
The ports are spread across 3 sides of the laptop and the ports on the sides are present in the middle for comfort. The laptop offers 4 USB ports including 3 Type A and 1 Type C which all support USB 3.2 Gen 1 standard. There is a lack of Thunderbolt 3 port and a SD card reader. Also the device supports the DIsplayPort functionality via USB C but the users will have to buy an adapter separately.
Maintenance
Getting into the laptop is relatively easy. By just removing the screws from the bottom panel and popping it off, one gets access to the 2x SODIMM slots, one of which is empty and available for upgrade, one 2.5 inch drive bay and one M.2 Storage slot. Removing the drive bay or the caddy also contains enough space for an extra SSD.
Input Devices
Keyboard –The keyboard in this device is good. It comes with a number pad if that’s what you are looking for. The key travel is decent with tactile keys and anyone will easily get used to this keyboard.It also has white clean backlight.
Touchpad –The Lenovo Legion 5 or the 5i’s touchpad supports Windows precision drivers and doesnt comes with dedicated left and right click buttons rather the whole trackpad is kind of the button that clicks. The touchpad is fairly precise and large enough for a gaming laptop and the click buttons feel consistent and produce a clear audible click sound.
Display
The base panel is a 1080p 60 hz panel which we don’t recommend as it won’t justify the high frame rates pushed by the dedicated GPU and won’t give a great gaming experience.
There is also a weird 120 hz panel option which only has 250 nits of brightness which is also advised not to get as 250 nits is not bright enough for good gaming experience.
The panel that we highly recommend is the 1080p 144hz panel with 308 nits of brightness and is also pretty colour accurate at 97% sRGB coverage. This panel looks good and with the high refresh rate your gaming experience would be very smooth.
Performance
The performance on this device is pretty good. The chassis is properly cooled and is able to handle the powerful hardware inside.
Both the AMD and the Intel version delivers with 60+ frame rates in modern triple A titles and 150+ fps on e-sport titles in high settings in 1080p.
Creative load like video and photo editing can be done without hiccups due to the high core-count processors included.
We just feel that the Intel versions are slightly overpriced though.
Storage
There are many variations in the storage options that you get with this device so you can choose any SSD and HDD combination that you want. If you want a recommendation then the 512 GB NVMe SSD model should be good enough for most users. A good thing about this laptop is that it comes with 2 M.2 slots that means you can have 1 SSD + 1 HDD or 2 NVMe SSDs at the same time if you remove the caddy which reveals the 2nd slot and enough space for the SSD.
Speakers
The speakers are good enough for a gaming laptop but the audio can feel a bit muddy at times. The bass is not the strong which is to be expected from such tiny speakers. It is still recommended to use a headset while gaming because the fans can overpower the audio from the speakers.
Battery Life
The battery life on this device is good. There is a 60 Wh cell which gives it around 6 hours in regular use with medium brightness which is good for a gaming laptop. The package includes a fairly lightweight 170W charger which takes 2 hours if you enable fast charging with the Vantage app otherwise it takes 2+ hours. It does not support USB C charging. Also there is a higher version with 80 Wh battery which can give 7 to 8 hours of battery life with regular use.
- Pros
- Good clean and durable build
- great 100% sRGB 144 hz display
- good keyboard and trackpad
- great thermal efficiency
- good CPU and GPU performance
- Cons
- No SD card reader
- Lack of USB C charging
- Intel varients are a bit too pricy
Lenovo Legion 5/5i
Nerd Score