We're LIVE with the Windows Central Video Podcast today at 2:30pm ET, make sure you're there! The Lenovo Legion Y540-17 Gaming Laptop has a backlit keyboard. One thing I noticed after just a few days of use is how susceptible the lid is to scratching. Our expert industry analysis and practical solutions help you make better buying decisions and get more from technology. The Legion Y530 represents the culmination of thousands of engineering hours to deliver a laptop that is both powerful and thin. The result is a proprietary score indicating a PC's suitability for processor-intensive workloads. 3D performance is obviously important in this category, and these laptops cover a range of power between them. For less of a head-to-head view, these scores mean that the Legion 7i (and its competitors) are good but not great multimedia machines. Bluetooth 5.0 is likewise ready to handle any wireless accessories. This toggles the laptop between three different power settings, represented by an LED in the middle of the power button. If you're a streamer, you're no doubt using some sort of third-party webcam for better quality video, but still, the angle with which the built-in camera shot up your nose wasn't pleasant. The main chassis has some plastic shrouding that covers vents and helps keep the laptop from lying completely flat and denying air intake. Regular use caused a couple of rather large runs, and flipping it over to remove the bottom cover scored it further. Lenovo - Legion 5 15" Gaming Laptop - Intel Core i7 - 8GB Memory - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti - 512GB SSD - Phantom Black. The design and build aren't the sleekest or most glamorous, so if your main aim is style and portability, the others have a leg up (although the Lenovo does have good battery life). We also run a custom Adobe Photoshop image-editing benchmark. Choose from myriad configuration options starting at a competitive price and enjoy mid-range gaming performance without throttling. If you're looking for a laptop that can handle competitive gaming with titles like CS:GO, League of Legends, or Fortnite, you should be in good hands. When not gaming or writing, the rest of his time is spent on the emotional rollercoasters known as Chelsea FC and the NY Rangers. The Intel Core i7 processor and 8GB of RAM let you run modern titles smoothly, … You can unsubscribe at any time and we'll never share your details without your permission. Those who favor single-player AAA games may not be as keen on a high-refresh display, but competitive multiplayer gamers stand to benefit from the blistering frame rates. If you're buying this laptop, consider investing in a skin ASAP. As we've come to expect from Lenovo, the keyboard—the same redesigned "True Strike" keyboard found on the 5i—is comfortable. Testing again with PCMark 10's Modern Office rundown at the same 50% brightness and Balance power plan, the Legion 5i managed just an hour and 27 minutes. Indeed, the extra headroom is to make sure the most demanding games can still maintain 60fps, and that competitive multiplayer titles can make use of the high-refresh-rate display. The AMD version of the Legion 5 15 would be a more affordable contender, except its GPU options are either a NVIDIA GTX 1650 or a GTX 1650 Ti. As such, the touchpad sat a bit more under my palm when using WASD than preferable, which could lead to accidental clicks. The Legion 5i does have an Ethernet port for a wired connection, but with a proper Wi-Fi 6 router and high-speed ISP plan, you might find that there's no need to lay cables to your laptop. © 1996-2021 Ziff Davis, LLC. It's a timed test, and lower results are better. Either way, the Legion squeezes out more frames per second than the competition, including those that should be equivalent. Despite the rear lip that houses ports, Lenovo has designed the laptop so that the display can sit back a full 180 degrees to lie flat. At the time of writing, it's priced below $1,300. Alongside the M.2 slot connected to the stock SSD, there's a secondary M.2 slot on the other side of the laptop. As for 15.6-inch IPS display options, the review unit has a 1920x1080 resolution, 144Hz refresh rate, 5ms response time, about 360 nits brightness, Dolby Vision, and anti-glare layer. The Legion 5i is a gaming laptop, but its design isn’t a dead giveaway. An anti-glare finish cuts down well on glare, but there's still an issue with brightness. There are some differences between them, with the former a bit behind the Legion 7i and the latter slightly ahead on average, but it's the same ballpark of speed. On average, these real game benchmarks tell the same story as the synthetic tests. Your subscription has been confirmed. If you want to go full AMD, a Dell G5 15 with Ryzen 7 4800H, Radeon RX 5600M GPU (about the same performance as the RTX 2060), 16GB of RAM, 1TB M.2 PCIe SSD, 144Hz display, and 68Wh battery costs about $1,245. In order to judge the Legion 7i's benchmark test results, I selected a handful of competing systems from our test database. The rest of the build is straightforward, but well executed. It's the TrueStrike brand, with anti-ghosting and 1.5mm of key travel with a soft bottom. The "7" in the model name does not denote that this is a 17-inch version of the Legion (there is a 17-inch version of the Legion 5i, but so far not of the 7i), but the fact that it's the step-up option in power and features. The base model includes an Intel Core i5-10300H processor, 8GB of memory, a GeForce GTX 1660 Ti GPU, a 256GB SSD, and a full HD 144Hz display. Since competitive gamers often play on lower settings to maximize frame rates over visuals, I also tested the game on the Low preset, where the Legion 7i sprinted to a 291fps average. It's available with a 60Wh and 80Wh option, and after using the former, I strongly urge anyone buying a model to go with the larger battery. The comparisons here are very straightforward. Gaming laptops, especially those with Ryzen CPUs, are getting really good, making it tough to choose when shopping. As on the Legion 5i, the pad is located a bit more to the left of the chassis than normal, a result of the keyboard having a cutout to make space for big arrow keys and the number pad. That's it. You can alter the lighting of both the keyboard and the chassis with the included Corsair iCUE software. We'll get to the components in a moment, but sticking with the physical build, the Legion 7i measures 0.78 by 14.15 by 10.2 inches (HWD) and weighs 4.96 pounds. This is undercut slightly by the Lenovo's not being the most physically portable of the bunch, but nobody's going to turn down more battery life. Amazon.com: Lenovo Legion 5 15.6" Gaming Laptop 120Hz AMD Ryzen 7-4800H 8GB RAM 512GB SSD GTX 1650 4GB - AMD Ryzen 7-4800H Octa-core - 120Hz Refresh Rate - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 4GB GDDR6 - Legion … Apple MacBook Pro vs. Microsoft Surface Laptop 3: Which 13-Inch Premium Laptop Is Tops? NVIDIA Optimus is on duty in the Legion 5i, expertly switching between the integrated Intel GPU and the dedicated NVIDIA GPU as needed. The Legion 7i is the largest of these laptops, so the extra room for thermals compared to those with the same components in a thinner chassis is likely making a difference (or Lenovo's Cold Front 2.0 is effective). Even with the laptop allowed to maximize performance, there's no thermal throttling. PCMark 8, meanwhile, has a storage subtest that we use to assess the speed of the system's boot drive. The frame is aluminum, but the sleek, all-metal build of the Blade 15 and Triton 500, and the more daring design of the Alienware, are all a bit more exciting than the 7i. It's packed in with the area for a 2.5-inch SATA SSD, so if you're upgrading, you'll have to choose between a two M.2 SSDs or one M.2 SSD and one 2.5-inch SATA SSD. For a bit more money, you can get four-zone customizable RGB lighting that will spice things up and make the Legion 5i look a lot more like a gaming laptop. I tested the laptop (and recorded the scores below) in Balance mode, which adjusts the fans as needed. With the latest high-performance hardware from Intel and NVIDIA … Design-wise, the Legion 7i is strikingly similar to its recently reviewed sibling, the Legion 5i. The Razer, meanwhile, has a theoretically step-up CPU to the Legion 7i, but with a lower clock speed and presumably some thermal restraints, it lags behind. Obviously, if you're going to play games off the charger the battery will diminish much faster, but for web browsing, word processing, and watching videos, you've got plenty of unplugged hours available. We've liked Lenovo's gaming laptop offerings since the company launched the Legion line, and the Legion 7i (starts at $1,529; $2,299 as tested) is another solid entry. Still, the Legion 7i is the best of the bunch in raw 3D power, but let's see how that translates to real games before we make any conclusions. In pure gaming performance, the Legion 7i claims the advantage—and since it's the second cheapest among the premium 15-inch gaming rigs, it scores high for value despite boasting double the SSD storage of its rivals. Some moderate-heft editing or production is certainly doable, especially if it's a quick job for fun or as a hobby, but professionals will want to seek a more specialized media workstation. One thing to note is the Alienware's RTX 2070 (Max-Q) outperforming two of the RTX 2080 Super (Max-Q) GPUs in 3DMark, and we have seen before that the RTX 2080 is affected more by the Max-Q limitations than the others in Nvidia's stack. Being a mid-range offering, it's understandable that there aren't high-end display options, but I'd still like to see a QHD screen to pair up with the RTX 2060 GPU. There is also currently a 17-inch version available only with Intel hardware, as well as a 17-inch AMD version expected September 2020. Despite having a full RTX 2060, the Legion 5i's Core i7 CPU doesn't measure up to the Ryzen 9 CPU in the Zephyrus G14. Lenovo supplied Windows Central with a review unit of the Legion 5i 15 gaming laptop. Lenovo supplied Windows Central with a review unit of the Legion 5i 15 gaming laptop. The somewhat odd laptop out is the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14, not because it's not excellent, but because at $1,449 it's substantially cheaper than the others. Take your gaming experience to the next level with the Lenovo Legion 5 Gaming Laptop.Equipped with a powerful 2.6 GHz Intel Core i7-10750H Six-Core processor, 16GB of DDR4-2933 dual-channel memory, and a 1TB M.2 PCIe NVMe solid-state drive, this laptop … The Legion 7i, Predator, and Blade 15 sit at the top of the heap with the same GPU. Lenovo Legion Y740 is what we characterize as a powerful gaming laptop. The majority of ports reside along the back edge where a lip juts out, including HDMI, USB-C, two USB-A, and Ethernet. At least with the RTX 2060. Lenovo has consistently made a strong case for its gaming laptops, and the Legion 7i is no exception. Lenovo - Legion 5 15" Gaming Laptop - Intel Core i7 - 8GB Memory - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti - 512GB SSD - Phantom Black Rated 4.6 out of 5 stars with 317 Reviews (317) Clearly, this hardware is capable of utilizing its 240Hz screen in esports games of this grade. This is without stressing the GPU at the same time. You can shift the fan modes among Quiet, Balance (automatic), and Performance through the included Lenovo Vantage software or a keyboard shortcut. Contrast is great and makes games pop, and the backlighting seems to be mostly uniform. The 230W AC adapter does at least manage to recharge the 60Wh battery to 80% in just less than 30 minutes, which is really not bad. 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. The Max-Q suffix means this is a slightly down-tuned version of the RTX 2080 Super; Nvidia developed Max-Q technology to limit the thermal output of its top GPUs in order for them to work efficiently in slimmer laptops. Building a gaming PC can be tough, especially if you're a first-time builder. I must stress that there was no reported thermal throttling at all during these lengthy stress tests. Switching to the Performance plan and running the same stress test with CPU and GPU, the CPU sits at about 50W under load. The Asus is better equipped than the others thanks to AMD's superiority in raw cores and threads here, but even that doesn't quite make the jump to professional-grade. The white LED denotes a "Balance" plan, the red LED denotes a "Performance" plan, and the blue LED denotes a "Quiet" plan. Luckily, Lenovo has moved the 720p camera back above the display, plus it has added a privacy shutter. Lenovo has named its cooling system ColdFront 2.0, and while that's partly just branding, there are some fancy features like a six-point thermal sensor to detect heat and manage fans. Here are five mistakes he made during his build that you can avoid. Fans do get relatively loud, but the tradeoff is no dip in performance. Description Lenovo Legion 5 15IMH05H Laptop: Game seamlessly with this 15.6-inch Lenovo Legion 5 gaming notebook. The no-nonsense chassis, the rear port hub, and the comfortable keyboard are all great design choices. Another competitor from ASUS is the TUF Gaming A15. Compared to non-Legion alternatives, the size of the 7i still stacks up well, though it trails the top options. It's a decent collection of ports that should allow you to connect most, if not all, of your favorite gaming accessories. The touchpad will be under your palm while using the WASD keys, but Lenovo included a touchpad killswitch with the Fn+F10 shortcut. It's worth noting that these dimensions are not identical to those of the Legion 5i even though the laptops are styled the same: The Legion 5i is thicker and heavier, at 0.93 by 14.3 by 10.2 inches and 5.4 pounds. With Ryzen CPUs, are getting really good, making it no doubt a loss of for. Feedback overall camera back above the display hits a maximum 364 nits, which expected. 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