Competitors to the Legion 5 15 include other mid-range 15.6-inch gaming laptops like the Razer Blade 15 Base Edition, Asus TUF Gaming F15, MSI Bravo 15, or Acer Aspire Nitro 5. The Legion 5 15 should not be confused with the Legion 5 Pro which is a larger 16-inch design.

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) After taking a look at the inside, I noticed a very familiar sight. The cooling system is exactly the same as what I saw on both the 15” Legion 5 and Legion 5 Pro. The only difference is the heat pipes were stretched out a little further to span the chassis. Frankly, I expected more. The Lenovo Legion 5 Intel Core i7 Gaming Laptop (82RB000XUK) can ensure you stay cool even when the heat is on with Legion Coldfront 4.0. With an expansive heat pipe layout coupled with a fan system 140% more powerful than previous generations, heat transfer becomes a breeze. What's more, with 40% thinner fan blades, it'll be super quiet as it cools.

Case - Legion with dark blue plastics

The hinges look shiny at first, but as one user pointed out in my Legion 5 15” review, it’s because they are coated in plastic film. You can choose to leave this if you want to preserve them for whatever reason. Removing it is kind of a pain in the butt because it requires opening and closing the lid multiple times to get to it all. For now, here’s a specs sheet of the Legion 5 Pro and Legion 5 models, based on the little we know so far, and we’ll update as we dig out more details. Note that while the standard Legion 5 models are available in either 15 or 17-inch FHD 16:9 versions, the 5 Pro is only available with the newer 16-inch QHD 16:10 display.

So for my laptop I'm looking at around 11 to 15% increase from Optimus tech. However, I wonder if there is a software element to this that skews my results. I was also looking at the CPU, iGPU, dGPU powers in both cases. It looked like the dGPU was enabled in both cases, reporting >10W. The dGPU did not entirely shut off. If it did, that could result in more like a ball park 2x battery life extension. I also did some testing in some games. I took some in Performance mode with OC, Quiet mode with again in Performance OC mode with my upgraded RAM: Ryzen 7 + RTX 3070 130W 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.Technically speaking, the 15.6in 1,920 x 1,080 IPS panel is well up to the mark. The maximum brightness of 345cd/m² and the contrast ratio of 1,313:9 are both solid, while the Delta E (colour accuracy) of 0.63 is pretty outstanding for a gaming laptop. The Legion 5’s sRGB gamut coverage of 94% and volume of 98.8% don’t let the side down, either.

If you’re dead set on getting a 17” screen and like the Legion series over everything else, I’d say this is a good buy at the 3050 and 3060 price points. But if you’re interested in getting the 3070 model I have on hand, I’d caution you against buying this unless you get a decent sale. The CPU might be Zen 3 but we get a somewhat cut down version in the Cezanne APU. The caches are smaller overall. The desktop counterpart gets 32MB of L3, but here we get 16MB. Still a decent amount, but like the ram for most use cases it is hopefully a small difference in practice. The Lenovo Legion 5 is an impressive gaming laptop on paper, with high-end components throughout, but it’s going to have to work hard when lined up against some strong rivals.As usual, Lenovo delivers a great keyboard: the buttons deliver a great balance between the snappiness required for gaming and the softness needed for longer typing sessions. The buttons are fast and consistent, too. The layout is solid: there’s a numberpad, and the full-size cursor keys are separated from the rest of the unit. It’s a little small though, and being on a 17” model really makes it stand out as a missed opportunity. This is yet another area that Lenovo got lazy on, probably due to cost and the fact that the 17” models aren’t popular enough to warrant more customized components. Nahimic drastically improves your gaming experience with its immersive 3D audio and engaging features for gamers. Experience crystal-clear communication with teammates. Nahimic is a new way of playing and Legion Gamers can exclusively enjoy Easy Surround, an innovative audio solution that turns any Bluetooth speaker into a surround sound system. The Legion TrueStrike keyboard enables you to strike with extreme precision and satisfying keystrokes—now featuring 33% less percussion noise so you can work in silence. Featuring soft-landing switches that deliver deeper strokes with equal force on every strike, this keyboard provides the comfort you need to play at your best level. Never miss a shot via Legion Spectrum RGB, and a full-sized number pad and even larger arrow keys. According to the spec sheet, the Legion 5 should have a 60Wh battery but the battery in my review unit was most definitely an 80Wh (5,210mAh) unit. Had it been the former, that would more easily explain the rather poor performance in our video rundown test.