Lenovo Legion has made a niche for itself in the gaming segment. And, with Lenovo Legion 5 Pro, the designers at Lenovo seem to have listened to the consumers to design a laptop that is suitable for gaming as well for work. After all, many consumers use their laptops for work as well as for playing games. Right from its subtle aesthetic design without any flashy gimmicks that fit perfectly in the workplace to having a lot of ports to connect accessories for gamers, the Lenovo Legion 5 with its suffix ‘Pro’ is certainly designed for professionals to work and play on their laptops with no compromise on either performance or aesthetics.
Specs that Matter
With a gaming laptop the first thing that you’ll have to compromise upon is its weight – at 2.3kgs the Lenovo Legion 5 Pro laptop is on the heavier side to be carried around by professionals. But that’s a compromise one need to give up for lightning-fast performance and high-end features, and Lenovo Legion 5 Pro doesn’t disappoint on that front. It comes loaded with specifications that make it a powerhouse for gaming as well as for content-creation jobs. The review unit that we received boasted an Intel Core i7 11th Gen octa-core processor coupled with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 GPU, 16GB of DDR4 RAM, and 1TB of NVMe SSD storage. Now the result from this powerhouse can be viewed on the Legion 5 Pro’s display, which is another impressive feature of the laptop.
The display of the Lenovo Legion 5 Pro is a 16” IPS screen with a resolution of 2560x1600px. It’s got a 16:10 aspect ratio along with a 165Hz refresh rate, which gives a crisp viewing experience with jitter-free motion while giving more vertical screen space for gaming as well as for office applications. The display panel also supports a 100% sRGB colour gamut, hence delivering vivid and accurate colours for games as well as for video and photo editing work. The display is housed in an aluminum lid that has an illuminated Lenovo Legion logo on the backside. The display lid is hinged not at the edge, but about an inch from the edge, understandably to house the graphics card at bottom of the case and place some extra ports on the back.
Just like the display lid, the bottom case is also made of aluminum and has ample vents for proper ventilation at the bottom as well as on the sides. Whereas, the area around the keyboard and trackpad is made of plastic, which helps to keep the temperatures within limits while doing graphics-intensive work or play. As mentioned, there are plenty of ports to connect external accessories for gaming or for extending display screens. On the right side, there’s a USB port along with an e-camera shutter to disable/disconnect the laptop’s camera. While on the right there’s a USB-C port and a 3.5mm headphone jack. The main housing of ports is at the back of the bottom case, where there are 3 additional USB ports out of which one is always powered on that lets you charge a phone or device without having to switch on the laptop. In addition, there’s another USB-C, a Gigabit Ethernet, and an HDMI port. Along with the native display, you can add three additional display monitors to extend your viewing area for gaming or editing work through HDMI or USB-C ports.
The keyboard of Legion 5 Pro is a full-sized one with a number pad and is backlit with blue light. While the built-in webcam is a 720p webcam with standard features good enough for video conferencing. The laptop has two speakers placed on both the bottom sides. The sound output is clear and is fine for making calls and playing media or games. However, for immersive sound quality and experience, it seems Lenovo didn’t invest highly in speakers as they knew a gamer would plug in a good quality headset.
Performance
One notable aspect before delving into the performance of Legion 5 Pro is that this laptop comes with a 300W AC adapter, which is as heavy as a brick and is there for an important reason. The discrete Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card with 6GB GDDR6 memory has a rated power of 130W. The discrete graphics remains latent and quiet, and let the integrated graphics of the Intel Core i7 11800H processor do the regular work. It whirs into action as soon as a graphic-intensive application such as a game or video editing job is initiated. Though the average power consumption of Legion 5 pro isn’t high, a 300W AC adapter is needed to provide additional power to the GPU when it’s in full swing in addition to the CPU assembly of the laptop. During our review process, we witnessed a peak power consumption of 128W while rendering a video.
With an integrated 80Wh Li-polymer battery, the Legion 5 Pro can last up to 6 hours for regular work. While with gaming and the GPU fired up, the battery backup falls drastically. So, if you’re a content creator or a gamer on the move, be ready to carry along the heavy AC adapter to keep your laptop’s battery from draining out of juice. However, Lenovo had thought of this struggle too, and has designed the adapter to support Rapid Charge that can pump up the laptop’s battery up to 50% in just about 30 minutes.
While playing games such as Call of Duty: Warzone or Counter-Strike, the game experience was great with no visible frame drops. Being in the content creation field, we also used Legion 5 Pro for editing videos at 2K resolution. While rendering the Nvidia CUDA-backed GeForce RTX 3060 fired up to deliver the rendered output of the video in about 5 minutes, which was much less when compared to the laptop we had used earlier having integrated graphics.
Another feature of the graphics performance is that it can be set to three levels – quiet, balanced/auto, and performance modes. By pressing Function Key + [Q], these modes can be set and the color of the power button changes accordingly. The blue light on the power button shows the quiet mode in which the GPU fan speed and power are kept low, a White light shows the automatic adjustment of the performance of fan speed and power consumption. While a Red light indicates a full performance mode with higher fan speed and power consumption. For this mode to be initiated the AC charger needs to be plugged in. Even in the performance mode, the fan doesn’t make much sound to annoy or interrupt during a game or an editing job.
Verdict
Lenovo Legion 5 Pro is a solid overall performer for gaming as well as for work involving content editing and creation. Its high-end specs along with robust performance make it a future-ready laptop for many years to come. Its aluminum hardened case offers longevity to the laptop, while the 11th Gen Intel Core i7 CPU and GeForce RTX 3060 GPU deliver a performance that’s capable enough for high-end gaming as well as for graphic-intensive editing work. At a price tag that’s just a tad above INR 2.0 Lakhs, this high-end laptop is a good bang for the buck deal.
