Lenovo Legion 5 Pro or HP Omen 15, which Ryzen gaming laptop should you pick?
I’ve compared both to show you the differences and help you decide which is worth it.
Both of my laptops have the same key specs, AMD Ryzen 7 5800H processor, Nvidia RTX 3070
graphics, 16 gigs of memory, a 1TB SSD and a high refresh screen, but despite looking
similar on paper there are some pretty big differences between these two machines that
you need to know about.
Both have a dark finish, however I’d rate the build quality of the Legion 5 pro above
the Omen 15.
The legion’s metal lid was sturdier compared to the Omen’s plastic lid, and the front
edge of the Omen and corners feel sharp.
Perhaps as a result of a lower tier build quality, the Omen weighed less too.
It’s 800g or 1.8lb lighter once you include the power bricks, as the Legion has a much
larger 300 watt brick compared to the Omen’s 200 watt brick.
The Legion 5 Pro is a little deeper, probably owing to its taller 16:10 screen, it’s also
thicker too, however the Omen is a tiny bit wider.
The Legion’s screen had better color gamut, but expect different results with the 1440p
omen.
The Legion was also brighter, at least between 60% and 100% brightness, otherwise the Omen
was brighter at lower levels.
The Legion 5 Pro has a MUX switch which can be used to disable optimus after a reboot,
and this will boost gaming performance.
The Omen is stuck with Optimus, but you can bypass it with an external screen, more on
that later.
With optimus disabled the 5 Pro offers G-Sync, or FreeSync with optimus enabled.
The Omen also has FreeSync, but the FreeSync range is much lower and less useful comparatively.
The 5 Pro also has an overdrive mode to lower screen response time, and it’s a fair bit
better than the Omen’s.
My Legion had basically no backlight bleed, the Omen had more patchy spots but I can’t
say I noticed it during regular use.
It’s also worth noting that the Omen 15 also has a 1440p 165Hz screen option too,
so expect different results with that one.
The screen on the Omen goes the full 180 degrees back while the Legion’s stops sooner.
Both have a 720p camera above the screen in the middle, though the 5 Pro has a switch
on the right to physically disconnect the camera to ensure privacy.
This is what the camera and microphone look and sound like on the Omen 15, and this is
what they look and sound like over on the Legion 5 Pro.
Both of my keyboards have white backlighting, however both also have RGB options too.
All keys and secondary functions are illuminated on both, and the legion has two brightness
levels while the Omen just has the one.
The Legion has a numpad while the Omen does not.
Personally I preferred typing on the Legion, though the key presses don’t feel too different
to me.
The main reason was simply that the front edge of the Omen feels sharp to me, while
the Legion is smooth, but also my hands can rest more comfortably on the legion.
The Omen’s power button is right next to delete and backspace, the Legion has it right
up the back, and the color of the light changes to indicate the performance mode you’re
currently in which I think is much more useful.
Although I had no problems using the precision touchpads on either, I liked the feel of the
click more on the Legion, plus it’s slightly larger too.
The 5 Pro has an air exhaust vent on the left while the Omen does not, the only thing in
common on this side is a 3.5mm audio combo jack.
The 5 Pro has a USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-C port, while the Omen has Gigabit ethernet, USB 3.2
Gen1 Type-A port, HDMI 2.1 output and SD card slot.
Both have an air exhaust on the right, and both have USB 3.2 Gen1 ports on this side,
one Type-A for the 5 Pro while the Omen has a Type-C and two Type-A ports along with a
mini DisplayPort.
The Omen just has air exhausts on the back while the 5 Pro has the rest of its I/O, which
I find preferable as bulky cables run out the back and out of the way.
So the key differences between the ports on these two machines are that the Omen has the
SD card slot and the DisplayPort output.
The Legion 5 Pro does not have these, but it does have an extra Type-A USB port and
a Type-C USB port.
Both of the Type-C ports on the Legion offer DisplayPort out, so technically both should
be able to run 3 monitors, but the Type-C port on the back of the Legion also supports
Type-C charging, the Omen 15 does not have Type-C charging.
All display outputs connect directly to the Nvidia graphics, so this could be used to
bypass Optimus on the Omen.
The lid of the 5 Pro lights up but can be turned off with this shortcut, while the Omen
doesn’t have lighting.
The bottom panels were similar, vents up the back directly above the intake fans, though
about half of the vent holes are blocked on the Omen, presumably to direct air to the
fans.
The internals are quite similar in terms of functionality.
Both have the battery down the front, the Omen has its 2 M.2 slots on either side of
the battery while the 5 pro has them just above.
Both have two memory slots in about the same place, however WiFi 6 on the Omen is soldered
to the motherboard, so a plus to the Legion there.
The battery in the 5 Pro is larger at 80Wh compared to the 70.9Wh battery in the Omen
15, however despite this the battery was lasting for about an hour longer in the Omen in the
YouTube playback test.
Both were tested with their default high screen refresh rate, but we can easily boost battery
life by 2 hours on the 5 Pro by instead limiting it to 60Hz.
Now we could do this on the Omen too, but the 5 Pro gives us this quick and simple shortcut
instead of going through all the Windows settings each time to manually change it, which I think
offers a far better user experience.
While running either stress tests or games, I noticed that the battery on the Omen 15
was draining while plugged into wall power.
It just seems that the smaller 200W power brick for it isn’t enough to handle the
5800H and RTX 3070 under full load for an extended period of time.
I did try changing some suggested settings in the BIOS but that didn’t help.
The Legion had no such problems, despite also having higher power limits, but it’s power
brick is also much bigger.
The speakers definitely sounded better on the 5 Pro, there’s a bit more bass while
the Omen sounds tinnier in comparison.
Let’s check out thermals next.
Both laptops let you adjust performance profiles, though the Legion 5 Pro has three different
options while the Omen just has two, however the Omen does give us the option of customizing
fan speed, a feature the 5 Pro does not offer.
I’ll only be comparing the highest performance profiles in this video, if you want to see
how both do at the lower modes then you can check the full reviews linked down in the
description.
Both have two fans and heat pipes, though the Omen shares two pipes between CPU and
GPU while the Legion has one shared.
Both have full VRM coverage, but the Omen doesn’t exhaust air from one of its sides.
These are the temperatures when sitting idle and while under CPU plus GPU stress test.
For the most part the Omen 15, shown in the red bars, was cooler than the Legion 5 Pro,
shown by the purple bars, however the 5 Pro is reaching higher clock speeds, so higher
levels of performance are likely what’s attracting the additional heat.
This is confirmed when looking at the power limits, the Omen 15 is limiting the processor
to 35 watts while the Legion runs the same CPU at 45 watts.
Likewise the GPU on the Omen is also what we’d traditionally call Max-Q, while the
Legion 5 Pro is Max-P - that is the full 125 watt power limit.
The Legion 5 Pro is also doing better in Cinebench, again both have the same Ryzen 7 5800H processor
but the Legion allows higher power limits which results in better performance.
Single core scores aren’t too different, however multicore score is almost 10% higher
on the Legion.
The gap narrows when running both on battery power.
Performance is lost with both laptops, but regardless the Legion is still able to perform
better on battery power.
This might be why the battery lasts longer on the Omen despite it having a smaller battery,
it might be limiting output harder.
Both were cool to the touch when just sitting there idle, low 30s is normal stuff for a
gaming laptop, though the WASD area on the Omen was a bit cooler.
This was also seen with the stress tests running, the WASD area of the Omen is cool implying
air is moving through the keyboard.
The legion has warmer hot spots, but it’s still not what I’d call hot even in those
areas - let’s have a listen to fan noise.
Both were quiet when idling, but the Omen was making less noise.
The Omen was louder when under load though, I found in this worst case stress test it
was running at maximum with the fans set to automatic speed, so no difference between
this and manually maxing it out.
The louder fans of the Omen would be contributing to it running cooler, as well as its lower
power limits.
Less power equals less heat, so let’s see how well both laptops compare in games.
Battlefield V was tested in campaign mode, and I’ve got both laptops at stock highlighted
in red.
The 5 Pro is hitting an average frame rate that’s 15% higher than the Omen 15, which
is quite a difference considering that on paper both have the same CPU, GPU and memory.
This is likely because the 5 Pro lets us disable optimus while the Omen does not support this
feature.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider was tested with the games benchmark, and the results are much
closer together here.
The 5 Pro was still ahead, but at just 3 FPS it’s less of a difference and not one you’d
be likely to notice in practice.
Far Cry 5 was also tested using the games benchmark, and this time both are extremely
close together.
Technically the Omen was slightly ahead, but the difference is so negligible that it’s
well within margin of error ranges.
Now the Legion 5 Pro does ship with suboptimal memory.
I’ve got a whole video talking about that over here, but basically it is possible to
boost its performance by using memory with lower timings, and I’m not even talking
about like super low timing special expensive memory or anything.
These are the memory timings of the stock memory that comes with the 5 Pro and Omen
15.
Both use two 8 gig sticks that run at DDR4-3200 CL22 in single rank, but there are some differences
in other timings like tRFC which are higher on the 5 Pro.
Now these are the timings with the 5 Pro with the memory kit linked in the description in
use, and they exactly match the Omen 15, so let’s see the performance differences now.
In Battlefield V I’ve got the new memory 5 Pro result in green, and it’s more in
line with the other RTX 3070 laptops that let you disable optimus now, like the MSI
GP76 and XMG Neo 15.
In Shadow of the Tomb Raider the 5 Pro with same speed memory as the Omen is now reaching
13% higher average frame rate compared to the Omen, and it also had a similar 12% boost
over the Omen now in Far Cry 5 too, so the 5 Pro can definitely get some gains when using
the same speed memory that the Omen ships with.
It’s also worth noting that we can boost performance with the Omen by connecting an
external screen, as this bypasses Optimus and connects straight to the Nvidia graphics.
The 5 Pro is still ahead, but at least the Omen doesn’t need a memory swap.
Now let’s check out some content creator workloads, we’re back to stock memory here.
I’ve tested Adobe Premiere with the Puget systems benchmark.
Again the 5 Pro was ahead here too, but it’s only scoring 2% higher.
The difference is even smaller in Photoshop, both were scoring exactly the same here, while
DaVinci Resolve was a little better with the 5 Pro almost 5% above the Omen.
The Legion 5 Pro is ahead in SPECviewperf too, which tests out various professional
3D workloads.
Again the 5 Pro was also ahead in the 3DMark tests, as the GPU can perform better with
optimus disabled.
This shows the memory difference is less of an issue here compared to the games, as stock
memory was tested.
Both laptops came with a 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD, and the one in the 5 Pro was a little faster.
The Omen also has an SD card slot though, which the 5 Pro is missing.
Linux support with an Ubuntu 20 live CD was similar with both.
Wi-Fi, keyboard, touchpad, speakers and camera worked on both, however the Legion’s performance
profiles are baked into firmware so we can still change between the 3 performance modes
with the function and Q shortcut.
The BIOS on the Legion has more options too, granted most of the options are also available
through the control panel software.
Alright let’s discuss price next, you’re going to have to refer to the links in the
description as prices will change over time, because at the time of recording the Legion
5 Pro still isn’t available in the US.
At CES Lenovo mentioned the 5 Pro would start at $1000 USD, however it’s not clear what
spec that’s for.
The Omen 15 on the other hand starts at $1120 USD, and while you can order today it won’t
ship for a while yet, seems like everyone is at the mercy of AMD’s supply.
If the Legion 5 Pro base spec at $1000 USD comes with Ryzen 5 5600H and RTX 3060 graphics,
well, it’s going to crush it.
It sounds too good to be true though, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it ends up coming
with RTX 3050 graphics - we’ll have to wait and see.
All things considered though, I think Lenovo’s Legion 5 Pro is a much better option compared
to HP’s Omen 15, so it would make sense if there is a price premium there.
With the same specs the 5 Pro was winning basically every test.
Yeah the Omen ran a bit cooler, but that’s because the fans run louder and it has lower
power limits resulting in lower performance.
At least it has fan control though!
The Omen does win in some areas though, it’s lighter and it’s got better battery life
despite having a smaller battery than the 5 Pro, and the RAM the Omen ships with is
better.
It’s also got an SD card slot, but otherwise the I/O is pretty similar with some minor
differences.
There’s just not that much else going for though, other than possibly the lower price,
but that’s still yet to be seen.
The build quality of the 5 Pro is better, it’s got a better screen with G-Sync and
a MUX switch to disable optimus.
Internals are similar, but the Omen has soldered Wi-Fi so that’s an edge to the Legion.
The power brick of the Legion is a fair bit larger and heavier, but at least it avoids
battery drain while gaming.
Honestly it probably makes more sense to compare the Omen 15 against the Legion 5 non Pro,
but I don’t have that one yet and a lot of people still asked for this comparison
- so here we are!
An easy win for the Legion 5 pro but at the end of the day it comes down to the price
difference.
Make sure you’re subscribed for more upcoming laptop comparisons like this one.
If the 5 non pro comes in I’ll definitely compare it against the Omen 15 too, and I
guess probably against the 5 Pro as well to see if the Pro is worth it.
Come and join us in Discord and get behind the scenes videos by supporting the channel
on Patreon, and if you need any extra details on either of these two laptops then check
out the full review videos over here - I’ll see you over in one of those next!