As a PC gamer, I'm sick of the current GPU shortage.
Screw all these crypto miners, they have really sucked the joy out of our lives.
So if you are a PC gamer, your dream of building an amazing gaming rig will not be turning
into reality anytime soon.
But guys, all hope is not lost because these days, you can get a gaming laptop that is
perfectly capable of playing 1080p titles without issues.
For e.g. this 6th generation Lenovo Legion 5i Pro gaming laptop, starts at around $1,300.
And for this price you get the latest Nvidia RTX 30 series GPU and the latest 11th generation
Intel processor.
You can also go with the latest Ryzen 5000 series processors if you are team AMD.
So here is the million dollar question: is Lenovo Legion 5i Pro gaming laptop any good?
Keep watching to find out!
Legion 5i Pro weighs around 5 pounds or 2.3 kilograms and is 0.9 inches thick.
Clearly Lenovo is going for a visually pleasing yet sturdy and robust design.
Legion 5i Pro’s all aluminum construction feels very solid when holding the laptop in
hands.
The top lid and the palm rest have this anodized surface treatment which gives Legion 5i Pro
a very premium look and feel.
I love it's gray metallic lid which nicely contrasts with the matte black hinge.
BTW the Legion logo on the top lid lights up when you plug-in the laptop, and it looks
really cool without looking too gaudy.
The display hinge is metallic and holds the screen steady during vigorous gaming sessions.
But unfortunately, it does not go all the way back 180 degrees unlike previous legion
gaming laptops.
There are plenty of air vents on the bottom and both sides to keep this laptop cool.
You will find about a dozen screws at the bottom of this laptop, which when removed
give direct access to memory DIMMs and SSD slots.
So right to repair fans will love this laptop
Moving on to the keyboard, you are getting a 4-zone RGB backlight keyboard.
This is a full size 6-row keyboard with dedicated multimedia Function keys and a numeric keypad.
The keycaps are black in color with white lettering which offer a nice contrast for
easy visibility in both broad daylight and in dark rooms.
I really like this keyboard because Lenovo has used these soft-landing switches that
deliver deeper keystrokes with uniformly balanced actuation force.
Gamers will appreciate the full-size arrow keys and customizable RGB backlighting.
I also love the soft grippy palm rest of this laptop which is perfect for long typing sessions.
Moving on to the touchpad, you are getting a pretty large surface area with Mylar coating.
This is a faux glass coating which feels very smooth and works great while swiping, scrolling
and executing various windows gestures.
On the negative side, there are no separate left and right click buttons or finger-print
sensors on this trackpad.
For day to day use, I think this is a perfectly fine touchpad, but serious gamers will be
better off buying a good quality gaming mouse.
Legion 5i Pro comes with a 16-inch LED backlit IPS panel with an anti-glare coating.
This is a really high quality screen rocking 2560 by 1600 resolution and 165 Hz refresh
rate.
It's response time is only 3 ms and this screen fully supports nVidia G-Sync.
It's also plenty bright offering over 500 nits of peak brightness and 1200:1 contrast
ratio.
The color reproduction is excellent, you are getting 100% sRGB color gamut, full support
for Dolby Vision and DisplayHDR and a wide 178° viewing angle.
Needless to say, this is a great screen not just for gaming but also for watching streaming
videos, and doing content creation.
So if you are into color grading in photoshop, adobe premiere or davinci resolve, you will
love this display
My Lenovo Legion 5i Pro is powered by an Intel Core i7-11800H Processor.
This is an 8-core 16-thread CPU from Intel’s 11th generation Tiger Lake Family.
It can turbo boost up to 4.6 GHz and operates between 35 and 45 Watts TDP.
This is a kickass gaming CPU that delivers amazing single core performance.
As you can see in this chart, Intel Core-i7 is matching Apple M1 silicon and beating Ryzen
7 in Cinebench single core benchmark.
Since gaming performance depends heavily on single core performance, this is an excellent
chip for gaming.
Also worth noting is the amazing performance that Apple’s M1 chip is delivering.
It's a shame that Mac-OS doesn't really support any major gaming titles, and until that changes,
macbooks will remain worthless as gaming laptops.
Let's talk about the Cinebench multi-core benchmark.
Here Ryzen 7 comes out on top beating intel core-i7 by about 5%.
Moving on the GPU, my Lenovo Legion 5i Pro is powered by Nvidia RTX 3050 GPU with 4Gb
Dedicated VRAM.
You also have an option of going with RTX 3050ti, RTX 3060 and RTX 3070.
I will put links to all these configurations in the video description below.
Regarding system RAM my review unit came with 16GB DDR4 3200 RAM in dual channel configuration.
The 2 DIMM slots are user accessible and you can add up to 32 GB RAM.
Also Legion 5i Pro fully supports Windows 11 upgrade thanks to the included TPM 2.0
integrated chipset.
Let's talk about gaming performance.
Here is a chart showing the average fps that I experienced in 1080p gameplay.
Feel free to pause the video here and take your time digesting this data.
But my one line summary is that Legion 5i Pro is a kickass gaming laptop that will play
all modern titles in 1080p resolution without any hiccup.
By the way, if you are enjoying this content, please give this video a like and subscribe
to Techno Panda for more awesome videos
Legion 5i Pro also nicely doubles as a content creation machine.
It is equipped with a fast CPU & GPU, a fast PCIe NVME SSD that offers around 3.5 Giga-Bytes
per second read speed and 3.2 Giga-Bytes per second right speed.
The icing on the cake is user upgradeable memory allowing one to add up to 32 GB RAM
in dual channel configuration.
Even with 16 GB RAM, I was able to run Davinci Resolve Studio edition without any issues.
Editing 4K 8-bit video footage from my Sony camera was a breeze.
Applying color corrections, vfx effects including green screen removal and fusion effects were
a pierce of cake.
So if you are a youtuber, twitch streamer, or someone who edits photos or uses music
production software, Legion 5i Pro will nicely serve your needs.
Legion 5i Pro comes with a 80Wh Li-Polymer battery that supports Rapid Charging thanks
to the included 230W AC power brick.
Lenovo claims 7 hours of battery life, but I managed to get around 4.5 hours while doing
internet surfing with WiFi turned ON.
You can put the laptop in hybrid mode and it will opportunistically downclock the CPU
and GPU to increase battery life.
The thermal design on this laptop is excellent.
I stress tested the CPU by running a prime number extraction algorithm which put all
the 8-cores and 16-threads on full 100% load.
But the CPU temperature never exceeded 75 degrees Celsius and it never throttled.
The CPU nicely chugged along operating at an amazing 4.1 Ghz frequency which tells me
that Lenovo has done a phenomenal job with heat management.
There are two fans, four radiators, three heat-pipes and plenty of air vents at the
bottom of this laptop.
Coupled with ample thermal plates on top of the CPU, GPU and VRMs, Legion 5i Pro runs
cool even under heavy load.
BTW, the two fans are reasonably quiet unless you run this laptop in high performance mode.
The onboard speakers on Legion 5i Pro are decent but they are bottom firing in nature.
So as long as you place the laptop on a hard surface, the sound quality is pretty good.
But for best results, I would recommend using a gaming headphone.
In addition to a headphone jack, Legion 5i Pro fully supports Bluetooth 5.1 protocol,
so any modern wireless headphone will work without issues.
Let's talk about the webcam which is located on the top bezel and comes with a mechanical
shutter for privacy.
It's a typical 720p webcam which is OK for zoom video calls.
But you will be disappointed if you are expecting crisper 1080p footage.
For that I would recommend getting an external 1080p USB webcam.
Let's quickly talk about the ports.
Most ports are located at the back of the laptop which means nothing will interfere
with your mouse while gaming.
You get 2 Thunderbolt 4 slash USB4 ports that support 40 Gbps data transfer, DisplayPort
1.4 and power delivery.
In addition there is an HDMI port, 4 USB 3.2 ports, an ethernet port and a headphone microphone
combo jack.
With so many ports, you can easily create a multi-monitor setup for kickass gaming or
office productivity.
As far as wireless connectivity is concerned, this laptop supports the latest Wi-Fi 6 and
Bluetooth 5.1 protocols.
The only thing missing is an SD-card slot and a finger-print sensor for password-less
login.
But overall Legion 5i Pro offers an awesome selection of ports that will make both gamers
and content creators very happy
So here are my final thoughts.
I honestly don't think the current GPU shortage will end anytime soon.
So if you are a gamer or a content creator, Lenovo Legion 5i Pro is an excellent pick.
Now if you are wondering how Legion laptops stack up against the competition, checkout
this video where I pit two popular gaming laptops against each other.
You will find this video very useful in making a purchasing decision.
So go watch that video, and I will see you guys over there.
Bye!