last year i said the lenovo legion 5 was
the best ryzen gaming laptop available
for the money so let's find out if
that's still the case and if this year's
new refresh model is worth considering i
bought the ryzen 7 5800h plus nvidia rtx
3060 configuration for testing as i
thought that would be of most interest
mine came with 16 gigs of memory a 512
gig ssd and a 15.6 inch 1080p 165hz
screen now there is also an all amd
version of the legion 5 with the new rx
6600m graphics but i'm still trying to
get it and there are also other nvidia
options with both lower and higher gpus
you can check out other configurations
as well as updated prices with those
links down in the description the legion
5 has an all plastic build but i thought
it felt nice enough the finish is called
phantom blue a darker blue basically but
there's also a stingray white finish the
laptop alone weighs about 2.5 kilos or
5.5 pounds then 3.5 kilos or 7.8 pounds
total with the large 300 watt power
brick and cables so on the heavier side
for a 15 inch laptop it's not thin or
anything but not huge either just a
regular 15-inch gaming laptop size the
15.6 inch 1080p 165hz screen has decent
color gamut for a gaming laptop above
average contrast but the freesync range
starts relatively high the screen gets
above 300 nits at maximum brightness but
it gets dimmed quite quickly without a
whole lot of control at lower levels the
lenovo vantage software the control
panel for the laptop lets you enable or
disable optimus aka hybrid mode with
optimus enabled the screen still has
freesync and with optimus disabled
you've instead got the option of gsync
so best of both worlds however you run
it the vantage software also gives us
the option to enable or disable panel
overdrive which should affect screen
response time i didn't actually find a
difference between overdrive on or off
though so not sure if this was a bug but
we're looking at just under a seven
millisecond average greater grey
response time it's not amazing compared
to others even the 144hz panel in last
year's legion 5 was more than 2
milliseconds faster so hopefully the
overdrive mode gets improved in a future
software update the lenovo sight claims
a 3 millisecond response time with
overdrive this is the total amount of
time it takes from a mouse button press
to when a gunshot fires in cs go the
total system latency was on the slower
side with more inconsistent results as
per the highest standard deviation
backlight bleed was very minor i never
noticed it during normal use but this
will vary between laptop and panel
there's a 720p camera above the screen
in the middle no i offer windows hello
though but there's a switch on the right
that physically disconnects the camera
for privacy this is what the camera and
microphone look and sound like and this
is what it sounds like while i'm typing
on the keyboard and you can actually see
that the screen is wobbling a bit while
i'm typing the legion 5 is available
with either a white backlit keyboard or
4 zone rgb which is what mine has you
can use the function plus space shortcut
to cycle through a few different effects
or turn it off however there doesn't
appear to be a keyboard shortcut for
adjusting brightness this is instead
controlled through the vantage software
with two levels of brightness and the
speed of the effect can be adjusted
between four different speed levels you
can modify the three profiles how you
like then use function and space to
cycle between your changes all keys and
secondary functions get lit up it's got
1.5 millimeters of key travel and i'm
glad that the arrow keys aren't small
like others as with other lenovo laptops
personally i liked typing on the
keyboard
the precision touch pad is milo so
plastic it feels nice and smooth clicks
anywhere and works fine it never got in
the way while typing or playing games
the left has an air exhaust vent a usb
3.2 gen 2 type c port and a 3.5
millimeter audio combo jack the right
has the camera disconnect switch a usb
3.2 gen1 type a port and there's an air
exhaust on this side too the rest of the
i o is on the back between two corner
air exhausts from left to right we've
got a gigabit ethernet port second usb
3.2 gen 2 type c port 3 more usb 3.2
gen1 type a ports for 4 in total hdmi
2.1 output and the power input on the
right the type c port on the back of the
laptop can be used to charge it but the
one on the front left cannot both type c
ports offer displayport 1.4 support so
you can attach an external screen to
either of them and both connect directly
to the nvidia graphics there are some
icons above the rear ports to help you
see where you need to plug in without
turning the laptop around but they can
be hard to see in a darker room as they
don't light up like the legion 7.
there's nothing on the front however the
middle sticks out a little making it
very easy to grip onto when opening the
lid and the lid goes the full 180
degrees back for sharing you can also
optionally enable flip to boot which
automatically powers the laptop on when
you open the lid something i prefer
given chances are i want to use the
machine when i do this some of you are
asking about hinge issues i'm not aware
of any with the 5 series specifically
and the images of the inside of the lid
from lenovo seem to show that it has the
better reinforced hinge design there's
some flex to the plastic screen and as
mentioned earlier mine did wobble a
little while typing the plastic lid has
that phantom blue finish and the legion
text has a sort of rainbow effect that
can be seen depending on the angle of
light there's some flex to the plastic
interior however this wasn't anything i
noticed during normal use outside of
intentionally pushing hard the bottom
panel just has some air vents towards
the back and speakers near the front and
we can see that most of the back has a
dust filter with the exception of
directly above the fans getting inside
requires removing 12 phillips head
screws of two different lengths and like
other legion laptops it can be a bit
awkward to open i actually broke off two
plastic clips in my attempt i found it
easy to open by prying around the back
using the tools linked in the
description just be careful pulling it
off as i've had cracks near the air
vents before once inside there are metal
plates over the m.2 slots these are
removed by taking out three smaller
phillips head screws from each while the
memory cover can just be pry off i was
able to use my fingernails there are
thermal pads on both of the storage
covers with the metal coverings removed
we've got the 81 hour battery down the
front two m.2 storage slots above on the
left and right wi-fi six card on the
right and two memory slots in the middle
as was the case with the higher tier
legion 5 pro my regular legion 5 uses
the exact same x16 memory so swapping it
to x8 memory should give a speed boost
and i'll show you this when we get into
the game tests the two speakers are
found underneath on the left and right
sides towards the front i thought they
sounded pretty average for a laptop not
great there's minimal bass and they're a
bit tiny at higher volume and the
latency mod results were looking alright
my legion 5 has a 4 cell 80 watt hour
battery but there's also a smaller 60
watt hour version too so expect lower
run time with that i've tested it with
hybrid mode aka optimus both on and off
demonstrating that with it off the
nvidia gpu burns through more power
resulting in less run time it's doing
quite well when compared to other
laptops lasting for more than nine and a
half hours in the youtube playback dust
though it's not quite matching last
year's legion 5 granted that one also
has lower specs too you can also run the
legion 5 with a smaller 230 watt power
brick i would think that should be
enough to run the 5800h and 3060 as it's
enough for other laptops but i don't
have that brick to test unlike the
higher tier legion 5 pro there's no
built in fn plus r shortcut to swap the
screen to 60 hertz so i haven't bothered
testing battery life with that as
there's no easy built-in shortcut but
presumably if you did swap to 60 hertz
that would boost the battery life even
further what's weird to me is that the
bios change log for the legion 5 since
version 23 actually says that they
removed the fn plus r shortcut no idea
why but it sounds like it used to be
there let's check out thermals next the
lenovo vantage software lets us change
between different performance modes
which from lowest to highest are quiet
balance and performance balance mode
also has an additional option for
automatically adjusting the performance
based on the workload so i've tested
this too the power button is above the
keyboard and its light color changes to
show the current performance mode in use
which can be changed at any time with a
function plus q shortcut the idle
results down the bottom are quite cool
though as you'll hear later the fans
were still going i've run stress tests
with both the cpu and gpu loaded up to
represent a worst case as well as
playing an actual game overall the
results are looking quite good worst
case the cpu appears to have hit thermal
throttling at 95 degrees celsius in the
stress test with the highest performance
mode but we could greatly reduce this by
using a cooling pad the one i test with
is linked below in the description
otherwise we're sitting in the mid-80s
with no throttling on the gpu these are
the clock speeds from the same tests the
cpu clock speed hardly changes outside
of quiet mode but we can see the gpu
speed gets a nice boost in performance
mode so presumably it's the extra gpu
power that's responsible for increasing
the cpu temperature in performance mode
as the cooler has a heat pipe shared
between both and the cpu performance
isn't exactly getting better we can see
this when looking at the power levels
being hit the rtx 3060 is running at
about 80 watts in quiet and balanced
modes at least with this consistent
stress test it differs a bit when
running an actual game possibly due to
dynamic boost this is a full powered
3060 running up to 115 watts when the
cpu is also under load but it can boost
to 130 watts if the processor isn't
loaded up there's no difference in these
specific workloads in the balance plus
automatic tune setting and i think this
is because lenovo says that it's only
supported in 16 different games that
said when i did thermal testing on the
legion 7 in these same workloads i did
see more of a difference there here's
how an actual game performs with the
different modes in use performance mode
does the best and i wasn't seeing any
difference with balance mode and the
automatic tune option here's how the
different modes perform in cinebench r23
a cpu only workload with the gpu now
idle the single core performance in
quiet mode was super low balance was
much more reasonable then of course
performance mode was best it's doing all
right compared to others a little behind
the higher tier 5 pro with same ryzen 7
5800h and 15 percent better than the
last gen legion 5 with ryzen 7 4800h
when it comes to single core gains while
multicore is about 14 percent higher
than last year's model it's still doing
quite well when running on battery power
when unplugged the highest performance
mode you can use is balance the single
core score is mostly unaffected while
last year's 4800h model was now just
slightly ahead in multicore performance
but it's still ahead of the intel 11th
gen models in multicore though not
single core it's quite cool when just
sitting there idle 30 degrees celsius is
pretty common but the legion 5 was
generally below this with the stress
test running it's barely warm on the
keyboard worst case in the low 40s
balance mode isn't much different but
the fans increase to offset the higher
performance it's a similar deal in the
highest performance mode there appears
to be a warmer spot near the arrow keys
but even touching it directly doesn't
feel hot let's listen to the fair noise
the fans were still audible when idling
in quiet mode not loud or anything but
this probably explains the cooler
keyboard and internal temps fan noise
gets louder in the higher modes as you'd
expect unfortunately there's no fan
control so these examples should
represent the loudest it should get when
fully maxed out under heavy load now
let's find out how well this
configuration of legion 5 performs in
games and compares against other laptops
all of the game testing has been done in
performance mode with hybrid mode
disabled for the best results as this
gives better fps i've also tested these
games with the stock memory and with my
own memory upgrade to x8 sticks on paper
both memory kits have two 8 gig sticks
so 16 gigs in jewel channel they're both
ddr4 3200 cl22 single rank but the stock
kit has lower timings and x16 banks you
can find the memory kit that i've tested
linked down in the description below
cyberpunk 2077 was tested in little
china with the straight kid life path on
all laptops and i've got the legion 5
with stock ram highlighted in red and
the upgraded ram highlighted in green
the memory change is giving a larger
boost of 1 lows than average fps in this
test but even with the stock ram this is
still the fastest rtx 3060 i've tested
so far the msi gs76 with lower gpu power
limit is about 10 fps behind and similar
deal for the even lower wattage 3060 in
the zephyrus g14 though that is also
much smaller too red dead redemption 2
was tested with the game's benchmark
there's a bit more of a difference this
time between the stock and upgraded ram
the upgraded legion 5 is just a few fps
behind the i9 and rtx 3070 in the
zephyrus m16 one position ahead though
the m16 is held back by optimus and
again even the stock memory legion 5 is
beating the other 30 60 laptops that
i've tested so far impressively the dell
g5 with last gen 5600m is close to the
3060s so i can't wait to try out the
newest 6600m legion 5 in future make
sure you're subscribed for that one
control was tested running through the
same part of the game on all laptops
there's basically no difference in this
gpu heavy game with the upgraded memory
and we're just a couple of fps behind
the higher spec hp omen 15 with rtx 3070
presumably due to the omen's lower gpu
power limit and lack of disabling
optimus the legion 5 is still the best
3060 result i've got easily ahead of the
lower wattage msi gs76 and asus g14
below and we're reaching more than 60
high average fps compared to the last
gen legion 5 with gtx 1660 ti
unfortunately i never had the 2060 model
to compare with but i will compare the
2060 and 3060 in an upcoming video so
stay tuned i've tested 10 games in total
at all setting levels with both the
stock memory and the upgraded memory in
this video over here if you want to get
a better understanding of what sort of a
performance difference this makes
basically it depends on the game and you
can certainly get performance
improvements with a better memory but
for the most part i found the
differences were bigger at lower setting
levels and fact is with rtx 3060
graphics you're probably going to be
using higher settings so based on this i
don't think the ram upgrade is
absolutely necessary it's mostly just a
nice bonus but it does depend on the
specific game and settings here are the
results from 3dmark for those that find
them useful now for some creator tests
adobe premiere was tested with the puget
systems benchmark the legion 5 was about
11 percent higher than last year's 4
800h plus 1660 ti legion 5. so less of a
difference going from ryzen 4 000 to
5000 at least compared to the
improvements seen with intel's 11th gen
which is dominating the top of the graph
adobe photoshop generally depends on cpu
performance and again mostly until 11th
gen near the top of the graph but a few
ryzen options there too the legion 5 is
doing better than the alienware m15r5
just below it despite that having higher
tier cpu and gpu davinci resolve is more
gpu heavy though the legion 5 is
slightly beaten by the lower wattage
3060 in the gs76 just above it so
perhaps intel 11th gen is giving it an
edge there compared to ryzen i've also
tested spec view perf which tests out
various professional 3d workloads the
one terabyte nvme m.2 ssd is doing well
for both reads and writes and there's
always that second slot if you want to
install another drive the bios has quite
a few options compared to some other
laptops granted many of them are also
options that can be configured through
software such as flip to boot you can
enable gpu overclocking through here and
control it but for some reason there's
no option to enable it or control it
through the vantage software which was
the case with last year's legion 5. it
also has tpm 2.0 once gpu overclocking
is enabled in the bios the vantage
software reflects this and shows you
it's on but yeah i couldn't see a way of
adjusting it here i booted an ubuntu 21
live cd to test linux support out of the
box the touchpad keyboard speakers
ethernet and camera worked but wi-fi
wasn't recognized the best thing is that
the keyboard lighting effects and
performance modes are baked into
firmware so you can still change them
with the keyboard shortcuts without
software let's discuss pricing and
availability next both of these will of
course change over time so refer to
updates with those links in the
description as lenovo in particular do
often run sales at the time of recording
the legion 5 starts at 1100 us dollars
but that's with the ryzen 5 5600h
processor and rtx 3050 graphics now the
is perfectly fine for gaming in my
personal opinion but the 4 gig vram
limit of the rtx 3050 or 3050 ti could
be a bit limiting as i've shown in this
video over here the radeon 6800m version
is 1300 in the us and that's meant to be
an rtx 3060 competitor according to amd
it looks cheaper than the 3060 model but
if we look closer it has half the ram
and no ssd by default so prices will
change as you customize it to your needs
which again you can do with the link
down in the description it's also worth
noting that these specific options are
listed with the smallest 60 watt hour
batteries overall there's not a whole
lot of changes compared to last year's
legion 5 which isn't necessarily a bad
thing given i did award that the best
ryzen gaming laptop for the money for
2020. is it still the best well no at
least not strictly speaking in terms of
things like best performance and most
features i mean lenovo even have their
higher tier legion 7 now for instance
2021 has introduced a lot of new ryzen
gaming laptops far more than we ever had
last year i've still got a few models to
test out before i make my updated best
laptops of 2021 video so make sure
you're subscribed for that this year's
legion 5 is of course refreshed with
newer cpu and gpu options and the
addition of g-sync and higher refresh
rate screen is welcome though it would
have been better for it to come with
faster x8 memory by default but i get it
supply issues during a pandemic and all
that it's the same reason that legion
laptops have been so hard to get lately
some of them are listed as being four
plus months away apart from that slower
memory which can be upgraded granted at
additional cost there aren't too many
other negatives to complain about with
this year's legion 5. i just hope we see
some sort of update for the screen
overdrive option as right now the
response time is actually slower
compared to last year's legion 5 with
144hz screen battery life was otherwise
great but i'm not sure why they decided
to remove the function plus r shortcut
to automatically swap the screen to 60hz
as that would have been an easy way to
boost battery life even further so all
things considered this year's legion 5
is a gaming laptop that i can recommend
it just comes down to pricing and
availability which i suppose is the case
with most things at the moment i hope to
compare the 5 against the higher tier 5
pro in a future video but basically the
key differences seem to be some changes
to the exterior and that the 5 pro has
the 16 inch 16 by 10 screen with a
higher resolution if you're new to the
channel then get subscribed for that
upcoming comparison as well as future
gaming laptop reviews like this one come
and join me in discord and get behind
the scenes videos by supporting the
channel in patreon and come and check
out some of my other videos over here
next including the one where i tested
the legion 5 in 10 different games at
all setting levels with both stock and
upgraded memory i'll see you over in one
of those next