Lenovo Legion 5i Pro Review : Different Choices That Work Very Well For A Gaming Laptop | Tech Reviews
Legion has been the family brand of the Lenovo manufacturer for a few years for its pure gaming equipment, a segment that is continuously growing and without a ceiling for now. In addition to a lot of variety for the consumer.
Its latest novelty, the seventh generation Lenovo Legion 5i Pro 16 , is presented in society as an update of the previous generation both at the design level, with necessary touches to improve, and inside, where the new Intel processors and the More powerful graphics from Nvidia make an appearance. We have already tried it at Fadvices.
Lenovo Legion 5i Pro 16 datasheet
| SCREEN | 16-inch IPS-LCD |
|---|---|
| RESOLUTION | WQXGA (2560×1600 pixels) a 165 Hz |
| MICROPROCESSOR | Intel Core i7-12700H |
| GPU | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 6 GB GDDR6 |
| PRINCIPAL MEMORY | 16 GB DDR5 |
| STORAGE | 1 TB SSD M.2 NVMe |
| CONNECTIVITY | Left side:
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Right side:
Back:
|
| WIRELESS CONNECTIVITY | Wi-Fi 6e (802.11ax) y Bluetooth 5.1 |
| SOUND AND WEBCAM | 2 speakers Nahimic (2x2W)
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720p webcam with privacy protection |
| BATTERY | 80Wh (300W adapter) |
| OPERATING SYSTEM | Windows 11 |
| WEIGHT AND THICKNESS | 2.5 kg y 19,9-26,6 mm |
| PRICE | 1679 euros |
A mixture of two worlds
The Lenovo Legion 5i Pro is presented in society as a powerful laptop that could almost go through a non-gaming model. It belongs to that type of portable equipment that moves away from the stridency and flashy elements to go practical.
This laptop has an aluminum and magnesium chassis that provides an excellent balance between resistance, solidity and correct weight, since the 16-inch model analyzed remains at 2.5 kg .
The design of this Lenovo Legion 5i Pro 16 is not straight, and the thickness varies from 2 on the front to 2.6 cm on the back, where Lenovo creates a connectivity hub after the end of the screen , as we find the strongest gaming equipment on the market. However, in this Legion 5i Pro 16 everything is very well integrated and is visually attractive as well as practical.
At the design level, we must highlight the double tone of the color of the casing . The back of the screen, where the logo of the Lenovo Legion family is placed, as well as the interior and part of the sides are a classic gray while the lower part of the chassis of this laptop together with the area of the sides with fans as well as the back of the screen are finished in a darker tone that gives it a very curious and attractive appearance.
A good part of the lines of work at the design level that fit this Legion 5i Pro 16 so well are motivated by the cooling needs that a laptop of this type demands. We have for example the air outlets, which are abundant.
The Lenovo Legion 5i Pro has two on the sides (which protrude slightly, and in a different tone as we have indicated, giving it a more aggressive look) as well as two others on the rear of the chassis. And there are also air intakes in the lower part, which is slightly raised thanks to wide rubber feet that give the equipment extra stabilization when we have it on a table, as well as a working margin for the speakers located in the lower part. bottom of the chassis, as we will see later.
Due to these large fan zones on the sides, Lenovo has moved almost all of the connectivity of this laptop to the rear. Ideal to enjoy this equipment at home with a more or less fixed connectivity, but less ideal when we are on the move.
On the sides, this Lenovo Legion 5i Pro 16 offers two USB-C ports on the left (one Thunderbolt 4 and the other USB 3.2 Gen2 with DisplayPort 1.4) and a USB-A 3.2 Gen1 on the right, where we also find the socket. combined for headphones and microphone as well as the switch to electronically lock the computer’s webcam.
Already in the back and as a hub we find two USB-A 3.2 Gen1 ports, a USB-C (3.2 Gen2 with DisplayPort 1.4 and power supply), an Ethernet port and an HDMI. Also in this area is the proprietary power port of the equipment’s serial charger.
Wireless connectivity is fixed by the Intel adapter that turns this laptop into a 2×2 Wi-Fi 6E (802.11 ax) device in addition to Bluetooth 5.1.
About this Lenovo Legion 5i Pro we want to leave two more notes in this section. First of all, the absence of a fingerprint reader is very surprising (the power button centered on the keyboard and under the brand logo seemed ideal to implement one).
On the other hand, the webcam gives us one of lime and one of sand. Although we appreciate that it has a shutter to block its use (yes, electronic and not mechanical), the 720p resolution and its general quality we believe are not up to the specifications of the rest of the equipment. Also, it doesn’t support Windows Hello, so we’re left with no biometric identification option for this device.
Screen 16:10 at 165 Hz
The 16:10 format and the 16-inch diagonal are the solid foundation of the Lenovo Legion 5i Pro at the screen level. It does so with an IPS WQHD + panel (2560 x 1600 pixels) where the high brightness of 500 nits stands out (very regular throughout its surface) that allows it to be certified VESA DisplayHDR 400.
The screen, with a matte finish that quite efficiently avoids uncomfortable reflections, covers 100% of the sRGB color spectrum and comes very well calibrated from the factory, also having the possibility of configuring some of its parameters via the app.
The panel is also Dolby Vision and NVIDIA G-Sync compatible , and its refresh rate is fixed at a maximum of 165Hz. There’s a panel option up to 240Hz available as well, as well as a 1080p resolution display.
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For this Legion 5i Pro 16, the combination of its WQHD+ resolution and 165 Hz refresh rate is very successful and offers a very wide range of possibilities that go beyond pure gaming. For this area precisely Lenovo boasts a response time of 3 ms when we have Overdrive mode active in Vantage, which manages to reduce the problem of ghosting .
The screen offers a quality display in all situations, with good contrast, viewing angles and color, also being striking despite the use of the matte finish. And note that the reduced frames are very well achieved.
In addition to playing, when, as we will see, it is advisable to use good (and insulating) headphones, this Lenovo laptop is suitable for viewing multimedia content, an aspect that has been thought of by placing two stereo speakers with 2 W of power each one and located at the bottom of the casing.
The result is acceptable in a global way but we miss something more forceful from the bass. For the management of sound aspects we have Nahimic technology that adds a lot of value.
One of the most powerful laptops on the market
Speaking of a gaming laptop , the interior counts for a lot. Lenovo, like other manufacturers, has been introducing AMD in the equation of possible configurations for this family, but the specific model of the seventh generation of the Legion 5i Pro that we have tested at Fadvices is the one that launches the 12th generation Intel processors .
Although we can configure the equipment with up to a Core i9-12900H, the version we have tested has an Intel Core i7-12700H combined with 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR5 4800 MHz SoDIMM RAM and an SSD M .2 2TB. Both modules, both for RAM and internal memory, are accessible by the user if the bottom cover is opened and they can be changed.
This technical sheet is balanced with respect to the price of the equipment, which is currently 1,600 euros* . And it offers one of the best performances we can get in this range of equipment and processors.
In the tests with PCMark, this Lenovo Legion 5i Pro reaches 9125, 5460 and 5922 in the Creative, Home and Work tests respectively. In Cinebench R23 it exceeds 17,000 points in the Multi Core test and 1,500 in Single Core. In the test with Cinebench R20, this Lenovo Legion 5i Pro is in a good position compared to the latest gaming laptops that we have analyzed at Fadvices.
Another surprise at the performance level was obtained in the tests that we passed on the SSD unit, which brings out the full potential of PCIe 4.0, having obtained the best result by length (even doubling) of all the SSD units analyzed in gaming laptops so far. exceeding 13.5 GB/s and 10 GB/s in the read and write tests respectively.
For raw performance tests , we opted as always for the purest profile for the end use of this equipment. Thus, via the Vantage app or the Fn + Q key combination, we select the Performance mode. A very welcome detail is that the color of the LED of the power button of the equipment, which as indicated above is placed centered under the logo of the screen, gives us a direct visual guide of the energy profile with which we are operating.
In the graphic section, it should be noted that this equipment includes Advanced Optimus technology to automatically manage the change between the dedicated and integrated graphics card while maintaining the possibility of taking advantage of G-Sync, being able to disable it in any case. one or the other as we want or need via, again, the complete Lenovo Vantage application.
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At the level of graphic performance, the RTX 3060 is logically a bit far from the most powerful Nvidia models, but it maintains the type if our idea is to play at 1080p and be able to comfortably enjoy rates higher than 60 fps in most games.
That graphical performance is directly reflected in the results with real titles like DIRT V, where we got an average of 79.8 fps at 1080p (65.6 fps in 2K) or in other games like Far Cry 5 (89 fps at 1080p and 62fps at 2K) or Battlefield V (143fps at 1080p and 116 at 2K).
If we compare visually as we usually do with the Shadow of The Tomb Raider game with maximum quality and 1080p resolution, this Lenovo Legion 5i Pro looks as follows:
Maximum performance = maximum loudness
The Legion 5i Pro we said that, at the design level, it already reveals that cooling has had to be taken very seriously. The exterior is already detailed in the first section of the team’s design. But the importance of cooling remains inside the system, where we have five heat pipes in addition to the renewed ventilation system with thinner blades and the dedicated copper heat transfer block of the CPU.
Despite this, the Lenovo Legion 5i Pro cannot remain a computer that we can use placed on our knees due to the excessive heating suffered by its lower part, as well as to a lesser extent in the keyboard area.
And it will not be because the cooling system does not make an effort to reduce the heat generated, with the consequent noise generated, which is annoying in the two modes of use that are not silent. The laptop, even when we are not playing, uses the fans very often .
We can control these power management options with the Lenovo Vantage software , one of the most complete and clear computer management programs that we have tested on laptops.
The sections are well differentiated and offer us a good balance between relevant information on the operation of the equipment and the configuration of aspects such as the screen, keyboard, sound or hardware driver updates.
It is not a laptop to play on the move
Since Lenovo has not put limits on either the CPU or the GPU when it comes to consuming energy so as not to cut their performance, this has a direct counterpart at the level of battery .
Despite the good capacity of its battery, which is 80 Wh , the Lenovo Legion 5i Pro is not capable of offering us a battery of more than 4 hours. The average with a mixed use, brightness at a third of its possibilities and connectivity all the time, was 3.5 hours , insufficient for a team that intends to go beyond being a team to play but that does allow us, for example, sessions of navigation or multimedia playback at home without worrying about the battery charge.
The large and heavy charger (1 kg) is not made to be carried from one place to another
The most positive in any case we take it from the charging side, which is fast and that we can do using the USB-C Thunderbolt 4 port with 135 W adapters in addition to resorting to charging via the proprietary port and its charger. 300 W, which is quite heavy and bulky to carry with us all the time.
With it and the fast charge (Rapid Charge) we can have the battery above 85% in less than half an hour.
Good RGB keyboard and touchpad
Halfway between 14-inch and 17-inch laptops, this Lenovo Legion 5i Pro logically decides on the middle ground in terms of its keyboard configuration, big words when we are referring to a team whose main role is that of play but that does not disgust having to spend long days writing with it.
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Thus, the keyboard of the Lenovo Legion 5i Pro remains as a model that houses a numerical part that is very small in size and also in prominence, but without sacrificing the main axis. There we have a full TrueStrike keyboard with a key travel of 1.5 mm , 100% anti-ghosting and with a great response despite the fact that its activation is somewhat hard.
It is also a keyboard with somewhat concave keys, as we have seen on other Lenovo laptop keyboards. And we like the result a lot because of how comfortable, precise and reliable it is.
Of the layout of the keys, we must especially mention the direction keys, which are full-size and are somewhat separated from the rest of the keyboard.
The keyboard of the Lenovo Legion is RGB backlit, but RGB lighting is chosen not individually but by zones . Specifically, we have four zones that we can choose to illuminate differently, both in intensity and in color or lighting pattern. Night visibility is good but we cannot regulate the intensity from the keyboard.
As for the touchpad , it has a generous size taking advantage of the dimensions of the laptop and, although the click is somewhat loud and resistant, the response is fast and the gestures are precise and soft to the touch.
Lenovo Legion i5 Pro 7Gen, Fadvices opinion
With other brands already well established in the gaming laptop market, Lenovo is betting everything on differentiation.
In this seventh generation Lenovo Legion 5i Pro we can already say that it is a mature team in the segment and that, thanks to its price, technical data, performance and design, it is an excellent option to consider. And its adventures with the screen format have been a success.
And all this despite the fact that there are gaps such as the absence of biometric identification or the fair battery.