Lenovo Legion Pro 5 review | A delightfully capable gaming laptop

A good display, serious computing performance, and reliability are some of the hallmarks of a good gaming laptop. Lenovo with its Legion series has consistently delivered on these parameters ensuring a distinguished place in the market. And with its Legion Pro 5i 2023 update, the company is taking another step towards fine-tuning the basics, while improving on aspects that ensure an overall good user experience.

We reviewed the Legion Pro 5 judging it on the gaming performance, ease of use, and day-to-day usability, and here is what we found.

Unboxing

The unboxing experience for the Legion Pro 5 is straightforward. In the box, you get the laptop itself along with the charging cable and paperwork.

Design

In keeping with the design language of earlier Legion devices, the Pro 5 looks bold, and industrious with clean aesthetics. The device looks especially good in the Onyx grey colour which along with the aluminium top gives it a classy minimalist look.

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The build quality is also on point, there are no chinks in the armour, and it feels sturdy and well put together. The device weighs around 2.55 kg, and though not the easiest to carry around, is quite manageable for commutes and carrying around home and office setups.

Connectivity ports are located on the bottom panel behind the screen, which allows uninterrupted access to place peripherals on the sides of the laptop. Lenovo has added a USB C port on the left and the headphone jack and a USB A port on the right side of the device for added ease. The hinges while being sturdy, allow the display panel to be opened up and positioned at almost any angle the user desires. Overall, the design of the Lenovo Legion Pro 5 is well thought out, easy to live with and appealing.

Display and performance

The Legion Pro comes with a 16’ WQXGA IPS 2560X1600 display refreshing at 240Hz. With a peak brightness of 500 nits, and coupled with thin bezels, the display is mesmerising, to say the least. The picture quality, regardless of whether you use it for gaming or content consumption is accurate and vibrant. Colour calibration is also on point for gaming, and we did not witness any drop in performance even after extended periods of gaming sessions and movie marathons.

The display manages to impress when used for games with darker colour palettes and continues the performance when displaying brighter setups.

The device we received came powered with the Intel core i7 processor clocked at 2.10 GHz, supported with 16GB LPDDR5 RAM, with the ability to upgrade it to 32GB. For graphics performance, the device came with the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 8GB graphics card along with 1TB SSD storage.

The device flies through normal usage and does not show any signs of slowdown. Performance, when used with multiple apps running in the background and workflows involving multiple browser tabs, MS Office and photo editing, was impressive.

Gaming performance

We used the device to play a number of AAA game titles, and the device was able to deliver an enthralling experience with no visible lags in inputs or display. During extended gaming sessions for titles like Call of Duty, and Ghost Reckon the device managed to keep maintain its performance with the cooling fans engaged. And though, they can get pretty busy, we did not find the fans so loud as to be intrusive.

The device thus comes across as a good gaming companion and can be used for intensive workflows as well.

Audio and keyboard

The device comes with 2Wx2 stereo speakers optimised with Nahimic Audio, however, their performance is one of the weak links in an otherwise great user experience. The speakers are barely audible when used in a room with a window AC, and though, they show no signs of distortion, their low volume range necessitated the use of headphones almost all the time.

The 4-zone RGB backlit keyboard, however, was a pleasure to use. The layout is easy to get used to, the keys have decent travel and we did not face any problems when using it for typing or playing games. The RGB lighting adds flair to an otherwise simple look and feel of the device making it stand out as a gaming-oriented machine.

Connectivity and webcam

For connectivity, the Legion Pro 5 gets three USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports in addition to one USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 with support for data transfer and displayport 1.4, and one USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 with support for data transfer and power delivery 140W and DisplayPort 1.4.

The device also gets an HDMI port, an ethernet port and headphone/microphone combo jack (3.5mm) and a power connector. We found the placement of the ports well thought out, with a majority of the ports located on the back of the device and ports including the USB C, USB A and headphones jack being placed on the sides. The device also comes with WiFi 6E and Bluetooth 5.1.

The FHD 1080p webcam with an e-shutter performs well under a well-lit environment and should be enough for most users’ video calling needs.

Battery

With its bright high refreshing display, we did not expect the Legion to have a great battery life and that is exactly what we found. Although it comes with a claimed 5.3 hours of battery backup, the integrated 80Wh battery consistently lasted around 3 hours with normal usage which included Google Docs and web browsing. When handling more intensive tasks like gaming, the device barely managed 1.5 hours of battery use.

However, the lack of good battery backup is managed beautifully with the addition of the 300W power adapter which manages to recharge the battery completely within 45-50 mins.

Verdict

The Lenovo Legion Pro 5 makes its mark with its power-packed performance, great screen, and a plethora of connectivity options. The device, despite its weak battery and speaker performance, nails the basics of a gaming laptop. The laptop, then, is a great companion for when you want to immerse yourself in alternate worlds made real through games. The Lenovo Legion Pro 5 is priced at ₹1,86,837.