The Legion Pro 5i from Lenovo is based on the Intel’s most powerful laptop CPU yet.
Lenovo’s Legion series of gaming laptops are known for their superlative gaming abilities. Much to the delight of avid gamers, with each iteration the company optimises its machines to make them better, faster, and more efficient. With the latest Legion Pro 5i, Lenovo is pushing the envelope even further.
I have been testing the Legion Pro 5i (Gen 8) for the last few weeks. The review unit here comes with the top-of-the-line Intel Core i9-13900HX CPU and RTX 4070 GPU and is priced at Rs 1,86,877. Based on my experience, this review will attempt to find out if the Legion Pro 5i (Gen 8) is among the best gaming laptops under Rs 2 lakh in India right now.
Design: Subtle yet practical
Unlike most gaming laptops of this class, Lenovo’s offering is a tad different with no external RGB lighting, which also makes it look distinct from the previous models. Instead, it focuses on being a highly practical gaming machine. It has all the ports, and I also like the rounded-off corners instead of sharp edges. Despite being a large device, it weighs just 2.55 kgs. Overall, it’s a well-made gaming laptop with an emphasis on practicality, featuring an RJ45 Ethernet jack, HDMI 2.1 port, but it does miss out on a microSD slot.
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Display: Best in the business
I liked the display on the Legion Pro 5i for multiple reasons. For one, it’s a 2K (2560x1600p) panel, and it also has a whopping 240Hz refresh rate with Dolby Vision playback support. The 16-inch screen offers plenty of real estate for gaming and binge-watching content. To top it all off, the screen is colour-accurate with 100% sRGB coverage and is also DisplayHDR 400 certified.
Despite being an IPS panel, the screen has a good dynamic range, and I also liked the narrow bezels, which make this laptop look like a 15-inch machine despite packing a large 16-inch display. Even when it comes to gaming, the laptop can easily handle modern AAA titles at 1440p and deliver over 60fps at high graphics settings without any issues. Lastly, it also has low blue light technology to reduce eye strain.
Keyboard, trackpad, and webcam
The keyboard on the Legion Pro 5i is phenomenal, and it gets RGB treatment, and the same can also be said about the trackpad. The 1080p webcam is definitely class-leading, and I really liked the fact that it comes with a switch that physically disables the webcam for added security. Overall, this machine delivers on the core aspects of a laptop.
Performance: Best-in-class gaming
This machine comes with the Intel Core i9-13900H CPU with the RTX 4070 laptop GPU with 8GB of video memory. The laptop also offers 1TB of storage and 32GB of DDR5 RAM. Overall, this combination of hardware makes the Legion Pro 5i one of the best gaming laptops under Rs 2,00,000.
The Intel Core i9-13900HX is one of the first laptop CPUs with 24 cores (8 P-cores + 16 E-cores) and a maximum clock speed of 5.6GHz. This ensures that the CPU delivers excellent single-thread and multi-thread performance, making it a great chip for both gaming and content creation. Here are some benchmarks numbers from the Legion Pro 5i.
I played Far Cry 6, where the laptop achieved over 90fps at 1440p resolution and high graphics settings. Similarly, in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, it delivered an average fps of 95 (with DLSS upscaling), and this machine can easily offer over 100 fps even on a demanding AAA title without any issues. The CPU benchmarks also prove that the laptop can handle professional workloads like video editing without any hassle.
I also liked the fact that the laptop operates quietly in non-gaming scenarios. However, while gaming, the fans do kick in to sustain peak performance. I liked that the keyboard area does not get heated up even with continuous gaming.
Verdict: A well-designed gaming laptop
The Lenovo Legion Pro 5i is one of the best gaming laptops that I have tested this year. Despite having almost cutting-edge hardware, it doesn’t cost as much as some other machines with similar hardware. Overall, Lenovo has once again made a stellar game laptop without compromising on any of the basic parameters.
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First published on: 14-06-2023 at 17:47 IST
