Review Lenovo Legion 5 Pro Review: Stunning Inside and Out

[Admin]

The Lenovo Legion 5 Pro occupies a perfect sweet spot among premium AMD gaming laptops, thanks to a gorgeous high-res display and strong productivity and gaming power.

Lenovo Legion 5 Pro Review: Stunning Inside and Out : Read more

 

[reader012345678901]

I did not expect a Laptop with a RTX 3070 mobil 140W to perform so poorly in the gaming benchmarks. The Razer 17 has a 100W GPU, the Alienware m15 has a RTX3060 with 120W, the MSI 15M has just a 3060 with 65 W.... Why dosen't this laptop easily outperform those competitors?
(Sure, the Razer 17 is bigger, but has only a 10th Gen CPU & a significant lower GPU TGP, and the legion is definitly not one of these ultra portable gaming laptops either)
Good looking Display sounds great though.

 

[watzupken]

I think the specs is incorrect, "The Lenovo Legion 5 Pro joins in on the 16:10 trend with a 2560 x 1440 IPS monitor that has a 165Hz refresh rate. "

This should be the correct specs taken from Lenovo's website,
16.0"2.5K, IPS, Anti-Glare, LED Backlight, Narrow Bezel, HDR, 100%sRGB, Non-Touch, 165Hz 2560x1600

 

[watzupken]

I did not expect a Laptop with a RTX 3070 mobil 140W to perform so poorly in the gaming benchmarks. The Razer 17 has a 100W GPU, the Alienware m15 has a RTX3060 with 120W, the MSI 15M has just a 3060 with 65 W.... Why dosen't this laptop easily outperform those competitors?
(Sure, the Razer 17 is bigger, but has only a 10th Gen CPU & a significant lower GPU TGP, and the legion is definitly not one of these ultra portable gaming laptops either)
Good looking Display sounds great though.

If you look for reviews of this laptop online, you will find answers to your question. In summary, there are 4 things that will hamper performance for this laptop, and potentially other Ryzen based laptops out in the market,
1. RAM with slower timings used - Despite being DDR4 3200 CL22, Crucial have increase the timings of newer RAMs very significantly. As Ryzen chips are more sensitive to RAM timings, it drops performance quite significantly to the tune of around 10% on average,

2. Corsair iCUE software - When this is enabled, this takes a lot of CPU processing power, which deprives the system of CPU power when it needs it for gaming

3. Testing resolution - Ampere is more susceptible to being CPU bound, especially at lower resolution. At 1080p and the games selected, it just doesn't allow the GPU to stretch its legs. Switching over to 1440p or 1600p, that will take the bottleneck off the CPU and will result in a the 3070 performing quite a fair bit faster than the RTX 3060 mobile

4. To get the most out of the laptop, the laptop needs to run at performance mode. At balance or lower, it nerfs the CPU and GPU quite a fair bit.

 

[pixelpusher220]

Ports on the back just seem like asking for broken ports.

Given the expanding number of laptops with this design, has anyone seen this?

For desktop replacement usage, perhaps, but any use in the actual portable sense seems like these would be problematic

 

[watzupken]

Ports on the back just seem like asking for broken ports.

Given the expanding number of laptops with this design, has anyone seen this?

For desktop replacement usage, perhaps, but any use in the actual portable sense seems like these would be problematic

Generally when you are on the go, the USB port on each side of the laptop is enough to allow a mouse and another device like portable hard disk/ mobile phone to be connected. So I feel that pretty much addresses most people's need on a laptop, when you are on the go/ portable. For me, the ports at the rear make sense given that this laptop is not exactly mobile when you have to lug a 1+ KG power brick along. And I actually prefer display out ports to be located at the rear because it gets very unsightly on either the left or right of the laptop, and may potentially cause some obstructions. From other reviews I saw for this laptop, there are LED lit logos telling you what ports are at the back. So that also helps without you physically having to turn the laptop around to find the port you want to use.

 

[suedezu]

I have this laptop for more than 2 weeks and it's amazing for gaming and productivity tasks alike.

I have the Ryzen 5800H, 3700, 32GB RAM, 2 TB SSD config and It runs every game I've tried smoothly and at very high or max settings. I've played Dirt 5, Red Dead Redemption, Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition, Wolfenstein: Youngblood. All these games were at the 1600p native resolution with RayTracing and DLSS where available.

RAM is holding you back only if you're CPU bound (playing at 1080p) and only on the 16 GB configs. Playing at 1600p, the incurred penalty for not having the fastest possible RAM modules is between 3-5%. To my eyes, it's pretty negligible and not worth the hassle of buying more expensive RAM and having to resell the current kit.

The location of the ports at the back is really clever and useful as it allows hiding all the messy cables behing the screen. Besides on each side there is a USB type C and type A port and the combo headphone/mic port so you're pretty much set should you wish to use a USB dongle/stick.

Someone mentioned Corsair ICU software on this laptop and it's wrong. ONLY the Legion 7 has this software as it has RGB galore. The Legion 5 Pro has a simpler 4-zone RGB keyboard so Corsair ICU would not work on the Legion 5 Pro.

One more thing: the display on this laptop is AMAZING! Bright, accurate, matte finish, fast refresh. It's a dream display!

If you want more info on this laptop from actual owners check this Discord channel dedicated to the Legion 5 Pro https://discord.gg/hGt9hGKb

 

[JWNoctis]

The slight graphic performance loss -might- also be partially accountable to the PCIe bus, which is limited to 3.0 x8 for the discrete chip on this machine. At least on mine.

No idea if that's normal. EDIT: For the record, it is. Cezanne platform limit.

Disabling the integrated GPU via BIOS settings also made some slight difference, on the scale of <5% improvement in terms of 3Dmark11 score.

But yes, it's great - Much better than any desktop machine I could get the parts for in these times for the same price.