14 DAY TRIAL // We live in awkward times, and our homes have become ad-hoc offices where a significant number of people are still struggling to find the right work-life balance due to obvious reasons.
It’s pretty clear already that 2020 and 2021 had different plans for us, and there’s a good chance 2022 wouldn’t bring any change in this regard.
In other words, home will continue to be the best place to be, and the devices will use will remain an essential companion for almost everything we do, including working, getting in touch with others, and playing games.
What do all of these have to do with a gaming laptop? It’s all pretty simple actually.
Many people want to buy a device that does everything, so when they spend thousands of bucks on a gaming laptop, they also want to use it for work, to watch videos, or to just make a video call and stay in touch with friends and family.
This is why Lenovo’s Legion 5 Pro laptop series is actually more than what it seems at first glance.
Of course, the Legion 5 Pro is a gaming laptop by all means, and nobody can deny it. After all, its specifications and the gaming legacy of the Legion lineup are certainly pointing in this direction.
Powered by the AMD Ryzen 7 5800H and a choice of four different NVIDIA GPUs, the Legion 5 Pro looks and feels like a premium laptop. It’s not very lightweight, given its weight starts at 2.54 kilos, but it’s not too heavy anyway, and this makes perfect sense for a device whose main focus is gaming.
With a 16.5-inch display sporting a 2560x1600 pixels resolution and topping at 500 nits, this new model makes playing games quite a breeze, at least as far as the screen is concerned. The display has solid response times (165Hz and 3 ms), so if you enjoy fast-paced games, there’s nothing to complain about on this front.
Paired with up to 16GB of RAM and up to 2TB SSD storage, the processor easily lives up to the expectations, and it can handle mostly anything you throw at it. Of course, it’s not the most powerful gaming laptop, and the PCMark results pretty much speak for themselves.
PCMark 10 puts the tested configuration (AMD Ryzen 7 5800H + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060, 16GB RAM, Windows 11) slightly above the standard gaming PC for 2020 with a score of 6933 points. It’s not far from high-end gaming PCs, rated at 7134 points, while the premium PCs are pretty close with 7163 points.
So in theory, the Legion 5 Pro is not the best gaming PC on the market, but it’s not very far either, and this can only be good news for someone who wants to buy this device and make sure no upgrades would be required at least for a couple of years.
Playing games on the laptop is exactly the experience you’d expect it to be. Everything is smooth, and in Battlefield, for instance, I could set the game to high details and still get high FPS with no hiccups whatsoever. However, you can easily tell when the Legion 5 Pro struggles with whatever you throw at it, as the coolers kick in and make a loud noise to make sure everything inside stays cool.
I found the keyboard a little bit cluttered and difficult to use on several occasions, but I think it’s probably just a matter of time until you get used to it. I spend most of my time on a Microsoft Surface Book 2 for work, and while the Legion 5 Pro sports soft keys that are easy to press, I miss the extra space between the keys that are available on the Surface.
The backlight is cool as well, and given we spend so much time on our computers these days, is something that has become a must-have, especially for people who play games late at night.
But as said earlier, we have reached a point where we want our devices to be able to do much more than just a single thing. And this is where the Legion 5 Pro is actually getting extra points.
This device is an incredible work companion that just helps you get the job done. Its top specs mean it runs Windows 11 and whatever app you throw at it just as smoothly as it gets, though I was surprised to hear the coolers kick in even during basic things like starting a meeting on Microsoft Teams.
The 16-inch display gives you enough screen estate to run two or three apps on the screen at the same time, and for multitaskers, this is something that has become quite vital. The built-in speakers aren’t necessarily the best, but really now, this isn’t how you use a Legion, no matter if you play games or work on it. Headphones are a must-have, so no complaints here either.
The battery, on the other hand, is kind of a letdown, no matter how you use the laptop. Supposed to provide up to 8 hours per charge, at least according to Lenovo’s specs, the Legion 5 Pro offers up to 5 hours on average on Windows 11 with apps like Microsoft Edge, Microsoft Word, and Microsoft Teams running all the time. The battery life is obviously worse during heavy gaming, and in some cases, you need to find a charger after just 2 hours.
The Legion 5 Pro is fully equipped for the typical office worker, so it comes with a built-in 720p camera, as well as an army of ports, including USB Type-C, USB-A, RJ45, and HDMI 2.1. Bluetooth 5.1 and Wi-Fi are available as well.
The bottom line
The Legion 5 Pro is a beautiful laptop, there’s no doubt about it. It has a high-end design, it feels nice in hand, and despite its rather heavy weight, it’s not a problem to carry around.
It’s not supposed to be your daily driver, but it can very well be if that’s what you want. It has the full hardware arsenal to handle whatever you throw at it, and in most cases, it does the whole thing without any substantial hiccups.
In most games, including recent releases like Cyberpunk and Battlefield, you get a very consistent experience that lets you enjoy almost the full package, though you might occasionally have to adjust the settings to increase the FPS count. This shows the Legion 5 Pro isn’t exactly the best gaming laptop on the market, but as said earlier, it’s not very far either.
The heat is efficiently sent out of the laptop by noisy fans, but once again, this is what a gaming laptop is all about in the first place. If your co-workers are bothered by the way your laptop gets rid of the heat, this is what headphones are for.
In many regards, the Legion 5 Pro has the full package, and it’s hard to find anything to complain about, no matter if we’re talking about gaming or work. There are things that need to be improved, such as the keyboard design, but other than that, you’re really getting excellent value for the money and the Legion 5 Pro is simply one of the best not only gaming laptops but also all-rounders on the market.
