Lenovo Legion 5 Pro 16 Update $1399 – Best Budget Gaming Laptop of 2021


ed here with the digital digest and today i wanted to share my first update on my experience with the lenovo legion 5 pro this machine is impressive and i think that its price to performance ratio may make it golden for a lot of consumers looking to get not just the most for their money but a really great gaming laptop that also happens to be competent as a content creation machine so let’s take a look and a listen uh to the speakers on the five pro as well as the brand new 16 inch 16 by 10 1600 p 165 hertz refresh rate display [Music] a little bit of tinniness there on the speakers i don’t know if that’s being picked up keep in mind brightness is nowhere near 100 so i’m gonna take it up to 100 now now we’re working at 100 which makes things in my opinion on camera at least look a little bit more blown out for obvious reasons so i’m going to stop it here because i think that gives you a pretty good idea and again you see the brightness if i bring it back down to where we were at which was actually right around there were i think roughly 50 brightness this display comes in at a little under 500 nits roughly i think it’s a fantastic display so this brand new 16-inch ips panel with g-sync i might add i think is a great standard for the majority of users but as you all may have noticed we’ve got letterboxing on the top and bottom and that’s because of the 16 by 10 aspect ratio means you’re gaining vertical height which is good for productivity work and certainly a lot of games will support it as well but not every single one so be aware of that i don’t think it’s a problem with this machine but it’s something everyone needs to know about buying into the legion 7 or of course this machine the legion 5 pro now the pricing on this to my understanding with

the of course ryzen 7 5800 as well as the rtx 3070 16 gigs of ram and a half terabyte nvme ssd which benchmarked uh very well completely competent you might want to expand it though because a half terabyte is pretty pretty tight i believe the price at walmart is around 1500 us dollars so at that price this is an insane purchase to me i mean my g15 does outperform it in certain ways underperform it in others based on my testing so far but one thing that this machine does better than anyone in the entire business is it is undercutting when it comes to pricing to get a great processor gpu fairly solid construction a brand new 16 16 inch high refresh rate ips panel that i think is great so no one else is matching this price point to my knowledge right now now if you can get beyond the design cues like of course the glowing y on the back there which some people will love some people will hate very little wobble in the display by the way you know the the build quality is not as good as the legion seven but does that justify the premium you’ll be paying for the legion seven and that’s another video that i’ll cover altogether but again competent read and write speeds so if you had to live with that nvme drive that at least comes pre-installed on this is the exact build by the way that walmart is starting to stock i think this coming week or may have already so you want to check that out i can’t link you to any

affiliate route unfortunately but of course i’m still going to give the information and i think initially it was supposed to be priced at 13.99 if you can get it grab it i mean that is the best value from anyone here in 2021 and this thing is out benching at least in time spy easily my g15 now remember the g15 has a 3070 and technically a superior processor but that 30 70 is getting a lot less power than the one on board here you’re talking about 140 tdp versus you know 80 to 100 with a boost on the g15 so the 30 70 here definitely shines with that extra juice but you pay for it in weight the physical weight of this machine again is more than a pound heavier than the g15 and predominantly polycarbonate we do have some metal here no question about it but i think what really sets this apart from the legion seven is the overall feel of the build material it’s not bad it’s just not in that same class and that’s why the legion seven sits at the top of lenovo’s gaming notebook pyramid but very good scores here and what i’m really impressed with is and i’m going to run the benchmark now just so you can see it is how quiet this machine stays regardless of being put under pressure and when i say that the fans spin up but no cooling problems at all and more impressively it is much quieter at least to my ear than my g15 and that’s why i’m going to run time spy right now i’ve also been consistently benching over 10 000 with this i’ve tried a few games you can see what i have

installed the usual suspects more will get installed beside cyberpunk call of duty world war ii modern you know and rust i’ll have more on board but right now it’s looking like this machine has absolutely no problem uh with 1600p gaming which is the native resolution that you’re getting obviously taking a little bit of a while to load up time spy but it is finally going and you’ll hear audio performance now i think the audio performance is a little underwhelming that’s one area where my g15 is substantially better that’s also an area where the legion 7 is significantly better so how much that matters to you i’m not sure remember you have two nvme slots ram is upgradeable but the machine is performing really smoothly outside of how long that load time took uh we should be operating in the turbo mode uh not turbo but the high performance mode that’s where i’ve left it and we are hardwired as you may have noticed camera just took a dip on me thankfully not too much see if i can get us back into position scary for a moment [Music] bring this a little bit more into frame and the keyboard you know is fine the trackpad i think is one of my chief complaints if i had to have one right now and i say that i’m going to mute this because i think you get an idea of what the audio is like it’s not phenomenal the track pad is plastic it is not glass like on the legion 7.

and another issue with that is that beyond i don’t really have a problem with the plastic it’s more so it makes a little bit of noise uh when you double tap um and use different gestures it may just be my copy this review unit from lenovo so i can’t say that you know this is what you should expect nor can i call it a quality control issue because uh the trackpad is working fine it’s just not optimal uh in my opinion for it’s it’s hard to really look past it’s another one of those things that i would say with the legion 5 pro it’s one of the corners that were cut kind of like getting the 300 watt power brick that’s the same one that you’ll get with the legion 7 which is overkill for both machines a lot of people have been complaining about it and i’m not here to say it’s good to have a giant power brick but one thing is certain you’re not going to run out of battery life as long as you stay hardwired and i think both this machine as well as the legion 7 are clearly aimed at being desktop replacement class gaming notebooks so even though they may not weigh an incredible amount they are directly taking on alienware as usual the g15 again falls more into a thin and light category so it’s harder for me to really put it in the same posture but that is a comparison that i will

eventually make uh basically the majority of the time spy scores that i’ve run here over 10 k i’m still at around 9 400 plus or minus i would say 300 to 500 points with the g15 but that’s really a matter of the g15s you know power going to the gpu i could flash a different bios and play with that but i don’t really see the value in doing that i think the real takeaway from today’s update is that even though uh there is some some i would say cost cutting cost saving in the build of this laptop it still is well built and again the pricing seems to be totally insane i mean when you put it in the crop of current laptops that sport new eight core processors either intel or amd and then to boot have uh an rtx 3070 you’re just you’re not going to find it at this price point without i mean i don’t even know of a machine but if you did something horrible would have to be on board with it and the fact that you hear how loud it is now this is under load it’s pretty quiet my g15 would sound like a jet engine compared to this and we’re pushing more pixels remember 1600 p uh native res on this which reminds me of the good old days when i first started you know hardcore we’ll call it pc gaming and you know the dell ultra sharp 30 was at a 31 inch 2560 by 1600 ips panel was like you know the piece de resistance that was wow that was an expensive

monitor and great for gaming but more importantly color proofing and i loved using it and that’s also part of what i enjoy about the 16 by 10 aspect ratio is that it does remind me of what work monitors displays high quality panels that was the standard aspect ratio and then of course everything shifted to 16×9 to reflect the content we consume rather than the work that we do but this panel is great to my knowledge the same panel employed in the legion seven and i don’t know how again at this price point even if it ends up being a sixteen hundred dollar uh machine it’s still an incredible value the g15 is 1850 right now if you can find it uh the m16 1850 and that’s with a 30-60 so the question i think really becomes do you want to spend the additional money between this and the legion seven do you care enough about the build quality uh to spend the extra cash for the legion seven i don’t believe this is going to be configurable with a 3080 so that’s another clear sign that at least right now lenovo is targeting this as the budget friendly option that’s going to appeal to people that purely are interested in gaming and don’t mind that the legion 5 took a step

backwards in terms of it got a little bit more gaudy a little bit more gamer centric in design the previous generation looks a lot more what the lenovo legion 7 looks like right now and again listen to these fans hopefully that’s audible i mean it is for me but i just that was the first thing the first time i benchmarked this i was kind of in shock that the fans were not going nuts and that we still ended up with fantastic benchmark results so here we go again a little under ten thousand you can see the best right there that’s coming up is over twelve thousand i’m not sure well i could guess how people pulled that off but the frame rates you know you’re talking about running anything in 1440p at ultra pretty much and getting 100 frames or higher you know apex legends again these are estimates i could actually run the games clearly but frames and remember you’re getting this with g-sync and 165 hertz refresh rate and granted not 1440 but you’ll be able to pull it off with 1600p based on the experience that i have with several games including cyberpunk i’m just blown away you know i don’t expect to be able to do in everything native and basically as close to ultra as possible but that’s the world we’re living in in 2021.

anyone who thought that gaming laptops were not going to be a leap in performance just called this completely wrong i mean we also the price to performance the g15 was the standard bearer now you’re looking at it i just don’t know how you can beat this machine for the price i still love my g15 don’t get me wrong but be realistic at 14 to even 1600 this laptop is pretty much an instant buy if you’re in the market for a gaming laptop and want as much horsepower at as you know the most affordable price possible we do have a webcam i love that we’ve got the privacy switch and overall i’m just really impressed uh content creation on this not going to be an issue the why again you could literally ask why this is something that you know the old uh the previous generation legion five this is a new design and i think it is you know lenovo trying to create a very gamey you know gamer-esque uh design sense and i think they’re doing it and some of you may love it i’m curious to hear uh in the question or rather the comment section because i want to know if that if this is really what people are looking for i’m sure lenovo wants to know and the only way they’re going to fix things if you do find it to be hideous or beautiful feedback is the way to make that clear now the ports on the back i love it you know every manufacturer should follow suit on this and for the most part when we get into this class of machine they do and the i o array is really good uh so i have no complaints with that and even though the power brick is huge again i don’t see that as being a terrible thing either i mean if the g15 granted it has a good weight advantage on this if it had a larger power brick and we could pull off higher power delivery to the gpu i wouldn’t be against it now i know when they

first teased these machines they were slated to come with a little over a 200 watt brick but it seems like the pandemic forced lenovo to make you know a decision that i i believe is in you could call it economics or it could be a matter of part shortages whatever it may be that 300 watt supply again is across all of these builds uh as well as the legion seven and so that that may be something that turns people off i personally wouldn’t want it but if i cared more about that performance i wouldn’t be upset having it uh and this does charge really quickly battery life is looking like you know right now five to six hours but i’m sure i’m going to be able to make it a little bit better but incredibly clean design again that privacy switch another type a usb port another type c port headphone microphone combo jack and this thing is just impressing me from a thermal perspective it’s just you know again fairly cool fairly quiet and everything is running really smoothly my biggest gripe right now by the way the lid is aluminum you can feel it it’s obvious it’s just a lot of other material is polycarbonate it’s really a matter again it seems to me you know if the track pad the touchpad is going to bother you that’s something you should feel in store i don’t think it’s a break it feature so far but if it gets enough on my nerves it might be a

different story also it is pretty offset don’t forget that not ideal when it comes to positioning for playing games but then again i would never use this to play games i would turn the trackpad off and use a mouse obviously if i was gaming on this display but the good news is i really like these new 16-inch 16 by 10 high refresh ips panels i think it’s a great new standard and it’s a wonderful thing to have higher res higher refresh displays that actually can be utilized because you have more than enough hardware under the hood something that used to be the reverse it’s like if if you didn’t go hd full hd no matter what you got 4k oled you just could not game this is the generation of gpus being able to natively max out games and whoever thought we could do it at a budget price like this again somewhere between fourteen and sixteen hundred so it looks like there’s a new king when it comes to uh price to performance however you know i gotta test it more i haven’t spent a lot of time with it but played a few games and run some tests and again really impressed with what lenovo has done here and uh stay tuned for a comparison to the legion seven as well as to the g15 any questions or comments please feel free to post them hit that like button and as usual please feel free to subscribe and please stay safe later


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