Lenovo - Legion 5 15" Gaming Laptop - Intel Core i7 - 8GB Memory - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti - 512GB SSD - Phantom Black

I have had this bad boy for an entire day now. yes 1 day! and so far I do not regret my purchase. I am a 15yr veteran computer tech that has been building and working on computers since I was a little child. My parents fostered my interest in x86 hardware before I even got out of elementary school. I have owned and built many systems the last 25 yrs including custom gaming desktops and custom configured gaming laptops. With that said, I got out of the industry almost 10 yrs ago. Not long after Windows 8 came around. The last system I custom configured for myself was a Lenovo Y series laptop about 6 yrs ago. I have not used anything since then. (around the time I got out of the industry) so my comparisons are a bit dated but I will say this...… I am a bit disappointed. But in all honesty I can't blame Lenovo or this model I purchased as my complaints are not truly with either. Performance. A word I know very well when it comes to PC hardware. This laptop does in many ways far exceed my expectations and in others it falls almost a decade short of what I expected. On paper and indeed in the flesh, This little laptop packs a punch. I was not compared in anyway for the extreme performance difference between a SATA SSD and the M.2 PCIE SSD found in this system. Boot time. Load time, Game time, Install time, It doesn't matter. This drive is blistering fast! sustained write speeds are 1000mbs. Sustained read speeds are nearly 1200mbs. Peak reads come in around 1300mbs. That is fast! especially for a laptop in the mid range. The CPU in this system is a little slower than I expected. On paper it is capable of 5ghz when boosting. With little or no activity, It chimes in around 4.6-4.8ghz. This makes common task super fast. But this is a gaming laptop and sustained clock rates after an hour of gaming was around 3ghz. Honestly that isn't bad considering the base clock is 2.6ghz. I will be honest though, I do not have any games that can truly stress the CPU. As far as graphics go, This is probably the systems weakest component. Well, It comes in second behind the ram. On paper this should be comparable to a desktop GTX 1060 or right around the performance of a GTX 1070m. It has all the specs you need for presentable 1080P gaming. Sort of..... The truth is, There is no doubt a bottleneck here. I am going to guess heat related throttling. Do not get me wrong. Most my games can maintain 60 FPS or higher. Some get upwards of 120-150fps. These are good numbers. But you have to back off to mid or low settings even with many 5 yr old games in 1080P. I guess this is to be expected in a mid range laptop. And honestly even with high settings, Most my games run at a very playable 40+ fps. But as I will discuss in the next paragraph, It is a little disappointing. Probably the biggest surprise with this laptop is the awesome and stunningly beautiful built in display. Best buy gives a very vague description of it so let me set the record straight. THIS IS A FULL 120hz 1080P Display! The brightness is close to 300n. as anyone knows, That is well above average for a laptop in every way. Viewing angles are much better than I imagined and color accuracy is almost spot on. I would guess at least 90% accurate. The refresh late is high enough to make silky smooth 120fps scenes come to life in full HD glory. But sadly this graphics card is not equipped with enough umph to push it to its max in most games. That is the biggest let down of all. System ram is 8gb DDR4 @ 2933 or so MHz,. Intel always has strange memory speeds due in part to system bus and CPU interactions and clock rates. Nothing new here. The memory is recognized by my diagnostic utilities as DDR4 3200. It is 1x 8gb module running in single channel. I plan to immediately upgrade to 16gb and enabling dual channel. That will probably have a good performance increase. The touch pad is annoying however the keyboard is clean, responsive, and very colorful. I however can not get the Lenovo utility that changes the back light colors to work so I am stuck with the 3 default settings. Windows 10 isn't as bad as I expected it to be but windows updates (as usual) are slow and problematic. It appears for every 1 thing they fix, 2 things break. I only purchased this as a portable desktop replacement for gaming so that has not had much of an impact yet...… yet! Build quality is impressive and the touch and feel of the system is sturdy. The cooling systems appears to be good enough to hold its own most of the time. I played for 6 hours last night and the laptop never felt hot. indeed a little warm in areas of the keyboard and underside, But not hot. Aside from the disappointing frame rates and lack of ability to keep pace with the 120hz in most games is a let down. But honestly this system is barely over $1000 bucks at the time of my purchase. For the money It is a heck of a unit. I shopped around and compared many of last years systems and new systems for this year before I decided on this one. There was only 1 other laptop I found with a better price to performance ratio but it is by order from the manufacturer only (Dell G5 SE Ryzen) and I did not want to wait 2-3 weeks to get my new laptop. Best buy had this in stock. The sales kid was friendly and I was shocked at how much tech knowledge he had. He ultimately pointed out a few details I had not seen that made this the system to get. Lenovo extended warranty and accidental damage is cheap and a great value compared to other manufacturers and you can always back that up with Geek Squad support and protection if you feel you need it. I am glad I purchased this laptop and I am glad I got it at Best Buy. Thanks from a happy Customer!

The Legion 5 is awesome just like other reviewers mentioned. That is the reason I bought it replacing the Dell G7.

So I’ve researched and considered other brands like ASUS and MSI. But they didn’t have the screen moved slightly forward like this Lenovo model you are looking at, for better cooling. This allows for the heat to escape out of the back and not roll up the back of the screen. Much more efficient this way. The fans are super quite compared to my previous ASUS I got for around $800 a couple months ago, And it had less performance than this one. The GTX 1660ti here combined with the latest 10th gen i7 processor is just about the best combo you can have for a cpu and gpu for gaming as far as thermal efficiency goes in a laptop. The i7 could certainly handle a RTX 2070 if it wanted to, but it will definitely help on more cpu heavy games. I decided to not go with a better RTX 2060 Gpu because that card is so under clocked for the Laptop version of it. And this 1660ti is capable of running Red dead redemption 2 very comfortably on high settings and it can do ultra settings too, but not as well. Temperatures stay cool and the graphics are more than I need for my level of gaming. I would only recommend something with a higher graphics card if you plan on having a desktop, in my opinion. This is a quality build and worth the extra $100 difference over the MSI, Dell, and ASUS with similar specs. Just buy it

This is the most well-rounded gaming laptop I've found, and I looked everywhere before I made the purchase, even considering Razer laptops which are vastly more expensive. This one has it all. Pros: - Blazing fast in and outside of gaming. - Can max every game I've thrown at it at 60+ fps. Nearly 300fps in CS:GO. 100fps in Prey. 120+ in No Man's Sky. This thing just obliterates my PS4 Pro. - Excellent aesthetics that aren't gaudy like most gaming laptops. It looks like a machine for professionals. - Customizable 4-panel RGB keyboard lighting. - Near silent operation during basic computer tasks, and super respectable fan noise while gaming. I'm a music producer so this was crucial for me. I have and will take a laptop back to the store if the fan noise is too loud. You can easily cover the fan noise with the internal speakers. - Generous 512 SSD and room for expansion (so I've been told--I've yet to pry this thing open and don't intend to for awhile) - Great IPS 120hz display that's plenty bright and colorful to my eyes (despite what a couple prominent YouTubers mentioned--they are likely spoiled). - Plenty of ports, and most are in the back which I prefer. - Excellent keyboard with a number pad AND large arrow keys that you might actually want to use sometime instead of the tiny awkwardly crammed-together arrow keys that are on most other laptops. - Very good battery life for a gaming laptop. - There's a keyboard toggle that lets you switch between 3 different performance modes, and the light on the power button indicates which one you're in. Really nice little feature. - Webcam is on TOP where it belongs, is actually decent quality, AND it has a privacy filter on it which I really appreciate. - Very little bloatware installed. Cons: - The power brick is massive, and heavier than I'd like. It will add a little more weight to your carrying case. But that's the price of power I suppose. - The wifi driver had an issue out of the box. It would disconnect me from the net after about an hour of use, or less. Uninstalling the driver in device manager (Network adapters > Intel WiFi) and then rebooting fixed it. No issues since. - Doesn't cook breakfast for me. - Yeah that's about all I got.

I bought this laptop primarily for the processor speed and gpu. Most of the other laptops had really slow processors but this one is fast. It has a camera sliding lock so that you don’t have to place your own privacy cover over it. It’s REALLY fast and my favorite part is the way the ports are set up. Many laptops are purchased without thinking about where your ports are. Everything is organized. NICELY on the back of the laptop. There’s actually a small overhang just for the ports so that you can see them without the monitor blocking them if that makes any sense (just view the rear of it). It has a really clean and responsive keyboard that feels like a regular keyboards depth. Some laptops feel like their keyboards are too thin. This one is perfect. The colors can be adjusted into 3 parts with different patterns. The on button is nice a simple. Just a small dot right at the center console beneath the screen on the keyboard. The screen is NOT touch. This was a PREFERENCE of mines because I found out that most of us enjoy using a laptop while laying down or sitting. Sometimes screens with the screen orientation sensors built in can cause problems like rotations when you dont want them to. For windows 10 you can just lock it and its fine. But for systems like Linux Fedora or Ubuntu (should you decide to install your own operating system) you might run into rotation issues even with the locks enabled. So I no longer desire touchscreen on my laptops anymore. We have ipads and tablets for that. This laptop has a great touch pad that senses both left and right clicks easily. The laptop just looks really clean cut. It doesn’t look gimmicky and isn’t made of any cheap plastic either. Everything seems very firm. This is my first Lenovo brand laptop. I am impressed to be honest. It didn’t come with a lot of bloatware either. I am very satisfied with this laptop. I would definitely recommend it. One thing I haven’t done yet is open up the inside. I do not know how difficult this is yet because there really is no need for me to do this as the laptop comes with a solid state drive. But that is something I also keep in mind. The ease of access for user customization if that is your forte. Finally, the laptop is VERY well ventilated. There are holes all over the bottom to let air out and the speaker is also very loud and clear too. I feel that I got my money’s worth. The specs specs speak for themselves on the gaming end. I specifically got this laptop for coding with the ability to game down the road. I already own a PC that I built from scratch and so I can’t say that I’ve tested the gaming aspect of this laptop. The specs look good though but I have yet to see how the heating handles gaming and ventilations while the laptop is running near max output. I’m sure somebody on youtube has done a review on that though. Best wishes.

I recently bought this laptop for school and casusal gaming. In the month I have had it I've had no problems with it and it exceeded my expectations. Stock it is very fast and will do most things but in 2020 the industrial standard for ram in a gaming computer is 16gb so I added an 8gb stick of ram to it allowing it to handle more, the process was easy and I think anyone could do it if you watch a video. Luckily you can make this upgrade without voiding the manufacturer warenty as long as you don't damage anything. The screen is great with a 120hz refresh rate and decent colors for gaming, I can really tell a quality difference between this screen and others of a similar price. Next. the cooling fans are LOUD, but thats a good thing, I haven't had my thermals over 65 degrees thanks to the efficent cooling system. It hasent been used for school yet but it will run just about anything so i'm sure it will work great. Some great added bonuses are the built in legion software and an rgb backlit keyboard. The only catagory the Legion 5 is somwhat weak in is the battery, lasting somwhere around 2 hours streaming netflix on just battery, but you don't usually buy a gaming laptop for battery life. I would highly recommend this laptop to anyone looking for a laptop for causal gaming!

I've had this laptop for about a month as of this review. I use it primarily for schoolwork and gaming. Construction of the laptop is solid and seems pretty durable, be aware that the charger itself is heavy and bulky, and the laptop has a bit of heft to it while not being heavy. As far as non-gaming functions go, it runs perfect and I haven't run into any compatibility errors or poor performance while doing typical office-type tasks. When it comes to gaming, I can run older games and High and Ultra settings, games like Skyrim run consistently for me at high settings. One thing to keep in mind is that after a while of gaming, the laptop fans will kick in pretty loud and it'll put off a decent bit of heat. There is an option to lower performance in exchange for a cooler, quieter run, but I haven't felt a need to use it. The heat isn't particularly noticeable when it's on a hard surface, and if your volume is on, you're not likely to notice the fan whirring either. I got the laptop on sale for around $950, for the price and quality of the laptop, I'm very pleased with it.

The Lenovo Legion 5 has all the power of a gaming laptop while still looking clean and professional. It similarly handles productivity work (like coding and Adobe Photoshop) and all of the games I have tried with no issues. The keyboard is backlit, and you can fully customize the colors with the included Lenovo Vantage app. The keyboard and touchpad are solid, and there are plenty of ports for I/O devices. The only real downside to the laptop is the battery life, which is not great, but can be improved by using the laptop on the "quiet mode" thermal mode. Conversely, when the laptop is plugged in and you need to boost the performance, you can set the laptop to the "performance mode", which is the perfect mode for gaming. The ability to change the thermal mode is greatly appreciated and makes the laptop very versatile, whether using it for gaming or productivity. Overall, it is a fast and efficient gaming laptop that looks modern and is definitely worth the money, especially if you can get it on sale.