The Legion 5 replaces the Legion 5P in Lenovo’s line-up and benefits from a Ryzen 7 5800H CPU, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 GPU, 165 Hz display and keyboard with RGB. 15.6 and 17 in. variants are available, with 16 GB of RAM and a 512 GB SSD. The Asus TUF Dash F15, on the other hand, offers excellent battery life, a great sound system, a beautiful white polycarbonate body and the same RTX 3070 GPU as Legion 5 paired with an Intel Core i7 processor. The problem with this laptop, however, is getting a model with both the RTX 3070 GPU and the beautiful 240 Hz display. If that’s not possible, the RTX 3060/240Hz combo costs around £1,400, but you also get a useful large 1TB SSD.
The Legion range has always looked a little more childish than some of its competitors, and the new models are no different. Apart from the RGB lighting on the keyboard and a sticker pointing out that Fn+Q is a shortcut to change the cooling profile in the Lenovo Vantage app, there’s nothing about it that sarcastically screams ‘games console’,Gucci Purses.
[content-egg-block template=offers_logo hide=price]We’re all for keeping the aesthetics down a bit, and it’s hard to find fault with the Lenovo TrueStrike keyboard in Legion 5 either. The spacious, full-width keyboard features a numeric keypad and full-sized cursor keys located a short distance away from the main keyboard. Key travel is a perfect 1.8 mm, and the keys feel physically solid; the 105 x 70 mm trackpad is offset quite a bit to the left, but is otherwise equally flawless.
The build quality is also very solid. In my use, I did not notice any creaking of the enclosure. Deflection of the enclosure was also very good considering the amount of plastic used. I am quite impressed with the durability and perceived high quality of this laptop. The lid is a smooth, reasonably thick plastic. There is a small Lenovo logo on the bottom corner and a Legion logo on the opposite corner.
The Legion logo has a prismatic colouring that changes colour depending on the angle of the light. It is subtle, but quite cool. So, under the bonnet, there is a lot going on as far as logos and stickers are concerned. There’s a Legion logo under the screen and a Lenovo logo on the corner of the palm rest, also in aluminium. There are also plenty of CPU, GPU and hotkey stickers, which can be easily removed.
The only complete failure of the Legion 5 is its battery life. Unfortunately, this is the second AMD-based laptop (after the ROG Zephyrus G14) to last less than an hour when running Shadow of the Tomb Raider. The Legion 5 was fully charged in just 52 minutes. Its primary use would be as a replacement for an all-in-one desktop, not as a truly portable system. A gaming laptop that can last for hours is not an endangered species, but perhaps the Steam Deck is a better choice at the moment.