Lenovo Legion Y545 Review

The Lenovo Legion Y545 (starting from $799, $999 as reviewed) is like getting a luxury car for the econobox price. Its muted styling and design made me feel like an undercover gamer. One minute I’m preparing spreadsheets, PowerPoint documents, and files, and the next minute I’m on a mission in Call of Duty – Modern Warfare while sitting on a park bench during my lunch break. You might even hear spy music in the background as you walk around it, knowing it’s on at all times! This is our Lenovo Legion Y545 Review.

Lenovo Legion Y545 Review – Design

With its industrial design accentuated by clean, attractive lines, the Lenovo Legion Y545 contrasts beautifully with many of its flashy counterparts. Its understated styling combined with a tasteful, aggressive rear and bottom ventilation makes it unique. Its dark iron-grey aluminum lid has a similar appeal to an entry-level Mercedes-Benz or BMW. The white, backlit Y symbol is distinctive and gives the car a respectable amount of flair.

Opening the lid, you can see more of that subdued dark grey aluminum. The island-style keyboard sits at the top of the deck, the triangular on/off button above the F8 key challenges you to intervene. The large touchpad underneath the keyboard that sits in the middle of the palm rest completes the presentation. The Legion Y545 has enough ports to transform into a walkable workstation. On the right side, there is a USB 3.1 Type-A port and a combination headphone/microphone jack. On the left side, there is another USB 3.1 Type-A port.

Do you need more ports? Look around the back, and you will find a virtual smorgasbord. From left to right, you’ll find a USB 3.1 Type-C port, a mini-DisplayPort, another USB Type-A 3.1 port, an HDMI, and an Ethernet connection, followed by the DC-in port and a Kensington lock.

Keyboard and TouchPad

As a person with pretty big hands, I enjoyed the big, island-like keyboard. With a fully numeric keyboard and white backlight, as well as an exclusive recording key for gamers who want to capture their best playing moments, this keyboard is made for gamers. I did better than expected in the 10 fast fingers typing test, with a score of 90 words per minute and an accuracy of 96%.

The 4.1 x 2.7-inch touchpad is made of matte black Mylar and feels smooth to the touch. Windows 10 gestures were very accurate, even when using three- or four-finger gestures and simple finger touches. The lower corners of the touchpad are very responsive and give an excellent click when pressed.

Lenovo Legion Y545 Review – Display

When I first saw the 15.6-inch, 1920 x 1080 anti-glare panel of the Legion Y545, I wanted to go somewhere quiet, ignore my family, and play games as if my life depended on it. When I saw the trailer for Fast and Furious, I found the colors so vivid, the explosions and the high-speed chases so bright and beautiful that in the end, I wished I had Vin’s muscles because they looked fantastic on this panel.

A few hours later and I still love this display. When I looked at [TK], and while 60hz isn’t as fast as the more expensive game installations, the Y545’s refresh rate made for a buttery smooth display when I played Grand The ft Auto 5. Everything looked sharp; the colors were perfectly saturated, bright, and sparkling. As I drove around, I kept making U-turns, to enjoy all the excellent detail and drive over a few people. Even the details in the distance seemed accurate, and as I got closer, the sharpness came into its own.

When we measured the screen’s color production capabilities, the Y545’s screen touched 99% of the sRGB range, which is just below our 100% minimum and the 110% mainstream gaming laptop average. Still, the Y545 was livelier than the Zephyrus (71%), the Pavillion 15 (66%), and the G3 15 (63%). Whoa, is this laptop bright! The panel of the Y545 averaged 300 nits clear and beat the average of 284 nits. While none of its competitors could hold the Lenovo’s proverbial candle, the Dell came closest to 272 nits. The Asus reached 240 nits, while the HP delivered a bleak 176 nits.

Audio

Laptop speakers often disappoint, but this was certainly not one of those times. The Dolby Atmos software, in combination with a pair of Harman/Kardon-tuned speakers, gives the Legion Y545 its excellent sound quality. The volume of the notebook is loud enough to fill my 200 square foot living room, and there is the right amount of bass to give depth to the sound. Like an old audiophile, I had to hear the funky horns of earth, wind, and fire.

When they performed “September,” the horns came in warm and rich. Maurice White’s velvety vocals were beautiful and full, and Phillip Bailey’s falsetto was clean and clear. I felt immersed entirely while playing Grand The ft Auto 5. The realistic tire screams and staccato gunfire took my playing experience to another level. I was very impressed by the fullness of sound every time I bumped into something. The sound quality is so clear and impressive while using this laptop that I didn’t need to use headphones or connect to a Bluetooth speaker.

I did make time to play with the Dolby Atmos software by turning on the Sound Radar, which allows the Dolby engine to simulate spatial sounds within the gameplay environment, and it just added buttery goodness. It took the audio experience to another level with sounds coming from all directions. I could hear another vehicle pull up on my right or left side. This added dimension makes the game palpable.

Graphics and Gaming

I played, I conquered, I sprained my thumbs while pushing the Lenovo Legion Y545 as hard as I could. I wanted to see how much the Nvidia GTX 1660 TI GPU of the Legion Y545 can handle with 6GB VRAM. So I terrorized everyone, crashed every car in GTA V (1920 x 1080 at Very High, averaging an incredible 62 frames per minute, beating the 59 fps average. The Zephyrus, which also has a 1660 Ti, scored 57 fps, while the HP and GTX 1650 GPU achieved only 39 fps.

Then I switched to one of my all-time favorites, Hitman 2, as the re’s nothing like a good old-fashioned murder to help someone relax. When testing Hitman in 1920 x 1080 on Ultra with DirectX 12, the Legion Y545 produced 95 fps, surpassing the average of 85 fps and the Zephyrus, which scored 73 fps. The G3 15 and the Pavilion achieved 62 and 57 fps, respectively. The Lenovo bent its gaming muscle further during Far Cry New Dawn, which came in at 79 fps. It is enough to surpass the average of 65 fps, as well as the Pavilion, Dell, and Asus, which were within a frame of each other at 54, 53 and 52 fps, respectively.

Get ready to play some Star Wars: Vadar Immortal because the Lenovo Legion Y545 does a surprisingly good virtual reality for a mid-tier system. In the SteamVR Performance Test, the Lenovo hit 8.6, which is short of the 9.1 average. That’s still better than the HP and Dell, which reached 5.9 and 5.8, respectively. The Asus beat the park by 9.2, while the HP reached 5.8, beating its competitors again.

Lenovo Legion Y545 Review – Performance

With a 2.6 GHz Intel 9th Gen Core i7-9750H processor and 16GB RAM, the laptop hasn’t struggled for a minute. It even handled resource-drainage Google Chrome while running 25 tabs, including an Avengers End Game game on Disney Plus, without a hitch. I downloaded DaVinci Resolve 16 to test how the Y545 video would edit and render. The Legion Y545 held up but didn’t render HD video as fast as my desktop, which has a desktop processor and 32GB of RAM.

However, if I were to record video and do some quick editing, that would be more than enough. I would take it with me on location when I take photos or shoot videos. The Y545 was screwed out of the port during the Geekbench 4.3 overall performance test with a score of 23,868. It outperformed the 20,511 mainstream gaming average, the Pavilion (21,326, Core i7-9750H), the Zephyrus (14,106, AMD Ryzen 7 3750H processor), those 14,106, and the G3 15 (16,650, Core i5-9300H).

During the file transfer test, Legion Y545’s 128GB PCIe SSD took 0:27 hours to duplicate 4.97GB of mixed media files for a transfer rate of 188.5 megabytes per second. That slow result was well below the average of 464.2 MBps. The G3 15 (128GB SSD) performed slightly better at 299MBps. The Pavillion (256GB PCIe NVMe SSD) performed even better at 351MBps, while the Zephyrus (512GB M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD) advanced at 424MBps.

Lenovo Legion Y545 Review – Battery Life

Gaming laptops are typically anathema to battery life. The Legion Y545 lasted only 3:38 on our battery test, which consists of continuous web browsing over Wi-Fi at 150 nits of brightness. That time is still a bit short of the 4:06 mainstream gaming average. Both the Zephyrus and the Pavilion lasted longer with times of 4:48 and 5:06, respectively. But the G3 15 proved that it has a staying power and clocks in at 6:41.

Heat

The Legion Y545 uses Cold Front cooling technology, a two-channel cooling system that simultaneously cools the CPU and GPU with unique fans and heat sinks. Although the rear and bottom vents are well placed and flowing well with the laptop aesthetics, I found the system warm up after 20 minutes or so while multitasking, running video, or gaming. There were times when the fans were noisy, but the fan noise is similar to other laptops in the same price range with related specifications. Sometimes the fans became louder in short bursts, while at other times, they kept the system cool.

I explored ancient Greece for 15 minutes in Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey and then measured strategic points along with the laptop. The touchpad measures 94 degrees Fahrenheit, which is just above our 95 degrees comfort threshold. The middle of the keyboard and the chassis of the laptop hit a relatively warm 109 degrees. After 15 minutes of streaming a full-screen 1080p YouTube video, the Legion Y545 measures 101 degrees Fahrenheit at the bottom, which is just above our 95 degrees comfort threshold. The touchpad and the center of the keyboard recorded 81 and 90 degrees, respectively.

Price and Configuration Options

The Legion Y545 I rated the cost at $999 and has a 2.6 GHz Intel Core i7-9750H processor, 16GB RAM, a 128GB PCIe SSD, and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti with 6GB VRAM. The basic model costs $799 but brings you back to 8GB RAM and an entry-level GeForce GTX 1650 GPU with 4GB video memory. However, you get more storage space with a 256GB PCIe SSD. Both models are reliable, but our review unit gives the user more bang for the buck.

Lenovo Legion Y545 Review – Conclusion

The Lenovo Legion Y545 is an entry-level gaming laptop that delivers under-promise and surrender. The laptop’s discrete Nvidia graphics chip has a price of $999 and offers a surprising amount of power, with above-average results. And if you’re not gaming, the laptop’s Core i7 processor is more than capable of creating spreadsheets, doing some light video editing, and, of course, watching some movies on that beautiful 1080p display.

However, if you want something with longer battery life and comparable performance, look at the $1,049 Asus ROG Zephyrus G GA502. But if you’re looking to play on a budget without sacrificing too much performance, the Lenovo Legion Y545 is a great choice.