Lenovo Legion 5i 2022 Review

The design is almost the same as the Lenovo Legion 5i Pro, and while that one with its white exterior could charm an octogenarian, the Legion 5i gets a rather boring gray exterior. While some might go as far as to call it churlish, it’s fair to say we’re positively enamored with the Legion 5i’s understated cool. 

The anodised aluminum lid with its polycarb body is sturdier than an aged monk’s morals and you could actually use it as a weapon should you wish to do considerable damage. The hinges are some of the sturdiest we’ve come across, and the display goes all the way to 180-degrees. Overall, it feels premium and well worth its asking price.

You get two options to choose from with the Legion 5i, there's a simple 15.6in FullHD IPS display that goes upto 165Hz with 300nits of brightness or for just Rs. 500 more (yes, you read that right) you could upgrade to a WQHD (2560 x 1440) option. It would be easy to just mandate the latter, but we love the fact that Lenovo has given the choice to the user. 

Our review unit had the WQHD option and it is great. It’s not going to make your eyes pop out in disbelief at how good it is or anything, but what you need is covered pretty well here. It covers 100% of the sRGB spectrum and looks quite balanced. The saturation is great and the tones are judged well. We played an old favorite - the Witcher 3 and loved the scenery and Geralt’s armor that helped bring out tones of brown leather with silver embellishments. The inferno while casting the Igni sign also looks good, although we’ve seen better. 

For those of you who are going to use the Legion 5i for work, there’s an anti-glare coating slapped on to the display too, to help you see better if you are seated at an outdoor cafe.

You get a full keyboard layout here, just like the other models in the series and 4-zone RGB lighting is an optional extra for Rs. 2000 (worth it). The keyboard has great travel, which we’ve raved about in the past and the matte application on it also makes sure there’s no smudges that show up. It’s great to use for gaming as well as typing and the number pad, albeit a bit slimmed down, is very usable, especially while playing games like Arma 3 where macros and almost every key counts!

The trackpad is standard size and there’s very little for us to nit pick here. It functions extremely well, obeys all finger swipes and just does exactly what it is supposed to do. The clicks are beautifully judged too - not too hard, not too soft - and the tactile feel of it is great.

The 12th gen Core i7 12700H is beautifully implied here, although in the performance modes and extremely heavy loads, GPU temperatures reach a crisp 80 degrees and it all sounds like a cacophonous crescendo as the temps rise. The upside is that you get lightning quick responses and getting any work done is childsplay. 

With a score of over 21,000 on the 3D Mark Firestrike bench, our review unit with the RTX 3060 fared quite well. Real world performance was nod-worthy too, with Witcher 3 returning a cool 90+fps, Metro Exodus running at 45+ fps and Battlefield V with a constant 100+ fps. These are figures in performance mode, and if you switch to balance mode, expect about a 8% decrease overall, however with much lower temps and noise levels.

It seems that the Lenovo Legion 5i is a well rounded product. But before you ‘Add to cart’ you must know that the damn thing weighs a cool 2.4Kgs and 1.5Kgs more for the charger and cables! That’s a heavy load to carry around and we absolutely hated it since our precious backs are used to working-class ultrabooks. 

However, if you have a strong back, there’s a few other things we like about it - the port positioning at the back that lends it a clean look is absolutely amazing! The audio is surprisingly well balanced and seems to come from something larger than a laptop, which is great to keep you immersed. Lastly, Lenovo is known for some great sales, so if you get this one at a steal, it is value for money…