The Lenovo Legion 5i is one of the most affordable laptops on the gaming market, and has been designed to withstand years of use at almost the highest level, thanks to its components.
Lenovo is one of the leading companies in the computer and laptop market, with major brands for all consumers, such as LOQ or Legion for the most avid video game fans.
With the new Lenovo Legion 5i, the brand is looking to reach the most demanding consumers of video games, but who are also looking for an everyday laptop, at an almost irresistible price for this market.
I have been testing the Lenovo Legion 5i for several weeks as my personal laptop and it has already become one of my favorites of the year.
The Lenovo Legion 5i brings together in its design the best of a gaming laptop and an office laptop.
This Lenovo Legion is a perfect match in terms of design, as it has not only been designed for playing demanding video games, but also for use as a laptop for work or studies.
Thus, its measurements are not excessive for transportation, although its weight could be somewhat annoying if you carry it on your back for a long time, as it exceeds 2.5 kilograms. It is not the heaviest, but you will notice it in your backpack or briefcase.
Be that as it may, I think it combines the best of an office laptop with the best of a gaming laptop, because it integrates the lighting and the keyboard into a not-too-high device, as well as incorporating physical ports for almost everything.
In this sense, it comes with outstanding connectivity, with everything you need so you don’t have to buy an additional adapter.
To highlight one that is essential so that cooperative games do not have lag or something similar, there is an Ethernet LAN RJ-45, but also an HDMI 2.1 in case you prefer to take advantage of the power of this laptop on a larger screen.
Although I can assure you that, with this panel, you won’t need to connect any external screen.
Its screen and sound are on a par with what you might see in high-end laptops
The Lenovo Legion 5i opts to include a 16-inch WQXGA panel, with a resolution of 2,560 x 1,600 pixels, which is common on Apple’s MacBook Airs.
Although I have personally become quite accustomed to OLED panels, I think it makes perfect sense that Lenovo has opted for this type of screen, as it generally lasts longer than OLED.
And in this laptop everything seems to focus on durability, not only in terms of design, but also in its components.
Beyond the type of screen, you can configure the different colors, to which it adds a maximum brightness with which I have never had any problem, even working with its screen under direct sunlight. Here, without a doubt, the OLED option would have hurt the brightness.
As for the sound, I found it more than remarkable, both when listening to music at full volume and when playing video games. In addition, it allows the option of inserting headphones, so in this sense you can choose the sound option that best suits you.
The Lenovo Legion 5i has more than enough power and only takes half an hour to charge
As for the processor chosen for the inside, it is Intel’s Raptor Lake series, specifically an Intel Core i7-14650HX, accompanied by 32 gigabytes of RAM, the most common capacity for gaming computers.
Thus, it is almost on a par with other large laptops such as the Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 from 2024, this one with an Intel Core Ultra 9 185H, also one of the company’s newest.
In the static tests, the Lenovo laptop comes very close, just barely, to the scores of other powerful beasts. In addition, it offers spectacular graphics performance, thanks to the NVIDIA RTX 4060, which will last for many years at a good level.
In short, the Lenovo Legion 5i performs outstandingly when launching demanding video games, not at the graphic level of the RTX 4090, as is logical, but with a performance that is more than remarkable in any graphic editing task – also with ray tracing in games.
On a very positive note, during day-to-day use I have not noticed any overheating at all, unlike what I have seen in other devices with more powerful graphics.
In addition, its battery can last several hours without any problem, although its greatest strength is the fast charging it allows: in just half an hour you will have the laptop at 100%, a spectacular value.
With Legion Arena you’ll have all your games in one place, although I wasn’t too keen on the Copilot key
Beyond its impeccable performance, it also comes with Lenovo Vantage, the company’s own application for getting the most out of your laptop.
With it, you can edit values such as the screen, the status of components or necessary system updates.
I have been using a Lenovo laptop as my personal laptop for several years now, so I am more than used to the tool, although I have missed a basic tutorial with all the functionalities it allows, as it seems to have more than enough of these.
On the other hand, it also has the Legion Arena application, which is specific to this Lenovo brand, and which allows you to access your entire game library from the same place.
At least, the ones from stores like Epic Games, Steam, Xbox and Battle.net, the profiles you can connect. Although I have missed others like GOG or EA Play, I think it is a good tool to avoid having to search for which store the game you want to launch belongs to.
Finally, it also adds the access key to Copilot for Windows. Honestly, I’ve practically forgotten it was there, because it doesn’t offer much more than what you can see on the operating system’s start button. Microsoft still has a lot of room for improvement here.
Conclusion: is the Lenovo Legion 5i worth buying?
The Lenovo Legion 5i is one of the most surprising laptops I’ve tested this year, and it has become my favorite if you’re looking for good value for money.
The price of this laptop is considerably lower than other options for video games, as it can be had for 1,765 euros in the Lenovo store.
Its affordable price for this market is matched by its durability, due to an outstanding design, software that won’t let you down and an RTX graphics card together with a processor that promises to last for years.
