Lenovo Legion 5 Pro 2022 Review – Best Ryzen Gaming Laptop?

The legion 5 pro was one of the best  gaming laptops last year combining the  beefy hardware with excellent design and  that QHD 16:10 screen.

so what’s it  like this year does this 2022’s legion 5  pro live up to the legacy of its  predecessor. Well to nobody’s surprise the answer is yes.
This year too they have kept  everything great about the previous  generation and improved on it.

let’s  take a look at the new legion 5 pro in  this full review.

Pricing and Specs:

Our legion 5 pro is configured with the ryzen 7 6800H cpu, RTX 3060 GPU 16 GB of DDR5 RAM and 1 TB SSD, which cost around $1500  in the us.

If you want more graphics power you can also opt for the RTX 3070 or 3070Ti versions.
Similarly if you’re not aware lenovo  also sells the legion 5i pro which is  basically the intel variant.

Also Read: Top 5 best Lenovo laptops (Mid 2022)

DESIGN:

Here lenovo has a further simplified the looks of the legion 5 Pro this time. While last year’s model featured a big glowing white logo on the lid that has been replaced with a simple  legion texture.

The keyboard color also matches the body now which adds to the flush minimal look of this device. Apart from that, it still has the top notch  build quality, the same true  strike keyboard and the same build  materials for me its build quality  leaves no room for complaints. And personally this is one of the best looking  gaming laptops out there.

Unfortunately  it still comes with the same comically  large power brick. This is a package of over  3 kgs Roughly (2.45Kg Laptop + 0.97 Kg Charger = 3.42 Kg) which is sure to take a toll on  your back if you move around with your  laptop a lot.

Anyway there is not much to  talk about the design. Because most of it  has remained the same. It is as if lenovo found the perfect formula and stuck with  it which is not bad in itself.

DISPLAY:

The display is  not that different this time either.

A 16  inch QHD screen with a smooth 165 hertz  refresh rate, 3ms response time and 500  nits of brightness. All while boosting  100 srgb colour gamut furthermore there’s also a 240 hertz option this time around the  display also comes pre-calibrated. And you can even choose between different  color profiles like srgb and Rec 709  inside the x-Rite color assistant app.

We  measured its contrast ratio at thousand seventy is to one which is slightly  lower than what we got on last year’s  model. But it leaves no room for  complaints in terms of viewing angles. And white balance in our tests we found  that this screen covers 98 srgb and 73  P3 gamut. So apart from gaming and  multimedia consumption this thing is  good enough for photo editing and  similar workloads as well.

At a 530 units brightness the legion 5  pro screen is easily visible outdoors  too. And setting it at 50 to 75 percent brightness was comfortable enough for eyes in a  well-lit room.

Like most gaming laptops  the legion 5 pro screen has an  anti-glare coating which makes it easy  to use when you have a bunch of light  sources directly reflecting onto the  display.

Besides this whether you’re  gaming or coding or reading up stuff  this 16:10 aspect ratio makes a  big difference. So all in all the legion  5 pro screen surpasses most of the  competition in this price bracket.

Keyboard and Touchpad:

Getting to the keyboard our unit has four zone rgb lighting. Whereas it is also  available with a simple white backlight, there’s also the stingray white version which looks quite elegant with its blue  backlit keys. The last gen legion five pro keyboard was not good enough. But this one has  actually grown on me so much.

We prefer the legion two-strike  keyboard over the keyboards on most  other gaming laptops. It gives off a decent tactile feel while gaming and typing the keycaps are not  wobbly. And the full sized keys are a  delight to type on you can also switch  between the lighting modes from the  lenovo vantage app or with the function + spacebar shortcut. 

But just like the last year the rgb lighting here is not the brightest even though the letters and secondary functions are uniformly lit.

Touchpad:

We were expecting lenovo to implement a glass  trackpad this time. But it is still stuck with the mylar plastic trackpad by no  means this trackpad is bad. But it simply  cannot compete with the smoothness of a  glass one.

SPEAKER:

This one have the same  speaker setup as we’ve seen before as  well between the frame and the lower  half of the laptop like the trackpad. These dual speakers are just okay for a  gaming laptop the base feels recessed  and the mids outshine everything else.

Webcam:

It’s 2022 but the webcam here  is still a 720p unit,. I found it to be  usable for attending video conferences  and this camera switch is also a welcome  feature too. But if you are a streamer  you should probably get an aftermarket  webcam for much better quality.

Performance:

Talk about the most important  aspect of a gaming laptop, the  performance. This year you can pick up  the legion 5 pro configured with an amd  ryzen 6600H or ryzen 7 6800H.

Lenovo has discontinued the usage of RTX 3050 here and the GPU options you have  now include RTX 3060, RTX 3070 and 3070Ti and  as mentioned earlier. We have ryzen 7 6800H with 140 watt RTX 3060 combo  which we think is the most value for  money.

How different is Ryzen 6000 Series from Intel’s 12^th gen Proessor?

We performed some benchmarks and it seems that the 12 gen  is still a leader as far as raw  performance is concerned the asus tuff f15 with core i7 12700H CPU, pretty much dominated  the ryzen 7 6800H on basically every  test it is ahead by 10 to 15 on  cinebench r23.

And we can notice similar  results on other benchmarks like 7zip  va5 corona and puket bench as well as  for the actual gaming experience playing  CS:GO at very high settings the legion 5  pro managed 318 fps on average with a 1  low of 100 fps strangely enough this is  higher than the tuf f15 with intel 12  gen.

Likewise the legion 5 pro easily  sailed through gta 5 and borderlands 3  at high preset with over 100 fps on  average, hitman 3 on the other hand yielded an  average of 66 fps and similar to the  tuf f-15.

In our tests we did not find any notable  improvement when dropping the settings  to media playing control on ultra with  ray tracing set to high was a decent  experience with the fps averaging at 56  or 69 fps on medium settings  on the other hand cyberpunk 2077 is  basically unplayable with just 33fps on  average on ultra settings without dlss  but you can get much better gameplay at  medium settings instead and when turning  off retracing completely the legion 5  pro averages at an impressive 102 fps.

Thermals:

That brings us to the cooling side  of Lenovo legion 5 pro, compared to its predecessor  lenovo has significantly upgraded the  cooling system this time with what it  calls cold front 4.0 it also claims that  the fans are now 140 percent more  powerful while the blades are 40 thinner, it also has a dedicated copper block  to further cool the CPU.

The  thermals here do live up to lenovo  slaves even after multiple sessions of  gaming putting my hands on the keyboard  deck did not feel uneasy at all.
We recorded a temperature of 45 to 46  degrees Celsius when playing cyberpunk  2077 on medium where the heat was mostly  localized to the area between the enter  and the power bottoms as for the fans  you will hear them only when the laptop  goes through some CPU and GPU intensive workload.

Most of the time we were using this laptop in performance  mode.

lenovo has added here the  color coded notification light on the  power button so i can immediately tell  if the laptop is running on performance  balance or quiet mode.

Battery and Charging:

In terms of  battery this year’s Lenovo legion 5 pro has the same 80 watt cell as its predecessor but  despite this we were getting like one or  two hours of additional screen on time in general usage.

It lasted  four to six hours on average under regular usage you can get much more than six hours of screen on time by switching  to the iGPU only mode and limiting the  refresh rate to just 60 hertz.

However  this does come with a significant  performance drop so i’d only use it when  there is a power cut or something.

Charging:

For charging this big 300 watt charger can  take the legion 5 pro from 0 to 100 in  about 2 hours there’s also rapid charge  support in case you’re in a hurry and  quickly need some juice before you head  it out.

Conclusion:

Okay let’s get to the conclusion of the Lenovo legion 5 pro review,
It’s no surprise that the 2022 edition  of the legion 5 pro gets a big seal of  approval from me granted its AMD CPU is  not as powerful as intel’s 12 gen  processors but the gains in terms of  battery life and thermals is hard to  overlook additionally it also has an incredible display  and a solid build quality which makes it  an easy recommendation.

If you’re looking for a reliable  gaming laptop in the sub $1500 price  range getting this year’s legion 5 pro  won’t disappoint you a bit.