The laptop offers a MUX, but no Advanced Optimus. This means you can opt for a Hybrid mode that enables Optimus (in the Vantage control app or in the BIOS ), which actively switches between the Vega and Nvidia chips, or disable the Hybrid mode and only keep the Nvidia dGPU active, which directly links the dGPU to the internal display and enables GSync in the settings. Switching between the two modes requires a restart. This article here goes over the AMD Ryzen 5 + RTX 3060 + FHD 165Hz configuration of the Lenovo Legion 5, and we’ll also go over a similar Legion 5 Pro variant in this article. There’s a regular 15.6-inch 16:9 matte display on the Legion 5 series, with a fair-quality FHD panel, the same we’ve already tested in the Legion Slim 7 series. Those above are rasterization-only tests, and here are some results for RTX titles. AMD Rzyen 7 5800H +

Lenovo Legion 5 Rtx 3060 - Tokopedia Lenovo Legion 5 Rtx 3060 - Tokopedia

Derek covered the 5 Pro in a previous detailed article, in the top-tier RTX 3070 configuration, and I wanted to add my own thoughts on the more affordable mid-level AMD Ryzen 7 + Nvidia RTX 3060 variant, which we’ll go over in this post. This goes for around 1400 USD in North America and about 1200 EUR here in Europe right now, but it’s in short supply in most markets. Switching over to the Balanced profile leads to the Ryzen 5 stabilizing at 45W of power. The fans spin at 43-44 dB in this case, and temperatures stabilize in the low-80s. The RTX 3060 model goes for significantly more in the US, at around 1400-1500 USD at this point. Over there, the 3050Ti configurations are aggressively priced at around 1000 USD, but that’s also for the 60Wh options. Lenovo offers options for an RX6600 dGPU in some markets, or for a QHD 165 Hz display.

Input Devices

Ok, let’s talk performance. We start by testing the CPU by running the Cinebench R15 test for 15+ times in a loop, with 1-2 seconds delay between each run. The Lenovo Legion 5 17 is a current-gen 17-inch gaming laptop and equipped with the latest AMD CPU and a powerful GPU, that manages to reach its full potential. The AMD Ryzen 5 5600H is a very good choice for this laptop and able to maintain its performance level for long periods of time. Our test model only falls behind consistently in a direct comparison with its competitors that are often equipped with eight cores and 16 threads. Despite this, the Legion 5 17 leaves an excellent impression and is almost able to keep up with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 mobile GPU in synthetic benchmarks thanks to its non-limited Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 mobile GPU. We were also pleased with the 17-inch display, which comes precalibrated ex-factory. This is something we would like to see more of. The 144-Hz refresh rate clearly designates the Lenovo for gaming. However, it is also well suited to video or photo editing thanks to its low deltaE-2000 values. Finally, I’ll mention that camera at the top of the screen. It’s HD-only and washed-out quality even in good light, but at least it’s there and can do that job when needed. This comes with an electronic shutter on the left side of the laptop, which electronically kills both the camera and the microphones, and not just covers the lens with a piece of plastic. Battery life

Lenovo Legion 5 15ITH6H Intel Core i7-11800H, 16GB Ram, 512GB Lenovo Legion 5 15ITH6H Intel Core i7-11800H, 16GB Ram, 512GB

On Quiet, the processor runs at ~25W sustained with only slightly audible fans (<32 dB) and temperatures in the 70s. The scores are roughly 70% of what the system delivers on Performance, despite the limited power. I’ll have a separate article comparing the two series at some point, but as far as the performance goes, the differences are minimal. We tested the Ryzen 5 + RTX 3060 configuration of the Legion 5 and the Ryzen 7 + RTX 3060 version of this 5 Pro, and both performed almost identically in the GPU loads and tests. That shouldn’t be a surprise, since both are the same up to 130W chip. W (~7-8 h of use) – 165Hz, 1080p fullscreen video on Youtube in Edge, Quiet Mode, screen at 60%, Wi-Fi ON;Once more, it pays to have a full-power and unlimited Ryzen processor and a full-power RTX 3060. In theory, this RTX 3060 should go up to 130W of power, but in our tests, it only averaged up to 125W and rarely surpassed that level. These are similar findings to the RTX 3060 Legion 5 model tested at the same time. The only downside is the fairly noisy fans on this configuration, which often ramp up to 50 dB on the Performance mode in the combined tests. You can always opt for the Balanced and Quiet modes if you want to, and we’ll get to that in a bit, but even those are not as quiet as I was expecting.

Lenovo Legion 5 review (RTX 3060 model) - mid-range gaming laptop

The screen is one of the main selling points of the Legion 5 Pro series over the competition in the mid-range segment. As far as the hardware goes, this series is built on a full-power AMD Ryzen Cezanne platform, with either 6Core Ryzen 5 5600H, 8Core Ryzen 7 5800H or 8Core 5900HX processors. This unit is the mid-specced Ryzen 7, which runs at around 76-80W sustained in CPU-heavy workloads on the highest power profile. This series allows full control over the RAM, storage slots, and WiFi module. There are 2x RAM slots and 2x SSD slots on the Legion 5, both on the 60 and 80 Wh configurations. Our review unit comes with 16 GB of RAM in dual-channel; the included memory is SR, but the kind with faster latencies, as shown above. The power profiles are Quiet, Balanced, and Performance, and you can select them from Vantage or switch between them with Fn+Q. Performance is only available with the laptop plugged into the wall. These profiles apply different power settings to the CPU/GPU and different fan profiles, as well as switch the color of the LED in the power button. Here’s a table that shows what each mode does: QuietFor the software, I put a clean Windows 10 install on my unit and the Lenovo Vantage app, which then took care of all the updates. There’s an 80Wh battery inside this Legion 5 Pro configuration, which is fair-sized for a mid-range laptop. Now, if 50 dB fans are too loud for you, and I can see how that can be the case in many situations, the Quiet profile is also very competitive on this laptop with the current BIOS settings. The fans average between sub 30 dBA noise levels with light use and up to 44 dB with combined taxing loads on this Quiet profile, and the performance takes a slight toll, but not a significant one, as you can tell based on these results down below. Switching over to the Balanced profile, the Ryzen 7 stabilizes at 45W of power after a few runs. The fans spin at 43-44 dB in this case, and temperatures stabilize in the low-80s. External temperatures are fine with this laptop, both with daily use and with games. It’s unusual though that the hotspots are placed just around the arrows keys and the Enter key, but the chassis never gets uncomfortable to the touch, as even those are only in the low to mid-40s Celsius. Still, I didn’t notice the same king of hotspots on Derek’s review units, so I’m not sure if this is normal or some sort of an issue with my unit. Internally, these hotspots seem to be placed over the chipset and SSD, which do not overheat based on our HWinfo logs.