Lenovo Legion 5i Professional Gen 7 Specs
Worth: $1,499 (beginning), $1,860 (as examined)
CPU: Intel Core i7-12700H
GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti
RAM: 16GB DDR5
Storage: 512GB PCIe Gen 4 M.2 SSD
Show: 16-inch, 1440p, 165Hz, IPS
Battery: 7:30
Dimension: 14.1 x 10.4 x 1 inches
Weight: 5.5 kilos
The Lenovo Legion 5i Professional illustrates that 2022 has been a terrific 12 months for gaming laptops. This 12 months, we’ve seen beastly rigs push the envelope with pure, unadulterated energy whereas others disrupted the entire trade with fascinating new type elements.
Then there’s the third class: actually good gaming laptops which have been born via years of iterative improvement. That’s the class the Lenovo Legion 5i Professional falls into with its supreme thermal efficiency, great-to-use keyboard and touchpad, and its refined visible design.
I wrote about why you must simply get a gaming laptop computer now and ignore the RTX 40 Sequence, as a result of likelihood is you’ll see a little bit of a worth premium added to them. Does the Legion 5i Professional show me proper? As you’ll be able to see by that rating, the reply is sort of the resounding “sure.”
Lenovo Legion 5i Professional worth and configurations
The Lenovo Legion 5i Professional begins at $1,499 (opens in new tab). I’d say the retail worth is listed as $1,789, however I wouldn’t imagine that quantity for a second. From previous expertise, we’ve seen Lenovo up its on-site costs considerably to make the precise price seem like a deal.
Inflated pricing is an entire different rant for one more day, however to show my level, a configuration with the identical specs is on Amazon (opens in new tab) for a similar worth — with no indication of a reduction. So, simply ignore the unique pricing printed on the Legion 5i Professional’s web page. As of this writing, its present price ticket is the laptop computer’s true valuation.
To match the specs we obtained in each of our laptops:
- Intel Core i7-12700H processor, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti GPU, 16GB DDR5 RAM, 512GB SSD: $1,860
- Identical as above, however with 32GB DDR5 RAM, and a 1TB SSD: $2,050
This places it squarely in the identical territory because the likes of the Asus ROG Zephyrus G15 ($2,000) and extra highly effective variations of the MSI Vector GP76 ($2,699).
Lenovo Legion 5i Professional design
In a tidal wave of tremendous masculine-looking gaming laptops, the Lenovo Legion 5i Professional (and 5 Professional) is a smooth system that you wouldn’t be embarrassed to whip out in public. That’s fairly the achievement, given the large 16-inch show this factor is packing.
The exterior shell is adorned with refined, polished stylings, from its metallic-gray lid to the premium plastic underside and rear chin.
The RGB is stored tastefully minimal so it doesn’t seem like you’re internet hosting a rave get together in your deck. Plus, the scale are tight and the load is respectable at 14.1 x 10.4 x 1 inches and 5.5 kilos.
It is a svelte system that, fairly frankly, embarrasses the Vector GP76 (15.6 x 11.2 x 1 inches, 6.4 kilos), however doesn’t fairly match the svelte nature of the ROG Zephyrus G15 (14 x 9.6 x 0.8 inches, 4.8 kilos). This apart, it’s abundantly clear that you just’re getting one thing good right here.
Lenovo Legion 5i Professional ports
The 5i Professional packs an honest choice of ports for all of your gaming and productiveness wants; it even packs some on the again to maintain the perimeters cable-free.
Beginning on the rear, you’ve obtained two USB-A 3.2 Gen 1, one USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 with DisplayPort 1.4 help and energy supply, HDMI, Ethernet and a proprietary energy port.
On the correct, there’s one other USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 port, an E-shutter swap, and an audio combo jack. And at last, the left aspect packs Thunderbolt 4 port and USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 ports.
If you happen to do want extra I/O choices, take a look at our greatest laptop computer docking stations and greatest USB Sort-C hubs pages. However for almost all of you, this choice ought to be sufficient.
Lenovo Legion 5i Professional show
Sticking true to the earlier technology of Legion 5 Professional, you’re getting a 16-inch IPS panel with QHD decision and an 165Hz refresh price, and put merely, it’s fairly the looker.
In our testing, the 5i Professional blows previous the premium gaming laptop computer common brightness with a powerful 473.8 nits, which destroys the ROG Zephyrus G15 (325 nits) and the MSI Vector GP76 (316 nits).
Once you hear “IPS,” it’s good tech to make use of for top refresh charges, however the vividness of coloration is often a bit of missing. Nevertheless, Lenovo has proved us unsuitable in our colorimeter check, reproducing 80% of the DCI-P3 coloration gamut. That pips the ROG Zephyrus G15 to the put up (79.9%), however falters barely to the GP76 (82.3%).
The tip result’s a vibrant, vivid image that turns net slinging via New York in Marvel’s Spider-Man right into a flash flood of coloration. And on high of that, the deep distinction facilitates each terrifying darkish scene of Alien Isolation with an immersive HDR high quality that makes hiding from the xenomorph all of the extra spine-tingling.
The first rate accuracy of the show makes this a terrific workhorse, too, throughout any and all artistic professional duties, with the responsive contact interactions supplying you with direct interplay along with your work. It’s a magnificence, it doesn’t matter what you throw at it, which you merely can’t take your eyes off of for one second.
Lenovo Legion 5i Professional keyboard and touchpad
Lenovo is well-known for delivering a robust typing and clicking expertise in a variety of its laptops, and the Legion 5i Professional is not any totally different — it’s a stable set of keys with a tactile really feel, which welcomes your fingers with each faucet, together with a cushty plastic base that makes yourwrists really feel proper at dwelling.
I typed 84 phrases per minute on the 10FastFingers.com typing check, which trumps my 80-wpm common. The quiet switches have that good snap that you just wish to really feel on a Chiclet-style keyboard and the RGB backlighting illuminates every key clearly for nighttime gameplay. It’s value noting that whereas the RGB is all rainbow by default, you’ll be able to customise it to be less complicated.
Going additional south, the 4.7 x 2.9-inch touchpad feels beneficiant in measurement, which makes for lengthy, superb gliding strikes and sleek Home windows 11 multi-touch gestures, adopted up with a satisfyingly snappy click on.
Lenovo Legion 5i Professional audio
The speaker system within the Lenovo Legion 5i Professional is straightforward: a twin 2W stereo setup with Nahimic Audio. And whereas the top result’s fairly tinny, the readability in any respect volumes is surprisingly good.
4 Yr Robust’s “Get Out of My Head” blasted the audio system at full quantity with out a single trace of distortion whereas preserving the main points of the crunchy guitars and hovering vocals. It’s value noting that I examined this throughout all of the totally different tuning choices, together with gaming, voice, music, and film. Curiously, whereas the variations are clear on different laptops, you’d be onerous pushed to listen to any tweaks to the tuning right here — bar a bit of further treble within the voice mode.
This interprets nicely into gaming, too, with the Forza Horizon 5 automobiles, combined with the drum and bass of Hospital radio, being properly balanced in any respect volumes.
And whereas that is extra about that is extra about efficiency than audio, it’s value noting that the fan sound is nowhere close to as loud as I feared for a system this highly effective — however we’ll go into thermal administration later.
In fact, for one of the best audio expertise, take a look at our listing of greatest gaming headsets.
Lenovo Legion 5i Professional gaming, graphics and VR
Let’s get into the good things. The Lenovo Legion 5i Professional we used for lab testing comes with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti GPU with 8GB of GDDR6 video reminiscence. Whereas the one I personally used double the RAM and the interior storage, the variations in benchmarking had been just about non-existent, so we’ll follow what now we have, which is a reasonably rattling performant powerhouse.
| 3DMark Benchmark | Lenovo Legion 5 Professional | Asus ROG Zephyrus G15 | MSI Vector GP76 | Premium common |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fireplace Strike | 25482 | 20867 | 26787 | 20,867 |
| Time Spy | 12152 | 8966 | 12054 | 11,733 |
| Fireplace Strike Extremely | 8805 | 6064 | 7679 | 6,531 |
| Time Spy Excessive | 5903 | 4380 | 5805 | 4,778 |
| Port Royal | 7348 | 5623 | 7212 | 5,855 |
Out of the field on default settings, the Legion 5i Professional greater than holds its personal towards its rivals whereas blasting previous the premium gaming laptop computer averages. The MSI Vector GP76 does come shut in some areas, and really beat it in 3DMark Fireplace Strike, however with scores this excessive, the distinction shall be negligible when making an allowance for the pure efficiency potential.
However these numbers don’t inform the complete story, which is a straightforward one: this method greater than retains up with increased settings of one of the best AAA titles on the market.
| Sport benchmark (1080p) | Lenovo Legion 5 Professional | Asus ROG Zephyrus G15 | MSI Vector GP76 | Premium common |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Assasin’s Creed Valhalla | 89 FPS | 73 FPS | 86 FPS | 78.9 FPS |
| Borderlands 3 | 98 FPS | 68 FPS | 92 FPS | 86 FPS |
| DiRT 5 | 98.9 FPS | 67 FPS | 100.3 FPS | 87 FPS |
| Purple Useless Redemption 2 | 81.4 FPS | 54.6 FPS | 78.3 FPS | 67 FPS |
| Shadow of the Tomb Raider | 110 FPS | 82 FPS | 103.3 FPS | 92 FPS |
As soon as once more, there may be one sport (DiRT 5) the place the GP76 beats the 5i Professional, however for the rest, Lenovo pulls out a pleasant lead and destroys the common scores we see for a gaming laptop computer of this class.
One check not accomplished within the lab (however achieved on my own) is Cyberpunk 2077 on excessive settings with ray tracing set to medium and no DLSS activated. At QHD decision, I comfortably hit a frames per second common, which simply goes to indicate this method isn’t enjoying round.
Now, it’s time to fiddle round with the interior modes, together with a efficiency one which ups the wattage going into the CPU and GPU. Surprisingly, it made little to no distinction.
| Benchmarks | Customary mode | Efficiency mode |
|---|---|---|
| 3DMark Fireplace Strike Extremely | 7805 | 7685 |
| 3DMark Time Spy Excessive | 5903 | 5819 |
| 3DMark Port Royal | 7348 | 7342 |
| DiRT 5 (1080p) | 98.9 FPS | 97.9 FPS |
| DiRT 5 (1600p) | 74.87 FPS | 75.6 FPS |
| Grand Theft Auto V (1080p) | 131.2 FPS | 132.7 FPS |
| Grand Theft Auto V (1600p) | 78.2 FPS | 79.5 FPS |
| Purple Useless Redemption 2 (1080p) | 81.4 FPS | 81.2 FPS |
| Purple Useless Redemption (1600p) | 53.3 FPS | 53.3 FPS |
However that is actually not one thing to be disheartened about. In truth, it’s one thing that I’d rely as a stable win for shopper accessibility. Due to the Nvidia’s Superior Optimus, a MUX switch-esque auto switcher between the iGPU and dGPU via software program, you may get unbelievable efficiency with out lifting a finger.
In fact, there are overclocking choices for individuals who are courageous sufficient to fiddle with them, however for downright attractive gameplay, that’s not mandatory.
Lenovo Legion 5i Professional efficiency
Outdoors of graphics efficiency, the 5i Professional we examined homes that twelfth Gen Intel Core i7 processor, 16GB of DDR5 RAM and a 512GB PCIe Gen 4 SSD. Whereas the system is sweet for gaming for certain, the good thing about a laptop computer like that is its capability to do every part. It may be a unbelievable beast for artistic productiveness, as long as it’s optimized proper, and Lenovo knocked it out the park.
| Efficiency benchmark | Lenovo Legion 5 Professional | Asus ROG Zephyrus G15 | MSI Vector GP76 | Premium common |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Geekbench 5.4 multicore | 13008 | 10017 | 12434 | 8222 |
| Handbrake (transcoding 4K footage to 1080p) | 04:29 | 06:07 | 04:40 | 05:38 |
| SSD velocity check | 925.5 MBps | 1170.2 MBps | 719 MBps | 1338.6 MBps |
Within the majority of our testing, the Legion 5i Professional completely shined with a stellar Geekbench 5.4 CPU rating that’s nicely above the premium common and a stellar Handbrake time. In truth, it managed to beat the twelfth Gen Intel Core i9 of the MSI Vector GP76 on this discipline.
However then, there’s the SSD velocity check, which sees it fall fairly a bit behind the premium common and certainly one of its major rivals. Whereas this velocity actually doesn’t make this a slouch, it does imply that loading occasions shall be a bit of longer, and any kind of massive file masses corresponding to Premiere Professional video timelines shall be just a few seconds slower.
As an entire, although, this gained’t allow you to down while you want that further horsepower for prosumer wants.
Lenovo Legion 5i Professional battery life
Not like many massive display laptops, the Legion 5i Professional’s battery life is fairly good. In our testing, it managed to hit seven hours and half-hour in our non-gaming Battery Informant testing. Although it’s not as energy environment friendly because the ROG Zephyrus G15 (8:48), it utterly annihilated the GP76 (2:44) and the premium gaming laptop computer common within the course of (5:38).
In fact, you’ll be able to run this factor down quick whereas gaming, as is confirmed by the 1:20 PCMark 10 end result, however given that’s 16 minutes longer than the AMD Ryzen 6000-powered Zephyrus G15, Intel is beginning to present up with some actual stamina potential.
Lenovo Legion 5i Professional webcam
The 720p webcam is a potato, and to make issues worse, it’s not outfitted with an IR sensor for fast Home windows Good day logins along with your visage. With none biometrics, your login course of from startup is longer than it must be.
With a mushy high quality that makes me seem like a blurry mess, and an awesome fuzziness when positioned underneath tough lighting circumstances, it’s not a reasonably image — actually. I like to recommend testing our greatest webcams web page for a digital camera you gained’t be embarrassed to make use of for the likes of informal streaming.
Lenovo Legion 5i Professional warmth
Inside, you’ll discover a fairly spectacular Legion Coldfront 4.0 thermal system, that includes 5 warmth pipes, a devoted CPU copper warmth switch block, and a fan that’s 140% extra highly effective with 40% thinner blades for higher warmth dissipation.The tip result’s a system that may (nearly) maintain its cool underneath the sustained stress of gaming.
After quarter-hour, the underside clocked in at 97.5 levels Fahrenheit, the middle of the keyboard hit 95.5 levels and the touchpad remained at a decrease temperature 73.5 levels. For many who are curious, the most well liked half could be discovered close to the hinge on the underside — measuring 114.5 levels.
For comparability, right here’s one other desk (since I do know you all love your numbers):
| Temperature Benchmark | Lenovo Legion 5 Professional | Asus ROG Zephyrus G15 | MSI Vector GP76 | Premium common |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Touchpad | 73.5 levels | 77.9 levels | 105 levels | 81.5 levels |
| G/H | 95.5 levels | 121.5 levels | 117 levels | 93.8 levels |
| Underside | 97.5 levels | 146.1 levels | 123.5 levels | 104.5 levels |
| Hottest | 114.5 levels | 160 levels | 144.5 levels | n/a |
Whereas there are some areas (such because the keyboard) the place the Legion 5i Professional creeps above the temperature of the premium gaming laptop computer common, the truth is this method has some wonderful thermal administration talents.
Lenovo Legion 5i Professional software program and guarantee
Very similar to different Lenovo laptops, the Home windows set up is fairly lean with no bloatware. The one essential app that’s included with the Legion 5i Professional is Lenovo Vantage. This app consists of efficiency modes, fan modes, element monitoring, general system settings, and {hardware} scan and troubleshooting options.
The Legion 5i Professional comes with a one-year restricted guarantee. See how Lenovo carried out on our Tech Assist Showdown and Greatest and Worst Manufacturers rating.
Backside line
2022 has been a unbelievable 12 months for gaming laptops, and the Lenovo Legion 5i Professional is up there as the most effective. For its worth, you’re getting a power-packed system in a smooth chassis with first rate battery life, wonderful thermal efficiency and loads of ports for all of your gaming wants.
That’s to not say it’s good: the webcam is fairly pants (although we’ve come to count on that from gaming laptops), there are not any biometric safety choices, and the SSD is a bit of slower than its competitors.
However whereas others introduced fascinating improvements to the desk, such because the convertible nature of the Asus ROG Stream X16, Lenovo caught to its weapons and simply gave us a rattling good gaming laptop computer.
