Computer Shopper - UK (2020-03)

ISSUE385|COMPUTER SHOPPER|MARCH2020 27

COMPETITIONISFIERCEin thegaming
laptop arena.The Legion Y740 is a15ingammming
contender trying to bringplenty of power to
bear withoutbeingback-breakingly heavy.
Lenovo hasrefrained from an emphasissson
the sharpangles andred accents synonymmmous
with manygaminglaptops, instead opting fora
tasteful grey finish.Thisclassydesign exteeends
to its materials,withamixofaluminiumannnd
hard plasticgiving it apremium feel. It’s noootas
slickasaRazerBlade (Shopper380)but,aaaside
foralittle flex in the lid, it’s asolid, refined buiiilllddd.
Although it measures 361x267x20mm and
weighs 2.2kg, theLegion Y740isstill pretty
easy to carryaroundifyou pop it in adecent
backpack; just be prepared to carryaround its
reasonably chunkypower supplytoo.
Having most of the ports at the rear –one
mini-DisplayPort, HDMI and Ethernet port
apiece, plus two USB3.1ports –allows fora
clean setup if you’re connecting the Legion
Y740 to an external monitor andperipherals.
There’s also aUSB3.1 port on the right side,
with aUSB Type-CThunderbolt 3port and
3.5mmaudio jack on the left.
Rounding off the design is apairofDolby
Atmos speakers on the base.These arewell
balancedfor downwards-firing speakers, but
can’t compete with the top-mounted speakers
of the Razer Blade15.

BITONTHE SIDE
The Legion’s fullRGB-lit keyboardhas more
than ahint of Lenovo’s ThinkPad, with
squarekeysthat areeversoslightlyrounded.
ThinkPad keyboards are always lovely to type
on,and the same applies here.Itoffers a
tactile and accurate typingexperience, even
when hammering thekeys.
That said, the underlying switches can feel
atad mushywhenplayingaction-orientated
games. Aset of macro keys,placed on theleft
of the keyboard, could be of great useto
strategy andmultiplayer fans, although their
positioning mighttake some getting used to.
We repeatedly hit them by accident when
aiming forthe Shift or Escape keeeeys.

LENOVO LegionY740

★★★★★

£2,000•Fromwww.lenovvvo.com

WINDOWS10 GAMINGLAPTOP

The1,920x1,080displayrightly

goes forspeed over maximising

resolution. It’s stillsharp enough, andthe

111444444 HHHzrefffreshhhrattteallllllowsfffor smoottthhher-

looking gameplay, especially in conjunction

with G-Sync preventingtearing.

The screen performs well,bothingames

andmore generally.Withacontrast ratio

of 1,208:1 andamaximum brightness of

440cd/m^2 ,there’s nothing stoppingthe

Legion Y740fromdelivering vividcolours in

games andmovies. Speaking of colours, the

panel covers90.1% of thesRGB gamutand

manages an average delta-E result of 1.93,

both of which are enoughfor gaming.

MAXPOWER

Aneatdesign andslick screenare allwelland

good,but agaminglaptopisnothingwithout

capable innards. Withahexa-coreIntel Core

i7-9750H topping out at 4.5GHz, 16GB of RAM

andaGeForce 2070 Max-Q with 8GB of video

memory,the Legion Y740has thesilicon to run

prettymuch anymodern game thrown at it.

With theHighpreset and SSAAoff, Metro:

Last Light Redux produced 162fps –more than

high enoughtofill out the 144Hz refresh rate

–and even in theSteamVR Performance Test,

Lenovo’s laptop scored 10.9.That’s only0.1 off

aperfect score, so you’llhavenoproblem

running VR games at high settings.The CPU is

great forproductivity tasks, too: it propelled

the Legion Y740toanoverall score of 196in

our own4Kbenchmarks.

As the Legion Y740 has aGeForce RTX

series graphics card, it cantap intothe same

ray-tracing and deep learning supersampling

(DLSS) abilities of thedesktop RTX2070.

Ray-tracinnngdelivers more realistic real-time

lighting effectsingames, while DLSS

uses machine learning to apply

jjjagged-edge smoothing on supported

titleeeswithout thesame performance

impact as conventional anti-aliasing.

In thhhhe gameControl,whichimplements

these technologies better than any

othertitle,the Legion Y740 ran

with all settingsturned up,DLSS

tttaking care of anti-aliasing and

y-tracingset to high,

all at playable framerates,

though not quite60fps.

AAAlllllliiinallllll,ttthhheLLLegiiionYYY 777444000 dddellliiivers superbbb

performancefor its size.Thanks to the Legion

Cold Front cooling system with four vents,

dedicated cooling forthe processor and

graphics card, as wellasaventand aheatsink

forthe keyboard, the laptop never getstoo

hot, andisalotcooler to the touch compared

to other gaming laptops. Fannoiseis

noticeable, but notobnoxiously so.

Storage comprisesa256GBSSD,witha

1TBhard disk providingextracapacity.It’s a

quickSSD too, achieving sequential read

speedsof2,526MB/sand writespeeds of

854MB/sinthe AS SSDbenchmark.

OVERTOOSOON

Batterylifeisthe only real weaklinkhere, with

theLegion Y740 lasting just 3h 10m in our

videoplayback test.Poor battery life is par

forthe coursewith gaming laptops, so this

lack of endurance isn’tsurprising.

At £2,000, the Legion Y740 is farfroma

cheap machine,but the fantastic gaming

performanceand tasteful designgoalong

waytowards justifying the price.With limited

battery life andoddly placed macrokeys, it’s

notflawless, but learntolive withthese

imperfections andit’s one of thebest gaming

laptopsavailable forthe money.

RolandMoore-Colyer

VERDICT

Clever design, excellent cooling and apowwwerful
spec make the Legion Y740 atop gaming laptop

SPECIFICATIONS

Windowsoverall

Multitasking

Battery life

0% -50 Reference + 50 + 100

See page 98 forperformancedetails

PROCESSORHexa-core2.6GHzIntel Core i7-9750H•RAM

16GB•DIMENSIONS361x267x20mm•WEIGHT2.2kg•

SCREEN SIZE15.6in•SCREEN RESOLUTION1,920x1,080•

GRAPHICSADAPTOR8GBNvidia GeForceRTX 2070 Max-Q

• TOTAL STORAGE256GBSSD,1TB hard disk•OPERATING
  SYSTEMWindows 10 Home•WARRANTYOneyearRTB•
  DETAILSwww.lenovo.com•PART CODE81UH000KUK

3h 10m

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