LAST YEAR’S LENOVO Legion 5 Pro laptop
won many fans by packing an AMD Ryzen 5
5600H processor, RTX 3070 GPU, and 16-
inch 16:10 display into a 15-inch chassis
and a $1,600 price tag. It was released at
a time when being able to buy a desktop
3070 was near-impossible, and it marked
itself out as one of the best value gaming
laptops on the market as a result.
The 2022 version of the machine is
here, albeit in Intel form (the “5i” moniker
signifying the Intel version—an AMD
model will follow later this year). The
Legion 5i Pro is a significant step forward
from a tech perspective, with Intel’s
12th gen i7-12700H also allowing for the
inclusion of DDR5 RAM as well as a PCIe
4.0 SSD. Other improvements include a
Wi-Fi 6E card and an RTX 3070 Ti 8GB,
with a better cooling system than last
year’s model. The 16-inch, 2560x1600
G-SYNC enabled IPS display seems to be
the same as before, which is no bad thing.
The 5 Pro sits between the Legion 5
and Legion 7 models. The Pro has that
gorgeous 16-inch screen but lacks the
7’s RGB lighting around the edge (there is
four-zone RGB on the keys). That screen is
the star attraction, with the extra vertical
space allowing you to game at higher
1440 or 1600 pixel resolutions, as well as
helping content creators who need more
space for timelines or office tasks such as
word processing and spreadsheets.Great performance at a great price
Lenovo Legion 5i Pro (2022)
9
VERDICT Lenovo Legion 5i ProROMAN LEGION Fantastic
screen; ample power;
great connectivity.
ROMAN BATH Heavy; huge power brick;
only 16GB RAM.
$1,899, http://www.lenovo.comSPECIFICATIONSCPU Intel Core i7-12700H
GPU RTX 3070Ti
RAM 16GB (2x 8GB) DDR5-4800MHz
Storage 1TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD
Side I/O
1x USB 3.2 Gen 1, 1x
headphone, 2x USB-C 3.2 Gen
2 (1x Thunderbolt 4)
Rear I/O
2x USB 3.2 Gen 1 (1x always-
on), 1x USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 (inc.
power delivery), 1x HDMI 2.1,
1x RJ45, 1x DC-In
OS Windows 11 Home
Dimensions 1.05 x 14.17 x 10.4-inches
Weight 5.63lbsWhatever you’re doing on the Legion
5i Pro, though, it’s an absolute pleasure
to use. Games run brilliantly and look
spectacular on the screen, and newer
titles such as Forza Horizon 5 run at over
60fps at max settings in native resolution.
There are three power settings—
Quiet, Balanced, and Performance.
The machine is quiet, but not silent, at
the lowest setting and it gets loud in
performance mode, although not as loud
as laptops we’ve tested from Dell and HP.GETTING BETTER
There are a couple of smaller
improvements to this year’s model. The
light-up helmet logo on the lid is gone, in
favor of a much more subtle ‘Legion’ logo.
There’s an extra USB-C port for a total of
three, one of which supports Thunderbolt
(this is an Intel machine, after all). And
the wired network port on the rear has
the release latch facing up, making it
much easier to unplug.
It’s not all good, however. This is a
chunky laptop, with the body weighing
5.63lbs and the massive 300W power
brick adding another 2.33lbs to your
backpack. For that reason, we wouldn’t
recommend it to anyone looking to take it
out with them often, but if all you’re doing
is working, you can take a much smaller
USB-C charger out—you need the big
brick for gaming though. Lenovo supportsup to 135W Power Delivery, not that we
could find any such charger available,
but our 100W charger worked just fine.
Battery life overall isn’t great, though,
and you may want to disable the discreet
GPU completely if you’re not plugged into
the wall. Sadly, that requires a restart
each time, which can be annoying if you
game a lot.
Upgradeability on the machine is good,
thankfully, although we found the chassis
to be tougher to open up than last year.
We wish the machine boasted 32GB of
RAM, although with the jump to DDR5
this would, of course, add to the cost.
Thankfully, PCIe 4.0 SSDs don’t come
with quite as much of a premium, so we
added a Samsung 980 Pro 2TB drive to
the machine’s second SSD slot, to offer a
bit more storage for our game library.
If you’re looking for a great gaming
laptop that offers great bang for your
buck, then the Legion 5i Pro needs to be
on your shortlist. –GUY COCKEROur zero-point is the MSI GE76 Raider reviewed in our Holiday 2021 issue, consisting of an Intel Core i9-11980HK,
64GB DDR4-3200 RAM, Nvidia RTX 3080 16GB, and PCIe 4.0 2TB SSD. All game tests were performed at 1080p at
the highest graphical profile.GAMING LAPTOPS BENCHMARKS
ZERO-
POINT
Cinebench R15 Multi (Index) 1,415 2,741 (93.7%)
CrystalDisk Q32T1
Sequential Read (MB/s) 6,781 7,043 (3.9%)
CrystalDisk Q32T1
Sequential Write (MB/s) 4,968 3,696 ( -25.6%)
3DMark: Fire Strike (Index) 22,591 24,258 ( 7.4%)
Rise of the Tomb Raider (fps)^158 144.12 (-8.8%)
Total War: Warhammer II (fps) 122 117.4 (- 3.8% )
Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon:
Wildlands (fps)
77 79.66 ( -3.5% )
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%in the lab
82 MAXIMU MPC JUN 2022