At its core, the Lenovo Legion 5 is a gaming laptop but it makes an attractive proposition for a broader audience, without breaking the bank. The words “inexpensive” and “gaming” don’t go hand in hand in the laptop world but that’s where Legion 5 comes in. We are in a phase when laptops are flooding the market with new GPU promises but most perform just about better than a model that came a year (or two) ago. Legion 5 gives you enough reasons to upgrade in case you have been gazing at options online.

Let’s talk about non-gamers

It’s strange to begin with the non-gaming audience because Legion 5 takes care of most gaming needs. There is a minimalistic design which works well for work and for late night gaming sessions, in other words you can take it to office without raising eyebrows. But remember, at 2.3kg, Legion 5 is not a light device.

It’s a very good 120Hz FHD IPS display that greets you, with good colour accuracy, colour range and decent brightness. The webcam is at the top with a manual slider-cover to ensure privacy. What I want to turn your attention to is the keyboard, with 1.5mm key travel. Typing for long hours is an absolute pleasure as the keys are well spread out. The arrow keys are big, making work easy. And the trackpad has zero flex. There is a pleasant rumble when you type away and even after heavy usage, none of the alphabets printed on the keys disappear.

The only quibble I have is with the palm rest, which has a matte finish, making movements slightly uncomfortable during gaming (in case an external mouse is not attached). That doesn’t mean the material is not durable; not once during usage we found the palm rest becoming gummy or sticky. The keyboard backlighting is perfect and so is the placement of the power key, which is just below the screen and you just can’t miss it.

The keys are well spaced out and typing is a pleasant affair on the Lenovo Legion 5

Ahead of the game

On that note, we slip into gaming mode. The power button also has an indicator, showing the mode the laptop is on — silent, power and auto; it can changed with the shortcut Fn+Q . Second, this is running on AMD Ryzen 5 4600H (six cores, 12 threads) with NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 4GB GDDR6. It is an efficient processor, especially when it comes to energy saving, and the review unit had 8GB RAM.

The games we decided to give a shot are Rise of the Tomb Raider, Dirt 5 and Sniper Fury, all worked without any throttling. Even when the fans came on it was barely audible while the Legion Coldfront 2.0 system dissipates heat efficiently.

There are enough vents around laptop to dissipate heat while most of the I/O ports are at the back, which is a clever design. If most of the ports were on the right side, moving the external mouse around while gaming could have been an issue. And the audio — delivered by Harman Kardon — is power packed; there is Dolby Atmos headphone support. You can experience surround sound in three-dimensional space with audio you’ll hear coming from any direction with profound clarity, immersing you in the gaming environment.

In way of battery life, heavy usage will allow around three hours of battery life, which is good for a gaming laptop, otherwise, you can easily get around six hours out of it (with some streaming, typing and light gaming). In way of ports, there are four USB 3.1 Gen 1, one USB 3.1 type-C Gen 1, headphone/mic combo jack, HDMI 2.0 and Ethernet (RJ-45)

Should you buy it?

Agree that the 720p HD webcam is passable but what Legion 5 offers is value for money. It’s difficult to spot a laptop that can handle gaming efficiently and go beyond it, helping users with productivity work. It’s in a way a package deal — a gaming laptop with no big compromises and enough I/O ports to take care of all your needs. For those who work with heavy photo or video files, shifting large files to and from this machine is a speedy affair and I could easily manage to go ahead with my usual 20 open tabs on the browser while running Spotify, Slack and all other office-related programmes. Instead of reinventing the wheel, Lenovo has made it more efficient. If not for anything, Lenovo products tend to last long. Powerful, throttle-free performance, that’s what the Lenovo Legion 5 offers.

More about the laptop

Most of the ports are at the back of the laptop, keeping wires out of your way

More about the laptop

Device: Lenovo Legion 5

Price: 91,990

High notes

• A gaming laptop that is also good for general use

• Sturdy build

• Excellent keyboard and key travel

• Efficient cooling system

• Most of the ports are at the back, which keeps wires under check

Muffled notes

• The matte finish on the palm rest can be a bother when gaming without an external mouse