Lenovo Legion 5 (Advantage Edition) Review
An all-AMD gaming laptop
Verdict
The Lenovo Legion 5 (Advantage Edition) is a decent all-round gaming laptop. The combo of a Ryzen CPU and Radeon GPU make it a great option for AMD fans, with enough power to play modern games smoothly in 1080p. Alongside this sits a super-generous selection of ports, superb battery life and some suave looks that makes it worth consideration.
Pros
- Marvellously powerful
- Sleek and suave looks
- Immense port selection
- Superb battery life for gaming laptop
Cons
- FHD display is a little lacklustre
- Heavy design
- A little noisy
Availability
- UKRRP: £1299
- USARRP: $1429
Key Features
- AMD Ryzen 7 5800H & AMD Radeon RX 6600MThe Lenovo Legion 5 is powered by an all-AMD CPU and GPU
- A wide array of portsThere are lots of ports including USB-A, USB-C, HDMI and Ethernet
- FHD IPS 165Hz displayThe Legion 5 comes with a sharp 1080p display, complete with 165Hz refresh rate and AMD FreeSync
Introduction
The Lenovo Legion 5 is part of a rare breed of gaming laptop – it’s an all-AMD machine that’s powered by an AMD Ryzen 7 5800H processor and an RX 6600M graphics card.
In addition, it sports a sleek design and comes with a 15.6-inch Full HD resolution IPS screen with 165Hz refresh rate, 16GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD and a quoted five hours of battery life – all for £1299. These are solid specs for the money, matching some of the best and more affordable gaming laptops we’ve tested recently.
But, decent specs don’t tell the full story which is why I put the Legion 5 through our standard suite of lab and real world checks to find out if it’s actually worth your hard earned cash. Here’s what I found.
Design
- Stylish looks with sturdy build quality
- Generous port selection
- Tactile keyboard and trackpad
For a gaming laptop, the Lenovo Legion 5 looks stylish. It features a classy blue outer shell alongside a metal and plastic construction that feels durable to hold. Compared to other gaming laptops, which tend to have a lot of RGB lighting, this Lenovo offering doesn’t scream its purpose – it looks more like a slightly bulkier ultrabook than a straight gaming laptop.
It comes with a large 15.6-inch display that delivers plenty of screen real estate to game on, and thin bezels round the sides that help give the Legion 5 a modern look. Note, too, that it’s a flip-down panel, so you can lay it completely flat. This is handy if you’re working on a project where multiple people need to see the screen at once. This, plus its stylish looks, made it one of the only gaming laptops I’ve been comfortable using in the office for work as well as at home for gaming.
Given this laptop has been built with gaming in mind, it’s no surprise that the Legion 5 is a weighty beast, clocking in at 2.4kg. This did make it feel cumbersome to carry around without a proper bag or sleeve.
Its downward firing speakers sound good for the price. Using them to play games, they offered a similar performance to some of Lenovo’s other premium laptops. Gunfire sounded meaty enough to make games engaging and there was decent enough tonal balance and detail for me to easily hear multiplayer dialogue over the online firefights. Support for Dolby Atmos, further helped it sound far richer, especially for gaming.
When it comes to ports, the Legion 5 features a fantastic assortment. There are four high-speed USB-As, alongside a pair of USB-Cs, a power port, HDMI out, a headphone combi-jack, and Ethernet. This means there’s enough connectivity for me to get a direct internet connection to a router, while also plugging in an external monitor, keyboard and mouse while at home.
There’s a full-size keyboard on the Legion 5 – although, annoyingly, it suffers from Lenovo’s odd layout decisions by way of a smaller Enter key and a squished number pad. All the keys themselves feel nice and tactile – they’re pleasant to type and game on – and there’s also a rather bright and easy-to-access backlight, if you’re working or gaming after dark.
The trackpad itself is of a decent size and its respective buttons are nicely firm and clicky, while tracking is certainly accurate.
Display
- Full HD display is good, but not amazing
- 165Hz refresh rate ensures games will be smooth
- 300-nits brightness is pretty decent
The Lenovo Legion 5 features a pretty conventional 15.6-inch panel with a Full HD resolution. For games it’s pretty good, allowing for decent detail, but what surprised me is that it’s also great for day-to-day working, especially for offering generous screen real-estate.
Its 300-nit screen is comfortably bright enough, but its substandard black levels means it’s not accomplished at presenting deep, dark blacks for a sharp contrast. Movie watching isn’t as immersive as I’d hoped for when streaming Netflix.
But colours are nicely vibrant and to the naked eye, and nothing looked too washed out. The 165Hz refresh rate proved handy, too, and means fast motions in games should look smoother, as long as the GPU can generate a high frame rate.
The only downside I noticed, compared to other more budget-orientated laptops, is that the 1080p resolution is a little behind the times. The HP Omen 16 (2021) comes with a 16-inch 2K panel, which looked sharper during our checks.
Performance
- An AMD core offers a beefy performance
- Runs well in latest games
- SSD is relatively snappy
For performance, it’s fair to say that the Legion 5 is superb for the price, offering an all-AMD setup inside.
The processor is an octa-core AMD Ryzen 7 5800H, which breezed through both basic productivity tasks and more intense fare, be it editing or gaming. Once again, it goes to prove the level of power Ryzen processors are able to deliver for the price, and their suitability for basically any workload. This is reflected in the processor’s high Geekbench 5 and PCMark 10 scores.
| Lenovo Legion 5 | HP Omen 16 (2021) | Dell G15 Ryzen Edition (2021) | |
| Processor | AMD Ryzen 7 5800H | AMD Ryzen 7 5800H | AMD Ryzen 7 5800H |
| Geekbench 5 Single Core | 1397 | 1350 | 1301 |
| Geekbench 5 Multi Core | 6609 | 7568 | 6733 |
| PCMark 10 | 6782 | 7215 | 6278 |
Combined with an AMD Radeon RX 6600M GPU, it means the Legion 5 can run latest games in 1080p, averaging just under 65fps in Borderlands 3, 72fps in Horizon Zero Dawn. It also excels with more casual, older titles such as Dirt Rally with its score of 117fps.
However, while playing these games, the Legion 5’s high fan noise did reach distracting levels on a few occasions. Which is something to bear in mind if you plan to use this laptop in crowded areas. Thermal performance was pretty good, though. The laptop didn’t becoming uncomfortably warm with any intense multi-threaded performance. It was also suitably quiet while running simple, single-threaded tasks.
SSD read and write speeds, which inform how fast you can download files and load up a game, are competitive. During our checks, I detected read speeds of 2638.8 MB/s and write speeds of 1644.32 MB/s. These aren’t quite as high as some of the latest and great gaming laptops, but it’s still very respectable.
With real-world use, my experience mirrored the scores with games loading suitably fast. However, a 512GB capacity feels a little stingy, especially if you’re planning to install a good selection of games or use this laptop for intense programs that may be rather high-capacity installs themselves. I only managed to get 4 major games installed before needing to reach for an external SSD.
Battery Life
- Lasted 8hrs 23mins in the benchmarks
- Capable of lasting one working day
When it comes to battery life, we conduct a test by lowering the brightness and running the PCMark 10 benchmark to simulate office workloads. The Legion 5 managed 8hrs 23mins in this test, which stands up really well against the competition. This laptop will happily see you through a working day, even if you do need to top it up once or twice.
For gaming, though, the Legion 5 lasted just under three hours when running at full brightness and with the graphics on full whack, so, as is the case with the majority of gaming laptops, it maybe be best used plugged into the wall for intense gaming.
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Should you buy it?
You want a powerful AMD core:
The Lenovo Legion 5 features some great AMD components inside that make it a powerful for the price, and a great laptop for both gaming and productivity tasks.
You want a sharper display:
If you’re on the lookout for a high-resolution display, then the Legion 5 and its FullHD IPS panel may not be the best option.
Final Thoughts
Lenovo’s latest iteration of the Legion 5 is a pretty good all-round budget gaming laptop. While its dual AMD core is perhaps a little out of the ordinary, it allows for superb gaming and the delivery of an exceptional performance, both for intense and simpler tasks alike. For a gaming laptop, a working day’s worth of battery life for office tasks isn’t to be sniffed at, and its port selection offers up a marvellous array of connectivity options.
The Legion 5’s display is perfectly serviceable for the price, but an FHD resolution can feel a little outdated now, given that some rival laptops come with 2K QHD panels that offer sharper looks for games. In addition, the Legion 5 is a bit heavy and can become pretty noisy while gaming, so if you’re on the hunt for a quieter gaming laptop, then you’ll be better off looking elsewhere.
How we test
Every laptop we review goes through a series of uniform checks designed to gauge key things including build quality, performance, screen quality and battery life.
These include formal synthetic benchmarks and scripted tests, plus a series of real-world checks, such as how well it runs the most frequently used apps.
We also make sure to use every laptop we review as our primary device to ensure our review is as accurate as possible.
Used the laptop for two weeks
Used Geekbench 5 and 3DMark to test performance
Used a colorimeter to test the display
Used PCMark 10 to test the battery life
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FAQs
This is the name that Lenovo has given to its Legion 5 configuration that features both an AMD processor and an AMD GPU. By having two components from the same company, they are able to work more efficiently together.
Yes, the Lenovo Legion 5 has been designed specifically for gaming.
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We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
