Thursday, December 23, 2021

Lenovo Legion 5i w/ Core i5-11260H, RTX 3060 Review

There are two words in the tech world that usually don’t pair well together, gaming and affordability. When used together in the gaming world, these two usually end up with disastrous results more often than not. Lenovo, though, is not afraid to play with that combo and released the Legion 5i with Intel Core i5-11260H and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060. How did it fare, though? Find out in our review.

Design and Construction

One of the first things that got our attention was the design of the Legion 5i. It doesn’t scream gamer-y at all, far from the previous generation Y-series of Lenovo. No more red accents everywhere, replaced by a sleek-looking notebook that goes well both in your gaming room and in an office.

It isn’t the lightest notebook nor is the thinnest but it’s a well-balanced notebook that more often than not feels lighter than it should be. Weighing in at 2.5kg, and is 25.4mm thick, the Legion 5i will surely need a bigger bag for you guys to lug it around. The only con I can point out is that the entire chassis of the device is a fingerprint magnet. You will end up wiping fingerprints off of the laptop a whole lot if you’re OC like that.

On the left side of the laptop, you get a USB Type-C port and your dual headphone/microphone jack plus a big exhaust for the fans.

On the right side, you get a single USB Type-A port plus a manual webcam shutter switch, and also an exhaust for the fans.

At the back is where the party happens. You get your LAN port, Lightning port, 3 high-speed USB Type-A ports, an HDMI out, and your power connector. You won’t be lacking ports in this laptop.

Underneath the laptop features the speakers and a large exhaust area for fans to breathe.

Lift the lead, and we can see the 15.6-inch display with slim bezels. Placed atop is the 720p webcam.

In the keyboard area, we have the power button. For the keys, they’re flat keys and are generally good to type in. It has decent travel at 1.5mm, you just have to get used to typing a bit to the left side of the laptop as there is a full Numpad on this laptop. The keyboard is backlit and you can customize it via Lenovo’s Vantage app. The only real issue we had with this laptop was that the keyboard, for some reason, sometimes has a delay when starting to type when switching between apps.

The trackpad is smooth but is a bit small, the clicks are decent as well. It supports multi-touch so you can use your gestures with the trackpad.

Overall, the build quality of the Legion 5i is very good, a lot of plastic but nothing creaks, nothing feels flimsy, and is solidly built.

Display and Multimedia

The screen of the Legion 5i is something I was surprised to see. Usually cheaper gaming laptops end up sacrificing display quality. The Legion 5i has a 15.6-inch IPS display at 1080p. It covers 100% of the sRGB color space and goes up to 300 nits of brightness. It has a 165hz screen refresh rate and 3ms response time.

We had no problem when testing the display of the Lenovo Legion 5i. It is fast and responsive in shooter games such as Call of Duty: Warzone. Colors were bright and vivid, the beautiful aesthetic of Midgard in Final Fantasy 7 Remake Integrade was represented well with this display. Binge-watching TV shows was also a treat with this display. Watching the Witcher 3, the dark scenes never felt like they were too dark to understand while the colors of their outfits really popped out in every scene. In other words, the screen of the Legion 5i won’t disappoint you whether it’s for work or for play.

The Legion 5i has two bottom-firing speakers and sad to say, this isn’t one of its strong points. We felt like it was neither loud nor clear. If you’re looking for something to just play music then it’ll do fine, but for gaming and watching shows I suggest you use headphones or a dedicated speaker. It’s good enough for meetings, video calls, or YouTube but for really immersing yourself in something, then go grab a pair of cans.

OS and Features

The Lenovo Legion 5i runs Windows 10 and is upgradeable to Windows 11. It didn’t have a lot of bloatware installed when we got the unit, we even had to install Lenovo’s own Vantage app to take control of all the lights and customization options of the laptop.

One of the things you can access here is its support and warranty, specifically the Legion Ultimate Support (LUS). LUS offers Level 2- Advanced technical support, meaning the technicians are familiar with popular gaming titles, trends, and communities. They have 24/7 availability through phone, chat, and email, can provide next business day onsite support and fast repair, and support for hardware, software, and accessories. Such a feature can provide users with peace of mind in case something goes wrong with their machine.

Performance and Benchmarks

Powering the Legion 5i is an Intel Core i5-11260H processor with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 dedicated GPU. It also has 16GB of RAM, and a 1TB NVMe SSD. What does it all mean? It means a lot of power under the hood, more than enough for your basic office tasks, and a lot of heavy gaming.

• PCMark 10 Extended – 7024
• Geekbench 5 – 6,541 (Multi-Core), 1,441 (Single-Core)
• Cinebench R20 – 4,941 (CPU-Multi) 540 (CPU-Single)
• Cinebench R23 – 9,429 (CPU-Multi), 1,453 (CPU-Single)
• CrystalDiskMark7 – 3,578.81 MB/s (Read), 2,789.81 MB/s (Write)
• 3D Mark – 23,131 (Fire Strike), 9,047 (Time Spy)

• Call of Duty Warzone – 120fps (High-Ultra settings)
• Final Fantasy VII Remake: Intergrade – 119fps (Max settings)
• Red Dead Redemption 2 – 96fps (High settings)

Connectivity and Battery Life

The Lenovo Legion 5i has all your basic connectivity features covered. In addition to the physical ports mentioned earlier, it has WiFi 6 for better and faster wireless internet and Bluetooth 5.1. We have a 60Wh capacity for the battery, which got us around 10 hours in Better performance mode, but only around 3-4 hours when doing intensive graphical work. The laptop comes with a 230W charger that works really fast, a full charge in less than an hour. The caveat though is that the charger is huge.

I’m not overstating this, the charger itself can be a huge downside to anyone who wants to buy this laptop. It’s heavy and will take a lot of space in your bag. So be ready to lug around a big laptop plus a thick and wide charger in case you want to bring the Legion 5i around for travel.

Conclusion

The Lenovo Legion 5i is an excellent entry into gaming laptops. You can probably find cheaper gaming laptop options out there but you won’t find one with the right price to performance ratio. You will get a lot for what you pay for when it comes to this laptop. Thus affordability and gaming in a single package. It will run almost anything you throw at it, medium to high settings at 1080p. It will blaze through all your office tasks, and that high refresh rate screen really takes the cake for this laptop.

If you are looking for an all-in-one entertainment package that will suit every need you will probably have then look no further. The Lenovo Legion 5i is the perfect laptop that will be your partner whether it be for work or for play.

The Lenovo Legion 5i is priced at PHP 72,995 and is available in Phantom Blue and Stingray White.

Lenovo Legion 5i 15ITH6H specs:
15.6-inch FHD (1920 X 1080) IPS display, 165Hz, 300 nits, 100% sRGB
Intel Core i5-11260h
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 6GB GDDR6 GPU
16GB DDR5 RAM
1GB PCIe NVMe SSD
WiFi 6
Bluetooth 5.2
1x USB Type-A (Sleep and Charge)
3x USB Type-A (5Gbps)
1x USB Type-C (Thunderbolt 4, Displayport)
1x HDMI 2.1
1x RJ-45
1x headphone/microphone combo
Dual-Speakers
720p webcam
80Wh battery
230W power adapter
Windows 10