Lenovo Legion 5 – AMD Ryzen Power under $1300!

Nov 6, 2020

This beautiful little device is the Lenovo Legion five with an AMD Ryzen 7 processor, the 4800 H very popular processor right now. AMD is absolutely crushing it. You’ve probably seen all the videos about the new desktop CPUs well before the big desktop Zen three CPUs were crushing it. 

In the news there were the mobile processors, the 4800 H being one of them. Now I’ve had a really good time testing out this laptop. It’s a shame I must send it back, but I have another laptop coming that I’ll be able to share with you soon that is going to knock your socks off. Another awesome device as far as this one goes. I really enjoy my experience with it now. It is made from ABS plastics. 

All the way around, so it’s not one of those aluminum laptops, but if you can look beyond that and you should, because it’s a very rigid device. You’re going to find that the value for your dollar is one of the best that you can get right now. This machine has 16 gigs of RAM, a half a TB SSD, a full size one terabyte. 

HDD and it also has a GTX1650TI. I can’t find this spec on Lenovo’s website, but Lenovo sells laptops all around the world, so it’s possible that it’s just as far as the US goes. It’s just not an option, but here’s the good news for a retail price of $1300. 

And a current sale price of around $1100. You can get this exact machine, but instead of the 1650 T it’s the full size RTX 2060 I’m much more powerful GPU. 

1100 Bucks is a pretty good deal, so when it comes to the value equation, Lenovo is certainly at the top of the list. Lenovo crushes it when it comes to value. Now you might be thinking you’re going to lose something, and I don’t feel like you are. Of course, as I mentioned, it’s not made from aluminum, but this a BS plastic is quite firm. 

And you won’t feel like you’re buying something that is cheap. Now the branding and the design is all the same as they’re more expensive. Legion 7 devices that have aluminum and have a couple other finer touches like the way that the LED lighting strip goes around the base. That’s for the 7, not the five, but let me give you a tour. So, at the top we have this cool Legion branding and then the standard Lenovo badge at the bottom had a double check where I was the Legion branding at the bottom. On the sides we have solid IO, USB, A and a headphone Jack on the left side and a full-size USB on the right side. The back is where the magic happens. Ethernet USB C, not Thunderbolt. Two more USB’s. 

Full size Ethernet dimension that full size HDMI out. Proprietary power Anna Kensington lock. The proprietary power port is the same size as all the ones Lenovo’s been using back since the rest of the Ideapad. I think the idea Pad had that too, so that’s 6 seven years ago. It’s bidirectional so you can put the right side up or. 

Upside down and it fits without issue. I’d mentioned some of the finer touches that are missing from this. Well, the one that I love the Legion 7 is that on this hinge lip it says Legion, but not on the five, although another cool touch that I love is on the hinge. There’s this Lenovo Legion Y icon and that made its way. 

To the Legion 5, which is very cool. So, you’re probably wondering about performance and capabilities. Well, I spent most of my time using this for work because I spend most of my time working in a small fraction of my time playing video games. If I did play some video games, who’s that bad time for someone’s horn to go off? OK, so I did that out, but I suck at editing. 

Time Spy score 4099 and a Witcher 3 performance frame rate of around 42 frames per second. Now that’s using 1080P settings and NVIDIA experience is recommended setting, so there’s a whole bunch of settings in Witcher 3 you can affect. Mostly they’re on high, so 1080P high ish. 

And 42 frames per second on average. Pretty consistent performance. And yeah, I put it up against some more powerful machines running RTX 2070’s in 2016. I really felt like even though this performed below all those first, you’re going to pay $1000 less. It’s a good way to go if your budget is tight, and that’s sort of your situation. 

So, I’m a big fan of this machine, but it’s not always, you know, the most perfect thing in the world. I love the keyboard. The trackpad is kind of small. There’s one other thing that kind of drives me nuts, so this might be difficult to see. You can see it better in my impressions video. 

Along that, his is a piece of plastic sticking up that was intentional. I didn’t want to peel it all the way off. It is hard to get this plastic off and that’s going to be the case along the entire hinge. So, you’ve got this circular hinge and this fine. Very well adhesive. 

Something is glued on tight piece of plastic. It’s hard to rip that off so you can do it. I did it on my Legion 7 then I’m testing, but in order to do it you start from here we start peeling, then you got to open it up and then peel the rest of it off and then kind of get underneath the hinge and rip the rest of it off. That’s a bit of a disappointment. I also wish there were biometrics on this, at least a fingerprint scanner, but instead we have your good old keyboard so type in your pin or your password and you’re good to go. 

No Windows hello of course, but on inexpensive devices like the new Microsoft Surface laptop, the Surface Go laptop, there’s Windows. Hello, so I think it’s come on. We can do it Lenovo. You got the tech? There is one cool thing I should mention about the camera though, and that is that there is a thing I don’t know what they call it on their non-ThinkPad devices, but there’s a think shutter. 

So, you can block the camera with just a manual swipe of the plastic over there. Overall, this is a phenomenal laptop, very well done by Lenovo. They’re going to continue to create inexpensive entry level laptops, and I’m very thankful for that because they’re doing it without changing the design and they’re just swapping out some aluminum for some plastic, but it’s a very. 

Very thick, very reliable device, thick plastic rather and I like the look of it, and I love the fact that there’s the ports on the back. So yeah, I had to send this back, but if you have questions, I’ll do my best to answer them, leave them in the comments and stick around because I have more laptop reviews coming and I’m going to be showing off some game footage.