- Excellent Value
- Great Build Quality
- Good Performance
If you haven’t seen what Lenovo have been producing out of their Legion line in the last 18 months, you owe it to yourself to check it out before you make your next gaming laptop purchase. I’ve been writing it for years: Lenovo’s gaming laptops are the best kept secret in the market. Their latest product is the Legion Y545 and its everything most gamers need. The features that are pushing prices upward across all manufacturers are display Hz, per-key RGB, giant trackpads and OLED. Of course there’s also the new RTX cards. By releasing the 1660Ti and similar GTX cards this year, NVIDIA have created an artificial floor for laptops with faster RTX cards. While every manufacturer has taken advantage of these cards, Lenovo is the only one I’ve seen really bring the value play of the 1660Ti to the masses. It can be found right here in the Y545.
Instead of a 144Hz panel that the card can’t even take advantage of in most games, the Y545 features a very good 60Hz panel in 1080p. That means your games are going to max at 60 FPS. If you want to drive up to 144Hz or more and get that pro-level experience in Overwatch, you’re going to need a different machine. The Y545 isn’t for pros, and chances are you’re not a pro and you don’t care to be. PC gaming isn’t just for average shooters like Fortnite and Apex Legends. It’s for Doom, Wolfenstein, Diablo, Civ, and Pillars of Eternity. These are the types of titles that keep blood of PC gaming pumping. And these games do feel better with more frames crunched each second but they don’t give you an advantage against the AI.
Lenovo’s Y545 is available from their website at around $1,000 depending on the configuration. Again, if you want crazy specs, there are many options for you from Lenovo and others. But the Y545 is the only laptop I’ve seen in 2019 that delivers good performance in a reasonably priced package for most of us. And it looks exactly like the gorgeous Legion Y7000.