Lenovo Legion 5/5 Pro/7 2021 Discussion

Since there appears to be talk of the refreshed Legion lineup going on in two separate threads, I figured it would be prudent to start a brand new one focused on these specific laptops. I'll start with links to the Jarrod's Tech reviews of the Legion 7 and 5 Pro.





Anyone who has purchased one of these laptops, share your thoughts, benchmarks, etc here.

 

I've had mine for a week now, the only complaint i have is that there is no way to enable XMP (as of now), so i have my CAS18 RAM running at CAS22, although it kept the 3200Mhz speed.

All the rest is pretty much great, the laptop doesn't heat much, it performs really good (i'll drop a few benchmarks here soon for reference) and the keyboard and display are of the best i've ever experienced. As a plus, i'd love to be possible to have some more power control over the CPU and GPU (undervolt CPU, a bit more power limit on the GPU, etc). I have the hardware tools to flash the GPU BIOS, but it seems that there's no BIOS editor that is compatible with Ampere yet, i wanted to try 170W on it

With time i hope the Laptop's BIOS will become unlocked for at least XMP profiles.

EDIT: Here are some 3DMark results with the lid closed and connected to an external 32" LG monitor via TypeC to DisplayPort:

 

What GPU did you end up getting?

I’m still waiting on this to come up for order in the US. At this rate I might end up getting the Alienware X17 depending on the price. It’s been months on end since it’s been announced we are nearing the end of May with no update for when it’ll be available.

 

It's in the screenshots, "RTX3070 Laptop GPU". It performs well being the limited part that it is (140W versus 220W desktop) and the laptop allows for some overclock on the GPU through the BIOS or software such as MSI Afterburner. Undervolt is also supported but it really doesn't have much effect as the GPU cannot keep very high clocks for long.

The CPU on the other hand is completely BIOS-locked which is a waste, it would perform better with voltage adjustments, RAM XMP, etc.

 

As of this post's writing, the base model Legion 5 Pro with the RTX 3060 and 512 GB SSD is back in stock at Antonline for $1,499. In addition to the laptop, you also will receive copies of Days Gone and Horizon Zero Dawn.

 

The 5 pro 3070 version is available now (just placed an order) on the US Lenovo website and changed from coming soon to offering 2 models; a 32gb / 1tb version and a 16gb / 2tb version.

 

That is a very stiff price premium over the RTX 3060 model, even more when you consider that you get two free games when ordering from Antonline.

 

I couldn't find the new Legion 5 on either Amazon or the US Lenovo store but I verified that I could find it at Antonline. As I already have the two offered games, I wonder if I could get the price discounted by the appropriate amount if you took away the two games. Still, the $499 increase over last year's Legion 5 is significant for what you get: 5800H processor and a 3060. Once you get to the $1500 price point, Lenovo loses its attractiveness for me.

 

We're talking about the 5 Pro, which is a different model entirely. The regular Legion 5 was announced but isn't on sale yet. It's going to start with a 3050 Ti and the same crap 1080p/120 Hz panel as the outgoing one. The price gap is likely to shrink considerably when you upgrade to the QHD display and RTX 3060.

 

I was hoping to see a 3080 model available, that and at least to reconfigure the SSDs as I don’t need 2 since I have a spare one I wanted to install.

 

They're not going to put a 3080 in the 5 Pro as it would cannibalize the Legion 7.

 

Well I guess I should have said I wish I saw the Legion 7 come out along side the 5 pro.

The price is very enticing for the 5 pro with a 5 year warranty. I didn’t go beyond the cart but I’m assuming Lenovo charges tax in the US?

 

Tax is charged based upon the state to where the item is shipping.

 

The Pro is built better than the Legion 5 as its mostly a aluminum design while the Legion 5 made entirely out of plastic. The 2021 Legion 5s can go up to a RTX 3070 so its going be a bit cheaper than the Pro version with the same specs. I still have no idea when they'll be released in the US but at least the Pro is finally released here despite the high price.

 

I received my Legion 5 Pro today...I was able to snag one last week when they finally went live in the U.S. First impressions...wow. Build quality is top-notch...and frankly it's a heck of a lot smaller than I was expecting, based on the few reviews out there. None of them really give this justice or give you a good idea of how this new design really looks/feels. Other than the massive power brick, I don't see this being any more encumbering to lug around than my previous gaming laptops, if anything it has a smaller footprint than any of my Sager 15in laptops!

I'll hopefully have some more updates later once I get some more time with it.

 

I ordered one last week too! My shipping says I should get it on the 8th! Can't wait to retire my batman Clevo with 980m and game on the legion 5 pro! I can't believe you got yours so quick.

 

Finally had a chance to set up my base model Legion 5 Pro (16 GB RAM, 512 GB SSD, RTX 3060), which I ordered from Antonline. While they apparently jacked up the price from the first leaked salvo a few weeks ago, the two included games help take the sting out of that somewhat. I was interested in them anyway, and even if you weren't, you could pretty easily sell them to claw back some of your initial outlay. The configuration on Lenovo's site, IMO, doesn't make a ton of sense, especially not for over two grand once you figure in taxes. Though it's sold out as of the time I'm writing this so I don't suppose it matters too much.

Anyway, first impressions ( warning, wall of text): Build quality is excellent. While not quite as solid-feeling as my Dell XPS 17 or the Asus G15 I returned in favor of this, the Legion more than holds its own. The laptop itself is thicker than the XPS 17, yet it weighs about the same. It's not as svelte as the G15 or Razer Blade, doubly so when you factor in the Legion's massive power brick. Lenovo is probably going for economies of scale by using the same adapter in the Legion 7, but 300W is unnecessary here. At least you can use USB-C in a pinch.

Keyboard feel is the same Lenovo goodness I've come to expect with nice, deep travel and none of the harsh sensation when bottoming out like on the XPS. The numpad is greatly appreciated, as are the dedicated home, insert, delete, page up/down, etc keys. This unit has the four-zone backlit keyboard. I hesitate to call it "RGB" because it's very dull, and the color bundling sucks. Further, brightness adjustment is only available through the Vantage software; the keyboard shortcut (fn+spacebar) cycles through the built-in lighting effects. Lenovo needs to provide a firmware and software update to allow users to change brightness with a dedicated fn shortcut (arrow up and down would be perfect since they're not used) or change what the pre-existing fn+spacebar one already does. I like that you can disable the lighting on the lid, and it stays off between reboots.

The trackpad I would rate as just OK. It's better than the HP Omen 15 but not nearly as good as the G15, XPS, or Razer Blade. There have been reports of issues with palm rejection, and while I didn't see it at first, it has happened a couple times. It hasn't been enough to be an annoyance, but employing the registry tweaks found here: Razer Touchpad Palm Rejection tweaking : razer (reddit.com) seems to have resolved it. The webcam and built-in microphone are fine for what they are, though the lack of biometric authentication is a missed opportunity.

The screen is pretty great. After using my XPS 17 for several months, I had a really hard time going back to 16:9 in the G15, so having 16:10 here is really nice. The 500-nit peak brightness claim is probably right, but as has been pointed out in reviews, it drops off a cliff from there. With natural light working in my living room, I could comfortably keep the XPS at 40-50% brightness, but the Legion needs to be around 60-70%. Not a huge deal, but this could impact battery life (which I will touch on momentarily). It's nice to have a keyboard shortcut (fn+R) to change between 60 and 165 Hz refresh rates, though it would be nice if Lenovo were to follow Asus by giving users the option to automatically switch when unplugging the laptop.

In terms of thermals, performance, and battery life, I haven't had time to do much testing. The laptop idles in the upper 30s in quiet mode, low 40s in balanced and performance. A cooling pad lowers these figures by up to 5C, which gets this thing down to near my Core i7 9700K desktop PC. The fans are completely silent in quiet mode when performing everyday work and entertainment tasks. Running Cinebench R23 in performance mode netted a score of 12,658 with a peak temperature and CPU frequency of 86C and 3.9 GHz, respectively. While there is no user-level fan control, Lenovo has tuned this laptop just about perfectly. The fans ramp up steadily as the load increases with no high-pitched whine or other obnoxiousness that is sadly common on other gaming laptops. The keyboard deck gets only very slightly warm.

Hybrid mode/Optimus is disabled out of the box, which means G-Sync is enabled. I haven't played any games yet, but with the screen at half brightness and keyboard lighting disabled, I'm getting anywhere from 4-5 hours of battery life while typing in Word, editing spreadsheets and PDFs, and streaming YouTube. I've gotten similar battery life from laptops that only used Optimus, so to see this kind of runtime using only the dedicated GPU is fantastic.

So far I am very impressed with the Legion 5 Pro. It checks off just about every box on my wish list for a laptop that can be used comfortably for work and play. The base RTX 3060 model is the best one in the lineup right now. Should Lenovo release an RTX 3070 version with a 1 TB SSD for around $1,750, that would be a better buy, however considering the 2 TB version on their site is $1,959, I wouldn't count on such a configuration being less than $1,850. At that point, I'd still consider the $1,500 3060 one the way to go since it's still a full-power GPU.

 

Wow very detailed reviewed. Great to hear the fans work well. I have been struggling to get the X170KM fans working to my satisfaction (<40dB at idle use, ~50dB while gaming). The 11900k generates a lot of heat and noise even at 4.5ghz single core or 4.0ghz all-core. So I ordered one of these Legion 5 Pro's to see if it is any better. Hopefully Linux runs ok with 5.11 and dedicated mode only.

What brand and model is the stock SSD? I assume the 16GB ram is the new high density single rank 8gb sticks that people have been complaining about?

Supposedly the Y740 230W brick does work with this model. I cannot even find the 300W brick available to order as a spare part, as I would want one for my desk at the office.

 

I think there is some level of subjectivity when it comes to fan noise. It is definitely louder than my XPS 17 under load, but the Legion's thermals are way better. Asus and HP gaming laptops I've tried have always suffered from the aforementioned high-pitched whine or other untoward sounds, but not so with the Legion 5 Pro. TBH, I think Jarrod's Tech review video slightly oversells how loud it can get, though maybe that's partially due to his unit having the RTX 3070 while mine has the 3060. In other words - don't take my viewpoint as gospel on this particular aspect of the laptop.

Stock SSD is the WDC SN730 - CDM results below. The RAM is indeed the slower stuff. Amazon.com: Crucial 8GB Single DDR4 3200 MT/S (PC4-25600) CL22 SR X8 Unbuffered SODIMM 260-Pin Memory - CT8G4SFS832A: Computers & Accessories - this is the stuff Jarrod bought. For a 32 GB upgrade, would the dual-rank version offer a further performance boost, or should I stick with the single-rank kit?

The connector is the same square slim-tip that Lenovo uses in basically all its non-USB-C laptops so I don't see why the 230W adapter wouldn't work. That's what I would get as a spare.

 

Do we have ANY indication when the 7 pro will be released in the US?

 

well...

​

 

I’m not sure what this means.

 

It means, the 7pro model is in the release schedule. just a matter of time for the stock to arrive to the States.

 

Cool! Days… weeks?

 

that... you'll have to check with Lenovo's CSO thru online chat in their U.S. webpage. it's best if you could show them this picture with those model references.

 

I agree that noise is subjective. I guess the XPS 17 could be better given it has the vapor chamber and a 65W GPU. From the reviews this one seems to do pretty well even without the vapor chamber. It also greatly helps if the fan curve is well tuned. I cannot imagine the 130W 3060 vs 140W 3070 being much difference in thermals.

Dual rank should be better than single rank I think, but it may be harder to find 32GB kits with dual rank anymore as they are all switching to the higher density chips. I would also stay away from anything with tRFC over 560. One option that should work well is Samsung M471A2K43DB1-CWE OEM memory which is about $200 for 32GB from Amazon.
Ram Info Thread on Reddit

This adapter looks pretty nice for travel, if it works. Sadly it seems like the reward points I was supposed to get for the laptop purchase either have not credited yet or I would purchase one.

 

The vapor chamber in the XPS isn't all that. I was still seeing temps of 100C even in moderate loads unless I set the power and boost limits to 60W and 3.5-3.6 GHz, respectively. A repaste would probably help, but I couldn't be bothered.

I went with the Mushkin Essentials kit linked in that thread for $150. At the same time, I'll slot in the spare 512 GB NVMe drive I pulled from my desktop when I upgraded that last year.

Can't envision a scenario where that adapter wouldn't be compatible. Not sure how Lenovo rewards work, but I imagine you wouldn't get the credit until after the laptop's return window has passed.

 

Interesting. Well the vapor chamber may at least help even out temperature spikes during low / idle usage in theory. I am not sure what the Legion 7 will cost or if they will even offer it with the same 5800H/3070 config. Either way it is probably not worth it for me given the inclusion of extra RGB bling.

That ram should work well. Curious if it ends up being single rank or dual rank.

Ah, that makes sense.

 

Nice!. They're gonna be released here sometime in June/July and i think its the same for the Intel Tiger Lake Models.

 

I got mine the other day as well. All in all it’s pretty great but I have a few first impression gripes…

- I’m not a fan of the off center touchpad, it just feels wrong / odd to use for me personally.

- The touchpad itself leaves a lot to be desired, traction wise and the clicking feels inconsistent (maybe this is as a result of it being off center for my taste). In addition, for some reason in games the touchpad cursor can move but clicks don’t register. I haven’t been able to find a solution for that yet.

- The WiFi is erratic ping wise which is odd as it’s an Intel AX card. The driver it came with was from Nov 2020 so I updated it to the latest from June 2021 but my ping while gaming is still all over the map. My desktop that is on WiFi on a game I play I get 75-85 consistently. On the L5P I’m jumping between 75 - 200 with most pings in the mid 150’s…

 

Well, so far I'm very impressed with the Legion 5 Pro. I'll post some test results later but I did have one minor concern, hoping you guys can provide some insight...

I'm having trouble with certain applications appearing slightly blurry with text and windows when I have the windows scaling option set to anything other than 100%. But at that level everything is SUPER tiny because of the higher res screen. Is there some setting I'm not seeing to make the apps adjust as well? I have the windows Advanced scaling option turned on....but it's obviously not helping lol. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

Can't say I've noticed anything like that, but my eyesight is terrible so I'm probably not the best person to provide a definitive answer.

I did upgrade the stock RAM to this: Mushkin Essentials – DDR4 Laptop DRAM – 32GB (2x16GB) SODIMM Memory Kit – 3200MHz (PC4-25600) CL-22 – 260-pin 1.2V Notebook RAM – Dual-Channel – Low-Voltage – (MES4S320NF16GX2) at Amazon.com

One nice feature Lenovo offers in the BIOS is an option that disables the battery so you can perform service and upgrades without needing to disconnect it from the motherboard.

The base timings match the originals exactly (CL 22-22-22-52), but other specs are much lower, which should bring about an improvement in games. I'd suggest picking up this or a similar kit before demand and prices rise as more OEMs are using cheaper, slower memory. Stock modules up top, Mushkin ones at the bottom.

 

I swapped the stock ram for a HyperX 2666 CL15 32gb kit. It still performs better than the stock memory kit with poor timings. I also swapped the stock SK Hynix PC711 drives for a Samsung 970 Evo as they had noticeably lower random I/O performance.

It is amazing just how well built Lenovo made this laptop. Still not as good as the Precision 7740 I had before, but better than any other laptop with a gaming GPU barring the Alienware 51m R2. The vantage software works well and is less buggy than Alienware Command Center so far. Sadly the 2560x1600 16 inch panel is too small for use at 100% scaling for my eyes, so I just use it at 1680x1050 with a little blur which is better than dealing with scaling issues @ 150%.

 

I've been trying to use a 4K XPS 17 at 150% scaling to see how well I could manage with an equivalent effective PPI and I came to the same conclusion. Unfortunately, about 160 PPI is the highest my old eyes can manage, and Windows display scaling just doesn't cooperate with a lot of my software.

Does anyone with a new Legion have a 65w+ USB-C charger to test? I know Lenovo says USB-C charging is supported, but I wonder if they've implemented it properly, or if they're doing the same thing as Asus where the USB-C charger only charges the battery and when the battery reaches full capacity, the charger is disabled and the laptop discharges the battery a few percent and then turns the charger back on to recharge the battery until the process can start again.

 

I tried an Apple 87W USB-C charger. Got a warning message on boot. The charging icon is present but the CPU was in a performance state between the Quiet / Balanced - about 30% worse than using the 300W charger in Performance mode. I am not sure if the battery was draining during the test.

 

Will probably get this laptop (5 Pro) through a contact in the US, seeing as it is difficult to find everywhere and the prices in the US are significantly better. I see a lot of people here and elsewhere link to Antonline but they have my IP blocked because of my country (Sager also does this since like 2018). Is the 3070 variant available at somewhere like a Microcenter or is my best bet using Antonline? I don't like buying over video chat but hey we can make it work. Porch piracy is an issue in the US afaik so I'd probably prefer somewhere like Microcenter either way. Might be a good place to get RAM and an SSD as well. (I have mixed experiences with Amazon for hard drives and things like that and I feel like it's gotten worse. Gotta love mixed inventory)

Also kind of a long shot, but do any of you have a Roost stand or Nexstand? I feel like the 5 Pro just barely clears the maximum front thickness but it's hard to tell. The stands use kind of an arc-shaped holder so the thickness measurements have a bit of leeway.

 

MicroCenter doesn't have a ton of selection when it comes to Lenovo laptops and even fewer gaming models. Matter of fact, I think I've only ever seen refurbished Legions for sale there. Regarding shipping, retailers that send high-value items will require a signature for delivery so theft isn't a problem.

 

Alright interesting, I'll look into ordering remotely through antonline anyway. Do we know about RAM and SSD upgrade specifications? I can see on some of the PSREF sheets that one of the SSDs can only be a maximum of 512GB, does that mean we can't use the stock 1TB SSD in the secondary slot? Also, the sheet says there is a 2280 and a 2242 but users are reporting the 2242 also has a screw hole for 2280. Does that mean we can safely hop on the 2280 bandwagon for a replacement boot drive and keep the stock drive as a secondary?

Finally RAM: If I want to bump up to 32GB, I'm seeing that some users are having trouble with the RAM not cooperating with the BIOS (essentially wasting money on higher binned memory)?

Sorry about all the questions, I'm just buying this from far away so I need to be sure about everything.


EDIT: I need to figure out an appropriate RAM upgrade is the thing.

 

Someone in a different thread posted that they added a 2 TB drive to the stock 1 TB, and it worked just fine. I have the base L5P, which came with 512 GB, and I added a spare 512 GB 2280 drive that I had when I upgraded my desktop PC. The mounting standoff and screw were in place for the second slot, so installation was a breeze.

See above for posts by myself and @win32asmguy regarding RAM upgrades.

 

I couldn't wait anymore for the Legion 7, so I got myself a Legion 5 Pro. Gonna throw in a 2TB Intel 665 and some better ram, but so far I have to say I'm in love with the screen.

What software is essential to backup if I'm changing the main drive? Color profiles, etc?

 

Probably the X-Rite Color Assistant if you really want it, though it's not something I personally use. Otherwise Lenovo Vantage can be downloaded from the Windows app store.

 

So, there's really nothing important in there? Good to know. ;-)

 

You may need the pre-installed audio drivers for the built in mic to be audible.

 

Having higher than expected power draw on battery with integrated graphics enabled.

A computer of this efficiency on battery power should only be drawing around 7-11 mW per hour when doing office work and light internet browsing without video taking into account the higher display resolution.

I am getting 20-23 mW per hour which would be the same as if the discrete graphics were still operating as primary.

Newest AMD driver installed, and the NVIDIA graphics don't appear to be operating per the read out on the lenovo vantage software. But maybe they are still drawing power in the background for some reason. Or perhaps the applications are incorrectly requesting the discrete GPU.

 

With Hybrid Mode enabled, I'm seeing a draw of around 11-12 mW/h in balanced mode and 9-9.5 in quiet. Go into the NVIDIA control panel and enable the GPU activity icon from Desktop menu. That will show if there are any rogue programs running on the discrete graphics.

 

Sometimes windows apps like "YourPhone.exe" can wake up your Nvidia GPU for no reason which you can easily disable it.

Also you can try to disable boost while on Battery.

 

I'm having a hard time finding benchmark comparisons between the 3060 and 3070 for the 5 Pro. Is there much of a difference in this model?

 

The keyboard backlight on my unit is completely dead (I have the white only version), not a flicker at anytime, no matter what I do. I may have to settle for a service, as these laptops are out of stock everywhere.

EDIT: By pure luck, my Lenovo online shop had the maxed out Legion 7 in stock, so I'll be getting that one instead of service the 5 Pro.

 

I was going to mention that it may be a poorly seated keyboard backlight cable, but it seems like the motherboard has to be flipped over to get to it, so not a very simple thing to check.

I wonder if the Legion 5 17 with 5800H + 3070 would use the same cooling system as the Legion 5 Pro. Really enjoying the quiet operation of this machine even in performance mode, but the 17 inch FHD would be much easier on my eyes at 100% scaling.

 

I couldn't help myself and picked up a 5 Pro 5800h + 3060. Immediately swapped in a 2TB 970 Evo and 32GB of OLOy 3200 CL18 ram. Cool to see a second heatsink/shield over the empty second M.2 slot.

Have to say, I am really impressed with this machine. Super quiet with some weird 10v fans...they definitely sound better than the 5v fans from my 2020 Legion 5. I really wish the display was 1920 x 1200 for my old eyes, but otherwise it looks splendid. No complaints with the keyboard or touchpad. Camera quality is much better than last year's Legion 5.

USB-C charging behaves as it should, just like the included 300w power adapter. No battery charge/drain cycling behavior like seen in the new Asus machines.

It does recognize the 230w Lenovo slim adapter from a 2020 Legion. but not a 135w Lenovo slim adapter from an X1 Extreme. This isn't a huge deal since USB-C charging works well >90w, but I have a lot of other Lenovo slim tip power adapters from years of having corporate machines I would have loved to use.