The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
I picked up a non-Pro L5 tonight that had Windows 11 pre-installed. My thinking was that it would be from a later batch and thus have a lower risk for quality control problems. Signs were good at first. It was tight, yet creak free with zero dead/stuck pixels on the display. Despite likely having the same mechanisms as the Pro, the trackpad on the standard model felt far superior. Lastly, the unit I purchased came with x8, low tRFC RAM out of the box. That all said, I'm still going to return it first thing tomorrow morning for two reasons: 1) Windows 11 is a disaster. It's not intuitive, bugged to heck and back, and I forgot that the Home edition requires a MS account to use. I have one but I'd obviously rather employ a local account. 2) The fan curves were not nearly as well tuned as they were on my 5 Pro. It seems when the CPU would reach 45-48C, the fan would kick on. Of course, merely opening a program or Explorer window would cause temperatures to spike temporarily, but it would be just enough to start the fans. I'd rather Lenovo just kept them running all the time like they did with the 5 Pro. This could be remedied with a BIOS update, but mine came with the latest available.
To be completely honest, I really wanted to try the Legion Slim 7. Best Buy stocks one with the same display as the non-Pro Legion 5 and RTX 3060 "Max-Q" for $1500. I think I managed to grab the last one in the area, and it's at a location not too far from MicroCenter, so I'll swing by there. If the Slim doesn't work out, I'm going to need to re-evaluate my options.
Did your non-Pro L5 have any issues with fan whistle noise? The 5800H + 6600M L5 has it pretty bad. I tried taping off the vents as some have suggested and its still present.
The Legion Slim 7 looks nice. The bottom panels appears to have a less restricting airflow design so hopefully no whistling noises. The specs online also say glass trackpad so hopefully the build quality is overall more premium than the L5P without the headache of iCue.
The L5 did have fan whistle, but it wasn't nearly as bad as the Eluktronics Mech-15 G3 I just sent back (for that issue among other things). The Slim 7 does in fact use iCue for its RGB, so that would have to be disabled or uninstalled. Unfortunately the Best Buy store in question did not have the laptop in stock despite the website indicating otherwise so they cancelled the pickup order.
What is your price range? Or what kind of use case?
Timing-wise you are moving toward a tight spot, as laptops with the CPU refreshes are going to be revealed in 5 months or less. So that will mean poor supply leading into poor supply. I don't think the laptop GPUs will experience the smaller manufacturing process refresh the desktops may. Next gen graphics will probably be released this time next year so <1.5 years before full laptop GPU refresh with likely similar poor supply.
Performance upgrades are likely going to be notable again this time around so there is going to be a lot of demand for the new laptops.
EDIT:
The one issue you are having with the windows is rectifiable with a $30 windows key. The fan issue less resolvable. So it depends on how much more effort you want to put into it.
Ideally, I wanted to spend $1500 or less, but because I'm an impulsive SOB I exchanged the Legion 5 for a Maingear Vector Pro (same chassis as the Eluktronics MAX 15) with an Intel CPU and RTX 3070 for $1800. So far it's proving to be the best Tongfang-based laptop I've used. The screen was excellent out of the box with only a small amount of backlight bleed and no dead pixels, which were two of the reasons I returned a Mech-15 G3. The fans are
much quieter and do not whine at all under load; this was another strike against both the G3 and Legion 5. It also runs cooler than the Legion, all while weighing significantly less.
The only thing I miss is USB-C charging, which is a major oversight on an otherwise light and portable gaming laptop. Unless something drastic comes up, the Vector is going to be worth hanging onto until Alder Lake-M and RTX 4000 come out. Hopefully also by then Microsoft will have worked out most of Windows 11's more egregious problems. The need for an account to even start using the OS was the least of my issues with it, none of which to this point can be fixed by switching to Pro.
Reddit or eBay. The keys are gray market, but in the half dozen or so I've bought from the MicrosoftSoftwareSwap subreddit I've only had one that was bad, which the seller replaced right away.
Found this thread today after having the Legion 7i for a few days. 11980HK, RTX 3080, 32gb, 1tb ssd for around 3157 usd (used a crypto card so got -2% off)
I got it in time to get W11 installed on it after it reached GA on 5 oct. It's running great and I will keep it.
But I have a problem with undervolting, no undervolt seems to apply really. In ThrottleStop it surely doesn't apply as the selected undervolt doesn't appear on the right side as offsets. And XTU doesn't seem to work either, as I applied -100mV and the Core voltage remained the same.
This is with the latest bios installed and it's still happening after resetting the bios settings (F9 and then F10 in settings). Is anyone else having this issue? Everywhere I went online, people were undervolting this with XTU and it worked
A family member has one of these and it has substantially worse whistle than the 5 Pro or the 17" L5 to my ear. I don't understand why because it replaced a L5 1660ti from last year and they look and feel nearly identical otherwise.
I presume we still haven't got Advanced BIOS for 2021 machines yet to do permanent undervolting, seeing that the latest BIOS on Lenovo site is still from August?
Question for longtime Legion users with Advanced BIOS. Does Lenovo allow users to set limited charge of the battery to lengthen its lifespan? I'm coming over from the Clevo side and Prema BIOS has spoiled us rotten. I intentionally set my Clevo to charge to maximum 80% capacity, seeing that it is meaningless to use battery on a DTR other than serving as a portable UPS.
Good to know. Does it mean you have to keep the software running at all times/at startup? Baking it into BIOS as a permanent sticky setting seems way better, especially when you want to declutter bloatware from your machine.
You change the setting within the Vantage software, and it sticks between reboots without needing to run in the background. Bear in mind, there aren't multiple charge level presets like on Asus or MSI laptops, nor is there the even more granular control like you have with Dell. With Lenovo, it's one option that limits the battery to a maximum of 60%.
Does anyone with the Intel model have Far Cry 6 and be willing to run some. Benchmarks?
I wanted to compare the cpu bottle necking. It seems pretty severe! Strangely the actual game is quite smooth but was interested to see what results the Intel machine will get.
Running on 5800h/3080 here are my results. The settings are 720p with various detail settings.
Built in benchmark
Average / Low
101/80 Low preset
92/57 Medium preset
87/50 High preset
81/44 Ultra preset
71/37 Ultra preset with dxr reflections
75/40 Ultra preset with dxr shadows
66/36 Ultra preset with dxr shadows and reflections
Indeed, we still don't have the Advanced BIOS. But still, others with Legion 7 w/ 11980HK have managed to undervolt it, whilist it doesn't work to me.
Also, I would really love to have sustained boosts of 4.5ghz+ for longer than 2 minutes in games, which only takes around 60-70w at 79 C. After "Turbo Boost Power Time Window" value of 128 seconds expires, it reverts to the 45-50w and it can only sit between 4.0-4.2ghz. Can something be done about this without the advanced bios?
Haha, so you caved and tried out the Vector Pro! Glad you are enjoying it so far, it really is a nice machine. I agree the fans are very quiet under load and the Maingear Node utility is very functional. I have the fans completely off until the CPU exceeds 65 degrees which is great for office and internet use.
My 3rd Legion 7i should arrive on Wednesday so we'll see if that one has screen defects. Lenovo CS is fantastic, they sent out a replacement the same day I contacted them about the defective laptop. If this one doesn't work out I will call it a day and keep the Vector Pro.
Fixed! This is also for my previous post. I managed to finally apply undervolting values by disabling Core Isolation in Windows Security. Windows 11 was the problem I think
It's minimum-required spec HDR 400 (VESA DisplayHDR 400). HDR purists and enthusiasts don't even take it seriously to be honest as a screen needs to be at least 400nit max brightness to call itself "HDR" according to VESA standard, but that standard is arguably set quite low. Like you said, it's neither OLED nor a FALD-capable LED LCD. Until the current supply chain madness and shortage is over don't expect fancy TV and monitor techs to trickle down to laptop screens anytime soon.
Thanks for the explanation. So what would be the difference between using the display in HDR vs SDR?
I can see the colour profile I have loaded gets disabled when I enable hdr (which seems to throw off the white balance significantly) but can't really see any other changes.
I still haven't found an answer to the 65w debate in the case with the 11980HK inside the Legion 7i. Is something wrong with mine that the CPU has the TDP set at 45W? Because the K i9 is listed as having 65W tdp. After the boost window (turbo time limit) expires (max is 128 seconds in XTU and unlimited in ThrottleStop, but it doesn't apply), my CPU sits at 45W during gaming.
Also, the CPU is meant to have a base 3.3ghz. But when I disable Turbo boost in ThrottleStop, it can't go higher than 2.5ghz.
Having the 65w TDP as permanent/sustained would have been great, as it meant 4.5-4.7ghz could be sustained during gaming with temps below 85 C.
UPDATE: After having read many times of the "Disable and Lock Turbo Power Limits" in TS, I understood how to use it and now I'm running it with no PL. While gaming, currently I can have it at 4.8ghz all core at -55.7 mV Core and Cache undervolt. It runs great and give me the necessary cpu power to finally play the CPU killer GTA IV, but it sits around 85 C for this and I'm not sure if it's worth it.
I ordered the
Legion 5 Gen 6 AMD (17") and I read that the panel has 7ms latency -.-
Anyone have it hear and can confirm that. Also worried the 5800h doesn't perform as well as the 11800h in single core. The main title I play is COD and Warzone.
According to the Jarrod's Tech review, response time for L7's panel is around 7.8ms with overdrive off and a bit less than 5ms with it on - this setting is configurable via the Lenovo Vantage software. Depending on the game and graphics settings you choose, Intel will be faster than AMD by about 3-7% at 1440p and 5-15% at 1080p.
5ms is great!
I have the MSI GE 76 and the panel clocks in at 25ms. I'm trying to confirm it in these forums to do a better comparison.
Still have a window to return it so trying to make the right decision on max fps and lowest panel latency.
Received 3rd 7i today, again will be returning. Two dust specks behind the LCD that I can't get rid of by tapping or gently using the suction cup method. So ridiculous. How hard is it to just get a damn laptop with a defect-free screen.
I have terrible luck with screens, it is insane. I receive brand new machines, not refurbs. I really like this laptop but not sure I’ll re-order. Will at least wait until both defective laptops are received by Lenovo before re-ordering. I don’t want to potentially be on the hook for 3 laptops.
Just got my Lenovo 7i with 1180H and rtx 3080. What a fantastic machine. Screen is so beautiful. 1440p is the sweet spot for this screen. It’s also light and perfect size.
Quesrjon, is it easy to install ssd, ram? I don’t want to scratch anything
A little difficult to get the bottom panel off I found that starting with the guitar pick pry tool at the vents on the side at the rear made it easier.
Some game benchmarks for the new all-AMD Legion 5:
It looks like the addition of a MUX really helps performance here as in some cases it's approaching the RX 6700M. I decided to take a chance on one since Lenovo had some stock available for immediate shipping. They're running a discount coupon as well, so I got the model with 32 GB of RAM, 1 TB SSD, and Windows 10 Pro(!) for less than $1,500 out the door. Factor in an extra 6% Rakuten cash back, and this could shape up to be a great value, assuming the fan noise and thermals are reasonably well controlled.
I have an Asus G513 5800H/3060 in my basement that I bought at Walmart for $1,299. I'm probably going to take it back, though, as I've had about as much luck with that brand as you've had with Lenovo, and the box is still sealed.
Nice sale price. I hope it does not have fan whistle as bad as the one I had. Also the timings on the stock Samsung 32GB were still worse than aftermarket memory.
I still like the Tongfang more than the Legion 5 base model even if its more expensive. It is tough to give up the better build quality and fan noise. 17 inch 2560x1440 is also easier for me to use at 100% scaling compared to 16 inch 2560x1600 on the Legion 5 Pro.
I would be keeping the Vector Pro, but it suffers from the same problems with fan profiles that I've encountered with other Tongfang laptops. When the CPU hits 50C, it kicks the fan on, runs for 2 seconds until the temperature drops below it, then shuts it off. Lather, rinse repeat. This could be easily corrected by allowing users to run the fans at all times, but you can't set a minimum speed above 0% at the lowest temperature in the control center. I'm assuming it would require a firmware update, but I wouldn't count on Maingear to provide one. Going the other way and keeping the fans idle until the CPU hits a higher temperature isn't an option either because the same thing happens, plus the deck gets Razer Blade warm.
I just double checked, and apparently the RX 6600M Legion 5 I ordered comes with
2 TB of storage, not 1. Assuming this wasn't an error and my order actually gets fulfilled, this could potentially be the best deal on a gaming laptop in history.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
