Lenovo Legion 5/5 Pro/7 2021 Discussion

I may keep both… ;-)

 

Shipping date for the non-Pro Legion 5 RTX 3070 from CDW now pushed back to mid/late August. Still well worth the wait given how much more expensive the same machine would be to order from Lenovo directly.

 

Same problem with MSI. The new QHD's were supposed to come out in June, then July, now it's mid-August. I hate covid. I saw someone say they talked to a Walmart rep and a supply of L5 Pro are supposed to be in July 23.

 

Are the stock ram in Legion 7 good enough to keep?

 

I guess the resolution you game at has some bearing on that question. I’ve heard that gaming at full QHD blunts the impact of the slower stock ram.

Someone please correct me if I’m wrong.

 

Point taken. Will change RAMs then.

 

You must plan to game at 1080p then, I take it?

 

Not really, but I already have the replacement RAM.

 

I decided to not keep the L7. The small increase in performance is no way near worth almost the double price tag.

 

Oh wow that was fast. How small are we talking here? Jarrods reviews seem to show it’s a pretty modest bump. Atleast compared to most other 3080 laptops it seems to be pretty high on the performance ladder. Though I have seen some ridiculously good deals on the L5.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PCGsPcy0Sxk

 

I could have ordered a 3080-equipped Legion 7 for about $2,650. Instead I opted for a non-Pro Legion 5 with a 3070 for $1,350. While the 1600p screen and vapor chamber cooler certainly add value, they're not nearly enough to justify such a steep difference in price relative to performance.

 

Yeah at $1350 I would definitely go with the Legion 5. That’s insane value. I have heard that some game at 1440p/1600p are pushing the 8gb ram limit on the 3070. Not sure if that actually true or not. I’m sure once the Legion 7 has been out for awhile you’ll be able to find them at a better price. Lenovo machines always seem to take a nose dive in price after they’re not new anymore.

 

If you want one and can wait 4-6 weeks (according to the account rep who is processing my order), here's the link. You'll need to sign up for a MyCDW account, which grants an extra 5% off, bringing the price down to a little more than $1,350.

Lenovo Legion 5 15ACH6H - 15.6" - Ryzen 7 5800H - 16 GB RAM - 512 GB SSD - - 82JU006QUS - Laptops & 2-in-1s - CDW.com

 

Wow.... thats a damn steal there especially for full powered RTX 3070 laptop

 

Nice. No 1600p screen though. Makes more sense as something had to be cut. Guess I’ll be patient and see how the Legion 7 is when it ships.

 

Yes, I got about 1500 points total more in 3DMark with the L7 and that's not worth it in my book.

There are other things that are good with the L7, but if anything, I'd go for the R7-version because that's way better priced IMO.

 

Really tried to like the Legion 5 Pro but I'm sending it back to Walmart. While I understand the price is good there are too many issues with it for me. The lighting cant be controlled in the same way that every other system I've used works, ie profiles stick on boot, reboot, hibernate etc and do not require OS interaction. The lid lighting resets from on/off with each connection of the power brick and while you can change your preference with FN+L it's unnecessary. Lastly the plastic deck is the kind that will get shiny with repeated use and I'm not convinced the hinges won't fail in a year plus the trackpad is unusuable. Really can't recommend the laptop even at $1522 after tax.

Same weight and proportions as an AW 15r3, didn't stop me then and wouldn't now. I have other issues with the laptop, weight not being one. Going to try for the Acer Triton 500SE while I wait and see on the P1 G4

 

Never had this issue with mine. The profile I set at shutdown or when the system reboots is the same every time.

This was a problem for me, but the latest BIOS fixed it. The one on Lenovo's support site is the most recent, not the one that the Vantage software reports.

 

Not saying you're wrong but iirc I had the latest bios and this did not fix my issue. To clarify when I mean OS interaction I mean boot to login screen.

Everything I set the lighting in vantage including enabling the lid lighting each time it shutdown or went into hibernate it would reset the keyboard coloring from white (mine) either to teal or rainbow until the Windows login screen appeared and the profile reloaded.

Also the laptop mines at 62MH for what it's worth. Shame about the issues mentioned above and the trackpad. Both were deal breakers for me.

 

I’ve had several of both L7’s and L5P’s home, and had none of these issues. May you had a lemon?

 

I did speak with Lenovo and they felt it was possible mine was defective but this makes the 6th DOA/Defective laptop I've received from Lenovo so I think I'm done with the brand. All 6 had issues related to expansion slots devices varying from USB, Thunderbolt and Display Output.

 

Too bad. I also had some QC issues with Lenovo historically, but no more than with any other brand, so YMMV.

 

Replace Lenovo with Asus and you pretty much have my experience with that brand.

Edit: Someone posted a review of the non-Pro Legion 5 with the 3060, and not going to mince words - it's not good. The build quality is rather atrocious and performance was way off in some games. While bad RAM may account for some of it, I don't think that's all.

 

The 17.3" Legion 5 (5800H, RTX3060, 1TB/16GB) is available at my local Micro Center. I plan to pick one up later today.

 

Good luck. Hope the build quality is better than what was shown the video I linked to above.

I just cancelled my CDW order. I realize that YouTuber's experience is not going to be the case for everyone, but there were so many errors I don't want to deal with potentially having the same thing happen.

 

Sucks, you'll go through that with any brand tbh and its like the luck of the draw

Personally i think you got a lemon and you should exchange it with another unit from Walmart if they have anymore units available and if the same issues happens again just ask for a refund.

 

I am also curious about build quality and your thoughts about it if you pick one up. I know you have also used Precisions and Alienware laptops so you are coming from the same place as me.

 

I've setup the 17" Legion over the last few hours. Some of my quick impressions:

• Build quality is basically the 2020 Legion 5 15" (non-pro) I have but scaled up to 120%. It is fully plastic, but one of the best fully plastic chassis I have used. It doesn't have the torsional rigidity of a Dell Precision because it lacks the internal skeleton, but it also doesn't bend unless you abuse it. It doesn't creak or make any unpleasant noises when you do use unnecessary force. The soft touch plastic is nice feeling on the keyboard deck and lid. The non-soft touch plastic base is the cheapest feeling part of the entire device, but I honestly wouldn't trade the additional weight a metal bottom plate would add. It has similar keyboard flex to my previous Precision and doesn't have any gaps or uneven panels. Overall, I think it feels very well built, especially for a $1400 machine.
• The keyboard and trackpad feel exactly the same as the 2020 version. It has a very similar keyboard to the L5P, but oddly, the 17" L5 has a smaller touchpad than the L5P. I wish the touchpad was glass and the plastic coating will get shiny within a month, but its adequate.
• The performance of this 17" L5 (5800H/RTX 3060/16GB) unit is within 5% of my similarly configured L5P in Cinebench and 3DMark when configured with the same memory. Like a lot of other machines being released right now, the 17" L5 comes with two Micron MTA4ATF1G64HZ SO-DIMMs that are 3200mhz, CL22-22-52 but 1Rx16. They are pretty poor performing and swapping in a 32GB set of HyperX is a substantial upgrade.
• The display is the real reason I'm interested in this machine. I don't need a refresh rate higher than 144hz and the PPI of 1080p@17" is perfect for my old eyes without relying on finicky Windows display scaling. If I keep this as my daily driver for a little while, it will strictly be because of the display. Curiously, the physical height of the 16" display on the L5P is almost exactly the same as the height of the 17". The 17" just has a much larger bezel and its over an inch wider. Aside from a little crispness, the only thing I miss from the 16" L5P is the insane brightness.
• Fan noise is something I'm going to tackle a bit more tomorrow. The 17" has a nearly identical thermal design as the L5P, but stretched. The fans appear to be identical to the L5P as @win32asmguy pointed out earlier, but the 17" has worse acoustics for two reasons. First, the fans cycle on and off and pulse much worse than both the 2020 L5 or the L5P when in the balanced thermal mode. I suspect this could be ironed out with a firmware update. The second problem is what I hope to tackle tomorrow; there is something about the chassis of the 17" L5 that gives the fans a higher pitch than on the L5P. With both bottom panels removed on the L5P and 17" L5, the fans sound almost identical but once the bottom panels are reattached, the 17" L5 is quite a bit more offensive to me from a normal distance. I experienced a similar frustration with the Legion 7 which also uses a similar thermal design... kind of a bummer but I'll see if anything can be done.

A few last miscellaneous things to mention:

• Wireless networking speeds are atrocious on the 17". Sustained bandwidth is about half of what I get with the L5P under similar conditions. I'm not sure if this is a problem with the antenna design of the 17" or the Realtek RTL8852AE NIC used in the 17" which I have zero experience with. I'll swap in an AX200 I have tomorrow as well to see if this improves.
• The 1TB SSD is a Samsung PM981a. I know this is likely to change depending on Lenovo's supply chain, but I always get excited when I get a good SSD in a notebook.
• The card reader is nerfed to about 100MB/s. Tested with a Sony SF-G64 that will normally max out well above 200MB/s.

 

Wow, thanks for the detailed information. Sounds decent other than the higher fan pitch compared to the L5P. I am curious what your fix may be. As far as the pulsing goes that can be fixed with repasting I think.

 

Tbh, I recall my Y740-17 being prone to some high pitch noise. Nothing major, but still.

I’m trying a L7 R7 version one last time, if that doesn’t work out it’s L5P keeping time.

 

Anyone know why you can't add onsite warranty to the 2021 Legion 7 Intel model? You can add it to AMD. Strange.

 

Jarrod posted this review of the Legion 5 non-Pro 15 inch, good details on game benchmarks here, but he does not cover build quality or fan noise.

 

Hi,

I finally purchased the Lenovo Legion 5 pro with theRyzen 7 5800h - RTX 3070. Same price as the non pro Legion 5 with the rtx 3060, surprisingly.

This RTX will be the 125w + 15w version?

And the Pro version, still has the same "bad" ram sticks?

Thank you!

 

The RTX is 125W+15W.

Yes also on the RAM.

Sent from my LM-V450 using Tapatalk

 

I didn't think AK had a microcenter, lol

Thanks for the insight on the Legion 5 17." I was considering it myself, but it doesn't seem like there is enough to warrant the swap, even though the price difference would be better. I will keep waiting for the L7 and compare.

Maybe next version will have a 17" 16:10. Been missing one since the Dell M6500. It is interesting that the 16" has the same width as the 15" version and the same height as the 17" version

 

Yea I remember when Asus was the standard to beat, their ultrabooks back in the early C2D and Merom days were fantastic. Lenovo has always had very hit or miss build quality and this doesn't suprise me at all

Honestly I'm more convinced it's the brand. There is no reason why a laptop should be that bad and should be forgiven because it's cheap. What I've done is replaced the Legion with an Acer Predator 500SE. So far it's considerably better, only issue I can observe so far is lightbleed from the bezel being too snug in some places but coming from alienware it's not bad.

While I realize it's $400 more and inferior specs on paper to me having a real metal chassis, glass trackpad, thunderbolt, 10 actual hours of battery life and a fingerprint reader outweigh the added cost.

 

What's all this I'm seeing about decently priced L5Ps? I lined up a contact to help me get one from the US and the only prices I see are 1900$ for a 3070 from Walmart's website or a similar price from Lenovo's with the caveat of 2+ months lead time. That's with a nerfed storage config (and Windows 10 Home compared to Pro, which in fairness won't make such a difference for me or most people)

RAM upgrade seems to have jumped up in price as well.

EDIT: There's two third-party sellers on the Walmart site. Is one of them more reputable than the other? Is there a chance that one of them could be a returned device with whine/lemon issues?

 

This one, Sold & shipped by NCS--We record S/N, has a lot of 1 stars for selling refurbished or returned laptops. I've considered buying one from the other seller. I'm tired of waiting.

I would like to know how these Walmart and Amazon resellers get so many in stock but its a 3-4 month wait to get one from Lenovo.

 

Thats good, As long you're happy with your new Acer. Enjoy your new machine!.

Personally you should get the RTX 3060 version on Antonline, At least the price remains consistent and you dont have to wait as long to receive it.

https://www.antonline.com/Lenovo/Computers/Computer_Systems/Notebooks/1427632

 

Bit the bullet and bought the Legion 5 15" , FHD, RTX 3070 from CDW w/ the 5% discount. Including the 3 year onsite warranty the total is $1589 shipped. Heck of a price, hope it arrives before 2022 haha.

 

Well this is new. Now when you got to the L5 Pro at Lenovo a popup says:
Sorry, this product is temporarily unavailable
Check back for new inventory of Legion 5 Pro Gen 6 16" AMD Premium with Nvidia GPU

 

Any updates on how your Legion 5 17 has been running? I noticed they got a shipment of these at the Denver Micro Center and put them on sale for $1299. That makes the RTX 3070 (Legion 5 17) from CDW an additional $300 more expensive, not to mention it is back-ordered without ETA.

 

Just ordered the Legion 7 from Lenovo since I got a $284.59 military discount. If the 5 Pro ever makes it back to Walmart I may cancel and get it.

 

Yeah there is another seller and their ratings do not say anything about whether or not the laptops are returns or not. I'm worried that I'll pay a pretty penny and end up with a whiny or otherwise lemony machine. I'm receiving it outside the US so it's not like I can just pop it back into the mail system and process a return.

I usually sit on it until things stabilize but I've waited so long that my current machine is deteriorating quickly. What's worse is that the hardware shortage is not letting up anytime soon so biting the bullet might just be the better way to do it. Kind of waiting to see if anyone has any experience with this second seller, but I might double down anyway if I feel like they will run out of machines soon.

Unrelated question, I've seen people discussing RAM upgrades and relating the CL upgrade to gaming at 1080p (on this machine). I'm not very familiar with AMD and how Zen handles RAM, just that it is more sensitive to RAM specs. Is there something I could read that could help me understand? I've tried a few keyword permutations in Google and I've found nothing relevant in the Reddit and NBR threads I found. I'm most likely to get a RAM upgrade but I'm not fully committed to that yet so any info that can help me make a wiser decision for my use case would be greatly appreciated.

 

Best thing to do is to watch this video on the subject.

 

Great link/video. Thank you.

I liked learning that the Legion 7 may already come with better RAM from the factory

 

Thanks! Saved me $150.

 

Interesting. I don't know why I had a specific kit in mind, but it's 250$ now compared to like 200$ when I first bookmarked it. Something to do with the default JEDEC timings (that acronym rang a bell when I looked at the datasheet, I frankly do not know much about RAM) since most "better" RAM relies on XMP, which is an Intel thing as far as I know. It's a 2*16 gig CL20 SODIMM kit with the "correct" JEDEC timings for running at 3200. Datasheet here, won't link a store page because it seems like every time a link gets posted the stock gets sold completely (might just be shortage though). Couldn't figure out if this is single or dual rank, I'd assume the marketing would scream DUAL RANK in every row of the spec table if it indeed was dual rank.

EDIT: 2Rx8 sounds pretty dual ranky to me but I wouldn't know. Google seems to agree.​

I play Cities Skylines with mods so I'm very consciously choosing 32 gigs, I'm aware 16 is enough for most people.

 

Lenovo Legion 5 2021



Problem is its way too overpriced, At those prices you mind well get the Pro version...

 

The Legion 5 17 is great. I picked one up from Micro Center along with an Intel AX200 Wifi card to replace the stock Realtek module. The price was $1299 before tax which I think is fair. Others might prefer the Pro's screen but I am quite happy with the no-scaling 1920x1080 17 inch panel.