Lenovo Legion 5 and 7 (2020)

Hinge defect is not that common, unless it's due to design, such as the hinge part was initially designed to be slimmer and thinner such that the overall thickness flushes with the thin LCD lid.
However, most of the issues raised on Legion 7 seems to be due to the RGB LED decos around the chassis that blocks air flow of the system. With addition of the slim profile of the model, heat builds up and can't be dissipate fast...

 

prices on the 7i models are dropping fast compared to only a month ago, my 17" Legion 5i now costs more than the Legion 7i with the same specs (no 17" 7i models). i've spoken with a couple people that had hinge issues on the 7i, both were fixed by on-site legion ultimate warranty but this is what happens when being thin gets prioritized over being reliable and the same can be said for the thermals in the 7i. this whole vapor chamber craze is a joke, the 7i vapor chamber models have at best the same thermals as the heat pipe models and some even worse.

7i's seem to have a lot of issues the 5i's dont which is unfortunate for 7i owners that paid a lot more to get an inferior product, i wanted the 7i but im glad my wallet didnt allow for it at the time

on the upside one could now say that RGB has an effect on performance

 

the Legion5 17ARH is now available for sale in the North American region as Pre builds.
and product page is now officially upped @ various European sites as well as selective Asian markets. however，the Legion5 AMD biggies are still not opened for order outside America.

 

the 5p comes with the full 115w vbios but no idea when they come over here to the US, i'd probably still go with the intel model anyway but thats just my preference. it's still quite irritating how lenovo decided to go about trickling out more powerful vbios in an otherwise unchanged machine other than removing the camera and replacing the nice clean looking lid with that stupid light up legion emblem in the center. if it was due to thermals i could understand but it's not, it was only done so lenovo could sell more models.

as much as i love my legion 5i, after this laptop i think im going back to my original stance of never HP, never Lenovo, never again. too many bad experiences in the past, HP for being put together with bubble gum, whitelists and stupidity, and Lenovo for more or less the same and now knowingly kneecapping performance in order to sell future faster models instead of making each machine the best it can be like some other better companies do

 

Well... like cars, not all makers will make consistent hot ticket "good makes" that will go on for the next generation or the generation after next.
I look at Legion brand as like Lexus out from it's parent company. However, what we can't avoid, is that they are built along with other brands in a particular country where their resource of parts and components is far more larger, than "enthusiast grade" gear makers like Clevo and TongFang where individual rebadging OEMs source their "easy to install" components from different markets where possibilities of bugs and issues may happen unexpectedly.

 

I just couldn't help thinking/suspecting** that there could be a "Gen2" redesign on the internal construction to tackle with the current reported issues reported in social medias. The hinge issues may/may not get revised as well... However, most importantly, I suspect that... 11th Gen Xe CPUs maybe in the plan to be fitted in the "Gen2" revision of Legion7i to fight off the growing interests on the AMD side of same product.

**base on my recent observation on changes done to the IdeaPad Flex5-15 in PSREF.

 

thing is with lenovo, they never seem to be in touch with what people ask for. one of the unique features it has/had was it's clean styling people loved and they changed that, then the corsair RGB on the 7i doing a light show whenever you turn it on without any way of disabling it outside of actually unplugging the cables, looks like it shredding psychedelic unicorns through a wood chipper .

heres my biggest issues with gaming laptops in general, the terrible keyboards that plague almost every one of them and resembling paddles as if the average finger is 2 inches wide or we type with a closed fist like whack-a-mole, but that RGB tho!! .

the legion 5i keyboard is only white backlit but it's a keyboard that you can actually type on, overall it's a great machine for the price if you ignore the vbios bs games they play.

i think the closest i've found to a perfect fit for me is the Aorus 17x but the price is a little insane, but a full 200w gpu, a great keyboard that does RGB right and meant to accent the keys and not the other way around. same for the Aero 17 but in a lower performance obviously, not much thermal headroom either, but an excellent keyboard.

MSI would be on my list but those keyboards man,ffs. makes an otherwise excellent machine look like a children's toy. the GS75 stealth looks good but i dont want max-q, the GE75 Raider specs give a good bargain but steelseries case and that goofy paddle keyboard are a no go.

can you tell im a bit picky?

 

Yeah and on the video i posted it shows how the hinges of the Legion 5 and 7 are designed and clearly the legion 5 hinges are built better than the Legion 7 which supposed to be their flagship gaming laptop. Im reading a lot of posts on Reddit who has the Legion 7 reporting the same problems. I doubt its predecessor the Y740 has the same issue.

Hopefully Lenovo fixes this issue in their next batch.....

 

Full review of the Amazon version i own



Gaming benchmarks

 

i think i just heard a joke in there, its hard to tell sometimes with his monotone voice. "there's an rgb option for a few extra fps"

i like his video's for certain specs like a list of laptops, their gpu's and what wattage they are but sometimes his numbers can be way off outside any reasonable margin of error and he uses numbers from overclock applied on some machines while using base on others. overall though he covers more models and has more useful info in his videos than any other youtub reviewer i know of, i just take the benchmark numbers with a grain of salt

 

That's right, he uses the highest built in profile for game benchmarks and sometimes these profiles apply a gpu overclock like the Helios 300. Its more consumer oriented so thats fair.

Either way his videos are the best overall with the most extensive testing. Bob of all trades is better in terms of the laptop usability but lacks game benchmarks, information on thermals, etc. Own or disown is OK but lacks information in general. Dave2d is the worst in terms of information you actually need to make a decision on which laptop to get as he just glosses over the weak points of the laptops.

 

Well I mean everything in Dave2D is basically just "buy Razer!" and always a comparison with them lol

Sent from my SM-G970W using Tapatalk

 

i was surprised when jarrodstech didnt do one on the 5i, although it's broken and at lenovo for repair (may or may not be a problem i created) i do really like the thing.
"Your Lenovo Case xxxxxxxxx - Delivered and in repair", until then im stuck finding new ways of breaking my old inspiron 15-7559 to pass the time.

 

True, but he mentions that they were tested at different times and with different drivers. Personally i prefer real time gaming tests like BOB and Own or disown does in their videos showing the FPS, temps, and clock speeds, Way more helpful than benchmarks imo.

Also i have a question how much an increase in FPS will i gain in games if i disable optimus? Btw Optimus is disabled by default out of the box and i kept Hybrid mode on ever since.

 

depends, some games show minimal improvement and other games show a lot more. i keep it in discrete mode for other reason too, i almost never use battery power so battery life isnt a priority and linux is my primary os and hybrid graphics are a pain in the ass.

i was actually wondering how the ryzen/vega/rtx combo handled the amd freesync display. the legion 5i and 7i were the first laptops to get advanced optimus for display control handoff on the fly although i've yet to see it work for anyone other than a single youtube review and i think that was shortly before they were released. does freesync work for you in hybrid mode or only in discrete?

 

Matthew Moniz review is just the same like D2D, so as Lisa from MobileTech... most of the time on aesthetics and barely little comparison. DutchLady from TechTesters, HardwareCanuck, Lon's TV and Just Josh at least does something little further with their reviews... ...Though not as extensive and comparative like Jarrods and Bob as they have "library of books" in their storage.

However, it was thru Bobs channel i come to know that by disabling turbo mode thru RegEdit, we can lower rising temperature of the 4000s Ryzen systems, which later further elaborated by Own/DisOwn.

 

Disabling turbo is not a solution though. You're just avoiding the problem which is the poor cpu cooling.

A repaste is what you need.

 

paying for new hardware only to cripple it, some people dont mind it but i could never bring myself to do it. im worried if lenovo replaces my motherboard i might end up losing the silicon lottery, it's no monster cpu but i had that i7-10750H running pretty damn good with cinebench r20 of 3399 and even that single point away from 3400 was getting to me

https://imgur.com/a/mpm1p2q

 

Disabling it especially on battery helps a lot if you care about battery life

I used the RegEdit tweak that adds the option of disabling it in the power settings. I usually leave the boost on when plugged in because the laptop can handle it even with the 4800h but when you disable the boost temps are insanely cool even when gaming, The temps hangs around the 60C range when testing it. Most games are GPU dependent anyways

 

EDIT: I misunderstood, yes I see what you mean wrt to Jarrod’s Tech.

One thing I like about him is on his website he has a database of noise measurements. It’s handy to see how laptops compare in one big spreadsheet. I wish Notebookcheck had a view like that.

 

i know with newer laptops and vbios people usually just swap them from one machine to the other, has anyone actually been able to work around the signed vbios issue and mod them? out of curiosity

 

unfortunately not.

 

thats too bad, i've collected the 85w, 100w, 110w, and 115w from the different Legion 5/5p/5i/5pi/7i models. im optimistic about the 5pi 100w working without losing discrete mode but im hoping the 115w from the Legion 5p (amd) end up being compatible but skeptical since it's a 4800H/RTX2060 vbios going onto a 10750H/RTX2060 model.

if not then i'll go with the shunt mod method, i mentioned in the shunt mod thread i that the stock vbios on the 5i is 85w which i loosely calculated to about 106w, what would the 100w vbios produce with the shunt mod?

 

Product page for Legion5-17ARH is now upped in numbers of European sites, as well as selective Asian sites. Available as prebuilts to be sold in North American markets.
After some digging from the online cso, i just found that I'll hv to wait till beginning of November for configurable order... In Singapore.

 

you might be better off waiting anyway, the 4000 series R5/7 models and not just lenovo seem to be having issues with the igpu and causing display issues


edit: what i dont understand is how it could be an igpu issue if the problem still happens in discrete mode. that part doesnt make sense

 

Well... I've the Legion 5 with 4600H and GTX1650, and it has been good with me since the first day to till today.
No buggy software and performance even after numbers of updates.
My suspicion goes to the screen panel rather than graphics card fault. Anyway, there will tend to be bugs in the initial releases, as there are lack of quality control workforce that resumes to work ever since May/June in China... So... that's where the lemons are.

 

Got my replacement today with the 2080 Super Max-Q and 32 GB RAM, but still i7-10750H. I understand why there is realistically only a 5% increase in performance from the 2080SMQ over the 2070SMQ and it is evident from the results of the profiles; with Balanced, more power goes to the CPU giving the result of the CPU test as 96% while the 2080SMQ only achieves 90%. However, Performance has more power available to the GPU, putting that at 99% but the CPU performance goes down to 87%. So what does that tell me? It tells me that the 230W power brick is not enough to maximize the potential of both components simultaneously. Curious. Wonder if there is a more powerful brick available that would work?

Sent from my SM-G970W using Tapatalk

 

Lenovo and it's infinite wisdom....

well the good news is that the RTX2060 vbios from the Legion 5/5p (AMD) are compatible with the Legion 5i (intel) on both hybrid and discrete mode, now comes the dumb part. i have the 100w vbios (5pi), and i have what i thought were 115w from the 17" 5p but turns out the 17" 5p gets 90w while the 15" gets 115w.

so, if anyone has a 15" Legion 5/5p with RTX2060 it would be greatly appreciated if you could use gpu-z to grab your vbios and post it somewhere.

 

If u had owned previous generations of Legion laptops with the same power terminal with bigger wattage supply, perhaps u may try it out.
However, conservatively, I believes in clocking your CPU/GPU to draw more power from the default supplied brick first to determine if the power brick will overheat before taking that straight forward power brick upsize.

 

Hi! Ill be getting the Legion 5 15arh05h - i can send you the bios as soon as it arrives (24. october)

 

thanks, that would be appreciated.

 

looks like lenovo actually warrantied my Legion 5i, replaced the motherboard, and it's being delivered today. cant wait to be done using this old dell laptop

 

Same here, besides some software/drivers issues i had with Windows 10 before and its been smooth sailing ever since.

230W is the max power brick for the Legions and its more than enough since the Max-Q versions of both the RTX 2070 Super and RTX 2080 Super uses 3 different variants (80W, 85W, 90W). Also a 230W power brick can handle a normal 115w RTX 2070 Super. Performance mode normally keeps the boost clocks at full power but it will throttle when it reaches temps above 90C.

 

it's great to have my laptop back from lenovo, so far all is working good. at least until i break something else

 

@dglt Hi there! So i got the laptop now. You just need the RTX 2060 bios exported via GPU-Z right?

 

i actually got ahold of them yesterday, but i appreciate the offer though. i'm loving the boost, 114-118w and still amazing thermals. running aida64 cpu stress test at the same time running unigine heaven, both 100% usage, no throttling.

i got the cpu running great first , 3411 cinebench r20. as of last night i have the #1 spot for time spy and port royal of all i7-10750/RTX2060 refresh laptops. 14th on fire strike but im working on it.

Port Royal results link

Time Spy results link

r20 score and hwinfo results:

 

@dglt Thats nice! Lenovo did a really good job with cooling on this machine!

Please do post the VBIOS in here for anyone that might need it

 

probably should of mentioned the part about liquid metal on both cpu and gpu.

115w vbios from 15" Legion 5 4800H/RTX2060 https://share.unixfy.net/legion5-rtx2060-115w.rom

works flawlessly on both hybrid and discrete modes on my i7-10750H/RTX2060 Legion 5i.

i also got XMP profiles working on my 5i (modded/unlocked bios)
https://imgur.com/a/uSTSN9K

 

How did you manage to mod the actual bios of this thing haha?

 

A bit off topic but for anyone interested (as i wondered myslef)

The Legion 5 15 arh05h (Ryzen 7 4800H, rtx 2060) is actually capable of outputting 4k@144hz with FULLRGB and HDR enabled via USB C Dp Alt mode.

Just tried myself and works like a charm

 

when it was just unlocking undervolt i used RUefi to disable "Overclocking Lock" (has nothing to do with overclocking) but for the fully unlocked bios i dumped my bios with fpt (intel firmware flash tool) and sent it to someone familiar with this kind of bios, he unlocked every possible menu and sent it back to me for flashing.

 

Agreed.

Even playing demanding games like RDR2 for a couple of hours the temps barely break 80c even with performance mode on. Idk if the Intel models have similar temps. I was even thinking about overclocking the 1660Ti somewhat, just the memory since the core clocks can reach 1.9Ghz at stock clocks.

Anyways an old problem popped up again after updating the AMD IGP drivers because i wanted to use Freesync and Windows 10 takes about 2-3 mins to boot up... even after reinstalling older drivers again. After searching around i finally found the solution to fix it and its a common problem with AMD systems.

Uninstall the AMD Audio CoProcessor driver under system devices in device manager and allow windows updates to reinstall the driver.

 

so for kicks i wanted to see how cinebench r20 would run via wine on linux, it beat my highest 3417 score from windows with ease even with the compatibility layer

 

I'm looking at two different configs of this laptop, and can't really decide the best way to go.

i7 10750H @ 240Hz and 16gb ram
i7 10875H @ 144Hz and 32gb ram

No other differences, and similar in price.

The ram is obviously not an issue as it can be replaced, but the refresh rate and CPU?

I probably won't reach anywhere close to 240 fps in AAA games, but still...

From a pure gaming perspective, which option would be best?

 

No opinions whatsoever?

 

There was a bit of a difference going from the 144Hz to the 240Hz but if you're coming from anything 120Hz or below, you're stepping up to a good screen regardless. The thing is, the CPU is a pretty big upgrade going to the 10875h from the 10750h as you've got 2 more physical cores (4 hyperthreaded). So that will future proof you a bit more. It might not be a huge improvement but if you play games that are CPU intensive, like Ubisoft titles, you're gonna wanna go the 10875h.

Sent from my SM-G970W using Tapatalk

 

i'd pay more attention to the cpu/gpu than i would the display, iirc both are 100% sRGB and rarely would you be playing games at 240hz. the i7-10750H, im able to get 3400+ cinebench r20 scores, the i7-10875H i've seen others getting between 4000-4300 r20 scores. if the trade off is losing the 240hz display but gaining the better cpu, go with the better cpu.

 

@Muyfa666 I would go for the beefier cpu all the time. The Difference of going from 144 to 240 hz is negligible. Yes there is a difference but it is so minimal compared to going from 60 to 144 that it is definitely not worth loosing out on cpu power for it.

As @Kalen said the 8 Core i7 is generally stronger and better going into the future with the current trend of games and software being to utilize more and more cores.

If you could link me the product page and the region you are in i can look up the lenovo databases if there is any differences regarding color accuracy, brightness features etc. of the 2 displayvariants

 

These are the models:

Lenovo Legion 7-15 81YT000KMX
Lenovo Legion 7-15 81YU000PMX

Thanks for all the replies so far all of you.

 

@Muyfa666 Unfortunately there is no public information available regarding the 240hz panel except for what you saw on the marketing information. Currently there are so few 15.6 inch 240hz Panels released and no one of them that is documented supports 500nits. The ServiceTag in the lenovo parts list reveils that there is a AUO B156HAN10.2 Panel baked into the machine which is a modified Version of the AUO B156HAN10.0 144hz Panel. There is actually information available on this one and if we can assume that they are somewhat similar in sepcs except for refreshrate then this is the best option we have for comparing the 2. After reading up on reviews of other laptops that use this and the 240hz panel it seems like it is a very good display with the only concern being that it lacks support for wide color gamut.

Details: https://www.panelook.com/modeldetail.php?id=40445

Judging by the possible used displays and its Service Tags we can find that the 500 nit adobe rgb 144hz panel will most likely (you can never be sure but im very certain on this one) be the BOE NV156FHM-NY5 --> This is an EXCEPTIONALLY GOOD display and if reviews are true probably the best FullHD Display currently out there packing Full Wide Gamut support aswell as high brightness, great color accuracy and fast response times.

Details: https://www.panelook.com/modeldetail.php?id=46515

I personally would opt for the 144hz display for the wide color gamut support any day over 240hz. With almost 100% DCI-P3 and Adobe RGB coverage, watching movies and consuming content on this display will be a dream. But do keep in mind as it uses wide colour gamut - all colors not mastered for wide color gamut (and therefore probably mastered for srgb) will look more saturated then they where intended to be.

Heres a link to the spec comparison of the 2 displays:
https://www.panelook.com/modelcompare.php?ids=46515,40445