Lenovo Legion 5i Pro Review: An enthusiast gaming laptop that ticks all the right boxes

Lenovo recently refreshed its Legion 5i Pro gaming laptop with 12th Gen Intel hardware and the latest Nvidia RTX-30 series graphics. We reviewed a version of the Legion 5 Pro with AMD processing power and Nvidia’s RTX-30 series graphics. However, this new model is powered by the latest Intel chip with a minor bump in graphics.

But before we get into our full Lenovo Legion 5i Pro review, let’s take a look at the pricing of this gaming powerhouse. The Lenovo Legion 5i Pro features a starting price of Rs 1,64,990 in India, although our model wasn’t in stock at the time of writing. Our review unit features the latest Intel Core i9-12900H CPU paired with the Nvidia RTX 3070 Ti laptop GPU. While the Legion 5i Pro does boasts impressive specs on paper, we’d like to take a closer look and see how it fares in real-world scenarios.

Design

The Lenovo Legion 5i Pro is a beefy laptop, weighing just under 5.5 pounds while measuring slightly over 27mm thick. The notebook has an aluminium chassis that just adds to the overall heft. While the Legion 5i Pro isn’t portable, the heft may not be such a bad thing as it leaves more room for cooling but more on that later. Our model arrived in a Stingray White colour, which looks pretty good and doesn’t tend to attract smudges.

It is worth noting that the Legion 5i Pro’s finish looks more professional than the gamer, although it is unmistakable that the gamer aesthetic is present in the laptop’s design. There are tons of ports and vents going around the sides and back of the laptop. Additionally, the laptop’s screen has slim bezels on either side with a large camera bump on the top. The Legion 5i Pro has a more subtle touch as opposed to the over-the-edge RGB gaming designs.

Ports

When it comes to ports, the Legion 5i Pro has got you covered! There is a USB Type-A port and an audio jack on the right, while the two USB Type-C ports sit on the left with Thunderbolt 4 support.

However, that’s not all, most of the ports are located on the back, which include two full-size USB ports, an HDMI port, a USB Type-C port for power delivery, an Ethernet port, and power output. Other connectivity options include Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.1. The Legion 5i Pro has the most number of ports we’ve seen on a 15-inch gaming laptop.

Keyboard and Touchpad

The Lenovo Legion 5i Pro comes with a full-size backlit keyboard with a Number Pad. Lenovo's TrueStrike keyboard features a travel distance of 1.5mm, giving you a nice tactile feel when gaming and typing. Additionally, there was no keyboard flex, although the keys do feel cramped together, which can result in some annoying typing errors. However, it doesn’t take long to get used to, although there are blue LEDs as opposed to RGB lighting.

The Precision touchpad on the Legion 5i Pro is fairly large, while the matte finish allows your fingers to smoothly glide across the surface area. It also accurately records gestures and sliding your palm across the surface doesn’t really move the mouse, which was really convenient. I defaulted to using the mouse throughout my use of the Legion 5i Pro and very rarely used the touchpad, but it felt comfortable and convenient to use when needed it.

Display

The Legion 5i Pro also opts for a 16-inch WQXGA (2560 x 1600 pixels) IPS display with a 16:10 aspect ratio. The display also features a 165Hz refresh rate and a 3ms response time. The screen comes with Dolby Vision and VESA DisplayHDR 400 support. Unlike traditional gaming laptops, the screen on the Legion 5i Pro delivers a peak brightness of 500 nits as well as an anti-glare finish, which makes the laptop easy to use outdoors.

The 16:10 aspect ratio is also good for multi-tasking, while the panel has excellent viewing angles. The screen supports Nvidia G-Sync and AMD FreeSync, which cuts down screen tearing making it excellent for gaming. The display also supports 100 percent sRGB coverage for basic content creation. The Lenovo Legion 5i Pro has a solid display that easily matches the laptop’s powerful hardware.

Performance

The Legion 5i Pro may not look very gamer-focused on the outside but that’s hardly the case on the inside. Lenovo has equipped this mobile gaming machine with an Intel Core i9-12900H CPU paired with integrated Intel Iris Xe graphics and dedicated Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti laptop GPU. The notebook also comes with 32GB of DDR5 RAM and 1TB of PCIe Gen 4 NVMe M.2 SSD storage. So, let’s take a look at some real-world results.

The Legion 5i Pro managed to pull off some impressive results while gaming, scoring 120 fps on average in Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War without RTX turned on and in QHD resolution. In Apex Legends, we got an average of 131 fps with max settings in QHD resolution and 160 fps on average in FHD resolution. In Battlefield V, the Legion 5i Pro managed an average of 120fps on high graphics at QHD resolution, although turning ray tracing on drops the frames rates to around 60 to 70 fps. Shadow of the Tomb Raider managed 80fps on average on its highest settings.

#ApexLegends on the @ASUS_ROG Zephyrus M16 (2022). 12th Gen @IntelGaming Core i9 / @NVIDIAGeForce RTX 3070 Ti#NoobGoesPro pic.twitter.com/eJ4CaDHKOK

— Carlsen (@Carlsen0491) August 25, 2022

I also ran the Legion 5i Pro in a few benchmarks, including Geekbench and Cinebench. The Geekbench 5 test yielded a single-core score of 1809 points and a multi-core score of 12781 points. In Cinebench R23, the chip managed a single-core score of 1910 points and a multi-core score of 18610 points. In the 10-minute throttling test, the CPU scored 1716 points in the single-core test and 17101 points. The overall benchmark results were pretty good, in large part due to Lenovo’s impressive cooling system.

#CallofDutyBlackOpsColdWar on the @Lenovo Legion 5i Pro 12th Gen @IntelGaming Core i9 / @NVIDIAGeForce RTX 3070 Ti#NoobGoesPro pic.twitter.com/iRP6dSICii

— Carlsen (@Carlsen0491) August 25, 2022

Lenovo claims its ColdFront 4.0 cooling system is quieter and allows the GPU and CPU to run at higher levels with a new dual-burn feature. You can also use the Fn + Q command to switch power profiles. The one downside of the cooling system is that there are no granular fan controls. However, the temperatures were well maintained with no heat seeping into the chassis and the laptop running relatively cool for a gaming laptop. I did not see temperatures north of 85 degrees on the CPU and north of 80 degrees on the GPU while gaming. Overall, the Legion 5i Pro’s cooling system does an excellent job of eliminating throttling.

Battery

In terms of battery life, the Legion’s 80-watt-hour battery is touted to deliver up to five hours of battery life. In my testing, the Legion 5i Pro lasted less than 90 minutes with Google Chrome opened alongside MS Word and Raid: Shadow Legends (Android Game).

If you shut down the game and run the laptop with its power consumption settings, including lowering the brightness to 40 percent and running the laptop in Quiet mode with the Hybrid-iGPU Only mode, you will be able to squeeze out around four hours of battery life when multitasking with three Chrome tabs open and MS Word. While the laptop is accompanied by a large 300W charger, there is a USB-C power delivery port. However, powering the laptop through the USB-C port won’t work out very well for gaming. Overall, battery life here is pretty average for a gaming laptop.

Audio and Webcam

The Legion 5i Pro features dual 2W downward firing stereo speakers. In most instances, be it gaming or watching content, I defaulted to the laptop’s speakers as the audio quality here is top-notch. In major parts, this is due to the Nahimic Audio app, which allows you to customise your audio via an equaliser or choose from multiple audio presets for different tasks.

Competitive gaming did require a headset but in most other instances I found the speakers to be quite effective. The Legion 5i Pro also comes with a 720p webcam that is adequate for video calls. It doesn’t have a physical shutter but there is a kill switch on the keyboard that shut the camera off.

Verdict

The Lenovo Legion 5i Pro is a no-nonsense gaming laptop that is built to squeeze every last drop of performance out of its hardware. The Legion 5i Pro has all the makings of a superb gaming laptop. It offers excellent performance, a vibrant display, a comfortable keyboard, good speakers, tons of ports, a reliable cooling system, and a solid build. The notebook is not without its cons, including the bulky design and sub-par battery life. The ‘pros’ easily outweigh the ‘cons’ here and the ‘cons’ aren’t things to be concerned about when looking for a high-performance gaming laptop.

The Legion 5i Pro is built to handle the heat and help you take full advantage of that powerful spec sheet. The Lenovo Legion 5i Pro is easily worth a recommendation in our books, which is pretty much down to its powerful specs and steadfast cooling. It is worth noting that our Legion 5i Pro model is currently unavailable in India now, but you can get a model with a downgraded 12th Gen Intel Core i7 CPU and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 laptop GPU, although its price is a little higher than your average gaming laptop with the same specs.