High-end performance at a mid-range price – Review Geek – News Block

The Lenovo Legion Pro 5i Gen 8 is a very powerful high-end gaming laptop. As with other gaming laptops, some compromises have to be made. It’s heavy, battery life isn’t great, and more RAM would have been nice too. Still, the laptop performs its primary function exceptionally well and can take just about anything you throw at it.

Lenovo’s Legion line is one of the biggest names in the world of gaming laptops. So its recent release, the Legion Pro 5i Gen 8, has a lot to live up to. Its specs sound incredible, but you really need to put one to the test to see if it translates to real life. That’s just what I did here.

As far as the basics go, the display is a nice 16-inch, 2k display, with a pretty decent 165Hz refresh rate. It’s not the most luxurious thing you’ll see in a laptop, but it’s not cheap either. There’s also a very good selection of ports, and Lenovo has been decent enough to put USB-A ports on both sides of the laptop, something not enough companies bother to do.

But there’s more to a gaming laptop than its screen and ports. They are creatures of compromise. So let’s take a look at what Lenovo has done right and where the Legion Pro 5i Gen 8 may have fallen short.

Specifications as reviewed

• CPU: 13th Generation Intel Core i7-13700HX Processor
• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 (140W) Laptop GPU
• RAM: 2 x 8GB SO-DIMM DDR5-4800
• OS: Home Windows 11
• Show: 16-inch WQXGA (2560 × 1600) IPS 300 nits, 165 Hz
• Storage: 512 GB M.2 2280 PCIe 4.0×4 NVMe SSD, two M.2 2280 PCIe 4.0 x4 slots
• Ports: 3x USB 3.2 Gen 1, 1x USB 3.2 Gen 1 (always on), 1x USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 (data transfer, 140W Power Delivery and DisplayPort 1.4), 1x USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 (supports data transfer and DisplayPort 1.4), 1x HDMI 2.1, 1x Ethernet (RJ-45), 1x headphone/microphone combo jack (3.5mm), 1x power jack
• Audio: 2 x 2 W speaker system with Nahimic audio
• Camera: FHD 1080p, with electronic shutter, fixed focus
• Dimensions: 14.3 x 10.25 x 0.88-1.05 inches
• Weight: 5.6 pounds

It comes with a lot of stuff you don’t need.

The first thing you’ll notice when booting up the Legion Pro 5i Gen 8 is the sheer number of additional programs included with the laptop. Some of them, like Lenovo’s Vantage app, are quite useful and can help you optimize your laptop settings and get the most out of your machine. Others are just bloatware and can be quite annoying.

Don’t get me wrong, this problem is easily fixed and the Legion Pro 5i Gen 8 is powerful enough to carry a lot of passengers before its performance suffers. But one app, in particular, kept turning on and minimizing the full-screen games I was playing at crucial moments, which isn’t ideal for a gaming laptop. At Lenovo’s asking price, you want a smooth, premium experience. You don’t want to spend time going through a test and take down process to be able to play on it.

This can handle anything you throw at it

As you’d expect with a high-end gaming laptop, Lenovo has really pushed it with the hardware here. It’s the best you can currently get without having to go through the weird experimental builds that cost more than a car. A 13th generation Intel Core i7-13700HX processor is the brain of the computer, with 16 cores and a clock speed of up to 5.0 GHz.

This is paired with 16GB of DDR5 RAM, which isn’t a weak point by any means, but is arguably the area where Lenovo could have pushed the boat further, with many of its rivals offering 32GB of memory with their game. badge. Laptops Still, 16GB is plenty, and coupled with the processor, it’s enough to handle pretty much any task you want to do on this laptop.

The real star of the show is the 4000 series GPU that has been stuffed into this bad boy. The version Lenovo lent us to test contained a 4060, but you can get a 4070 if you want to shell out a little more cash. It’s worth noting that laptop GPUs aren’t the same as what you’ll find on a desktop for a number of reasons. A rough rule of thumb is to remove a generation and that’s pretty much the performance you’ll actually get from it. So that 4060 is really a 3060 in desktop terms.

After some extensive testing, I came to the conclusion that it doesn’t really matter in this case. This is a very powerful high-end GPU that can run just about anything at very high settings. I’m a bit of a VR fan, if you haven’t noticed, so naturally I slapped half of my back catalog on the Legion. VR games have to be rendered twice, so they are a bit more demanding than their 2D counterparts. The Legion handed them over without issue. Everything looked great and worked like a charm.

As a bonus, it’s all tied to the current generation of consoles in terms of gameplay, so this Legion Pro 5i Gen 8 will probably be playing in the big leagues until 2028 at the earliest and will likely still be a heavy hitter in early 2020. the next decade.

The keyboard is surprisingly nice

Part of the reason I bought my daily driver is its keyboard. I do a lot of typing, obviously, so the Alienware i5’s semi-mechanical keyboard was a good choice. I hate a lot of things about my personal laptop, but the keyboard is not one of them.

However, he should have gone for this Legion instead. Is the “Truestrike Gaming Keyboard” that Lenovo added to its laptop that good? No, it is not. But it’s still very comfortable to type on. Key travel is smooth and pleasant, and you can type long pieces without disintegrating your carpal tunnel. From a gaming standpoint, the built-in anti-ghosting works just fine, but that’s the case with many modern high-end keyboards.

You can also set custom lighting profiles if RGB is your bag. I only did this to test it out and then didn’t bother as I think it looks stupid. But each to their own there.

Battery life is…it’s a gaming laptop

Lenovo boasts that its fast charging system will bring the battery back up to 80% in as little as 30 minutes, and from experience, this laptop charges very quickly. Its charger, which looks like a reinforced USB type A connector, I also really liked. Initially, it was much more difficult to insert than a barrel connector, but it stays in place very securely, which is ideal when using the laptop on a sofa or in bed.

Unfortunately, beyond fast charging, it’s again a gaming laptop in terms of battery life. These high-performance machines are thirsty, and even if you’re just watching YouTube videos or browsing the web, you’ll struggle to get more than a couple hours out of the Pro 5i Gen 8’s “80Wh Battery” when unplugged. Performance and portability are great, but battery life makes using it as a work laptop or an all-rounder a huge pain.

It’s what you’d expect, at a surprisingly decent price

The Lenovo Legion Pro 5i Gen 8 retails for $11589.99, if you’re paying full price. In my opinion, the premium processor and GPU option makes it worth the money at that price. You can add more RAM to a laptop easily enough, should you need it, and the SSD is expandable too. All the shortcomings are not a deal breaker, as long as you’re looking for a gaming laptop. Don’t use a gaming laptop as a work laptop; it’s torture

The bottom line is that the Pro 5i Gen 8 does what it’s supposed to do incredibly well, and it’s something to seriously consider if you’re looking for a new gaming laptop in the mid-range price range.