In this article reviewing the Lenovo Legion 5i Pro gaming laptop, it has a 12th-gen Intel Core i7-12700h paired with an RTX 3070TI from Nvidia. Here we are going to deep dive to know its Design and Build quality, Ports, Display Picture quality, Audio, Mic, Performance, and Battery life. Also, my final thought is: is it worth it as a gaming laptop in 2023 or not?
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Read Also: Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 7 Review
Lenovo Legion 5i Pro Design, Build Quality
Inside the box, you get a 300-watt power adapter; it does support the 230-watt slim adapter as well, and you get some documentation as well. Now, compared to the Legion 5 Pro 16 with the AMD Ryzen processor, the chassis is basically the same, but the lid design has changed a bit. Instead of the large illuminated Legion logo, which was also imprinted on the side of the lid, there is now only subtle Legion lettering on the upper part of the lid. It’s a more subdued look, and I think it’s more classy, and at about two and a half KG, without the power supply, an additional 1.056 KG adds a little bit more weight, especially with that big 300 watt power adapter. So it’s not the lightest thing out there, but for a gaming laptop, the Legion 5i Pro is definitely portable enough to take with you on the go. The Legion 5i Pro build quality is still excellent, it is a very solid build. it’s design going to be pretty durable as well.
Lenovo Legion 5i Pro Ports and Connections
On the legion 5i Pro left side, we get a USB Thunderbolt 4 port, a USB 3.2 Gen 2 port that supports DisplayPort 1.4. Over the right side is your e-shutter switch to turn off the webcam in terms of security and privacy, which you’ve got to love, and next to that is a headphone and microphone combo jack. A USB 3.2 Gen 1 port, and moving on to the back, are a lot of the ports you’re going to love here. Let’s start off with that RJ45 Ethernet port, a USB 3.2 Gen 2 port, which supports DisplayPort 1.4 but also delivers power up to 135 watts. In other words, you can charge this with a USB adapter that you might have.
I’ve even charged it with a 65-watt USB-C adapter, which is not ideal if you can do gaming and stuff like that and want to use that 300-watt power adapter, but in a pinch, it’ll definitely get the job done, so that’s a good addition. There and next to that USBC port is an HDMI port that’s great for video out, a USB 3.2 Gen1 port, a second USB 3.2 Gen1 port, and finally your power port, which is the proprietary Lenovo port, and I would say all in all, pretty good port selection. On the legion 5i Pro the only thing missing would have been a full-size SD card reader, but we get none of that, and not even a microSD card reader would have been a great addition.
Internals and User Upgradeability
Now, when it comes to upgrading your ability to get inside, you need to remove the 10 screws and the bottom plate. Now once you do get the lid off, there are some things here to upgrade, which are always welcome. There are two SSD slots to upgrade as far as the RAM is concerned, so that means there’s a lot of upgradability. Here you can go up to 64 gigabytes of ram; now it’s DDR5 4800 ram running in dual channel mode. My review unit has 16 gigabytes of RAM, eight in each slot, and it’s working pretty well so far, but one thing you’ll notice is that it’s the rank 16 RAM, not the faster rank 8 RAM that we’d like to see. I didn’t notice any slow-ups or hiccups due to the fact that it has rank 16 RAM, so at the end of the day, it really is a non-factor.
| All | Read (MB//s) | Write (MB/s) |
|---|---|---|
| SEQ1M Q8T1 | 6739.89 | 4425.55 |
| SEQ1M Q1T1 | 4095.42 | 4131.13 |
| RND4K Q32T1 | 821.22 | 720.93 |
| RND4K Q1T1 | 74.47 | 246.10 |
When it comes to storage, the review unit has 512 gigabytes of PCIe Gen 4 SSD storage, and judging by the above reads and writes, these are excellent results; there is no doubt about it. I mean, 6739 for the read and 4425 for the write are simply blazingly fast. and the great news is there’s a second slot for you to expand out even more storage, which you’ve got to love. Unfortunately, Legion 5i Pro doesn’t have Wi-Fi 6e, which I would have liked to have seen, it still has Wi-Fi 6 along with Bluetooth 5.1, that it’s slotted in, which means if you want to swap it out for Wi-Fi 6e, you have that option. As far as the Wi-Fi and the Bluetooth go, they both work well, I’ve had no issues whatsoever.
Hinges, Keyboard and Touchpad
Now for those wondering, you can open the lid with one finger, and this is as far back as the display will go; it’s not 180 degrees like other laptops in the Lenovo line, but it goes back far enough to give you a proper viewing angle. and we have a pretty nice keyboard here; it’s actually really good, and I like the key travel on it. I also like the tactility of it; it feels really good for extended periods of typing. There’s also a numpad for those that want to crunch numbers when they’re not gaming during business hours, which will certainly help out some of you.
Having numpad move the touchpad over to the left means you’ve got to adjust a little bit, we’re used to this on a lot of gaming laptops and a lot of 16-inch laptops that are out in the wild, And for those that like the RGB lighting on keyboard, you have a lot of customization options in the settings, and it gives a nice look. You don’t have to go with that, but that is an option you have for those who like RGB lighting. I thought the touchpad was pretty responsive as well; it’s a precision touch pad, and I thought two-finger scrolling was smooth, and all the gestures worked as you’d expect.
Lenovo Legion 5i Pro Display
Lenovo Legion 5i Pro has a 16-inch display with a resolution of 2560 by 1600, an IPS display with a 165 hertz refresh rate, and a 16:10 aspect ratio, a matte display, which means there’s no glare reflection that you have to contend with, which is really great. Especially if you’re gaming or doing some work during business hours a really nice display. Lenovo claims the Legion 5i Pro display will get up to 500 nits in terms of brightness. I actually measured 500 nits on the dots, so they’re pretty accurate in their description of how bright it gets, so you’re going to be able to use this in both indoor and outdoor scenarios. Watching movies on this has been great.
Remember, it has HDR on it, so watching high-dynamic-range content on YouTube, Netflix, and Amazon has actually worked out really well. Lenovo Legion 5i Pro is also g-sync-supported. When you’re gaming, you’re going to have better game play, and having that 165 hertz refresh rate with the three millisecond response time is going to enhance that fluid gaming experience that you’d want to be very smooth.
Now you’re looking at some pretty deep blacks, good white points, decent contrast, a thousand to one ratio, which is good, and a delta e score of 1.36. Remember, anything below 2 means this will be a color-accurate display. As far as the coverage of the color gamut, 100 srgb, 75 Adobe RGB, 74 of the DCI-P3 wide color gamut, and 69 NTSC, if you’re a content creator, there are better choices out there. The Lenovo Legion 5i Pro is pretty decent, there are better content creation displays out there, that’s for sure, but don’t get me wrong, this will definitely get the job done. when you need to do some video editing or color grading, It will be okay in that regard—not the best, but definitely serviceable.
Audio
Now when legion 5i pro comes to the audio, there are two two-watt speakers that are located towards the front of the laptop, and it has a dynamic app that helps improve the sound quality without being a little bit teeny, but once you adjust the settings, it gets a little bit richer and a little bit more fun.
Webcam and Internal Mics
So the Lenovo Legion 5i from 2022 has that 12th-gen Core i7 12700h paired with an Nvidia RTX 3070 Ti, and what we’re looking at here is a 720p webcam. There is a shutter switch for those who want more privacy and security. It didn’t go with the 1080p webcam. I’m not surprised because it is a gaming laptop first and foremost, but it would have been nice to have 1080p. This is not a bad 720p, and I would say it’s certainly passable to do zoom calls and whatever you need, but again, the focus here is gaming with this beautiful 2.5 k 165 hertz display.
Lenovo Legion 5i Pro Performance, Benchmarks and Gaming
| PCMARK 10 | 7,763 |
| GEEKBENCH 5 (Single-Core) | 7,749 |
| GEEKBENCH 5 (Multi-Core) | 12,987 |
| CINEBENCH R20 | 6,850 |
| CINEBENCH R15 | 2,730 CB | 196.28 fps |
| CINEBENCH R23 | Single-Core 1,815, Multi-core 18,629 |
| 3DMARK Fire Strike | 25,571 |
| 3DMARK Time Spy | 11,781 |
Let’s talk about performance, and the Lenovo Legion 5i Pro (2022) is running the core i7-2700h processor paired with that RTX 3070 Ti. This 3070 Ti has 8 gigabytes of GDDR6 video memory, and it also has a TDP of 150 watts, so it has really good performance. As you can see from the benchmark table numbers above, PC Mark 10 is a good indicator of everyday use. Microsoft Office email, web browsing, and video conferencing had a very high score of 77.63.63. The geekbench 5 did really well; both the multi-core and the single-core scores were really impressive. Cinebench scored really great numbers indeed, and of course the graphics on those 3D Mark Fire Strike and Time Spy scores were really impressive indeed.
| Alienware x17 R2 (2022) Core i9-12900HK | 13,712 |
| Lenovo Legion 5i Pro (2022) Core i7-12700H | 12,987 |
| Apple MacBook Pro 14-Inch (2021) M1 Max | 12,647 |
| Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2022) Ryzen 9 6900HS | 9,946 |
| Lenovo Legion 5 Pro 16ACHGH Ryzen 7 5800H | 8,245 |
To illustrate how impressive this multi-core performance is, here it is against some of its competition. As you can see in the above table, the legion 5i Pro did better than the Apple MacBook Pro 14 running the M1 Max chip, which is pretty impressive. It didn’t do quite as well as the Alienware X17 r2 2022. That’s the one with the Core i9 12900 HK, and the Rog Zephyrus G14 with its Ryzen 9 6900 HS did 99.46, not quite as well as this Legion 5i Pro. pretty impressive indeed by Intel.
| Games | High (1080P) | QHD |
|---|---|---|
| Cyberpunk 2077 | 96 FPS | 62 FPS |
| FAR CRY 5 | 129 FPS | 108 FPS |
| GTA V | 171 FPS | 101 FPS |
| DOTA 2 REBORN | 151 FPS | 140 FPS |
| The Witcher 3 | 219 FPS | 100 FPS |
The Lenovo Legion 5i Pro is a gaming laptop, and it did really well on some of the more popular titles. We tested Cyberpunk 2077, which has 96 frames per second in high 1080p gaming and 62 frames per second in QHD, both of which are very playable frame rates. Getting some impressive frame rates and impressive gameplay and having that 165 hertz refresh rate on this review unit with this QHD Plus resolution makes for very smooth and fluid gameplay, which you’ve got to love, and it’s a matte display as mentioned so you don’t get those glaring reflections. So gaming has been great on this legion 5i pro, and that’s its main thing; that’s what you want to do with it, but for everyday use such as Microsoft Office, email, web browsing, consuming media, and watching Netflix, Amazon, and YouTube, the performance out of this 12 gen processor has been very good. Now, as I mentioned earlier, you get the Geforce RTX 3070 Ti from Nvidia, which includes the Advanced Optimizus, which is a dynamic muck switch that certainly helps out with performance when you want to go with the dedicated discrete graphics or with the hybrid mode, which allows you to use the mix between the integrated and discrete graphics, so I like having that muck switch here because it gives you some more options when it comes to gaming.
Thermals, Surface Temps and Fan Noise
One thing I notice is that under heavy load when you’re gaming and things like that, the surface temperatures can get pretty odd especially on the bottom, where I don’t think you want to use this on your lap. When you’re gaming or doing things like that, I would use it on a desk or a table. It’s not too crazy, but it definitely gets up there in the 50s. and I love the fact that hitting the function plus the q key cycles through the difference performance mode. In the silent mode, you can expect a 30 to 40 percent decrease in performance, but it remains very quiet so you can get work done, and it’s perfectly fine for doing Microsoft Office email, web browsing, and stuff like that.
Then, of course, there’s a balance mode, which allows a little bit of a blend between the two, but you will notice the fans ramp up every now and then, and then, of course, in the performance mode, that’s where you really hear the fans. Let’s give it listen in terms of that performance mode As far as the fan noise is concerned, now it will reach a core temperature of 100 degrees Celsius, so it does get quite warm in that core temperature, and it doesn’t show much throttling, so it does maintain very good clock speeds and very good performance, and as a result, you’re seeing really good playable frame rates on those popular titles, as I showed you earlier.
Lenovo Legion 5i Pro Battery Life and Charging
| Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2022) (76 Wh) | 722 |
| Lenovo Legion 5 Pro (2021) (80 Wh) | 378 |
| Lenovo Legion 5i Pro (2022) (80 Wh) | 349 |
| Alienware x17 R2 (2022) (87 Wh) | 249 |
On the Lenovo Legion 5i Pro, we have an 80-watt-hour battery, and when I ran my continuous web surfing test over Wi-Fi at 150 nits, it took four hours and 49 minutes, which was not quite as good as the Legion 5 Pro with that AMD Ryzen processor, which took six hours and 18 minutes. and it didn’t do quite as well as the Asus Rog G14 2022 that I recently reviewed that did 12 hours and two minutes on this same test, that would be the Alienware x17 R2, and that didn’t do quite as well, but overall in real world mixed usage on this legion 5i pro, you can expect four to five hours of real world mixed usage, and if you’re going to game on battery, you can only expect anywhere from an hour to an hour and a half at most if you’re lucky, but if you do need to plug in, the supplied 300 watt power adapter does support rapid charge, giving you 80 in about 22 minutes, or a full charge in an hour and 45 minutes, that’s pretty good.
Lenovo Legion 5i Pro Specs and Price
| Display | 16-inch 16:10, 2560x 1600 189 PPI, NE160QDM-NY1, IPS, Matte 165 Hz |
| CPU | 12th Gen Intel Core i7-12700H |
| Graphics | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti 8GB GDDR6 150W TDP |
| Memory | 16Gb DDR5-4800, Dual-channel, 2 Slots max, 64Gb. |
| Storage | UP to 1TB PCIe SSD (Gen 4) |
| Battery | 80Whr, Super Rapid Charge Supports 230W Slim Adapter |
| Connectivity | Intel Wi-Fi 6 802.11ax 2×2 + Bluetooth 5.1 |
| Ports | E-Shutter button, Headphone / mic combo, USB-A 3.2 Gen 1, USB-C Thunderbolt™ 4, USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 (DisplayPort 1.4), RJ45, USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 (DisplayPort 1.4, power delivery 135W), HDMI, USB-A 3.2 Gen 1, USB-A 3.2 Gen 1, Power-in |
| Price | $1,799 Shop AT AMAZON |
Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Great Gaming Performance ✅ | Loud Fans in Performance Mode❌ |
| Fast PCIe 4.0 SSD✅ | High Surface Temperature❌ |
| 16″ 165HZ WQHD Display✅ | Shorter Battery Life than Last Gen❌ |
| Good Port Selection✅ | |
| 2x RAM and 2x SSD slots✅ | |
| Comfortable Keyboard w/Numpad✅ | |
| Good Audio Speaker✅ |
The Lenovo Legion 5i Pro 16 gen 7 2022, and I’m impressed. This is not a huge upgrade over the 2021 model, so if you have last year’s model and you don’t care to upgrade to the 12th generation processor, then I see you’re okay. Now I like the great gaming performance, especially with the pairing of that 12th generation processor with the RTX 3070 Ti. I thought the numbers were looking good. Fast pcie, four ssd speeds, that 16-inch wqhd display, 165 hertz, great for gaming, good port selection, as I mentioned, with the exception of no SD card reader, two ram slots, and two ssd slots accessible to the user for upgradability and expansion. You’ve love that comfortable keyboard with a numpad and good audio from the speakers, although it’s not quite as good as the 16-inch Mac Pro, which is the best in the business.
The negatives of the Lenovo Legion 5i Pro are the loud fans in the performance mode, which is not too unexpected, but in the other modes they were very tempered and actually worked out pretty well. High surface temperatures, when you are gaming and under heavy load, will get kind of hot, and of course the shorter battery life than last generation is not great, although not terrible, it was not good either, so something to be aware of, but the gaming laptops in general don’t give great battery life, but I think they’ve hit a home run here once again, a more incremental upgrade than a revolutionary upgrade, and I like what they did with the design language, toning down the logo and all that stuff. I think it’s a good move with overall good aesthetics.
is the Lenovo Legion 5i Pro Worth the price?
So what do you think about the Legion 5i Pro? Very nice build quality. You can see the change in the logo a little bit more subtle pretty nice overall package. Not the lightest 16-inch gaming laptop out there, but portable enough to take with you on the go, that 300-watt power adapter is a big boy as well, adding almost two pounds to the package, so you know what you’re getting into, but you’re getting power here; it’s all coming from that 12th gen core i7-12700h processor, the RTX 3070 Ti, and video graphics, which are really impressive. Now that the Legion i Pro can run hot, as I told you, it reaches a core temperature of about 100 degrees Celsius and the surface temperatures can reach over 50 degrees, so you’re definitely going to feel it on your lap.
The Lenovo legion 5i Pro 16 Gen 7 2022 definitely worth your money with great gaming performance, webcam and 165Hz QWHD Display.
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Design9
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Display9
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Hardware10
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Performance10
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Thermals9
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Keyboard9
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Touchpad9
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Battery6
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Audio8
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Ports and Connectivity10
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Webcam/Mic7
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Price/ Value8
