15 vs. 17-inch laptop for gaming – Lenovo Legion 5 review

Topic:- 15 vs. 17-inch laptop for gaming – Lenovo Legion 5 review

In this article, we’ll discuss a 15 vs. 17-inch laptop for gaming – Lenovo Legion 5, the Ryzen version of the Lenovo legion 5 is a very well-equipped mid-range gaming or video editing laptop.

The specs for both laptops are very similar both feature AMD 8-core Ryzen 7 4800h processors the 17-inch version has 32 gigs of ram, whereas the 15 inch has 16 gigs both have 1080p 144hz screens and Nvidia RTX 2060 graphics.

Other than the size these two laptops are very similar, the design of these laptops doesn’t scream gaming laptop and they wouldn’t look out of place in a work environment. I very much like the minimalist design the build is plastic with a matte black finish overall the build quality seems quite solid.

There’s a dedicated power button which I prefer to have on the keyboard typing on the keyboard is quite comfortable and felt good with 1.5-millimetre key travel, it didn’t feel quite as good as the keyboard on my think pad but still better than most other gaming laptops.

I’ve tried the keyboard layout seems very well thought out to me and I like the full-size arrow keys, the keys have one zone white backlighting with two brightness levels as well as off.

There is also an option for 4 zones RGB backlighting the trackpad is again not as nice as the glass trackpad on my think pad but still a solid trackpad. I didn’t have any clicking issues and palm rejection seem good.

The lid doesn’t have too much flex and the hinges seem quite solid, there’s some keyboard flex but not too bad considering it’s a plastic frame, the inside of the laptop has a slightly rubberized texture the screen on both units is listed at 300 units.

To my eyes both panels looked good with accurate colours, I couldn’t tell much difference between the two the backlight bleed on the 15 wasn’t too bad but on the 17 it was quite noticeable of course this is going to vary from panel to panel.

but I’ve seen some reports on forms of other people having some backlight bleed issues on the 17-inch screen also has a 720p camera located at the top of the display, with a physical sliding privacy shutter the video quality of the camera is not great.

but I’m glad that it has a camera as some gaming laptops seem to be leaving them off or placing them in strange locations.

Unfortunately, no windows hello support neither of these laptops is particularly thin or light, the 15 inches is listed at 5.5 pounds and the 17 inches is listed at 6.57 pounds the size and weight are comparable to other similar gaming laptops.

The ac adapter has the same sort of rectangular plug that most think pads have I really like this design as unlike a lot of other brands that use long barrel-style plugs that seem to break easily this one is very solid and can withstand some abuse, it plugs into the back of the laptop which also seems like a good placement.

The power brick for both of these laptops is quite massive the ports are similar on both models on the left side you have an exhaust vent USB a 3.2 generation 1 port and a headphone mic combo jack on the back you have the same ports on both laptops.

But in a different order there are two more exhaust vents Ethernet port USB C 3.2 with display port two USB A 3.2 generation 1 port HDMI power input and a Kingston lock slot on the right side there is yet another exhaust vent USB a 3.2 generation 1 port and an sd card reader on the 17-inch model.

But there’s no sd card reader on the 15-inch model which is a shame because I do a lot of video editing it’s awfully nice to have that built-in but of course, you can always buy a cheap USB sd adapter the USB type c port cannot be used for charging.

The laptop underneath the laptop there are two more big air vents I really appreciate how much ventilation, they’ve given this laptop which should help with heat and throttling issues inside both laptops are quite similar with the 17-inch version, obviously having a bit more space there are shields over the first SSD Wi-Fi card and memory slots neither memory slot is soldered.

So it’s quite easy to upgrade the ram there’s a second hard drive bay that can be fitted with a 2.5-inch drive or an m.2 SSD it comes with a drive bay mount and screws which is great as a lot of laptops require.

You to buy this separately they’re often hard to find so good upgrade options the 15-inch has a 60-watt hour internal battery whereas the 17 inch has a larger 80 watt-hour internal battery.

You can, however, add an 80 watt-hour internal battery to the 15 inches but I believe it takes up the second hard drive bay the speakers while not amazing is decent for a laptop with a good amount of bass the quality of the headphone jack seems pretty good.

I didn’t notice any excessive hissing or tininess inside the Lenovo vantage software you can select between quiet balanced and performance modes the performance mode also allows you to enable GPU over the clock which allows you to adjust the GPU’s clock you can also change modes by hitting fn plus.

The light on the power button will change color to indicate what mode you’re in a pretty cool note that you need to have the laptop plugged in to turn on performance mode.

You can also disable optimums by turning what Lenovo calls hybrid mode off this requires a reboot optimum that allows the laptop to switch between the integrated GPU and the RTX 2060.

Turning it off will gain you some performance but at the expense of battery life, there’s also an option to turn on or off overdrive which affects screen response time one big difference between these two laptops is the RTX 2060 on the 15 it runs at 815 watts whereas for some reason on the 17 inches it’s locked at 85 watts.

This seems like a strange decision as if anything the 17-inch should have less heat and throttling issues than the 15. should also be noted that the Intel versions of these laptops are also locked at 85 watts so with that in mind onto the benchmarks.

I tested both laptops with cyberpunk 2077 on the default ultra setting I think it did fairly well considering how hard this game is to run on ultra with a few options turned down slightly.

It runs quite smoothly I also ran Deus ex mankind divided on ultra this is also a very demanding game for benchmark tools I ran unigene heaven valley and superposition I ran them in all settings these are great for testing against other people’s benchmarks as they remain pretty consistent.

The same is true for 3d marks fire strike and time spy I was quite impressed with the results I’m getting from these laptops seems able to hit scores that I would expect more from an RTX 2070 or even 2080.

I primarily use gaming laptops for video editing I personally use Davinci resolve so I ran the Puget systems Puget bench test on Davinci resolve 17 betas 6.

Here we can see what a powerhouse the combo of the Ryzen 7 4800h and the RTX 2060 are very impressed with these scores these laptops did a really good job editing 4k footage in Davinci resolve this is with fairly small projects but overall I was very impressed.

I think these tests definitely show that there’s a fairly big difference between the 115 watt and the 85-watt graphics cards one of the users on the legion series discord channel has posted a v bias for the RTX 2060 which will flash it to either 100 watts or 115 watts.

I will be flashing mine to 115 watts and running these tests again I’ll post the results so keep an eye out for that so to summarize these laptops are pretty amazing for the price point they take a lot of boxes without too many compromises.

I can definitely see why these models are so popular right now whether you’re using it for gaming or for video editing I think you get a lot of performance for your money.

You’re getting a plastic build but it still feels quite solid to me I think if you’re buying this laptop for video editing the Ryzen processor is really worth getting over the Intel version as it offers a lot more performance.

The biggest difference between the 15 inch and the 17 inches is the size if you like a larger 17-inch laptop then get that if you prefer a smaller laptop the 15 is great both laptops have really nice screens the back bleed on the 17 inches was a bit disappointing but I do like that the 17 has the sd slot.

I really don’t understand why these two laptops are offered with different wattages on the RTX 2060. if you don’t feel comfortable flashing your video card you will get slightly better performance out of the box from the 15-inch version compared to other gaming laptops out there at the moment.

I think this laptop is one of the better options it’s upgradable it has quite a good keyboard trackpad screen and amazing performance for the money. So this topic concludes of 15 vs. 17-inch laptop for gaming – Lenovo Legion 5 review

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