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Lenovo Legion 5 series has long been highly regarded for its design, cooling system, performance, and quality compared to competitors in the market. The Lenovo Legion 5i 16-inch HX continues to inherit and enhance these strengths.
Design of Legion 5i 16-inch: Familiar and Unique
The design of the Legion 5i 16-inch stands out in every aspect, from the hinge, cooling vents, keyboard, to the screen, front, and back edges, making the Legion series distinct from other gaming laptops in the world.
In terms of design, the Legion 5i 16-inch excels in every aspect, including its hinge, cooling system vents, keyboard, and screen, distinguishing it from other gaming laptops.
Legion 5i 16-inch boasts a familiar designThe Legion 5i 16-inch features a gray color with an aluminum A-side and the rest made of plastic but still extremely robust and stable. The laptop lid can be easily opened with one hand. Despite not being a Slim model and having a 16-inch screen, the Legion 5i 16-inch is lightweight at only 2.3kg, making it relatively comfortable for portability.
The screen bezels are thin on all sides
. The top of the screen has a notch in the middle for easier opening. It also houses a 1080p camera, which does not use a physical shutter but utilizes a physical shortcut key located on the side of the laptop.
Similar to other Legion models, the hinge can open up to 180 degrees.
The spill-resistant keyboard features 4-zone RGB backlighting. Lenovo has been incorporating keyboards from ThinkPad into the Legion series for many years, providing an excellent gaming and typing experience. It's one of the best gaming laptop keyboards on the market, second only to high-end gaming models with mechanical keyboards.The Legion 5i 16-inch features a fairly large touchpad – 75 x 120 mm. It has a smooth glass surface for a good user feel and precise tracking.
Flipping the laptop reveals three rubber feet, a large ventilation grille, and 2 speakers. The heat is dissipated through two vents on the back.
If you notice, the Legion 5i 16-inch no longer has air vents on the sides but instead adds an air intake vent at the rear, shifting some of the ports to the sides.
Adequate Connectivity Ports
On the left side, we have a USB Type-A 3.2 (Gen 1) port, two USB Type-C 3.2 (Gen 2) ports supporting DisplayPort 1.4, and an audio jack.
The back panel houses an HDMI 2.1 port for external displays up to 8K 60Hz and a power port.
On the right side, you have LAN, an E-shutter switch, a microSD card reader, and two USB Type-A 3.2 (Gen 1) ports.
Quality 2K 165Hz Display
The Lenovo Legion 5i features an IPS WQXGA panel, model number Innolux N160GLE-GT1 (CMN1631). It comes with a refresh rate of 165Hz. The screen diagonal is 16 inches with a resolution of 2560 x 1600p. The aspect ratio is 16:10, pixel density – 189 ppi.
The maximum brightness measured is 367 nits (cd/m2) in the middle of the screen and an average of 342 nits (cd/m2) across the surface with a maximum deviation of 13%. The color temperature on a white screen at maximum brightness is 7000K (HDR off).
The screen covers 88% sRGB/ITU-R BT.709 and 71% DCI-P3. Out of the box, color accuracy deviates quite a bit because the white point is set at 7000K, suitable for gaming but not ideal for color-critical tasks. However, due to the good panel quality, after adjusting to a white point of 6500K, the screen can fully meet the needs of image editing, design, and video editing tasks that do not require strict color accuracy.
Before color calibration
After color calibrationExcellent Performance and Superb Cooling
All benchmarks and tests were performed with the “Performance” setting activated in the Lenovo Vantage app. The “GPU Overclock” and “dGPU” modes were also applied. The “Best performance” setting was configured in the “Power & Battery” settings of Windows.CPU OptionsThe Lenovo Legion 5i 16-inch HX offers several CPU options including Intel Core i5-13450HX, Core i7-13650HX, Core i7-14650HX, Core i7-14700HX, or Core i9-14900HX. The configuration tested in this article is the lowest configuration with the Intel Core i5-13450HX, a 10-core, 16-thread chip (6P + 4E). Impressive results were seen in multi-core performance testing with Cinebench R23; the Legion 5i 16-inch HX with Core i5-13450HX outperformed the Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 with Core i5-13500HX (14 cores 20 threads).
GPU OptionsLegion 5i 16-inch HX offers 3 GPU options including NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 (Laptop, 140W), GeForce RTX 4060 (Laptop, 140W), and GeForce RTX 4070 (Laptop, 140W). The tested version is equipped with RTX 4060, and it's evident that Legion 5i 16-inch outperforms most other competitors with the same GPU by a considerable margin.Temperature TestIn this test, the Legion 5i 16-inch was subjected to 100% CPU usage to monitor its frequency and temperature. The first column shows the computer's response to short loads (2-10 seconds), the second column simulates a heavy task (15 to 30 seconds), and the third column represents the machine's performance under sustained heavy load such as video rendering.
One notable aspect is that the Intel Core i5-13450HX tends to keep the TDP from rising too high while maintaining stable clock speeds and temperatures over extended periods.Gaming PerformanceIt's truly impressive to see the GeForce RTX 4060 maintaining a stable clock speed of 2715 MHz after half an hour of gaming. This is the highest result, surpassing Acer Nitro 16 (AN16-41) by 120 MHz, and even further ahead compared to other laptops with the same GPU.
Legion 5i 16-inch Battery Life Overview
In the battery life test, the laptop was set to 'Better performance' mode, screen brightness adjusted to 120 nits, and all other programs were closed except for the testing tool. The 80Wh battery can last for 8 hours and 20 minutes of web browsing or 6 hours and 40 minutes of video playback.
Under mixed work conditions, it may sustain around 4 hours of usage. For longer battery life, opting for a version with AMD Ryzen 7040 series chip is recommended, as it can offer one and a half to double the battery life for office tasks.Legion 5i 16-inch Upgrade Flexibility
The Lenovo Legion 5i 16-inch is equipped with 2 SODIMM RAM slots compatible with DDR5-4800 MHz or 5600 MHz RAM. It supports a maximum upgrade of 64GB DDR5-5600.
Fortunately, the laptop features 2 SSD slots compatible with Gen 4 SSDs, making storage upgrades more convenient and accessible.Regarding storage, you have two M.2 slots for Gen 4 SSDs. The slot on the right also supports the 2242 NVMe standard.
The cooling system of the Legion 5i 16-inch is quite substantial, featuring two fans and three heat pipes shared between the CPU and GPU - the lower pipes are notably thick. Additionally, there are smaller heat pipes for the GPU, explaining why the GPU maintains higher performance than the CPU, catering well to gaming needs.Legion 5i 16-inch: High-Speed SSD but Excessive Heat
The tested Legion 5i 16-inch comes with a WD PC SN810 SDCPNRY-512G-1101 512GB SSD. Tests show that its read/write speeds are not particularly impressive, only reaching an average level for a Gen 4 SSD. Notably, the SSD runs excessively hot, reaching up to 81 degrees during testing. One of the reasons for this excessive heat may be due to the plastic underside, limiting heat dissipation through the laptop's casing.
Conclusion
While the Legion 5i 16-inch HX is not yet perfect, it's fair to say that it's challenging to find any major drawbacks on a mid-range gaming laptop like this.With its ability to maintain stable performance over time, sharp display with a 165Hz refresh rate, relatively quiet fans during gaming, support for NVIDIA G-SYNC and Optimus, and excellent customization options via Lenovo Vantage, the Legion 5i is truly an excellent choice for gaming and work.
Adding on: Review of Acer Predator Triton 14: The most powerful 14-inch gaming laptop, featuring a mini LED 250Hz displayIt is currently unclear whether Lenovo intends to bring the Legion 5i 16-inch HX to the Vietnamese market or not. While waiting, you can explore other gaming laptop models with extremely attractive prices available at [website link].
