The Lenovo Legion 5i 15IRX10 laptop is an exceptional value proposition for a gaming laptop in a sleek form factor that has me rethinking Lenovo and its Legion brand as a contender for top gaming-focused vendors.
I was sent the Lenovo Legion 5i, more specifically, the Legion 5i 15IRX10 configuration that features up to an Intel Core i9-14900HX series CPU. My model came equipped with the Intel Core i7-14700HX, which features 28 cores with a clock speed of 3.9Ghz (with potential for 5.5). In terms of its GPU, the Legion 5i SKU sent to me features the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060, which, for the price, offers solid performance, only beaten by the likes of something like the 5070, particularly for better ray-tracing performance. But, again, for its asking price and overall package, it’s hard to fault the Legion 5i gaming laptop.
My favourite aspect of the Lenovo Legion 5i is its 15.1-inch OLED display, which feels like a rather unique screen size with its 16:10 resolution, that not only feels large, but is still small enough to allow users to easily carry it around with them with any old laptop bag or backpack thanks to its smaller overall footprint.
With a maximum brightness of 500 nits and Dolby Vision certification, games with HDR support, or even anything with a lot of contrast, look stunning on the Lenovo Legion 5i 15IRX10 laptop. One minor complaint about the Legion 5’s screen is that Lenovo has opted for a glossy finish, which is fine indoors, but can produce a lot of glare, especially outside or in places with excessive light pollution.
“My favourite aspect of the Lenovo Legion 5 is its 15.1” OLED display, which feels like a rather unique screen size with its 16:10 resolution…”
The Lenovo Legion 5i features 32 GB of DDR5 memory, which affords users the assurance of not only high-spec gaming but also the ability to crush through other demanding tasks, such as video editing or anything that requires some extra processing punch. Storage-wise, the Legion 5 features a 1TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe drive, which can take advantage of Direct Storage for games that support it, on top of having an ultra-fast boot time of around 15 seconds.
Finally, in terms of IO, the Lenovo Legion 5i 15IRX10 comes equipped with 2x USB-A 5Gbps ports, 1x USB-A always-on port, 1x USB-C 10Gbps port, Ethernet, 3.5mm headphone jack and HDMI and power, which are conveniently located on the top of the laptop, making it easy for docking.
Despite the lack of a dedicated SD card reader, the Lenovo Legion 5i offers plenty of IO, making it easy to rely on a cheap adapter if the need arises. More importantly, the location of the rear HDMI and power is what stuck out to me, as someone who, prior to switching to a desktop solution, would regularly use laptops on bigger, external displays.
Before moving on to the benchmarks, in terms of battery life, the Lenovo Legion 5i 15IRX10 has an 80W internal battery, which gave me a reasonable 11 hours of use (with HDR disabled, but on for media consumption) as a daily driver, with simple tasks such as browsing the internet, word processing and even some light YouTube. Watching content on Plex reduced that to around 6 hours, which again, isn’t too bad for the kind of machine you’re getting and looked fantastic on the OLED panel.
For the gaming benchmarks, I wanted to take advantage of the Lenovo Legion 5i’s gorgeous OLED display, which began with testing games like the 2023 remake of Dead Space. At launch, Dead Space was notorious for stuttering during gameplay sequences, when loading in new assets, something I wanted to put to the test on the Lenovo Legion 5i. Thankfully, although still not perfect, the Lenovo Legion 5i 15IRX10 offered a very respectable FPS that hovered around the 100fps mark, with lows of 70fps for minor sequences under load on high settings.
Sticking with the horror remake theme, I tested another game that was released in 2023 — Resident Evil 4. Capcom’s latest and greatest fair well with an average of 90 FPS, with lows around the 80 mark, again on high settings, with ray-tracing turned off. Another Capcom title that had a rough launch on PC, which would put the Lenovo Legion 5i through its paces, specifically its CPU, is, of course, Dragon’s Dogma 2.
“Marvel Rivals ran at a blazing 160fps on the Lenovo Legion 5i 15IRX10, with a settings of high and medium, and around the 90fps with everything maxed out…”
Somewhat predictably, despite the time since its launch, using a mix of high and medium settings with FSR 3, Dragon’s Dogma 2 still produced an FPS of around 40. At the very least, thanks to the Lenovo Legion 5i’s VRR-capable display, it was a smooth experience that, to the eye, looked closer to a 60FPS title.
Moving on to a newer action title, I tested the excellent PC release of Black Myth: Wukong on high settings, with ray-tracing turned off, which netted me a stable frame rate of 70 FPS. This offered a smooth and responsive experience that is perfectly suited to the often tough-as-nails, soulslike action-adventure game.
Another popular title I wanted to test on the Lenovo Legion 5i 15IRX10 was Cyberpunk 2077, more specifically, the complete edition of the game, which features a robust benchmarking tool built in. On high settings, with ray-tracing turned off, Cyberpunk ran at an impressive 60fps, and even with full ray-tracing and path-tracing enabled, it managed to push a stable 30fps with frame gen enabled.
To test a game released earlier this year, I used Doom: The Dark Ages, which really pushed the hardware, netting me around 45-60 fps on average, but managed to pull a stable 60 with high and medium settings with RTX disabled. Finally, for the last test, I wanted to try a multiplayer-focused competitive title, which for me could only mean one thing: Marvel Rivals.
Marvel Rivals ran at a blazing 160fps on the Lenovo Legion 5i 15IRX10, with a settings of high and medium, and around the 90fps with everything maxed out, making it one of the best ways to experience the game, taking full advantage of its high refresh rate screen.
After testing was done, with maybe the exception of Dragon’s Dogma 2, most titles on the Lenovo Legion 5i ran very well and could easily be tweaked to take better advantage of its 165Hz refresh rate. Ultimately, the Lenovo Legion 5i 15IRX10 is a fantastic laptop for the price and features one of the best screens I’ve used in recent memory.
