Lenovo launched Legion 7, Legion 5 Pro and Legion 5 gaming laptops with AMD processors in Taiwan in May this year. After half a year, the Legion 5i with the 11th-generation Intel processor was quietly launched in the near future, and JB also At the end of the year, I borrowed this entry-level gaming machine to experience. The model tested in this article is equipped with Intel's 11th-generation "Tiger Lake H45" Core i5-11400H processor, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050Ti graphics card, and 165Hz update rate. It has an FHD screen, and it looks pretty much the same as the flagship Legion 7 I reviewed in the middle of this year. The model of this specification is priced at 35,990 yuan, and the entry threshold is lower. It is a new price band for the mid-range RTX 3060 laptop. Then, let's take a look at the actual performance of the Legion 5i (15ITH6)!

Legion 5i's shape is almost the same as last year's version. It is still a low-key style. Unlike the AMD version of Legion 7 that JB reviewed in July this year, it is storm gray. This time, it is phantom blue.

). In addition to the anti-fingerprint-adhesion polyester film matte coating on the surface of the aluminum metal body, there is also a slight pearlescent pastel on the surface. I think it looks better than gray, and the upper left corner of the laptop cover still has a mirror surface The word LEGION, if you still have an impression, the Legion 7 can customize the lighting effect on the Y-shaped star ring pattern inside the letter "O", but the lower-end Legion 5i is just a mirror. As for the right side of the upper cover In the lower corner, you can see Lenovo's metal nameplate.

In addition to the small detail of the Y-shaped star ring pattern, the appearance of the Legion 5i is different from the appearance of the Legion 7, as well as the front and rear of the laptop. The front end also adopts an inward bevel design that is easy to open the top cover with one hand, but the RGB light bar is castrated. BC635ZL1 model">BC635ZL1 model">BC635ZL1 model">BC635ZL1 model">BC635ZL1 model">BC635ZL1 model">BC635ZL1 model">BC635ZL1 model">BC635ZL1 model">BC635ZL1 model">BC635ZL1 and the end of the notebook is not only the port configuration is slightly There is a difference. The indicator light above the port of the flagship model is also printed on the Legion 5i. The configuration of the heat dissipation holes is maintained, and the waste heat can be discharged from the left, right and rear of the fuselage.

Legion 5i's ports are mainly concentrated at the end of the notebook, from left to right are RJ45 Ethernet jack, USB-C Thunderbolt 4, two USB-A 3.2 Gen1, HDMI 2.1 terminals, one USB-A 3.2 Gen1 and square power input port, with USB-C Thunderbolt 4 and 3.5mm composite audio jack on the left side of the fuselage, and USB-A 3.2 Gen1 and IP camera electronic shutter on the right side, aside from the lack of a card reader , which is a very good port specification... After all, the version with AMD processor does not have Thunderbolt...

The Legion 5i (15ITH6) that JB borrowed this time is equipped with a 15.6-inch FHD 1920 x 1080 -ic/" title="1080 model">1080-ic/" title="1080 model">1080-ic/" title= "Model 1080">1080-ic/" title="Model 1080">1080-ic/" title="Model 1080">1080-ic/" title="Model 1080">1080-ic/" title="1080 model">1080-ic/" title="1080 model">1080-ic/" title="1080 model">1080 resolution monitor (optional QHD version), display ratio is 16:9, in immersion It feels slightly inferior to the 16:10 narrow bezel screen of the flagship Legion 7, and the word LEGION is printed in white on the lower part of the screen. Other gaming features of the Legion 5i (15ITH6) screen also include 165Hz The screen refresh rate, 3ms response time, and support for NVIDIA G-Sync are standard gaming laptop specifications. In addition, it also has 100% sRGB color gamut, 300 nits of brightness, and Dolby Vision support.

The screen of the machine can be flattened by the rotating shaft. Although it cannot be completely flattened by 180 degrees, it is still convenient to share the screen with others on the opposite side. There are two unfortunate parts here. First, there is no screen. The corresponding button is flipped (so that the person on the opposite side can see the content clearly), and the circular screen hinge omits the Y-shaped star ring logo of the flagship Legion 7. As for the network camera, it is 720p HD resolution, which is still not supported. Windows Hello facial recognition login function, and there is no option for fingerprint recognition, I hope the next generation can strengthen privacy and security. After all, it's an entry-level gaming machine. Of course, the Tobii Horizon eye and head motion tracking function I introduced last time in Legion 7 is also not available!

The Legion 5i (15ITH6) is equipped with a full-size black laptop keyboard with NumPad numeric keys. The key travel feels a little longer, and the tapping feedback feels good without being too noisy. The overall typing experience is quite good. The keyboard of the model tested by JB this time only has a white backlight, and there is no colorful lighting effect to display. Consumers who pursue RGB lighting effects can only increase the price and choose it. For the Legion 7 I tested earlier, The lighting effect is four-zone backlight and can be customized with 16 million colors and various special effects, but to customize it, you still need to enter the Corsair iCUE application. key to quick start) inside ah!

The touchpad size of the machine is 105 x 70mm. When pressed, there is no sinking feeling of some laptops, and it is relatively quiet. The circular power button is still located on the upper edge of the keyboard. Unlike the flagship model, there is no heat dissipation on the left and right sides. air hole.

The D part of the notebook is designed in one piece. A whole row of large circular cooling holes can be seen directly below the dual fans. The bottom cover can be removed by removing 10 screws. Above the internal components are dual fans with four-channel exhaust. Air mechanism and improved heatsink, with cooler Coldfront 3.0 technology, effectively dissipate heat for laptops.

Below the left and right fans, there is a metal heat sink covering the bottom components. On the right is the factory-installed Samsung 512GB NVMe PCIe 4.0x4 SSD and Intel AX201NGW wireless network card. The bottom of the metal heat sink on the left is an empty space. The M.2 SSD slot allows users to further expand the storage space up to 4TB, while there are two dual-channel SO-DIMM DDR4 memory slots under the central silver metal cover, a total of 8GB, as for the internal components. It is a rechargeable lithium battery with a capacity of 3810mAh / 60Wh, with a 2W speaker on the left and right sides.

Legion gaming laptops have built-in dedicated central control application Lenovo Vantage. Users can view the current CPU, GPU, VRAM and SSD operating information on the dashboard of the main screen. The Legion Edge on the right provides a variety of custom performance options. , the most important "thermal mode" is the performance control of the notebook, providing three modes: effective, balanced and quiet. The performance mode can only be used when connected to the AC power supply. As the name implies, it consumes the highest power and has the fastest fan speed. Fast mode, balanced mode is a mode that adjusts performance and fan speed according to system requirements, and quiet mode is unnecessary.

The "Hybrid Mode" under the thermal mode can disable advanced GPU settings to improve battery performance when not playing games, which is NVIDIA Optimus technology, and "Over Drive" is used to speed up the screen response speed. GTG response time will be further improved, and "Network Acceleration" will automatically set selected applications such as Twitch or Discord to the highest level in the network to achieve the highest speed.

From the My Device tab, you can find detailed settings options such as power, sound, display and camera, input and accessories, etc. The "Battery Warranty and Settings" is worth mentioning here. There will be an independent fast charging and power saving mode. Switch, the warranty of the battery is 12 months, which is the same as the warranty of the entire laptop. In the "Power" option, there are options to turn on and turn on the USB. The former allows you to turn on the cover when you open it, but I I think consumers should pay more attention to the privacy function... As for the latter, if the latter is turned on, even if the laptop is turned off or in sleep state, it can still be quickly charged through the USB port, which is quite a convenient feature. For other settings, please refer to the above. The audio part is set through another application, Nahimic. You can refer to the Legion 7 article previously reviewed by JB, so I won't go into details.

Lenovo Legion 5i (15ITH6) key specifications:

Operating System: Windows 11 Home Edition

Processor: 11th Gen Intel Core i5-11400H @2.70GHz

Graphics chip: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050Ti with 4GB GDDR6 VRAM (TGP 95W)

Storage: 512GB M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0x4 SSD

Memory: 8GB SO-DIMM 3200MHz DDR4

Display: 15.6-inch IPS class (FHD 1920 x 1080 / 165Hz / 3ms response time / 100% sRGB / 300 nits / Dolby Vision / NVIDIA G-Sync supported)

I/O ports:

4x USB-A 3.2 Gen1

1x USB-C Thunderbolt 4 (supports DisplayPort 1.4)

1x USB-C Thunderbolt 4 (supports DisplayPort 1.4 and PD charging)

1x HDMI 2.1

1x RJ45 Ethernet jack

1x composite audio jack

1x power input port

Communication: Wi-Fi 6 (2x2 802.11ax), Bluetooth 5.1

Battery: 4Cell 60Wh

Dimensions: 363 x 260 x 25.75mm

Weight: 2.4Kg

The Legion 5i (15ITH6) tested this time has a built-in Intel 11th generation "Tiger Lake H45" Core i5-11400H processor with 6 cores and 12 threads, with 12MB of L3 cache memory, and the CPU base clock is 2.7 GHz, and the maximum TDP is 45W. By the way, the Legion 5i can be configured up to a Core i7-11800H processor and an RTX 3070 graphics card. In the CPU-Z test software, the single thread performance test result is 578.7 points, the multi thread performance test result is 4238.1 points, the multi thread performance result of CINEBENCH R20 is 3,756 points, and the X264 FHD Benchmark video conversion performance The result is a performance of 45.8 fps.

In terms of creator use cases, I used V-Ray Benchmark and Blender to simulate 3D scene rendering for the Legion 5i (15ITH6) and scored 6,597 points in the V-Ray 5 rendering test, while in Blender I used It takes 4 minutes and 7 seconds and 12 minutes and 11 seconds to render the two scenes of bmw27 and Classroom respectively. Don't look at the 80% performance ranking in the lower left corner, its performance is quite ordinary. If you have the need for 3D creation, it is recommended to buy the creation. A laptop would be better.

The Legion 5i (15ITH6) that JB tested this time has a built-in M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0x4 SSD solid state drive with 512GB storage capacity, which is made by Samsung. Its sequential read and write performance in CrystalDiskMark is 6728.91 / 4859.95MB/s, and in TxBench's sequential Max QD32 performance test, it achieves 6704.057 / 4765.243 MB/s of hard disk read and write performance, and then see the hard disk read and write performance of AS SSD Benchmark The performance of the write performance test is 2395.60 / 2294.95 MB/s, and the performance score is 5,461 points, which has achieved the standard of PCIe Gen4.

In 3DMark's Storage Benchmark SSD performance test, it scored 2,955 points. The results are mobile games, recording game screens, installing games, saving games, and opening "Battlefield V", "Battlefield Special Attack", "Decisive Moment", etc. The average time from the game to the main menu is 61 μs, and the bandwidth is 508.04 MB/s.

Legion 5i (15ITH6) gaming laptop graphics card can be configured up to RTX 3070, but this time I borrowed an entry-level NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050Ti with 4GB GDDR6 VRAM, clocked at 1222 MHz, Boost The pulse is 1485 MHz and the TGP is 95W. The RTX 3050Ti notebook computer GPU, released in May this year, uses the Ampere architecture, has 2560 CUDA cores, and supports functions such as Resizable BAR and ray tracing.

In the same laptop test environment, Legion 5i (15ITH6) scored 5,992 points in the 3DMark Time Spy test mode for DirectX 12 performance and 2,851 points in the 3DMark Time Spy Extreme test mode, slightly better than 2020. I used a laptop for gaming in 2018, but it only scored 364 points in the 3DMark Port Royal test mode of ray tracing performance. The expected performance of playing Battlefield V at 1080p Ultra quality is over 40fps. After all, you get what you pay for, and light The tracking performance is still slightly weaker on the RTX 3050Ti. In fact, in the 3DMark test options, Port Royal displayed a warning of "Hardware may not be supported", and the same words also appeared in the DirectX ray tracing and NVIDIA DLSS function tests.

In the "Unigine Heaven Benchmark" graphics performance test, I set the resolution to 1920 x 1080 full screen, set the picture quality to Ultra High, and turned on 4xAA anti-aliasing mode, and the measured performance was 3,053 points and 121.2 fps, in the "Unigine Valley Benchmark" test software, it achieved a performance of 3,987 points and 95.3fps, and finally saw the "Unigine SUPERPOSTION Benchmark" test software, in the 1080p Extreme mode, the performance was 3,497 Scored an average of 26.16fps.

Next is the "Final Fantasy XV Benchmark" game simulation graphics performance test, I also set the display resolution to 1920 x 1080 full screen, the picture quality selected Standard and the measured result was High performance of 7,904 points, and the picture quality selected High The test result is 5,251 points and Fairly High performance. In the simulation performance test of "Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker" just launched this month, under the 1920 x 1080 window mode and High image quality settings, the measured DirectX 11 performance score was 12,704 points, and the rating was Very High. It seems that it is no problem to play this positive online game.

In terms of heat dissipation and system stability, I also selected the "Performance" mode in the Lenovo Vantage thermal mode, and used the familiar CINEBENCH R20 and FurMark software to conduct the system stress test for the Legion 5i (15ITH6). When the laptop is in standby, the CPU temperature is up to 49 degrees, while the GPU temperature is 42 degrees. Through the actual measurement of the body temperature through the Flir temperature measuring instrument, it can be found that the average temperature of the laptop in the standby state is 35 degrees, and the highest is 35 degrees. 42 degrees, the hottest place at this time is 37.3 degrees at the heat dissipation hole at the rear of the fuselage, and 31.5 degrees at the wrist.

When the two softwares run for 30 minutes at the same time, the CPU temperature can be seen to rise to 97 degrees. At this time, the performance score of the CINEBENCH R20 processor is 3,438 points, which is only about 8.4% lower than the 3,756 points under normal test conditions. The performance is quite good, as for the GPU temperature, it came to 79 degrees. According to the heat map of the Flir temperature measuring instrument, the maximum temperature of the laptop body rose to 47.8 degrees, and the average temperature was 36.3 degrees, which was not a big increase. At this time, the hottest part of the whole device appeared on the right side of the fuselage to dissipate heat. The second highest temperature is 42.3 degrees at the end of the notebook, while the WASD key commonly used by players is 37.4 degrees, and the left and right wrists maintain a normal temperature of around 30 degrees.

While the laptop was fully burning, the noise of the cooling fan measured by the decibel meter was 54.6dB, which is considered a quiet performance for a gaming laptop. I only played Forza Motorsport for a full hour. : Horizon 5, no noticeable annoying fan noise at all.

This gaming laptop has a built-in 60Wh rechargeable lithium battery. I adjusted the brightness of the screen to 50%, and turned off the keyboard backlight, Bluetooth transmission and positioning functions, and only kept the Wi-Fi connection. Balanced mode (automatically adjusts performance and fan speed according to the system) and quiet mode for battery life testing, using PCMark 10's Modern Office test items for general work usage environments, the results are from 96% initial power to automatic in balanced mode The battery life is 2 hours and 14 minutes when the battery is turned off at 19%, while the battery life in quiet mode is slightly increased to 2 hours and 45 minutes. The measurement range is from the initial 98% of the battery to the 5% of the automatic shutdown. It is better to use it when plugged in. Although the battery life is weak, the fast charging speed of the 230W special transformer is amazingly fast. It only takes 33 minutes to charge the battery from 8% to 100%, and the device can be fully revived in a short time.

Different from the early launch of models equipped with AMD processors, the Lenovo Legion 5i (15ITH6) gaming notebook, which will be launched in late 2021, has launched a new "entry-level" combination of Core i5-11400H and RTX 3050Ti. The FPS frame rate performance of the tested model is considered acceptable, but the ray tracing performance is a bit unsatisfactory. If you pursue a smooth and realistic gaming experience, it is recommended to go straight to the RTX 3060 version, which will be more secure, although you still have to check the official website first Are there any customized specifications...

In addition, the performance of the machine's heat dissipation performance and noise control is not bad! Speaking of other unfortunate things, I think it is the slightly thicker body and weaker battery life, and then there is the lack of secure login methods such as biometrics. Compared with the MSI Crosshair 15 A11UDK, which was tested by Brian a while ago, the Lenovo Legion 5i (15ITH6) seems to have lower specifications, but after the actual experience, I feel that it is also equipped with RTX 3050Ti. I think it can still meet the needs of light players and provide some relief for the RTX gaming laptops that are out of stock on the market.