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Slim, eh? I am not into the physique shaming of moveable gaming techniques, but when the Lenovo Legion Chunky is ever launched, it’ll want a bigger reviewer. Mainly, I am not satisfied that it is slight sufficient to justify that ‘Slim’ moniker.
Nonetheless, there are advantages to having one thing this substantial in your lap. The keyboard does not really feel squeezed, and there is even a numpad. The trackpad generally is a respectable dimension, and a 16-inch laptop computer display screen can really feel luxurious while you’re utilizing it two toes from the top of your nostril. Plus there’s additional room for the cooling system and, in concept, battery. Nicely, we’ll see about that one.
The worth/efficiency equation for the Lenovo Legion Slim 5 sees AMD and Nvidia introduced collectively for a combo that is able to good body charges for a welcome worth. Although I am starting to query the utility of 512GB SSDs on gaming laptops in an age the place even a well-liked top-down CRPG can take up 136GB and Ark: Survival Developed can double that. You are unlikely to purchase a laptop computer just like the Slim 5 simply to play Stardew Valley, so a bit extra space can be appreciated. And, given the low worth of SSD storage proper now, it should be anticipated.
Nonetheless, do you have to want to offload your Steam library to an exterior drive, you not less than have choices. A pair of USB-C ports lives on the left-hand facet of the chassis, each USB 3.2 Gen 2 with DisplayPort, and whereas one can provide 140W of energy for charging units, you possibly can’t use them to cost the laptop computer itself. On the rear of the machine there’s one other two USB ports, USB 3.2 Gen 2 Sort-A, together with a devoted charging port, Ethernet, and HDMI 2.1. There’s additionally an SD Card slot and a headset combo jack, making this a laptop computer with wonderful connectivity.
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS
GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060
RAM: 16GB DDR5-5600
Storage: 512GB SSD
Display screen: 16in IPS, 2560x1600px, 165Hz
Connectivity: Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.1, 2x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Sort-A, Ethernet, HDMI 2.1, SD Card reader, 2x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Sort-C/Displayport, headset combo jack, charging port
Dimensions: 36 x 26 x 20cm
Weight: 2.3kg
Value: $1,341 | £1,150
The positioning of most of the ports on the rear somewhat than the facet of the chassis is an fascinating alternative. Whereas it is completely potential to make use of a USB-C dock to connect a monitor and a few peripherals via a single cable—although you may nonetheless want to make use of the charging port—having energy, USB, HDMI and Ethernet on the again of the laptop computer suggests a extra sedentary life through which the Legion spends a lot of its time desk-bound, the cables tidied out of the way in which as a substitute of spraying out from the facet.
The AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS CPU at its coronary heart is an eight-core chip with 16 threads, a base clock of three.8GHz and a turbo of 5.1GHz. It is a Zen 4 chip made on the TMSC 4nm course of, and pulls as much as 54W of energy. Backed up with 16GB of DDR5-5600MHz RAM, and that 512GB PCIe 4 SSD, it makes for a well-specced machine even earlier than you get to the RTX 4060. That is clearly not the best graphics card in the marketplace, however Nvidia’s xx60 playing cards are fashionable mid-range gaming chips and have a superb fame for efficiency at a good worth. It is definitely sufficient to push the 1600p 16:10 IPS display screen and with the additional benefit of DLSS and Body Era in play for pushing the frames increased.
In our benchmarks it performs about in addition to you’d anticipate, often hitting 60 fps or extra in video games at extremely high quality and 1080p decision. The RTX 3060 was the second hottest GPU within the 2023 Steam {hardware} survey, coming in behind the GTX 1650, so the RTX 4060 ought to have a couple of years of life in it but and has the good thing about bringing DLSS 3’s full function set to assist bump frames as much as the display screen’s 1600p native res.
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That display screen is an IPS mannequin, and whereas it does not present the saturated colors of an OLED it additionally does not have that tech’s reflectivity downside both, so even with lights behind you it is potential to see what you are doing as a substitute of your individual face. There are brighter screens on the market, nevertheless, and it struggles a bit in darkish areas of video games and movies; its backlight making itself identified a little bit greater than I might like.
Until you are utilizing a Bluetooth controller the keyboard is the primary interface between you and the PC, and the Legion Slim has a superb one. There is a good quantity of key journey, the backlighting will be adjusted so it highlights the letters with out inflicting migraines, and as a result of dimension of the laptop computer you get full-size keys. I am not eager on the present development to make the Enter key smaller to slot in some additional punctuation above it, I simply do not use the back-facing slash or pipe characters sufficient to justify them having their very own key, particularly one I typically hit by mistake when trying to ship zingers on a chat app.
The numpad is a cut-down mannequin: it is good that it is there, but when it had been lower there may need been room for extra audio system than the pair of tiny grilles between the keyboard and display screen hinge. The trackpad beneath is especially good to make use of. It has a grippier floor than the glass pads that may generally permit your fingers to slip over them like a racoon in ice skates. There’s additionally a backlight that may be cycled via a couple of modes utilizing the Fn key and house bar, or managed extra exactly utilizing the Lenovo Vantage software program, which additionally lets you activate a variable refresh price and add a couple of hundred megahertz to the GPU and VRAM clocks at the price of a warning message concerning the guarantee.
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Purchase if…
✅ You are after a superb all-rounder: The Legion Slim 5 can deal with each video games and productiveness duties with equal aplomb.
✅ You want a superb keeb: The Lenovo Legion keyboards actually do ship in a means most gaming laptop computer keebs not often do.
Do not buy if…
❌ You need freedom to roam: You are not going to have the ability to stray too far-off from an influence socket and nonetheless play video games.
❌ You need one thing truly slim: The identify may be overselling it a little bit, although the Legion Slim is extra slight than its greater siblings it is nonetheless comparatively chonk.
There is a draw back to all this, in fact. In our testing below gaming situations, the laptop computer’s battery gave up after one single hour. You will get way more out of it in the event you’re simply messing round with an online browser (or taking part in Stardew Valley), with as a lot as six hours predicted by the Lenovo battery widget. It is while you hearth up the GPU and begin throwing polygons round that the endurance begins to drop, nevertheless, providing you with simply sufficient time for a touch between wall sockets—and you may want to hold the charger with you because it’s choosy about what it’s going to take energy from. No utilizing a useful USB-C pill charger for a fast top-up with this one.
So whereas this does look like a brand new star amongst fairly priced gaming laptops, it comes with a caveat. After all there was going to be a compromise while you’re getting one thing with this stage of efficiency for lower than two grand, and on this case it is the lithium brick within the base that is the weak hyperlink. We do not anticipate huge battery life from gaming machines, however the one hour that the present Lenovo laptops sport appears a little bit brief.
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