Lenovo Legion 5i Pro Gen 7 review

The Lenovo Legion 5i Pro ($1,399 to start) is far from a perfect gaming laptop. However, it's a solid choice for a player in need of a durable, reliable device at a reasonable price.

After spending weeks putting it through its paces, I think this Intel-powered edition of Lenovo's Legion 5 Pro is a good gaming laptop that delivers great performance for the price. That said, there are some key weaknesses you should know about before you buy.

While it may not one of the best gaming laptops for everyone, those who don't mind a little bulk will find a lot to like here. My Lenovo Legion 5i Pro review will show you why.

Lenovo Legion 5 Pro Gen 7 review: Price and availability

The Lenovo Legion 5 Pro is available for purchase via Lenovo’s website and select third-party retailers for a starting price of $1,399. For that you get the 12th Gen Intel Core i7 CPU, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 Ti laptop GPU, 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD for storage.

If you want the best possible version, a fully-kitted Legion 5i Pro sells for $2,559 and includes an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 laptop GPU, 32GB of RAM and a 2TB SSD. 

For the purposes of this review Lenovo sent us a build featuring the RTX 3070 Ti GPU, 512GB of storage and 16GB of RAM.

Lenovo Legion 5i Pro Gen 7 review: Design

Measuring 14.17 x 10.4 x 1.05 inches and weighing nearly 5.5 pounds, the Lenovo Legion 5i Pro is slightly clunkier and heavier than I like. 

That said, the design of the unit feels sleek and durable. The aluminum and magnesium chassis looks good on a desk and feels sturdy under my hands. I also appreciate that the laptop didn't pick up a lot of visible fingerprints during my time with it.

The relatively thin bezels around the display are a nice touch, thickening a bit at the top to accommodate the webcam built into the center of the top bezel. However, the power brick is massive, so don't expect to take this gaming laptop on the go without a sturdy bag.

Lenovo Legion 5i Pro Gen 7 review: Display

The Lenovo Legion 5i Pro's 16-inch WQXGA (2560 x 1600) 165Hz looks nice and vibrant in person. During my testing it helped the bright colors and verdant landscapes in games like Valheim pop, and in fast-paced games the 165Hz refresh rate is nice to have.

It's also great to see HDR support in this display, and with some tweaking I was able to get some great results out of it. The screen also supports G-Sync, which is great for high-framerate gaming.

When we got it into our lab and started pointing our instruments at it we discovered the Legion 5i Pro's display achieved an average brightness of 473.8 nits. That's on par with its predecessor the Lenovo Legion 5 Pro, which achieved 472, and is a full 136.8 nits brighter than the 337 average achieved by the Alienware x14 gaming laptop. 

Our Klein 10-A colorimeter reveals the Legion 5i Pro's display can achieve 113% of the sRGB color gamut and 80% of the more demanding DCI-P3 color gamut (100% is most accurate, higher tends to mean more saturated colors) with a Delta-E score of 0.24 (0 is best). That's about the same as last year's model, and slightly better than Alienware's x14, as you can see from the results below.

Spending some time adjusting display settings caused the screen to breathe new life into the Civilization VI maps I've been playing for years, and while Overwatch 2 felt bright and bold, I could also tweak the Legion 5i Pro's settings to ensure Valheim's Mistlands had the spooky, dark feel the developers intended. 

Lenovo Legion 5i Pro Gen 7 review: Keyboard and trackpad

Power up the Lenovo Legion 5i Pro and the keyboard lights up thanks to its built-in RGBs, which you can easily disable if that's not your thing. The keys have decent resistance and are made of a matte-style plastic that feels good and almost soft to the touch. However, I was a little disappointed there's no fingerprint reader built into the keyboard for biometric authentication.

The trackpad beneath the keyboard is on the smaller side. While it works well, I generally prefer connecting a mouse whenever I play on a gaming laptop. Stillm the trackpad was helpful in cases where using a mouse was inconvenient. The trackpad is incredibly responsive and requires a bit of force to trigger a press, meaning an accidental bump or swipe shouldn't result in a misclick.

Lenovo Legion 5i Pro Gen 7 review: Audio

The speakers on our Lenovo Legion 5i Pro review unit don't strike me as very powerful. 

While I was testing it the sound never felt loud enough. Even when watching YouTube videos and shows on Hulu and Netflix, the max volume still felt a little muffled. I don't expect a laptop's speakers to be so powerful I can feel the bass vibrations, but if I'm sitting just a few feet away from the laptop, I would at least like to be able to hear what characters on the screen are saying without having to turn on captions.

I had a similar experience gaming on the laptop, as the audio still came across flat. Putting a headset on noticeably improved the sound quality, but that's a byproduct of using a quality product. If you want better sound than the Pro's speakers can provide, consider checking out our recommendations for the best gaming headset or the best headphones. 

Lenovo Legion 5i Pro Gen 7 review: Ports

The Legion 5i Pro has plenty of ports, including three USB-C, three USB-A, one DisplayPort, one HDMI, one Ethernet, a headphone jack and a webcam shutter button. 

This feels like the right amount of ports, as it's enough for a camera, a keyboard, a mouse, an external hard drive, a connection to a monitor and a few extras.

The E-Shutter safety, which you can engage to keep your laptop camera off, is nice to have for privacy purposes.

Lenovo Legion 5i Pro Gen 7 review: Gaming performance

The Lenovo Legion 5i Pro is built for gaming, and it comes with potentially useful features like Lenovo's Network Boost, which is intended to prioritize game performance. I didn't notice an immediate difference when I enabled said Boost, but I appreciate the slew of options the Legion 5i Pro gives me for tweaking system settings and making my games look and run just right. 

I enjoyed my time with the laptop testing games like Overwatch 2 and Valheim. Games generally ran well, and I rarely experienced any performance issues—just some minor tearing in Overwatch and a crash in Civ VI. 

When we got it into the lab and started testing framerates on popular games like Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Grand Theft Auto V, and Red Dead Redemption 2, the Legion 5i Pro was superior to its predecessor in every test (as you can see from the chart above) and it generally blew the Alienware x14 out of the water. 

Of course, the Alienware x14 is smaller and over 1.5 pounds lighter than Legion 5i Pro, so it's not hugely surprising it can't hit the same peaks of performance.

Lenovo Legion 5i Pro Gen 7 review: General performance

The Lenovo Legion 5i Pro is more than capable enough for day-to-day work. I had no trouble using it in for basic tasks, though apps sometimes loaded a hair slower than I'd like.

Our performance testing reveals some real power under this laptop's hood. When we put it through the Geekbench 5 multi-core CPU benchmark it earned a score of 13,008, nearly doubling its predecessor's score (7,328) and almost matching the Alienware x14 (13,353) with its slightly better 12th Gen Intel CPU.

In our drive speed test, which tracks how quickly a laptop's storage drive can move 25GB of multimedia files from one location to another, our Legion 5i Pro hit a peak speed of 925.46 MBps (megabytes per second). That's pretty speedy and faster than its predecessor, though not as fast as Alienware's thinner, lighter x14 (1,156 MBps). 

If you care about editing video, good news: Our Lenovo Legion 5i Pro review unit performed well in our video editing test, which times how long it takes a laptop to transcode a 4K video down to 1080p using Handbrake. 

The Legion 5i Pro completed the test in 4 minutes and 29 seconds, over half a minute faster than Alienware's x14 (5:04) and almost 3 minutes faster than the 2021 Legion 5 Pro (7:06).

Lenovo Legion 5i Pro Gen 7 review: Webcam and streaming

The Lenovo Legion 5i Pro's 720p webcam works perfectly fine for video calls and other everyday uses. However, more complicated video endeavors will benefit from an external webcam with the capacity to record 4K, such as those recommended on our list of the best webcams.

When recording with the Legion 5i Pro's built-in webcam I had the option to choose between a 30 FPS recording and 60 FPS, with a warning that recording as such could present stuttering. As part of my efforts to see how much the laptop could handle, I went with the latter and attempted to record at the high-quality setting. 

By default, the Legion 5i Pro records gameplay through the Xbox app, which is true even if you're playing a Steam game. I also chose to play Vampire Survivors, which can be a demanding game. 

The final two-hour recording did present some minor stuttering, but for the most part, looked quite good.

Lenovo Legion 5i Pro Gen 7 review: Battery life and heat

In the Tom's Guide battery test, which tasks the laptop with endlessly browsing the web via Wi-Fi 'til it runs out of juice, the Lenovo Legion 5i lasted roughly 7 and a half hours. That's over an hour and 15 minutes longer than its predecessor, and nearly two full hours longer than the Alienware x14.

However, in our gaming battery test the Legion 5i Pro's battery drained in an hour and 20 minutes, which is worse than its predecessor (1:55). faster than the Legion 5 Pro, with the previous model outlasting the latest iteration by a full 33 minutes. Regardless, its gaming battery life of 1 hour and 20 minutes still puts this computer in the range of normal for a gaming laptop, almost on par with the Alienware x14 (1:23).

The Legion 5i Pro also features the company’s Coldfront 4.0 vent fan system, which is meant to be significantly more powerful than its predecessors. Sure enough, peak temperatures were significantly lower than those of both the Legion 5 Pro and the Alienware x14.

In our heat test, which involves running a heat gun over the laptop after streaming 15 minutes of HD video, the 5i Pro got as hot as 88.5 degrees on the bottom, near the hinge. However, in our gaming heat test it got as hot as 114.5 degrees on the bottom.

So despite the Coldfront 4.0 cooling system, watch out: Lenovo's Legion 5i Pro can be a lap-scorcher when gaming.

Lenovo Legion 5i Pro Gen 7 review: Verdict

The Lenovo Legion 5i Pro exceeded my expectations, offering speedy performance enriched by the eye-pleasing 16-inch display. It's great for playing games, and a solid laptop for getting work done.

It's a good choice for anyone in the market for a 16-inch gaming laptop, though at over 5 pounds heavy (not to mention the truly brick-like charger) this isn't the most portable gaming machine.

If you'd prefer something a little easier to carry around, the Alienware X14 costs roughly the same amount yet is both smaller and lighter. However, its performance can't match the Legion 5i Pro and it has a smaller, lower-resolution screen.

That said, few 16-inch gaming laptops deliver the same great performance and features as the Legion 5i Pro for this price.