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Lenovo tweaks design and powers up its excellent Legion 5 Pro gaming laptops

Monica J. White
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Lenovo has just unveiled several new gaming laptops from the Lenovo Legion line during CES 2022. The refreshed Legion family of laptops includes two 16-inch models dubbed Lenovo Legion 5i Pro and Legion 5 Pro as well as the 15-inch Lenovo Legion 5i/Legion 5.

All of the laptops come with some of the latest components, including Intel Alder Lake processors, DDR5 memory, and Nvidia’s RTX 30-series mobility graphics cards.

Lenovo offers a wide range of updates to the Legion line, ranging from switching the default operating system to Windows 11 to the inclusion of components that are only released this year. Users will be allowed to choose between AMD Ryzen processors and 12th-Gen Intel Alder Lake CPUs which are brand-new and are only just now starting to appear in the latest gaming laptops.

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The company has shared more information about its upcoming new releases, starting with the Legion 5 Pro series. Both the Legion 5 Pro and the Legion 5i Pro emphasize a minimalist design with thin bezels that surround the 16-inch screen. There’s also a bump on the top bezel that houses the HD webcam.

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Although the laptops themselves offer a simple, elegant design that doesn’t scream “gaming laptop,” Lenovo has still included a backlit RGB keyboard that blends well with the rest of the notebook. Lenovo has also updated the cooling system to optimize the temperatures while maintaining lower noise levels.

The laptops come with a 16-inch 240Hz WQHD+ screen that offers adaptive refresh rates and a 3ms response time. The use of an IPS panel should guarantee stunning visuals and a wide color gamut. The screen is VESA Display HDR 400 certified and it offers up to 500 nits of brightness combined with the wide viewing angles usually offered by IPS panels.

There’s more to the Legion 5 Pro than the fancy-looking screen. The laptop will likely come in several configurations for gamers to choose from. Lenovo equipped its new notebooks with DDR5 memory that runs at 4,800MHz, and up to 1TB PCIe Gen 4 SSD, and improved Wi-Fi 6E.

It’s the big-ticket components that make these gaming laptops truly shine. Lenovo is offering a choice of processors, including up to the Intel Core i7-12700H, an Alder Lake CPU that has performed excellently in early benchmarks, and next-gen AMD Ryzen chips. This will be combined with some of Nvidia’s newest RTX 30-series graphics cards with a maximum TGP of 165W.

Lenovo Legion 5 / 5i

Aside from the 5 Pro/5i Pro laptops that Lenovo has announced, it has also spoken at length about the upcoming Lenovo Legion 5 and 5i. These notebooks were designed to be lighter and more portable than their predecessors and Lenovo describes them as great all-rounders that mix performance and value.

The Legion 5/5i line features a very similar design to the Pro laptops described above, including thin bezels and a top webcam bump. Lenovo offers users the choice between a 4-zone RGB keyboard or simple white backlighting for the built-in Legion TrueStrike keyboard that now promises 33% quieter keystrokes.

Lenovo Legion 5, much like the 5 Pro, comes with a WQHD IPS display, although it has a different aspect ratio: 16:9 compared to the 16:10 of the Pro. In addition, this notebook has a lower refresh rate of 165Hz, but those numbers are still more than sufficient for even fast-paced games such as shooters or MOBAs. The screen has up to 300 nits of brightness compared to the 500 of the Legion 5 Pro.

In terms of specifications, the Legion 5 comes with a next-gen AMD processor while the Legion 5i offers a 12th-gen Intel CPU with choices up to the Core i7-12700H. Lenovo mentioned that the laptops will come with an optional Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 laptop GPU. The manufacturer hasn’t disclosed whether these laptops will feature DDR4 or DDR5 RAM.

Lenovo’s new notebooks mark an update to an already highly successful line: Lenovo Legion are some of the best gaming laptops on the current market. Alongside Legion, the company has unveiled a number of new releases, including new ThinkBooks, ThinkPads, a ThinkBook desktop PC, and a new Lenovo Yoga laptop.

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Monica J. White
Monica J. White
Computing Writer
Monica is a UK-based freelance writer and self-proclaimed geek. A firm believer in the "PC building is just like expensive…
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