Lenovo Legion Pro 5i laptop review: Super powerful i7-14700HX and RTX 4060 performance

[Redaktion]

All eyes were on the Lenovo Legion Pro 5 16IRX9 during our test thanks to its strong CPU and gaming performance. Our review will reveal which further strengths—and also weaknesses—the gamer has.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-Legion-Pro-5i-laptop-review-Super-powerful-i7-14700HX-and-RTX-4060-performance.856842.0.html

[NikoB]

$2400 (real price from the Lenovo website without discounts for students, milking ordinary people) for a obviously non-gaming laptop in games 2023-2024?! With the shameful 4060, instead of 4080? And without TB4 ports! How shameful this is for Lenovo, if you remember that the first models of 2021 and 2022 had TB4/USB40.

Even for $1,700, this is clearly an overpriced model from Lenovo with a shameful cheap 1TB SSD, and not a minimum of 2TB and a minimum of 64GB of RAM. Or 32GB of RAM and 4TB SSD (keep in mind that the warranty on memory and SSD is only 1-2 years in different countries, while a separate purchase gives a minimum 5-year warranty, and much cheaper than what laptop manufacturers want for the same amount of memory /disks).

It's not clear with the screen - what about the high-quality transmission of sRGB space throughout the software, how is Lenovo doing it at the driver level?

If someone wants to buy, then at a real price of $1300-1400, no more. It simply doesn't stand anymore, because...has no gaming prospects even for current games, not to mention future releases.

And the monstrous 50W consumption at rest precludes its use for professional purposes, as does the increased noise from coolers even in surfing.

The result is a complete failure for Lenovo.

PS, Let me remind you that hdmi 2.1 does NOT support 8k monitors in lossless mode. And there are not even 4K@144Hz+ monitors with support for HDMI 2.1/FRL6, because... All modern monitors are cut to 24Gbps. Those. You can connect such monitors in lossless mode only via TB4, but it's not here...$2400 (real price from the Lenovo website without discounts for students, milking ordinary people) for a obviously non-gaming laptop in games 2023-2024?! With the shameful 4060, instead of 4080? And without TB4 ports! How shameful this is for Lenovo, if you remember that the first models of 2021 and 2022 had TB4/USB40.

Even for $1,700, this is clearly an overpriced model from Lenovo with a shameful cheap 1TB SSD, and not a minimum of 2TB and a minimum of 64GB of RAM. Or 32GB of RAM and 4TB SSD (keep in mind that the warranty on memory and SSD is only 1-2 years in different countries, while a separate purchase gives a minimum 5-year warranty, and much cheaper than what laptop manufacturers want for the same amount of memory /disks).

It's not clear with the screen - what about the high-quality transmission of sRGB space throughout the software, how is Lenovo doing it at the driver level?

If someone wants to buy, then at a real price of $1300-1400, no more. It simply doesn't stand anymore, because...has no gaming prospects even for current games, not to mention future releases.

And the monstrous 50W consumption at rest precludes its use for professional purposes, as does the increased noise from coolers even in surfing.

The result is a complete failure for Lenovo.

PS, Let me remind you that hdmi 2.1 does NOT support 8k monitors in lossless mode. And there are not even 4K@144Hz+ monitors with support for HDMI 2.1/FRL6, because... All modern monitors are cut to 24Gbps. Those. You can connect such monitors in lossless mode only via TB4, but it's not here...

[usacomputer]

Excessively expensive to only carry i7-14700HX and its RTX 4060 for $2,400
Simply because it has an Intel they already set those absurd prices that do not match reality and a laptop whose days are numbered unless it drops to $1,400

[petar]

Could the author (or anyone else) explain why there is significant discrepancy between this review and the first review of the Legion Pro 5i (with 14900HX and RTX4070) when it comes to the Temperature section? In the first review, in the Witcher 3 test, the heat wasn't too bad (the upper middle section measured 45.6 degrees, but the rest was OK).
In this review, in the Cyberpunk test, the heat is horrible (unacceptable for a gaming laptop; entire keyboard section is above 40 degrees, with 49 degrees in the WASD area). I know Cyberpunk is a newer and more demanding game, but still, if you maxed out the Witcher 3 settings, I wouldn't have expected such a difference (not just that it heats up more in the second review, but the heat distribution is different).
And in the Max.Load test there is an even larger discrepancy. I don't know if the Max.Load test was done differently between the two reviews, but, with the exception of just one section (the upper left), the laptop was quite cool on the top side in the first review, whereas in the second review (with a less powerful CPU and GPU) it is way hotter all over.

[NikoB]

petar, everything can be trivially simple - unstable quality of the cooling system, i.e. a factory defect in this instance, if we discard other options. And the quality of installation of radiators in this series is known to be unstable, just like in L7.

[petar]

Thanks for your reply. That's really disappointing that Lenovo doesn't do better with the thermals on this laptop (or indeed on the Legion Pro 7). What's the point in scoring high in performance (which, according to the notebookcheck reviews of these models, indeed they do) if the keyboard gets so hot that it becomes unusable.

[NikoB]

if the keyboard gets so hot that it becomes unusable.

This probably means that the very concept of a "gaming" (or "computing") laptop is stupid by definition, given the level of cheating with TDP from Intel, when one processor now consumes more than an entire "gaming laptop" 10-15 years ago.

This is abnormal and became possible only because Intel lost the race in technical processes, and the technical processes on silicon themselves are at a dead end in terms of productivity growth by 1W.

The result was general madness (at the instigation of criminal cheaters at Intel) with the consumption of laptops growing to wild levels.

We need a legislative limitation on the power of laptops at a maximum of 80W if the authorities strive for a "green economy," as well as desktop processors and video cards.

At 80W, a total of 60-65W will be allocated to the processor and dgpu, which can be easily handled by current cooling systems.

But the world of duplicity and lies is such that we can only buy such garbage - there are simply no alternatives, and AMD, in principle, does not care about the x86 market share, and even now, with Intel admitting defeat in terms of technical processes and the official transfer of Lunar Lake production to TSMC, there will be practically no difference in energy efficiency between them and only a general drop in the rate of growth of energy efficiency per 1W of silicon technologies will be visible. And this is already a common problem...

To start strong competition:
1. Intel/AMD x86 patents need to be revoked.
2. set legal restrictions on the total consumption of PCs/laptops that can be purchased at retail. This will automatically lead to the need for dramatic progress or the inability to sell new series, because... There will be virtually no difference in performance.
3. Severely punish methods of artificial aging and artificially limiting the transition to a new generation through intentional hardware restrictions (like artificially changing the socket, etc.)

The world could be a better place, but politicians and officials are mired in corruption and crime, and the stupid majority of the population chooses not meritocracy, but populists, because stupidity always chooses those who are clearer to them, in the absence of flexibility of thinking and a broad outlook/experience/knowledge..