Lenovo has nailed the successful formulation for a compact, game-worthy laptop computer with the Legion Slim 5 Gen 8 (begins at $1,295.99; $1,479.99 as examined). This AMD-powered gem undercuts its rivals on value whereas delivering equal or higher efficiency with out compromising on battery life. Its 14.5-inch OLED display is certain to please, as is sort of the whole lot else, together with a sturdy aluminum chassis. With little to carry it again, this Legion earns an Editors’ Selection award within the 14-inch gaming laptop computer phase.
Design: A Gaming Laptop computer That Would not Scream ‘Gaming’
The $1,479.99 Legion Slim 5 Gen 8 I am reviewing right here from Greatest Purchase qualifies as a midrange gaming laptop computer with its AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS processor, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 GPU, 16GB of RAM, 1TB solid-state drive, and a couple of,880-by-1,800-pixel OLED display with a 120Hz refresh price. Lenovo additionally sells a 16-inch model with a numeric keypad and an IPS show, although it has shorter battery life (as we’ll see later). Think about the 14.5-inch Slim 5 a separate mannequin.
This Legion’s design strikes the slider extra towards “understated skilled” than “garish gaming rig.” Legion lettering on the lid and a outstanding rear protrusion are giveaways that it is a high-performance machine, however a scarcity of flashy graphics and LED lighting assist it keep low-key.
(Credit score: Joseph Maldonado)The rigid Storm Grey aluminum overlaying each floor evokes confidence when transferring or dealing with this laptop computer. It is no featherweight at 3.85 kilos, nevertheless it’s comparatively mild for a 14-inch gaming laptop computer—the MSI Stealth 14 Studio is lighter at 3.75 kilos, however the Razer Blade 14 and the Alienware x14 R2 tip the scales at 4 and 4.2 kilos, respectively. The Legion is the thickest of the bunch, measuring 0.84 by 12.9 by 9.9 inches (HWD), whereas the Alienware is simply 0.57 inch skinny. The Razer and MSI are 0.7 and 0.75 inch, respectively.
(Credit score: Joseph Maldonado)Port choice begins round again with an HDMI 2.1 video output, a pair of 10Gbps USB Sort-A ports, and the AC adapter connector. I recognize rear-facing ports since they hold cables out of sight.
(Credit score: Joseph Maldonado)The remaining ports embrace a pair of 10Gbps USB-C ports on the left flank and a full-size SD card reader and an audio jack on the appropriate. Each USB-C ports assist DisplayPort, and the rearward one helps 140-watt energy supply.
(Credit score: Joseph Maldonado)Additionally on the left edge is a change to disable the webcam centered above the display. Its 1080p sensor information fairly sharp pictures and correctly uncovered my face in medium mild with out blowing out highlights or exhibiting extra grain. It does not assist IR face recognition, however you’ll be able to nonetheless use Home windows Howdy to skip typing passwords because of a fingerprint reader constructed into the ability button.
Utilizing the 14.5-Inch Legion Slim 5 Gen 8: Working and Enjoying With OLED at 120Hz
Gaming laptops sometimes use in-plane switching (IPS) shows for his or her excessive refresh charges and low response occasions, however OLED panels are rising in popularity as their refresh charges climb north of 60Hz. The Legion’s 120Hz is lots, on condition that its GeForce RTX 4060 GPU may have its arms full on the native 2,880-by-1,800-pixel decision.
(Credit score: Joseph Maldonado)The Slim 5’s display has the identical wow issue as different OLED shows I’ve examined, driving exceptionally vivid shade and distinction. A shiny floor provides readability on the expense of gentle reflections. Aggressive esports gamers will wish to search for a nonetheless sooner IPS panel, however this display is a stunner for cinematic gaming and film viewing.
I am additionally a fan of the Legion’s keyboard. Making an attempt the 10FastFingers on-line take a look at, I scored 116 phrases per minute with 99% accuracy, a stellar consequence for me. The keys have affirmative, communicative journey and extremely seen white backlighting. The structure lacks devoted Residence and Finish keys, however Lenovo deserves a nod for separating out the arrow-key cluster. The Alienware x14 R2 and the Razer Blade 14 characteristic fancier RGB backlighting in case your pockets are deeper. The touchpad tracked precisely underneath my fingers, although I discovered its bodily clicks to be on the shallow aspect.
(Credit score: Joseph Maldonado)The downward-firing audio system beneath the Legion’s palm relaxation sound satisfactory at finest. I observed barely harsh treble and never lots of instrument separation in Steve Winwood’s “Increased Love” and minimally punchy bass in Kygo and Whitney Houston’s model. The default equalizer within the included Nahimic app improves readability, although I turned down the bass increase to provide the audio system somewhat extra quantity.
Lenovo additionally contains its acquainted Vantage app for assist, system updates, and settings, which I discovered straightforward to navigate. Some bloatware is sadly current, together with a McAfee trial and a Dropbox promotion. The usual guarantee is one yr.
(Credit score: Joseph Maldonado)The Legion’s twin cooling followers had been quiet throughout on a regular basis use however ramped up when gaming. I did not discover motor noise, however the air streaming via the slender vents was audible throughout my front room. The chassis remained cool sufficient to the touch throughout gameplay.
Testing the 14.5-Inch Legion Slim 5 Gen 8: Compact and Highly effective
As talked about, Greatest Purchase sells our 14.5-inch Legion Slim 5 Gen 8 evaluation configuration for $1,479.99, although I did see it drop briefly by $200 throughout my testing. It combines an AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS CPU (3.8GHz base, as much as 5.1GHz increase), an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 GPU (105 watts most graphics energy), 16GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD. Lenovo.com sells configurable fashions with a Ryzen 9 7940HS chip, however the LPDDR5X reminiscence tops out at 16GB and cannot be upgraded after buy. Home windows 11 House is commonplace, as are Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.1 wi-fi.
The Slim 5’s value compares properly with the Alienware x14 R2 ($1,899.99), the Razer Blade 14 ($2,399.99), and the MSI Stealth 14 Studio ($1,499.99), all of which it is going to face in our benchmark comparisons. We rounded off the charts with the 16-inch model of the Legion Slim 5 Gen 8 ($1,529.99 at Greatest Purchase) to see if going up a display dimension brings any achieve in efficiency.
Productiveness and Content material Creation Exams
We run the identical normal productiveness benchmarks throughout each cell and desktop methods. Our first take a look at is UL’s PCMark 10, which simulates quite a lot of real-world productiveness and workplace workflows to measure general system efficiency and in addition features a storage subtest for the first drive.
Our different three benchmarks give attention to the CPU, utilizing all obtainable cores and threads, to price a PC’s suitability for processor-intensive workloads. Maxon’s Cinebench R23 makes use of that firm’s Cinema 4D engine to render a fancy scene, whereas Geekbench 5.4 Professional from Primate Labs simulates standard apps starting from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine studying. Lastly, we use the open-source video transcoder HandBrake 1.4 to transform a 12-minute video clip from 4K to 1080p decision (decrease occasions are higher).
Lastly, we run PugetBench for Photoshop by workstation maker Puget Methods, which makes use of the Inventive Cloud model 22 of Adobe’s well-known picture editor to price a PC’s efficiency for content material creation and multimedia purposes. It is an automatic extension that executes quite a lot of normal and GPU-accelerated Photoshop duties starting from opening, rotating, resizing, and saving a picture to making use of masks, gradient fills, and filters.
The 14.5-inch Legion positioned extremely in PCMark’s productiveness take a look at, led the group within the storage take a look at, and completed competitively in Photoshop. It impressed essentially the most in our CPU-centric benchmarks, the place it outran the Ryzen 9 Razer and matched or got here scary near the Core i7-powered Alienware and MSI.
Graphics and Gaming Exams
For gaming laptops and different cell gaming {hardware}, we run each artificial and real-world gaming benchmarks. The previous contains two DirectX 12 gaming simulations from UL’s 3DMark, Night time Raid (extra modest, appropriate for methods with built-in graphics) and Time Spy (extra demanding, appropriate for gaming rigs with discrete GPUs). Moreover, we use the cross-platform GPU benchmark GFXBench 5, which gauges OpenGL efficiency. These GFXBench exams are rendered offscreen to accommodate totally different native show resolutions; extra frames per second (fps) means larger efficiency.
Our real-world gaming testing comes from the in-game benchmarks of F1 2021, Murderer’s Creed Valhalla, and Rainbow Six Siege. These three video games—all benchmarked at 1080p decision—characterize simulation, open-world action-adventure, and aggressive/esports shooter video games, respectively. Valhalla and Siege are run twice (Valhalla at Medium and Extremely high quality, Siege at Low and Extremely high quality), whereas F1 2021 is run twice at Extremely high quality settings with and with out AMD and Nvidia’s performance-boosting FSR and DLSS options turned on.
The 14.5-inch Legion confirmed massive numbers throughout the board, performing properly forward of the Alienware and even besting the RTX 4070-equipped Razer Blade 14 in our real-world benchmarks. Its 16-inch stablemate did not do significantly better. That is probably because of the smaller Legion’s elevated thickness in contrast with its different 14-inch rivals, which went for a lot thinner designs that inevitably influence cooling and subsequently efficiency.
We additionally tried the real-world video games on the Slim 5’s native 1800p show decision: It reached 83fps in F1 2021 (Extremely settings with DLSS), 95fps in Murderer’s Creed (Extremely Excessive), and 190fps in Rainbow Six (Extremely). These numbers recommend the GeForce RTX 4060 has efficiency to spare.
Battery and Show Exams
PCMag exams laptop computer battery life by taking part in a domestically saved 720p video file (the open-source Blender film Tears of Metal) with display brightness at 50% and audio quantity at 100% till the system quits. Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting are turned off in the course of the take a look at.
We additionally use a Datacolor SpyderX Elite monitor calibration sensor and its software program to measure a laptop computer display’s shade saturation—what proportion of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 shade gamuts or palettes the show can present—and its brightness in nits (candelas per sq. meter) on the display’s 50% and peak settings.
OLED screens sometimes prime our shade gamut chart. The 14.5-inch Legion’s proved no exception, although the opposite 14-inch laptops are additionally exceptionally colourful. The 16-inch Legion was merely outclassed. The smaller Legion did not lead the pack in brightness, however OLED laptops need not exceed 400 nits to look sufficiently vivid.
The little Legion additionally confirmed commendable battery life, outlasting the 16-inch mannequin by a number of hours and placing the MSI to disgrace. The Alienware and Razer confirmed much more stamina, however greater than 9 hours from a gaming laptop computer is totally praiseworthy.
Verdict: Compact Gaming Excellence
The 14.5-inch Lenovo Legion Slim 5 Gen 8 impresses on all fronts, particularly worth, retaining tempo with or outperforming extra expensive rivals just like the Alienware x14 R2 and the Razer Blade 14 in our benchmarks. It makes no main compromises, not even battery life, which is not one thing we will say about MSI’s Stealth 14 Studio. A stupendous OLED display, a snug keyboard and touchpad, a large sufficient array of ports, and admirable construct high quality solidify its attraction and earn it a well-deserved Editors’ Selection award for avid gamers looking for an simply transportable system.
