Gaming

82b1000aus Lenovo Legion 5 Ryzen Review – Gaming Laptop.

The world of laptops is diverse, with many different companies offering products that try to cater to everyone’s needs but what if you want a top-of-the-line gaming laptop that’s not made by Acer? Lenovo has risen the ranks in recent years to become one of the most respected names in laptops.

They offer products that are reliable and produce little to no noise, but they aren’t very cheap until now. The Lenovo Legion 5 82b1000aus is their attempt at offering a quality gaming laptop for under half the cost of many competitors.

Let’s start with the specifications:

  • Processor AMD Ryzen 5 1400
  • Memory 8GB DDR4 2400 MHz
  • Graphics Card NVIDIA GTX 1050 Ti 4GB Storage
  • 128GB M.2 2280 SSD + 1000 GB HDD
  • Screen Size 15.6″ Anti-Glare, NVIDIA G-Sync
  • Networking 802.11ac WiFi + Bluetooth 4.1
  • Operating System Windows 10 Home 64-Bit

The specifications of 82b1000aus are respectable but not groundbreaking for a laptop in this price range – the GTX 1050 Ti is a solid card, and the Ryzen 5 1400 has plenty of power for a laptop.

Legion 5 Ryzen

They also packed in 8GB of DDR4 memory at 2400MHz. While it’s not as fast as DDR4 2666 or 3000, for this price range I really can’t complain about anything on the spec sheet.

Is 82b1000aus Lenovo Legion 5 Ryzen Best Gaming Laptop?

While Lenovo hasn’t been much of a recognizable name in the gaming world, they’ve been making great strides to change that. In 2016, the company released the IdeaCentre Y900, a PC that featured many powerful components at a reasonable price. Then late in 2017, Lenovo announced its Legion line-up of desktops and laptops aimed at gamers.

Display

Open it up and you’re greeted by a 15.6″ 1080p IPS panel, with a webcam in the top-left. The screen has slightly thicker bezels at the bottom, but there are no dead pixels or any other form of visible damage.

Processor

While my Legion 5 review unit came with an Intel Core i7 7820HQ, you can also opt for an i5 7300H or Ryzen 5 1400. The notebook comes with a 128GB SSD for lightning-fast boot times, but storage is limited to only 1TB of HDD space.

Lenovo Legion 5 Ryzen

Lenovo has included an additional M.2 2280 slot if you want to upgrade later. I would have preferred at least 2 TB of HDD space instead though.

Ports

On the left side of the laptop, you’ll find a USB 3.0 Type-A port and an SD card reader. On the right, you’ll get another USB 3.0 Type-A port, Kensington lock slot, HDMI output, and a Gigabit Ethernet jack. While on the back, there’s a USB Type-C port (no Thunderbolt), Mini DisplayPort, and also a headphone/microphone combo port.

There’s no optical drive, but with the prevalence of online distribution and USB drives these days I don’t mind it – it also helps reduce the price of the laptop substantially.

Keyboard

The keyboard has red backlighting, which cannot be turned off or adjusted in brightness levels. It looks fantastic when you’re playing games or watching movies with the lights turned off, but it can be quite distracting if you’re using this laptop in an office setting.

Lenovo Legion 5 keyboard

There are only three brightness levels (brightest, medium, and dim), which is rather odd especially when other Lenovo laptops have five different settings.

Trackpad

The trackpad is large and uses integrated buttons so you won’t ever accidentally click the trackpad when you’re typing which is always nice. It doesn’t have any fancy RGB lighting or fancy textures, but it gets the job done and that’s all that matters to me.

Speakers

The Legion 5 also includes 2x 2W Harman speakers with Dolby Audio Premium software built-in. For gaming, you can choose between two different profiles. The “Headset” profile is made for single-player games where all the audio comes from your speakers, while “Dolby Atmos Home Theater” is ideal if you have a surround sound system or gaming headphones.

I personally prefer to use Dolby Atmos with my Astro A50 headset – it gives me pinpoint positional audio in first-person shooters, which really helps with my KDR.

Weight

The Legion 5 isn’t the lightest laptop I’ve ever used, but it’s definitely not heavy either. It weighs around 1.95 kg (4.3 lbs), which is about average for a gaming laptop of this price range. The Legion Y920 is actually lighter at just 1.8 kg (4 lbs), but it has a smaller battery and costs $200 more than the Legion 5.

Battery

Connectivity on this 82b1000aus laptop is pretty standard you get Wi-Fi AC, Bluetooth 4.1, and Gigabit Ethernet. The battery life is also outstanding, with this laptop able to last 4-5 hours on a single charge while performing basic tasks such as web browsing and watching YouTube videos.

In my testing, I found that the Legion 5 screams through most games at 1080p resolution at medium or high settings.

Cooling System

The Lenovo Legion 5 has a very quiet and efficient cooling system so you won’t have to worry about the fan being too loud, even when playing games. It is also powerful enough that it can easily be upgraded if needed.

Conclusion

The 82b1000aus Lenovo Legion 5 is a high-quality gaming laptop that you should definitely consider buying if you are looking for one. It fits most budgets and it also has some very good specs which means you will have no problem playing games on it.

It may not have the best battery life, but otherwise, it does everything really well, especially for its price range. You can certainly have a lot of fun with this laptop.

There’s no doubt that Lenovo has done an outstanding job crafting this machine, but if you’re looking for something a bit more portable then I’d recommend checking out Dell’s G3 15 or 17 offerings. They’re cheaper, lighter and offer similar graphical performance to the Legion 5.

Check out our latest post on World’s Most Expensive Gaming PC.

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