Lenovo Legion 5i Gen 10 Laptop - Average Jenn Tech Reviews
Have you ever been researching a new piece of technology, only to be confused by all the tech jargon in the reviews? Have you ever wanted to buy a new laptop or phone, but wanted to know how it would fit into your daily life? Do you ever feel like most tech reviews are written for other techies and not the average Joe? Insert Average Jenn Tech reviews, a regular person writing slightly above average reviews that fit in with your above-average lifestyle.
For today’s average people’s consumption: the Lenovo Legion 5i Gen 10 laptop.
Review Model Specs
Display 15.1”, 165Hz OLED
CPU Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX Processor
Memory 32GB DDR5
Graphics Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080
Storage 1TB SSD
Ports 2x USB-C, 3x USB-A, 1x HDMI, microSD card slot, ethernet, audio jack
Battery 80wh
Weight ~2kg
The Lenovo Legion 5i Gen 10 laptop is a pretty snazzy piece of hardware. Visually, it’s not quite as slick as some other gaming laptops on the market, but the RGB elements and matte black casing give it enough personality to make it visually appealing. I love a gaming set-up with lots of bright, flashing RGB lights, and I appreciated that the RGB elements on this laptop could be dialled up to the point you’ve basically got a light show going on in your lounge room. Of course, if you want to use this laptop for work or uni and don’t wanna blast people in the face with light, it can all be dialled back down.
The laptop comes with a full-size numpad and arrow keys on its flat-form keyboard, and typing on it is very comfortable. The keys are spaced well so you won’t be making any weird or awkward typos, and whilst not as satisfying to type on as some, the tactile feel of this keyboard is pleasant enough.
My one bone to pick with the Legion 5i laptop is that it gets hot, so if you’re using it on your lap while sitting on the couch… maybe don’t. It’s not hot enough to cause you discomfort, but it did melt the crap out of a misplaced chocolate bar when I was playing games. RIP, my delicious Crunchie, you will be missed. (Lenovo, you have my address now, so sling me a Crunchie, yeah?)
Day-to-Day Use
One of the things I look for in a laptop (other than how it’s going to run all my games) is how well it fits into my daily life. There’s no point paying over $3k for a piece of hardware if it can’t do everything I need it to. And whilst some gaming laptops obviously work excellently for video games, there have been models that really fall over in a daily use case. But I’m pleased to announce that the Legion 5i is not one of them.
Video/Audio Calls
The Legion 5i places its webcam at the top of the screen, which is great. It might sound stupid, but I’ve used laptops in the past where the camera is at the bottom near the keyboard, and NOBODY looks good from that angle. Imagine paying over $3k for a laptop and then looking like a thumb in every Zoom call. No thanks.
The audio quality from the speakers isn’t bad, voices are clear, and the built-in mic picks things up well. It managed to pick up voice from far away and did a pretty good job of isolating other noises so that only the voice came through. Audio in terms of gaming or video sound isn’t too bad. A little muffled, but the volume carries and gets decently loud. Obviously, there’s very little differentiation with music (you won’t be able to pick up bass or treble), but you don’t buy a gaming laptop for it to be your DJ at a party. Plus, once you plug a headset in, none of this matters anyway.
Battery Life
Unfortunately, the Legion 5i does fall a bit short in terms of battery life. I wouldn’t often use a machine like this without being close to power, but with this laptop, I didn’t have much of a choice. I managed to play 90 minutes of video games on full brightness, with audio, before I got the 20% battery warning from Windows. For video streaming, I was able to stretch this to about 2 hours, and general web usage gave me an extra couple of minutes – but you’d realistically only be getting around 3 hours of use out of the battery before you need juice.
Gaming
If you’re buying a gaming laptop, the one thing you wanna know is how well does it play games? I tested the Legion 5i on a bunch of different games to see how it would run and honestly, it smashed it (which isn’t super surprising considering my review model came packed with an RTX 5080). Generally my CPU usage across different games stayed around 40%, FPS was consistently over 100 with no weird drops or frame tearing, and the gorgeous 165Hz screen kept things looking bright, gorgeous and vibrant.
I tested the 5i across a range of different games, but the ones I used to really try and throttle it were:
Inzoi
- Life Sims aren’t usually known for sucking the life force out of your PC, but Inzoi in particular is quite graphics-intensive due to its realistic art style. In fact, this game is so graphics-intensive that many gamers have subscribed to GeForce NOW just to play it – but on the Legion 5i, this game ran like a dream.
- I cranked everything up as high as it would go, and my fps was high and constant. Textures were clear, camera panning was smooth, load times were quick – I have no notes.
- Graphically, the Legion 5i made this game look fantastic and run even better – which says a lot about an early access game that hasn’t been properly optimised yet!
DOOM: The Dark Ages
- The next thing I wanted to test was an FPS, which I am notoriously dogshit at, but they work well as a much faster-paced game to test graphics with.
- I am pleased to report that whilst the Legion 5i did not make me any better at the game (it’s a laptop, not a miracle worker), the game did look fantastic while I was having my ass handed to me over and over again.
- DOOM is not a game for bright, happy colours, but it was a great way to check out how deep the blacks and dark colours can get on this monitor, and I was not disappointed. The bleak and gloomy atmosphere of this title was stunning when viewed on a Legion laptop.
- I experienced a very smooth and consistent fps with no dips or frame tearing. There was no stuttering in my gameplay either; everything was perfect. The ‘reload’ screen has never looked better!
Where Winds Meet
- Where Winds Meet is the newest of the three mentioned, and it is stunning – even more so on this amazing laptop.
- There’s a feature in the character creator where you can speak into the mic, and it will develop a character for you based on the sound of your voice. At the risk of getting my feelings hurt, I abused this feature to see what kind of weird characters I could get the game to create – but the reason I’m telling you this is because it was a great test of the mic. As I listened to the recording of myself speaking these ridiculous sentences in crazy voices over and over, it dawned on me that ‘hey, you sound like an idiot, but damn if you don’t sound like a crystal clear idiot!’.
- Whilst the optimisation of this game is, once again, not amazing, it really didn’t throttle the laptop half as much as I expected it to. I was able to play with everything on Ultra and easily reach 150 fps at all times.
- The gorgeous colours of the world in WWM were a great testament to the vibrancy the screen is able to produce, and going back to my normal monitor genuinely kind of sucks.
Closing Thoughts
The Lenovo Legion 5i Gen 10 laptop is a great piece of hardware that will easily fit into your daily life. Whether you need it for work, school or nerding out in a game for 10 straight hours, this laptop has you covered. The design is sleek and subdued enough that it can pass in a corporate office for work, but the subtle RGB elements tell other people that you’re not a regular techie; you’re a cool techie. If you’re looking for a beast of a gaming laptop that can also double as a daily driver, the Legion 5i Gen 10 has you covered.
