Average Jenn Tech Reviews - Lenovo Legion 5i
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 wondered 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 your lifestyle.
For today’s “average” people’s consumption: the Legion 5i Gen 11 laptop.
Review Model Specs
- Display: 15.3″ WQXGA (2560 x 1600), OLED, 165Hz
- CPU: Intel® Core™ Ultra 7 251HX Processor
- Memory: 32GB DDR5
- Graphics: NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 5060 Laptop GPU 8GB
- Storage: 1 TB SSD M.2
- Ports: HDMI, 3xUSB-A, 2xUSB-C, Audio Jack,
- Battery: 4 Cell Rechargeable Li-ion 80wh
- Weight: ~2kgs
The Lenovo Legion 5i Gen 11 is Lenovo’s “jack of all trades” laptop. Designed to deliver in gaming, creativity and, of course, “average everyday human” activities, it’s meant to bridge the gap between people who want an awesome laptop but don’t need or want one with the capabilities (or price tag) of Lenovo’s Pro series machines.
At first glance, the Legion 5i looks like the other Lenovo laptops I’ve reviewed: understated design, clean lines, tasteful RGB – however, this one is significantly lighter. Considering this laptop is also designed for people who want to use it for things outside of just gaming, the weight reduction is great. If you wanna carry this to and from work or uni every day (or even just from your desk to the couch), you can do so easily. The one drawback of this design is that it is a fingerprint magnet, so keep a cloth handy if you don’t want your machine to look like it’s constantly being handled by grubby little children.
Daily Use
Given that this laptop is meant to take you from work to gaming and everything in between, I wanted to make sure it could handle everything I threw at it… and the TLDR is, yes, it could. But we still have a lot of the review to go, so just keep reading, ok?
This laptop is baller, but my very first impression was… less than baller, and that’s because of all the freaking bloatware that is installed on this machine. I reviewed the Pro 7i a few months back, and I don’t remember that laptop having this much crap pre-installed on there. Upon start-up, there’s a useless pop-up on your screen every few seconds. It got so bad at one point it reminded me of those viruses we’d get on our computers in the early 00’s. Of course, for a techie it’s as simple as going through and uninstalling all the crap, but oh boy is there a lot of crap.
Once you get past all of that, though, this laptop shines so bright you can almost
I am currently planning a trip overseas, so I used this laptop to do a lot of my research. I was looking up restaurants, hotels, flights, activities – I had split-screen going with maps on one side and hotel room walkthroughs on the other. I had tabs on tabs on tabs of TikTok videos, YouTube videos and Instagram Reels, and even for the hours and hours and hours I spent diving deep into the travel rabbit hole, the battery lived. It got to the point where I actively had to try to think of “daily use case” activities to drain this battery, which is a huge win.
The keyboard on this laptop was also an absolute joy to use. It had a springy feel to it, and the feedback from the keys themselves made typing feel great. The keyboard also included a numpad, but this inclusion meant some keys were really awkwardly spaced; however, I will take this over no numpad every day of the week. And honestly, the keyboard felt so freaking good to type on that I really didn’t care about the position of the keys; I just wanted to wham on them for hours.
Video, Audio Calls & Sound
I tested the audio quality on audio calls, gaming sound, music and general media and the laptop never failed me. The speakers consistently deliver clear, crisp sound no matter what you’re doing, and they don’t distort when the volume gets high either. People’s voices come through with great clarity, music has depth and ambient sounds in the games I tested sound wonderful.
The mic also functions really well; voices pull through clearly, and it does a pretty good job of isolating your voice when there’s background noise. One thing I also noticed it does really well is muffling sound when things get too loud… however, the reason I noticed this so much is that it kept trying to do it to my voice. I get it, Lenovo, I’m loud. Thanks.
ANYWAY.
The camera on the laptop really needs a good light source to deliver quality, but bless its little heart, you can tell it tries really hard in low-light settings. During the day, the camera is great – the image is clear, and the colours are balanced. As soon as the lighting becomes darker, the image will become grainy, but the camera does its best to auto-adjust the colouring and light levels of your background.
Gaming
Whilst not purpose-built solely to be a “gaming laptop”, a Lenovo laptop should be able to play games, and play games well, and this one certainly does. My review model came with a 5060 card, and there was nothing that stopped it or slowed it down.
I loaded up Oblivion (the Elder Scrolls series has been calling me like a siren lately), and it looked phenomenal. Colours were vibrant, blacks were black – Tamriel looked fantastic. The creepy-looking elf dude that followed me through my adventures didn’t look great, but that’s not the fault of the laptop… he just has a bad head. The machine did render his freaky-looking face in wonderful high definition though, so that’s… just great.
I also tested Fields of Mistria (think cute pixel farming meets Sailor Moon-style characters) which, unsurprisingly, ran like a dream. Where Oblivion is dark, gritty and flashy, Fields of Mistria is pretty, pastel and slow-paced. The two games couldn’t be more different from one another, but they both performed amazingly on the Legion 5i. The pastels really popped on the OLED display, and the sounds of the cosy world of Mistria carried through on the speakers beautifully.
Testing out games was where I really missed the 210Hz screen that comes with the Pro series, but the display on this laptop definitely does the job – and does it well. All games I tested ran at a solid 70-100FPS, with only Oblivion experiencing any kind of frame drops; but that was only when I was getting barraged by an army of spells, and even then it remained at a constant and solid 60FPS.
Closing Thoughts
I have reviewed a lot of Lenovo laptops, and I think each machine is getting better than the one before it. The Lenovo 5i Gen 11 is made to appeal to people who want a little bit of everything, and it definitely delivers.
If you’re a creative and you want a laptop you can edit on, you got it. If you’re a gamer and you wanna play games, go for it. If you’re a numbers person and you want to open and use 300 spreadsheets at once, well… I don’t know why you would, but hey, the Legion 5i will do it for you. If you’re looking for a solid machine that will deliver on quality, longevity, and battery life and can do pretty much anything you want it to, the Legion 5i is a solid choice.
