Lenovo Legion 5 Pro Gen 7 (2022): Nearly an Editors' Choice

A solid gaming laptop for under 2,000

- ERIC GREVSTAD

Lenovo offers so many gaming laptops under the Legion 5 and Legion 7 labels, with Intel and AMD flavors and Slim and Pro variants, that it can be hard to keep track. Think of the Legion 5 Pro Gen 7 as the poor man’s version of the 4.5-Star-rated, Editors’ Choice award-winning Legion 7 Gen 7—well, not really a poor man’s at the price. But it’s a 16-inch, AMD-CPU-powered pixel-pusher that’s a full 1,000 cheaper than that 16-inch, Ryzenand Radeon-powered flagship. If your budget exceeds economy gaming rigs but doesn’t reach to the top of the line, the Legion 5 Pro is a first-class choice for you.

A POWER BRICK THAT WEIGHS A BRICK

When we last saw the Legion 5 Pro in July 2021, we complained about its bulk. This year’s model is a tenth of an inch thinner 0.78 by 14.2 by 10.3 inches) but still pretty hefty at 5.49 pounds, not counting a huge, heavy AC adapter. A typical 15.6-inch system, such as the Acer

Predator Helios 300, is 4.8 pounds. Crafted of Storm Gray aluminum and magnesium, the Lenovo shows almost no flex if you grasp the screen corners or mash the keyboard deck.

The 1,439.99 base model combines an eight-core, 3.2GHz AMD Ryzen 7 6800H processor with Nvidia’s 6GB GeForce RTX 3060 graphics processor, 16GB of memory, and a 512GB NVMe solid-state drive. The screen is a non-touch IPS panel with 16:10 aspect ratio, 2,560-by-1,600-pixel resolution, and a 165Hz refresh rate.

Our test unit model 82RGoOoo4US) is a Micro Center configuration bolstered with 32GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD, and 8GB GeForce RTX 3070 Ti graphics; it’s officially $1,979.99 but was discounted to 1,599.99 when we wrote this). The GPU and RAM are both maxed out, though thrill seekers can opt for a Ryzen 9 6900HX chip. Windows 11 Home and Wi-Fi 6E are standard.