Driving impressive performance for the money, Lenovo’s new Legion Pro 5i Gen 9 (starts at $1,369.99 at the time of writing) makes a few more concessions for cost than the company’s higher-end Legion 7 and Legion 9 gaming laptop lines. You can think of the base model seen here as a chunkier alternative to our favorite midrange gaming rig, the Editors’ Choice award-winning Lenovo Legion Slim 5 Gen 8, or a rival to the slightly-larger-screened Acer Nitro 17 and Asus ROG Strix 17. Come for the speedy performance and comfy keyboard, stay for the surprisingly long battery life.Configurations: Mighty in the MidrangeThe 16-inch Legion Pro 5i Gen 9 settles neatly into the midrange gaming laptop market, built around a 14th Generation Intel Core HX-series processor and Nvidia GeForce RTX 40-series graphics card. The starter model combines a Core i7-14650HX chip, an RTX 4060 GPU, 16GB of memory, a 1TB solid-state drive, and a 2,560-by-1,600-pixel IPS screen with 165Hz refresh rate.
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(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
Oddly, our test unit was configured slightly below the baseline, with a 512GB SSD instead of a 1TB drive. We tried custom-configuring it on Lenovo’s website, but doing so brings a big price hike compared with prefab systems—it came to $1,593 versus $1,369.99 for an otherwise identical base model with 1TB of storage. Other ready-made configurations upgrade the RAM to 32GB, the storage to as much as 2TB, the CPU to an Intel Core i7-14700HX or Core i9-14900HX, and the GPU to a GeForce RTX 4070. You can also get a faster display, the 240Hz panel we saw on the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 9, which is fantastic. A fully loaded and upgraded rig costs $1,929.99. If you’re no fan of factory upgrades, the Pro 5i uses DDR5 memory and has two M.2 storage slots, allowing for expansions after purchase.
Design: Recognizably LegionThis Legion Pro model carries on the design Lenovo has established for its gaming notebooks in recent years. While not one of the company’s Slim models, it’s thin enough for a gaming laptop while building out extra cooling and ports through a rear section extending past the display hinge. The Legion Pro 5i Gen 9 has similar aesthetics to the Legion Pro 7i Gen 9 with a slightly cheaper bill of materials; the chassis is mostly plastic, though a metal lid lends a somewhat more premium feel. Despite the plastic, the laptop still feels plenty sturdy. The frame can flex a bit, but not to a worrying degree. Higher tiers in the Legion family feature per-key RGB keyboard lighting, but the Pro 5i settles for more straightforward multi-zone lighting. It provides tame effects and less nuance but illuminates the keycaps effectively. The keyboard is well laid out, with a slightly downsized numeric keypad at right and full-size, offset cursor arrow keys set aside to keep from interfering with the rest of the keyboard.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
Lenovo fit a modestly sized touchpad into the Legion Pro’s palm rest. It’s not as large and luxurious as those we’ve seen on several recent laptops, but it provides plenty of room for most uses. While you can find larger gaming rigs, this Legion is anything but small. It measures 1.05 by 14.3 by 10.3 inches, with a degree of that thickness coming from the substantial rubber feet it stands on. Those feet help ensure a steady grip on your desk and provide a large channel underneath the laptop for airflow. The downside is that they can also make it harder to slip the computer into a carrying sleeve or backpack. The Lenovo’s size combined with its 5.39-pound weight doesn’t help its portability, though it’s not burdensome for a computer packing a 16-inch display.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
Our review unit’s screen isn’t the best Lenovo has to offer, but it’s 100% ready for gaming. Its 16:10 aspect ratio gives it plenty of vertical real estate and the 2,560-by-1,600 resolution keeps everything sharp at typical viewing distances. While, as mentioned, a 240Hz panel is optional, the 165Hz refresh rate should satisfy moderate gamers. The screen supports G-Sync and Dolby Vision, though it’s only rated for 300 nits of brightness and 100% sRGB color coverage compared with 500 nits and 100% of DCI-P3 for the 240Hz display.The laptop provides a decent 1080p webcam that captures reasonably sharp photos and videos while performing well even in dimmer lighting conditions. It also has a wide field of view, helping ensure you’re in frame. Unfortunately, like many gaming rigs, the Legion lacks any sort of biometrics for logging in, with neither a fingerprint reader nor facial recognition webcam.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
Two 2-watt speakers are located at the laptop’s outer edges. They angle outward more than they do downward, which helps prevent them from firing directly into a soft surface (like a lap) that the Legion Pro might be sitting on.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
You’ll find a decent selection of ports on this Legion, though the array does feel a little lacking in some regards. The left features a USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A and USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port. The right side holds another USB-A port and a headset combo jack, as well as a hardware kill switch for the camera. The rear brings more connections with two additional USB-A ports, another USB-C connector (with both DisplayPort 1.4 and 140W power delivery), HDMI 2.1 and Ethernet ports, and a proprietary connector for the 300W power brick. Despite this being an Intel laptop loaded with ports, neither Thunderbolt 4 nor USB4 are present.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
While the Legion’s wired connectivity might be slightly disappointing, we have no complaints about its wireless capabilities. Lenovo provides Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3, which aren’t the absolute latest technologies but still quite capable.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
Using the Lenovo Legion Pro 5i Gen 9: Everything You Need to Get GamingLenovo has long offered exceptional laptop keyboards, and the Legion Pro 5i’s is in the upper tier. The switches have decent travel and resistance, making for a snappy experience. Rapid typing is a breeze; I comfortably managed more than 120 words per minute with high accuracy. The keycaps are well stabilized, with smooth vertical travel that plays a big part in how easy it is to type accurately. The touchpad is not nearly as memorable, with a reasonably smooth but not glassy surface. The click is a little dull, and getting a consistent double-click can be tricky. While its size is sufficient, it could be bigger, if only to make it so that right-handed use didn’t require reaching so far across the laptop. You likely won’t play games with the touchpad, but its design makes navigation suboptimal.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
The base display is decent, with an effective anti-glare coating that helps offset the limited peak brightness. Moreover, while Lenovo rates it at 300 nits our testing measured 374 nits, a winning combination for visibility in different environments. However, the panel’s contrast ratio of 940:1 is a little low for an IPS display and certainly doesn’t make for a compelling HDR experience. The 77% coverage of the DCI-P3 color space also leaves the visuals less vibrant than they could be.On the flip side, the laptop’s speakers have a satisfying tone—clean and clear even at full volume, with a decent blend of mids and treble. The speakers even add a little touch of bass, which is often totally absent in notebook speakers. The bass isn’t heavy, but is still a plus.You’ll find a bit of extra software on the Legion Pro 5i than you’d get from a clean Windows 11 Home install, but most of it comes in handy. Lenovo Vantage is vital for managing the system, and the Nahimic app plays a crucial role in making the speakers sound as full as they do. You can skip Legion Arena and other preinstalled Lenovo apps, which aren’t staggering in number. You also get Tobii Experience for some head-based gesture control, but it has limited utility, drains the battery heavily, and requires extra software for some aspects like in-game controls. It’s a nonessential nicety.Testing the Lenovo Legion Pro 5i Gen 9: A Performance Paragon for the PriceThere are plenty of cheaper gaming laptops, but most settle for much lower-end configurations than the Legion Pro 5i Gen 9. The Acer Nitro 17 ($1,399 as tested) and Asus ROG Strix 17 ($1,399 as tested) cost a bit more but come similarly configured, though they pair the GeForce RTX 4060 with an AMD Ryzen processor. Last year’s Lenovo Legion Slim 5 Gen 8 also has a Ryzen CPU and RTX 4060, and bore a higher $1,549 price tag when tested. The MSI Raider GE68 HX 13VF is the costliest in our comparison group at $1,799, but includes a Core i9-13950HX processor and 32GB of RAM to justify its price.
Productivity and Content Creation TestsWe run the same general productivity benchmarks across both mobile and desktop systems. Our first test is UL’s PCMark 10, which simulates a variety of real-world productivity and office workflows to measure overall system performance and includes a storage subtest for the primary drive.Three other benchmarks focus on the CPU, using all available cores and threads to rate a PC’s suitability for processor-intensive workloads. Maxon’s Cinebench R23 renders a complex scene using the company’s Cinema 4D engine. Next, Geekbench 5.4 Pro from Primate Labs simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning. Finally, we use the open-source video transcoder HandBrake 1.4 to convert a 12-minute video clip from 4K to 1080p resolution (lower times are better).
The Legion Pro 5i isn’t a performance monster but is well-balanced, especially for a product in the middle of the pack price-wise. The Pro’s Intel Core i7-14650HX easily outpaced the two lesser AMD CPUs in our benchmarks; it didn’t quite keep up with the Ryzen 9 7845HX and Intel Core i9-13950HX processors but is certainly fast enough for everyday computing and then some. Those CPU results pair with extra SSD performance for a responsive system. We’re generally happy with 4,000 to 5,000 points in PCMark 10’s productivity summary, so breaking 8,000 shows the Lenovo’s potential.Graphics and Gaming TestsWe put gaming laptops to the test with both synthetic and real-world benchmarks. The former includes two DirectX 12 gaming simulations from UL’s 3DMark—Night Raid (more modest, suitable for systems with integrated graphics) and Time Spy (more demanding, ideal for gaming rigs with discrete GPUs). We also run the cross-platform GPU benchmark GFXBench 5, which gauges OpenGL performance with tests rendered offscreen to accommodate different native display resolutions. More frames per second (fps) mean higher performance.Our real-world game testing comes from the in-game benchmarks of F1 2021, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, and Rainbow Six Siege. These three games—all benchmarked at 1080p resolution—represent simulation, open-world action-adventure, and competitive/esports shooter games respectively. We run Valhalla and Siege twice (the first at Medium and Ultra quality presets and the second at Low and Ultra quality). F1 2021 is run twice at Ultra quality settings with and without AMD and Nvidia’s performance-boosting FSR and DLSS features turned on.
One area where Lenovo has excelled with its Legion line is its ability to keep hardware running optimally, letting the system maintain high performance without losing steam. The Legion Pro 5i delivered some of the best GPU performance in the group, leading the way in 3DMark’s Time Spy benchmark and both GFXBench tests. It only trailed the Asus and MSI in Night Raid, which is less demanding on the GPU and can therefore see a more robust CPU push ahead.The Pro 5i’s graphics advantage persisted in our gaming tests, keeping the system at or near the front of the pack. Rainbow Six Siege was an outlier at max settings, but that may have been a hiccup in testing given our other results. These systems suggest they’re getting close to the GeForce RTX 4060’s maximum potential, and the Legion Pro 5i Gen 9 performed well while costing less than its rivals.Battery and Display TestsWe test battery life by playing a locally stored 720p video file (the open-source Blender movie Tears of Steel) with display brightness at 50% and audio volume at 100%. We ensure the battery is fully charged with Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting turned off before the test.To gauge display performance, we use a Datacolor SpyderX Elite monitor calibration sensor and its Windows software to measure a laptop screen’s color saturation—what percentage of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 color gamuts or palettes the display can show—and its 50% and peak brightness in nits (candelas per square meter).
It’s not an OLED graphics workstation or long-lived ultraportable, but the Legion Pro 5i strikes a great balance of display quality and battery life. Its IPS panel was the brightest of the bunch and held its own in color coverage, notably beating the Raider’s lackluster panel. Acer and Asus pulled ahead with color fidelity, but the Lenovo is a perfectly respectable option. With its sizable 80WHr battery, the Pro 5i is also relatively long-lived for a gaming laptop. It outlasted its rivals with eight hours of unplugged video playback, though such longevity requires bypassing the discrete GPU and the screen showed only a dim 87 nits at 50% brightness. The Acer Nitro offers a better-looking display with comparable battery life, while hitting more than 200 nits.Verdict: An Effectively Balanced Midrange GamerIts build quality and base display aren’t the finest, but the Lenovo Legion Pro 5i Gen 9 is a well-rounded gaming laptop for the price. It delivers class-leading (or close) performance, a sharp and smooth screen, an excellent keyboard, and a solid design if you can live without a Thunderbolt 4 port. The alternatives have their own merits but generally have more drawbacks, making the Pro 5i a midrange gaming option that’s arguably only beaten by Lenovo’s own Legion Slim 5.
Lenovo Legion Pro 5i Gen 9
The Bottom Line
Lenovo’s Legion Pro 5i Gen 9 laptop balances price, performance, and size for an effective, affordable package for gaming and productivity.
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