03 Jul
Blog

Lenovo Legion 5 Pro Review: Move Aside Thin Gaming Laptops

lenovo legion 5 pro rating 01

"The display quality and performance make the Lenovo Legion 5 Pro a fantastic mid-range gaming laptop."

  • Excellent gaming performance

  • Beautiful 1440p display

  • Satisfactory, accurate keyboard

  • Good cooling

  • Inexpensive touchpad

  • Thick and chunky

Gaming laptops are getting thinner and thinner. Still, there's plenty of room in the market for gaming laptops that don't forego unbridled performance on the altar of portability.

The Lenovo Legion 5 Pro is one such gaming laptop. Its design is nothing spectacular, nor is the strain you will feel as you lug around.

But for a decidedly old-school gaming laptop, the Legion 5 Pro brings the basics together in a way that will make many performance-minded PC gamers very happy. The affordable entry-level price of $ 1,700 will put a smile on your face too.

design

The front of the Lenovo Legion 5 Pro with the lid open.

The Legion 5 Pro is not an eye-catcher. The oversized Legion logo on the lid isn't exactly subtle, and the sleepy, storm gray color and keycap font come straight from Lenovo's business laptop designs. Add in the ThinkPad-like keyboard and black vent pieces that seem glued on, and it's a bit of a Frankenstein design.

I have no problem with a stealth gaming laptop that hides its gaming roots – like the Predator Triton 500 SE or even the Razer Blade 15. But the Legion 5 Pro seems torn between the two identities. The name itself seems a bit confusing, as it can be found both in the Legion gaming line and as a "Pro" laptop. It's less of a mix and more of a mishmash.

The design has its strengths. For example, the super thin bezels around the screen look amazing. Even the lower bezel is relatively small, which makes for a modern design that puts the screen in the foreground. This is thanks to the 16:10 aspect ratio, which is a new trend in gaming laptops. Extra vertical screen space may seem unnecessary when gaming, but it's sure to come in handy when you need to get some work done. Again, 16:10 makes a lot of sense because the Legion 5 Pro hits the line.

The back of the lid of the Lenovo Legion 5 Pro.

The Lenovo Legion 5 Pro when closed.

The screen is also larger than the average 15-inch gaming laptop that is 16 inches diagonally. That's the same as the Predator Triton 500 SE, but it's still an unusual screen size for gaming laptops. But here, too, thanks to its small bezels, it does not add any additional size to the overall print.

And that's important because the Legion 5 Pro is by no means small. It weighs 5.4 pounds and is 1.1 inches thick – clunkier than your average 15-inch laptop and most high-end gaming laptops out there. As we'll see later, this extra size makes for excellent thermal performance, especially when compared to the Razer Blade 15, MSI GS66 Stealth, or even the Alienware m15 R4.

Ports

The ports are on the back of the Lenovo Legion 5 Pro.

The Legion 5 Pro offers an increasingly popular port placement option: the back of the device. This makes the laptop's footprint even bigger, but it does a good job of keeping messy cables out of the way.

On the back you will find HDMI 2.1, RJ-45 Ethernet, a power jack, three USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 ports and a USB-C port that supports both USB 3.2 Gen 2 and DisplayPort 1.4.

This leaves only ports on the sides that you really need to access quickly. On the left you will find a headphone jack and another USB-C. There is a single USB-A port on the right.

In terms of connectivity, the Legion 5 Pro supports Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.1.

display

The Lenovo Legion 5 Pro with Cyberpunk 2077 is played.

The Legion 5 Pro offers an excellent screen for both gaming and standard work. Native resolution is 2560 x 1600 to support 16:10 aspect ratio and can be scaled down to 1920 x 1200 for lower resolution games.

According to my colorimeter, the Legion 5 Pro has one of the best displays I've ever tested on a gaming laptop. First of all, it's unusually bright, reaching a brightness of 550 nits. That's even brighter than the latest MacBook Pro or Razer Blade 15. It's also a decently color-accurate panel that hits 77% of the AdobeRGB color space.

The Legion 5 Pro has one of the best displays I've ever tested on a gaming laptop.

It's rare to see such a bright, vibrant, and well-calibrated screen on a gaming laptop. Like the Predator Triton 500 SE, the Legion 5 Pro offers that great picture quality alongside a fast refresh rate, although 165Hz isn't as high as the 360Hz panels you can get in 1080p gaming laptops. But let's face it – unless you're a professional esports gamer, you probably wouldn't notice the difference while gaming anyway. The gameplay feels very responsive and fast, especially since you are running most of your games in the native resolution.

The increase in resolution is worth the tradeoff, especially with such a large screen. Pixels are disappearing thanks to the sharpness that matches what you get on the MacBook Pro. And thanks to the power you will use the full range of 165 Hz even with native resolution.

performance

As I mentioned earlier, the Legion 5 Pro is a chunky gaming laptop that offers better cooling. The result is pretty amazing gaming performance.

My configuration came with an AMD Ryzen 7 5800H, Nvidia RTX 3070, 16 GB of RAM and two 1 TB PCIe SSDs. Lenovo also offers an identical configuration with the exception of the RTX 3060. This saves 150 euros, but the RTX 3070 option should offer a noticeable increase in frame rates. It's not currently available, but Lenovo reportedly also has a confusing mid-tier model with just 1TB of storage but 32GB of RAM. Most gamers will choose more memory and less memory.

Laptop 3DMark time spy 3DMark fire strike Assassin's Creed Valhalla (1080p Ultra High) Battlefield V (1080p Ultra) Fortnite (1080p Epic) Civilization VI (1080p Ultra)
Lenovo Legion 5 Pro (RTX 3070) 9175 21033 61 fps 73 fps 101 fps 114 fps
Asus ROG Strix G15 (RX 6800M) 10504 26800 77 fps 109 fps 108 fps 150 fps
MSI GS66 Stealth (RTX 3080) 9097 19175 70 fps 117 fps 140 fps 149 fps
Razer Blade 15 (RTX 2080 Super) 7637 16895 58 fps 98 fps 110 fps 134 fps

I included the benchmarks in 1080p in the table above to level the playing field between these different laptops that include both 1080p and 1440p resolutions. The Legion 5 Pro masters all games with over 60 frames per second (fps), including the tough assassin Creed Valhalla. As for the lighter esports tariff, the Legion 5 Pro averaged over 100 fps in Fortnite, with room to use the full 165 Hz range in lower settings.

At native resolution, which is the number of people who will likely be using the Legion 5 Pro, you'll still get over 60 fps in most games. Battlefield V was right on the line at 60 fps, while Fortnite played fantastic at 83 fps. The system slowed to 52 fps at 2560 x 1600 in Valhalla, so you should probably stick to lower resolutions for heavier titles like this one.

The Legion 5 Pro offers an excellent price-performance ratio.

Although the Legion 5 Pro with RTX 3070 consistently beat the MSI GS66 Stealth with RTX 3080 (and 1440p screen) in 3DMark runs, the MSI device was well ahead in every recent game I have tested. Of course, newer configurations of the GS66 Stealth aren't widely available right now – and if so, they'll get quite a bit more expensive. The same goes for the Razer Blade 15, which will easily cost you at least $ 1,000 more.

All of this makes the Legion 5 Pro an excellent price-performance ratio for the performance it offers. The only problem is the Asus ROG Strix G15, which offers a base configuration for a similar $ 1,650. It's a more powerful laptop, no doubt about it. It's a strength of AMD's new Radeon RX 6800M graphics card that beats the RTX 3070 in every way and challenges the RTX 3080 in some. The performance of the ROG Strix G15 is undeniable. I prefer the design and screen of the Lenovo Legion 5 Pro, but it's hard to beat the ROG Strix G15 in terms of price.

Cyberpunk 2077 plays on the Lenovo Legion 5 Pro.

During my tests, the Legion 5 Pro turned out to be a well-cooled device. The GPU temperatures never rose above 86 degrees Celsius, while the CPU temperatures were even cooler. The surface temperatures got warm at times, but never quite as hot as on slimmer laptops like the MSI GS66 Stealth or the Razer Blade 15.

All configurations of the Legion 5 Pro feature the AMD Ryzen 7 5800H. It's a powerful 45-watt chip with eight cores and 16 threads. This gives you improved CPU performance over the 35-watt processors found in something like the ROG Zephyrus G14. The Legion 5 Pro had a particularly impressive single-core score of 1430 in Cinebench R23. It also does a lot better than Intel-powered laptops such as the MSI GS66 Stealth.

I also tested the CPU-based video encoding in HandBrake, and the Ryzen 7 was an absolute runabout. In comparison, the GS66 Stealth was 24% slower in the same test. That ensures the Legion 5 Pro is just as good a machine for content creation and heavier CPU-based workloads as it is for gaming.

Still, it's not quite as fast as the Ryzen 9 5900HX that you can find in the ROG Strix G15 or ROG Zephyrus G15.

battery

The Lenovo Legion 5 Pro doesn't have great battery life. Other gaming laptops have made strides in this area, like the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14, but the combination of the RTX 3070 and G-Sync panel is a recipe for frequent use of the charging port. The 80-watt-hour battery isn't quite as big as some of the 99-watt-hour batteries you'll find in premium gaming laptops.

Still, the battery life isn't nearly as bad as a laptop like this one has been for years, probably thanks to the efficient Ryzen processor inside. A little more than seven hours of light surfing on the internet isn't a bad thing. However, the second you boot up the discrete GPU, you'll find that it drops off pretty quickly. On the other hand, you probably shouldn't be playing without being plugged in anyway.

I should also mention the massive 300 watt power brick that comes with this thing. It's a tank and adds some weight to the backpack if you plan on traveling with the Legion 5 Pro.

Keyboard and touchpad

The illuminated keyboard of the Lenovo Legion 5 Pro.

The Legion 5 Pro uses a precise, ThinkPad-style keyboard. It's an odd look for the keycaps on a gaming laptop, but it offers one of the best typing experiences you will find. The key travel of 1.5mm is luxurious and the layout is perfect. The backlight is pretty limited with only four adjustment zones (including the number pad) and a disappointing software experience with Lenovo Vantage. The joy of typing more than makes up for the lack of a stylish backlight.

The quality of the touchpad was all the more disappointing. It's the kind of quality you'd find on a $ 400 Chromebook, not a powerful gaming laptop. It's a big touchpad which I appreciate. But the surface isn't very smooth, which means that clicking and dragging, pinch-to-zoom, or other gestures that require close tracking can skip or feel awkward. It's frustrating, especially on a laptop doing so many things right.

There is a 720p webcam above the screen, which Lenovo fortunately included. It's still omitted from Asus' ROG gaming laptops to allow for a thinner top bezel. However, the laptop does not contain any security features, but it lacks both a Windows Hello IR camera and a fingerprint reader. These have become more common lately even on mid-range gaming laptops, so it's a shame to see Lenovo force you to rely on passwords and PINs to log in.

Our opinion

The Lenovo Legion 5 Pro is the real deal. If you're done with gaming laptops trying to be too thin at the expense of the right cooling and performance, the Lenovo Legion 5 Pro is what you've been waiting for.

Are there alternatives?

Most gaming laptops at this price point cannot be compared to what the Legion 5 Pro has to offer. The Predator Triton 500 SE corresponds to the screen size, but is limited to an RTX 3060.

The Legion 5 Pro's two biggest competitors come from Asus. The all-AMD ROG Strix G15 is the gaming laptop with the ultimate price-performance ratio, while the ROG Zephyrus G15 corresponds to the Legion 5 Pro in almost all specifications for the same price. It doesn't have such a good screen, but the Zephyrus G15 has a sleeker design and options for up to an RTX 3080.

How long it will take?

The Lenovo Legion 5 Pro should last at least five years. It's a powerful gaming laptop that can handle the latest AAA games for many years.

Should you buy it?

Yes. The Lenovo Legion 5 Pro isn't the most stylish gaming laptop in the world, but its performance and display more than make up for the difference.

Editor's recommendations



28 Oct
Blog

Watch Dogs: Legion Review: The Reasons To Skip It Are Legion

Watch Dogs Legion Review Fly Drone

Watch Dogs: Legion Review: The Reasons To Skip It Is Legion

"As Ubisoft presents its best open world yet, the main gameplay hook falls flat."

  • Fantastic open world

  • Pleasant fight

  • Fun new traversal options

  • Recruitment hook does not work

  • The story is a tonal mess

  • Too easy, even in the most difficult case

  • The PC version crashed frequently

Ubisoft wants its core gameplay hook, the ability to recruit anyone in the open world, which is what makes you want to play Watch Dogs: Legion. Unfortunately, the mechanic's reception is quickly exhausted. The more time I spent with the game, the less impressive it got and the rough edges of the system became clear.

The real reason you stick with Watch Dogs: Legion is because London is incredibly vibrant, one of the best open worlds I've explored in a video game. But buyers watch out. The PC version of the title is littered with issues, so the console is the preferred choice.

That's a story

Watch Dogs: Legion begins attacks on key London landmarks tied to the hacking group DeadSec. This forces the city government to turn control over to a private military company called Albion. As the game progresses, the player will uncover the secret behind Zero Day, the real perpetrators of the bombings and how the vicious factions of London bond with them.

Guard dogs Albion

Watch Dogs has always passed the edges of reality with its surveillance commentary, but Legion delves into the depths by adding a healthy pile of suppressive policing. The final game in the franchise, Watch Dogs 2, was released around the time of the last US presidential election, an event that changed not only my personal politics but the state of the world almost daily. As you know, 2020 was a long year.

I was hoping Legion would find something interesting, but subjects that should be tackled with a scalpel are tackled with a sledgehammer instead. The game has no tact and is never subtle, but insists on getting around hot button issues with the light-hearted nature that made Watch Dogs 2 popular. It doesn't work.

Watch Dogs Legion Mary Kelley

As Bagley, the A.I. Companion who accompanies your employees on missions, jokes, you are forced to take photos of corpses found in the middle of a sports stadium that has been converted into a concentration camp. In one mission, you have to navigate a spider robot through a mansion only to find refugees who are kept as slaves. If anyone asks for release, they will instead be executed in front of the other prisoners.

Yes. It's getting dark. However, the game never acknowledges the dire situations it represents, which has troubled me about the entire state of game history. Legion wants to get serious, but she also wants to be silly and feel relevant. The game cannot solidify these ideas into a reasonable story or even a theme.

A mechanic's recruit misses the mark

Legion lets you go to any London civilian and recruit them as part of DeadSec. The idea initially feels new but cannot justify its existence, and the lack of a main character becomes a problem as the game progresses.

After playing the prologue mission, which starts with a preset agent, there are 15 different randomly generated characters to choose from. They are given their name, profession, a single sentence about their background and the tool or skill they come up with. My choice fell on Marcel, a mechanic with a wrench that dealt additional melee damage.

From the jump you can approach (almost) anyone on the street and recruit them for the cause. I say almost everyone, because around 75% of civilians actually had the “start recruiting” popup over their heads at some point. I'm not sure if this was a bug or if the game only allows you to recruit a certain number of characters at a time. Still, there are enough people that I didn't believe Ubisoft falsely promoted the mechanic.

Watch Dogs Legion recruitment

You can verify recruits by examining the same information that was displayed during the initial recruiting post prologue: name, occupation, background, and skills. Depending on their feelings about DeadSec, you will have to complete a side quest of varying difficulty in order for them to join. As soon as this is the case, you can switch between employees at any time.

The campaign sometimes assigns you to recruit a specific employee for a mission. For example, you need a construction worker to gain undetected access to a construction site. The game also marks the card with recruits who bring more unique skills to the table.

The majority of employees play the same game.

While character swapping is new at first, you'll quickly find that it's too shallow. London's civilians are randomized, but the variety seems limited. I have often met people with the same haircut or beard as the character I played. I even met a recruit who had the same face as Marcel, but with a darker skin tone. The random visual and vocal matches mean characters don't always have meaningful voices.

Worse, the majority of employees play the same game. There are a few exceptions. My spy character had a handful more combat animations than the rest of my crew and the ability to spawn an Aston Martin car with missiles and camouflage. Mostly. However, I could have swapped one of my recruits for another and it wouldn't have made much difference.

My construction worker could call in a cargo drone to climb on top of the city and fly through it, but there were enough of them soaring through the sky as they are. I also gave a belly laugh when a staff member – an elderly woman – performed a flying spin kick to incapacitate a heavily armored Albion guard.

Watch Dogs Legion Team

The more hacking and combat upgrades unlocked for your crew, the smaller the differences between your recruits will become. It's hard to imagine that the game would play any differently if it only had a single protagonist.

I could have swapped any of my recruits for a different one and it wouldn't make any difference.

However, one main character or several protagonists would have served the story much better. We could have connected with them in ways impossible with the casual recruits, and a message beyond "fascism is bad" could have been gleaned from history.

The game tries to anchor you with its supporting characters, including the often amusing A.I. Bagley, however, they're a poor substitute for a consistent main character.

London is the real star

I'm disappointed with Legion's story and the surprisingly thin operational mechanic. Neither is noticeable. However, if all you want to do is jump into a Ubisoft-style sandbox, Watch Dogs: Legion is the company's best accomplishment yet.

Legion's London version is a joy to discover, especially for someone (like me!) Who grew up in England. You can meet other employees you recruited during the exploration and select members of the public will be highlighted if they are in any way related to a recruit. Although by and large I am lukewarm to recruiting someone, I do appreciate that touch.

If you just want to jump into a Ubisoft sandbox, Watch Dogs: Legion is the company's best accomplishment yet.

With ray tracing on, the reflections in puddles or on the side of a double decker bus gave the world a texture I'd never seen in a game. It's dirty, shiny, and cozy at times, depending on which part of the city you are in.

Watch Dogs Legion Multipalyer

The cargo drones that you can use to fly around the city add a new level of verticality to the game and offer new ways to enter a restricted area. This is a welcome addition as entering restricted areas accounts for 90% of Watch Dogs gameplay. That said, using a cargo drone was sometimes like playing the game in easy mode, as the server or other target I needed to access was often on a rooftop.

The game is played by the feeble-minded enemy A.I. The city is littered with Albion drones and guards, and yet I was able to create a lot of chaos without looking out of the fluff. And when they caught me in the act? Ducking around a corner or two quickly turned her awareness display from assault red to confused white, and within 30 seconds the chatter of giving up chase would get through on the radio with little effort on my part.

Hard mode doesn't make them smarter, just more deadly. There's also a permadeath mode in which an employee who dies is gone for good. With all that said, the game never felt challenging.

PC performance is an issue

My ability to enjoy Legion has also been impacted by significant PC performance issues. I tested the game on my new LG CX OLED TV. The game ran in 4K at high settings and activated ray tracing at a desired speed of 60 frames per second (fps). However, it would inevitably crash, be it a few minutes after the game started or half an hour. A Ubisoft representative told me to make sure I had the latest GeForce drivers and check the game's technical requirements.

I actually had the latest drivers installed which I reinstalled for security reasons. While I didn't have the Nvidia RTX 3080 graphics card that asked what settings I wanted to run it at, even the most demanding games I played before Watch Dogs: Legion ran without any problems at even higher settings and higher frame rates. Plus, the problem wasn't a bad average frame rate. I would enjoy a steady 60 fps and then the game would crash and force me to restart.

I eventually reduced the resolution to 1800p which seemed to help, but this is not normal behavior for a game. Worst of all, I ran the game with its patch from day one. A console hotfix will be released on October 30th, while a more robust second patch for Squash performance issues will be released on November 9th. Hopefully this will fix the problem.

Our opinion

Watch Dogs: Legion is Ubisoft's most ambitious entry in the series to date, and while it doesn't disappoint like the first Watch Dogs, it feels aimless. Exploring London is a good time, but the game is never challenging and the story makes very little sense.

Is there a better alternative?

Yes. Watch Dogs 2 is still the best the series has to offer. If you're looking for a newer game, you might be waiting for Assassin's Creed Valhalla to be released about a week after Watch Dogs: Legion launched.

How long it will take?

As with any Ubisoft open world game, you have a lot of side quests to complete. With goals associated with recruiting new members, this is taken one step further. The campaign lasts around 20 hours, but if you stick to the main story.

Should you buy it?

Legion's recruiting hook doesn't produce any results, and performance issues make this a leap for PC gamers.

Editor's recommendations




25 Sep
Blog

Lenovo Legion Y27q-20 Review: 1440p Gaming Done Right

Lenovo Legion y27q 20 review y20q 10

"The Lenovo Legion Y27q-20 offers fluid, ultra-fast gaming in an elegant design."

  • Simple, lightweight design

  • 165Hz refresh rate

  • Excellent ergonomics

  • Decent value for 1440p

  • 1 ms response time

  • No speakers

  • Bad contrast

  • Frustrating controls

It's an ideal time to upgrade to higher resolution games, but you will likely need a new game monitor. That doubles when you've updated your PC's graphics card, whether it's a lower-priced RTX 20 series or one of the new 30 series cards.

The Lenovo Legion Y27q-20 offers a resolution of 1440p and a refresh rate of 165 Hz and is in every way an upgrade of your old 1080p monitor. It is quickly becoming a crowded space, however, and $ 430 isn't the cheapest price out there. Does the Legion Y27q-20 have the picture quality and gaming performance to secure it?

design

While nothing special, the Legion Y27q-20 is not devoid of embellishments, including Lenovo's signature circular cheese grater design on the back of the case. Oddly enough, it's not dissimilar to Apple's Mac Pro or Pro Display XDR. For a gaming peripheral, it's rather sleek and not as bulky as some Acer Predator or Asus ROG monitors.

But don't get too excited. Like most gaming monitors, the Legion Y27q is mostly made of plastic and has a large lower bezel. The HP Omen 27 gaming monitor has more class in my book, but the Legion undercuts the price of this monitor considerably. Fortunately, the stand is made of metal, which offers a lot of stability.

The Legion Y27q's screen, base, and stand are individually wrapped, but I got them assembled in seconds thanks to the monitor's simple VESA mount. The entire package weighs just 14.7 pounds, which makes it even easier to set up. The Acer Nitro XZ272U is lighter at just 11 pounds, but the Y27q isn't far away.

After setting it up, I was delighted to discover how adjustable the Legion Y27q is. With tilt, turn, height and swivel adjustment, you are sure to find something that meets your needs. Switching from landscape to portrait is a notable addition that gaming monitors like the Predator XB273U and Dell S-Series monitors lack.

Ports

The connections are on the back and face down. You won't find any surprises here – just a DisplayPort 1.2 and HDMI 1.4. These are older port standards, but for a 1440p gaming monitor, they're all you need.

The Legion Y27q-20 even has additional USB connectivity to sweeten business. On the back, you'll find a USB-B 3.1 upstream port and a USB-A port, while two USB-A ports flank the side. You will also find a headphone / microphone jack here. These are nice additions to an otherwise fairly simple gaming monitor that turns into a USB hub.

The monitor is supplied with power via the rectangular “Trim Yellow” power connector from Lenovo next to a relatively small external power supply module.

Unfortunately, Lenovo didn't think the Legion Y27q-20 needed speakers. Lenovo sells a separate model with a cone-shaped speaker in the base, but it's missing here. That's a shame. I still think most monitors should include speakers, even if they're not the largest in the world. Yes, most people use headphones or external speakers, but for the rare occasional time you want them, they're missing.

Buttons and Menus

The on-screen menu is accessed using the six buttons just below the control panel. There are no fancy joysticks or buttons behind the screen.

Once you are in the menu, you can adjust settings like brightness and contrast as well as switch between different game settings and color profiles. Lenovo offers genre-specific profiles for first-person shooters, strategy games, and more. You can also switch to "Extreme" mode, which takes you from three milliseconds to one.

Navigating the menu with the buttons is a frustrating experience.

The problem? Navigating the menu with the buttons is a frustrating experience.

For starters, the button furthest to the right is the power button, but it feels identical to the other buttons. Accidentally turning off your monitor during a game is no fun. This can happen if you reach for brightness controls while gaming in a darker environment, especially because the monitor lacks adaptive brightness.

The symbiology used on the buttons and in the menu is also confusing. What looks like a back button is actually a select button that is disoriented while navigating the menu. It would have been a good idea to do some additional user testing on these.

Game performance

The Legion Y27q-20 uses a 27-inch panel with a 2560 x 1440 resolution. Playing games at 1440p is great. It's not quite 4K, but it's also not nearly as demanding when you have more of a mid-range system. The RTX 2070 Super I tested it with push games like Battlefield V and Fortnite well over 100 frames per second, even at maximum settings.

Thanks to the refresh rate of 165 Hz, the gameplay feels incredibly smooth. Sure, there are 240Hz, 300Hz, or even 360Hz monitors out there – but unless you want to be a professional gamer (and maybe even then) 165Hz should work fine. This is especially true if you are playing in 1440p.

This is not true G-Sync.

Nvidia G-Sync stickers are placed all over the Legion Y27q-20, but it's not a real implementation. Instead of a physical G-Sync module, it is certified by a solution that Nvidia calls "G-Sync Compatible". Essentially, this means it's a Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) monitor that Nvidia checked for flickering, ghosting, and tearing. This is not true G-Sync.

And yet the gaming experience on the Legion Y27q-20 is super fluid. As soon as you jump into the Nvidia control panel and change the refresh rate to 165 Hz, you'll immediately notice the smooth animations, even of your cursor, as you move it across the screen. Next, you want to enable the Extreme setting to achieve the specified response time of one millisecond.

Response time is about how quickly the pixels on your monitor can change color. There is no agreed measure of response time, so the difference between 1 ms and 3 ms can be inconsistent depending on the monitor. However, with the Legion Y27q-20, you can tell the subtle difference in responsiveness when you switch between the two settings.

picture quality

Thanks to the IPS display (In-Plane Switching), the Legion Y27q-20 can also be used for activities outside of the game. It's pretty bright with a maximum of 415 nits, and the color saturation isn't bad either. With 99% of sRGB and 77% of AdobeRGB, the Legion Y27q is as colorful as you can expect from a gaming monitor.

Many inexpensive or medium-sized gaming monitors opt for VA panels (vertical orientation) or TN panels (twisted nematic). These screens tend to have worse viewing angles, so I am pleased that Lenovo has chosen IPS.

However, it wasn't perfect. The contrast was low at only 650: 1, which was affected by the flat black values. The images look a bit washed out next to other displays. For comparison: the Acer Nitro XZ27 has a size of 1,060: 1, which leads to much richer images and colors.

The Legion Y27q is a hit or miss in terms of image quality.

The second problem was color accuracy. With an average Delta-E of 3.07, the color accuracy is surprisingly poor for 202o. The Nitro XZ272U, for example, has an average of 1.23. Again, this isn't the biggest issue for gamers, but there's no reason a $ 430 monitor should be so poorly calibrated.

I tried calibrating the screen myself to see if I could improve some of these numbers with my Spyder5Elite. The gamma has been corrected from 2.1 to 2.2 and the color accuracy has been reduced to 1.85. Both are positive improvements in image quality, which shows that this panel could have used an additional factory calibration. However, contrast and black levels were not helped.

The Legion Y27q is a hit or miss in terms of image quality. It's not a screen that you want to perform precise color grading or watch movies all the time.

Our opinion

With RTX 30 series graphics just around the corner, gaming monitors like the Lenovo Legion Y27q-20 will soon become important. There are some cheaper options that result in higher resolutions and refresh rates, but the Legion Y27q-20's looks and responsiveness make it a solid option for a monitor upgrade.

Are there alternatives?

The Acer Nitro XZ272U is only $ 330, though it's also a 27-inch 165Hz gaming monitor. It uses a VA panel and has a response time of 4 ms instead of 1 ms. It even has a curved screen.

Another option is the Asus TUF VG27 gaming monitor, which is available for $ 479. Finally, the $ 400 Dell S2719DGF is another great option. It has a 1ms response time and 155Hz refresh rate, but uses a cheaper TP panel.

How long it will take?

The Lenovo Legion Y27q-20 should last around five years. The standard warranty is three years, but with the refresh rate of 165 Hz and the resolution of 1440p you are equipped for PC games longer.

Should you buy it?

Yes. The Legion Y27q-20 combines features, design and performance in one affordable package.

Editor's recommendations