Lenovo Legion 5i 16″ WQXGA Gaming Laptop

I puchased this machien on November 2021, and I got bricked this machien from 6th sept 2022 (it is under warranty).
I purchased this machien on UAE and i got bricked in India during my vacation.
So I mailed lenovo india to service this machien under warranty.
But they simply said to me this machien made in USA and warranty services covered only from there.
I checked there website for my laptop servieces country and found USA,UAE,India none of these three countries are not entitled for my machiens warranty services.
Now I’m totally stuck, regretting to purchase this machien. I googled about this issue and I found so many costomers with bios bricked Lenovo products.
If you are an expat please keep in mind,
No more Lenovo.

For sure this is the more affordable, easily upgradeable gaming laptop in the market this year. Not only for the cost ($660) but for the improvements you can do. The keyboard is rock solid; the 120 Hz display is awesome, the heat dissipation is very good, despite that the laptop heats significantly when is working hard or gaming. But, in general, the build is much better than other brands in the same price range. In fact, right now is $100 or less than other laptops with the same hardware or worse. The first picture shows the interior of the laptop, exactly as it arrived.

I recommend to do two important improvements in the laptop. The first one is to improve the RAM. Firstly, because with a single module works at single channel. But my recommendation is to replace the original ram module in the laptop. AMD processors are very sensitive to memory latency and rank. But the memory that came by default is a single side/dual rank (1Rx16) Samsung memory. If you look up for reviews in expert channels in Youtube (like Linus Tech Tips or Jarrod’s Tech), the speed with a single rank/double side RAM improves up to 20%. I opt for these pair of T-Force modules, because right now is the cheapest and works so fine, exactly like other more expensive memories.

The second important improvement I recommend is the hard drive. The laptop came with a WD 256gb PCIe 3.0 disc, relatively slow (1900-950 Mb/s), but tiny (2242). The motherboard supports up to PCIe 4.0, so you can buy a disc up to 7000 Mb/s. For the second 2280 slot I choose a 2TB Inland disc, considerably faster (3500-3000 Mb/s), but considerably cheaper than a PCIe 4.0 disc. The motherboard supports 2 NVMe discs and an additional SATA disc, and the laptop came with adapters and the enclosure for a standard 2.5 SATA disc (mechanical or SSD). But unfortunately, there is no way (o no clean way) to connect all the three discs at the same time. It can be done in a dirty way, if anyone figures it out. I tested the three discs at the same time with the laptop open and it worked, but there is no room for the three discs at the same time once you close the laptop. Additional recommendation: do not forget to migrate the SO to the faster disc.

This is an all-plastic laptop, but has a fairly rigid build, not like metal, but far less flex on the screen than my 5 year old Acer Aspire which needed many replacements due to flexing including a cracked screen, hinges, and back cover. This has 8 GB memory. This has and older GTX 1650. This has a 120hz display (unheard of at this price point) This has 256SSD m.2. It has a backlit Keyboard. It has an amazing processor: AMD Ryzen 5.

Here’s the deal. You can get similarly priced laptops that have more storage and RAM, touchscreen, etc… but you will trade down the pieces that future-proof this machine. I can walk into Walmart and get a similarly priced Pentium, i3 or a similarly priced i5 with more RAM or storage or maybe a touchscreen (if that’s important to you), but no dedicated graphics, no backlit keyboard, or expansion slots for ram or SSD. However, I can always buy more RAM or hard drive later when the price will actually be lower. I can NOT come back later and upgrade the CPU, add slots to increase the RAM, and all of a sudden make my keyboard visible in the dark when I want to work late at night sometime. I can’t later upgrade the screen to 120hz as this one has. And, the GPU at this price range is perfectly adequate (Although not as future-proof). The Battery has a LOT to be desired and could be a deal breaker. I can get 5 to 6 hours if optimized back (all but battery-saver mode). My old Acer had 12 hour battery, but the screen was a significant tradeoff.

Some people are saying only 6 GB RAM. That is because of the new way Ryzen processors use dedicated RAM instead of shared RAM. There is 8, it is just that old processors shared the RAM with the system. Now the new processors are dedicating part of the RAM to the processor permanently. It isn’t too much different than before, but does change the way the RAM is handled and displays for availability for Windows.

My system is gaming fine right now with the existing setup, but I’m not a power user. I’ll wait until I can’t live with the performance and then I’ll go buy more RAM and SSD when it comes down lower in price, because I can. Beware of machines that downgrade built in pieces to give you more memory and hard-drive, but will be outdated in 4-7 years instead of 7-10+ years depending on what you plan to do with the machine. Those are not good tradeoffs. Lenovo seems to have hit a sweet spot in this price range with its optimal upgradeability and good built in features for for the price you pay.

If you need a power machine, this is not it. This is a good midrange machine that will allow you to do a diverse amount of tasks without lagging out or crashing, and should last a long time with the specs it has.

 Es una computadora bastante buena, la recomiendo en lo absoluto, pero debes tener en consideración las siguientes partes..
1. No cuenta con suficiente almacenamiento, por lo que obligatoriamente tendrás que agregar, al menos otros 500 gb, la ventaja es que puedes agregar un SSD de tipo NVM, o uno convencional sata 3, pero no los dos al mismo tiempo.
2. La RAM es rápida pero si quieres tener el mejor provecho debes agregar otros 8gb, para hacer el dual Chanel, ya que juegos demandantes como Warzone, no te deja jugarlo con 8gb, que realmente solo puedes usar 6.1gb, ya que tiene cierto espacio, para los gráficos integrados, cosa que puedes modificar entrando a la BIOS, para esto debes de usar un pincho, el que usas para sacar la SIM de tu celular, ese mismo, del lado derecho el equipo trae un orificio, le das un pinchazo y entras a la BIOS, podrás encontrar tutoriales, de como bajarle memoria a los gráficos integrados, que no es complicado.
3. La batería es bastante mala dura 2 horas o 2 1/2, pero recordemos que esta diseñada para el Gaming.
4. El brillo no es el mejor, y por lo demás creo que es un gran equipo, que lo recomiendo si lo encuentras por menos de 15,500 pesos, de otra manera hay equipos mucho mejor.
5. Las temperaturas y los ventiladores son muy buenos, pero debes tenerlo elevado unos centímetros de la mesa, para que pueda correr bien el aíre, de esta manera incluso jugando GTA V en gráficos ultra, no llegas a los 70° centígrados.
6. Es una gran compra, como digo si lo encuentras por un precio acorde a las características, y sobre todo a mi me lo envió amazon de estados unidos, por lo que no tuve problemas con la entrega, de hecho llego 2 días antes de lo acordado.