Lenovo Legion 5 Pro 2023 version features a design with slightly more aggressive details, looking more like a gaming laptop, but compared to brands that feature RGB LED strips all over the chassis, the Legion Pro 5 is still "too mild," which is also a characteristic of this series. Legion 5 Pro 2023 focuses more on performance and cooling than flashy elements.
If you want something flashy, you can still opt for the Legion 7 or Legion Slim 7-ultra-premium gaming laptops where RGB LEDs are a given. I previously used the Legion Y530 for a long time, which was a gaming laptop with excellent performance for its price at that time, and it also lacked a bulky or flashy appearance.
Simple and Somewhat Cool Design
The Legion 5 Pro 2023 no longer comes in the jet-black version like the old Y530, and although the current color is still beautiful and simple, I prefer the black on the Y530; it felt cooler and more powerful. This year, Lenovo calls the color Onyx Grey, which leans more towards grey.
With Lenovo Legion, they have up to 4 different gaming laptop lines: the Pro series, Slim series, 5 series, and 7 series (according to the Lenovo US website). The Legion 5 series or 5 Pro features a 16” screen, while the 7 series features a 17” screen. Therefore, the name of the laptop in this article is the latest Legion 5 Pro 2023.
The 2023 Legion 5 Pro has an overall rounded design with more pronounced curves, especially in the rear ventilation area. Compared to the Legion 5i Gen 7 (2022), the Legion 5 Pro (2023) is slightly more aggressive, and the design details have changed slightly to convey a "Pro" feel.
Ultra-thin bezels on all four sides, a sturdy design, and solid build quality are all things you can feel when touching the Legion 5 Pro.
With this Legion 5 Pro 2023, the A-cover is still finished in aluminum while the rest is ABS plastic; the A-cover can still attract quite a bit of sweat and fingerprints if you are someone with sweaty hands. This year, with the Gen 8 generation (available only on the Pro series), there will be the 5th generation Coldfront cooling system, and the Legion AI Engine+ management system has also been upgraded. The LA1 chip, which manages performance and adjusts it in real-time based on a series of internal sensors, promises to help the Legion 5 Pro achieve great performance and excellent cooling.
After "playing around" with this laptop for a while, I really like the design of the Pro series; it is angular yet rounded, with very well-finished small details, making the overall look better than the Legion 5 series.
Regarding the ports on this machine, there are plenty: two USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 ports, one of which supports data and DisplayPort, and the other supports 140W PD (though following Lenovo's proprietary standard). Next are 4 USB-A ports, including one Always On charging port, 1 HDMI 2.1 port, 1 RJ-45 port, 1 3.5mm jack, and 1 webcam privacy shutter.
Sharp screen with high color gamut
For this series, Lenovo offers users two screen options: both have a 16” size, IPS QHD+ panels, and a 16:10 aspect ratio, but one option has 300 nits brightness with a 165Hz refresh rate, while the other option is 500 nits with 240Hz.
The version I have is the 165Hz, 300 nits version, which also supports Anti-Glare and Low Bluelight.
With these specs, you can easily play games; for me, 165Hz vs 240Hz is not as important as brightness and color gamut coverage. The 500 nits version also features DisplayHDR 400 and Dolby Vision certification. Fortunately, both versions offer 100% sRGB, which is more than enough for gaming. The Legion 5 Pro 2023 also supports a 1080p webcam.
The Legion keyboard is one of my favorite aspects, especially when compared to other laptops. The Legion 5 Pro layout provides a confident typing feel with deep travel and good tactile feedback, featuring 4-zone RGB lighting. Overall, there are no complaints about the keyboard, but the touchpad has a high friction level because it is not glass-covered but plastic; while the tracking is still high, the lack of a glass layer makes the mouse movement experience not truly comfortable.
Powerful configuration
The version I am using has a relatively high configuration for the Legion 5 Pro 2023 series: a Core i7-13700HX and an RTX 4060 8GB GDDR6, which is enough to handle any current game with complex graphics effects. This machine also features 16GB DDR5 4800MHz RAM and a 512GB PCIe 4.0 SSD.
The Raptor Lake generation Core i7-13700HX has 16 cores and 24 threads with a PBP of 55W. The Core i7-13700HX features 8 P-cores and 8 E-cores, with 30MB Smart Cache. Theoretically, the power of the Core i7-13700HX is not much inferior to the high-end i7-13850HX version; I will test it more thoroughly and share the results with you later.
For the GPU, NVIDIA's RTX 4060 Laptop is the 4th most powerful graphics card in this year's RTX 40 Laptop series. Its TGP according to NVIDIA ranges from 35-115W, but Lenovo sets it at a maximum of 140W. The RTX 4060 Laptop features 8GB of GDDR6 VRAM, utilizing the AD107 chip with 3072 CUDA cores, 256 GBps bandwidth, and a 128-bit bus width.
When comparing CUDA core counts and bandwidth, the RTX 4060 is inferior to the RTX 3060, but thanks to upgrades in RT and Tensor cores, the RTX 4060 is about 10% stronger than the RTX 3060 in some 3DMark FireStrike tests.
My tests with 3DMark FireStrike, Port Royal, and Blender showed quite impressive results from the RTX 4060. I will provide a more specific comparison with the RTX 3060 Ti in a later report.
With the Legion 5 Pro 2023 series, Lenovo always brings its latest technologies to this lineup, most notably the new configuration and the Coldfront 5.0 cooling system, featuring larger vents, larger fans, and thinner blades... which provides efficient cooling. In practice, when I ran a GPU stress test, the temperature only reached 85°C, while the CPU reached about 90°C. The C-cover of the machine stays very cool and comfortable, which is also a strength of gaming laptops with thicker designs.
The PCIe 4.0 SSD on the Legion 5 Pro 2023 is also a high-speed SSD; Lenovo uses an OEM Samsung drive (model MZVL2512HCJQ) with sequential read speeds of over 6500MB/s and sequential write speeds around 4900 MB/s.
Battery & Connectivity
The Legion 5 Pro has an 80Wh battery, and according to Lenovo, the Legion 5 Pro 2023 supports fast charging: 10 minutes for the first 40%, 30 minutes for 60%, and 60 minutes for a full charge; the power adapter for the Legion 5 Pro is 300W. According to Lenovo's claims, this laptop can last 6.5 hours for video playback and 5.3 hours for MobileMark tests.
The Legion 5 Pro also features a dual-microphone system and 2w x2 stereo speakers, optimized by the Nahimic Audio system. For wireless connectivity, the machine is equipped with Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.1. Based on my inspection, the Legion 5 Pro uses an Intel AX211 Wi-Fi card and a Realtek ALC3306 audio chip.
I really like this laptop for the 2023 Legion 5 Pro series; it maintains a primarily simple look but is accented with details that show the necessary strength of a gaming laptop. The performance and screen are sufficient for playing AAA titles at the current time at QHD resolution, and the keyboard feels great to type on. The reference price for this laptop is approximately 40 million VND.




