Introduction – Legion 5 2021
Lenovo’s Legion 5 Stingray White Edition has arrived this week so if you’ve missed the pre-order and are still on the fence to get one for yourself, here’s a full rundown on this fan favorite model.
The Legion 5 2021 has been a strong product from Lenovo this latest iteration bring more flare to the lineup with the debut of the Stingray White color option. Previous Stingray White models were already available but has only recently come down to the Legion 5 which definitely brings out that elegant design further especially for professionals that don’t want the utilitarian tones of the classic silver.
Back to the laptop itself, you may be wondering why its a fan favorite? If you’ve only recently wanted a laptop and kept on seeing Legion models being recommended in reviews particularly the Legion 5 or Legion 5 Pro, the main reason being that the price-to-performance on these things are quite good. And speaking of performance, that’s just what we’re going to look at today. With a Ryzen 7 5800H and an NVIDIA RTX 3060 6GB laptop graphics card rated for 130W.
The Legion 5 Stingray White drops in the Philippines this week forPhp89,995 and if you want to find out more, keep reading!
Features & Specification – Legion 5 2021
Lenovo Legion 5 2021 82JU0033PH | |
Screen | 15.6 inch, 1920×1080, IPS equivalent, 300 nits peak, 165 Hz, anti-glare |
Processor | AMD Ryzen 7 5800H, 8C/16T, 3.2Ghz with 4.4Ghz boost, 16MB cache |
Video | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 6GB, TGP: 130w |
Memory | 16 GB DDR4 3200Mhz (2x8GB DIMM) |
Storage | 1TB GB M.2 NVMe with spare slot |
Connectivity | Realtek RTL8852ae Wifi 6, Bluetooth 5.2 |
Ports | 4x USB-A 3.2 gen2, 1x USB-C 3.2 DP 1.4, 1x USB-C with DP 1.4 and PD support, 1x HDMI 2.1, ethernet, mic/earphone |
Battery | 80Whr, 300 W charger |
Size | 363 mm or 14.3” (w) x 260 mm or 10.22” (d) x 23.57-26.1 mm or .93-1.03” (h) |
Weight | 2.4 kg (5.3 lbs) |
Extras | HD webcam with privacy shutter, stereo speakers |
Closer Look – Stingray White Edition
If I remember correctly, the Stingray White variation of Legion laptops debuted with the Legion 5 Pro. You can see the original legion 5 as well as the Legion 5 Pro in the photo above. As you can see, despite the slight variation in the case design, the color remains the same and this has been true since the inception of the Legion rebrand.
The design on the Legion 5 Pro remains the same as of the last generations except the color. Lenovo has managed to imbue a pristine white on the Legion 5 that doesn’t look business-ey nor too casual. Its a tough act to pull off but in the PC space, a lot of white cases has managed to to pull this off and the angular shape of the Legion 5 really pulls it all together.
The white treatment also extends to the TrueStrike keyboard of the Legion 5. If you’ve been following my reviews, you’ll know I swear by Lenovo Legion’s keyboards.
The IO on the Legion 5 sees a nice array on the back of the laptop with a USB3.2 Type-C port and Type-A ports, an HDMI port and a USB3.2 Gen2.
The keyboard features RGB lighting although this is zone lighting and not per key. Personally, I’d keep the lights on teal or white just to keep the colors together.
Upgradability
The Legion 5 2021 has two DDR4 slots and two M.2 slots. Depending on the SKU you get, you may have the memory slots prepopulated. You can upgrade the memory up to 64GB DDR4-3200 with two 32GB sticks.
For the M.2 slot, you can have 2 Gen3 drives active at the same time.
Testing Methodology
As this is a laptop review, this will mix our CPU benchmarking and GPU benchmarking methods. That said, the technique will be identical to our desktop testing which means you can use our results here to compare with desktop results for relative comparison.
CPU Testing Methodology
We’ve added some new benchmarks in our CPU test list but we are in the process of adding more and are trying out more benchmarks that reflect a more modern system’s general usage scenario tailored for our audience.
CPU Tests
- Arithmetic Test
- SuperPI 32M(Single-Threaded)
- wPrime (Multi-threaded)
- Rendering Test
- Blender 3D
- Cinebench R20
- Cinebench R23
- POV-Ray
- CoronaRender
- V-ray 4
- Encoding Test
- 7zip
- Content Creation Test
- PugetBenchmark for Photoshop
- PugetBenchmark for Premiere Pro
- Productivity Test
- Microsoft Office Word
- Microsoft Office Excel
- Microsoft Office PowerPoint
- Synthetic Gaming Test
- 3DMark Time Spy
- 3DMark Fire Strike
Game Testing Methodology
For a full-hardware workout, visit https://benchmarks.ul.com for our system warm-up and stress test of choice.
For benchmarking methodology please see our game benchmark method guide.
Test results are gathered and produced on CapFrameX. This makes it easier for use to get both line graph comparison and raw averages without extra tools. Simply the easiest tool for benchmarking and its available for everyone to use, free of charge. Check it out at capframex.com.
Since this is a GPU review, we benchmarked the area of the games that put heavy load on the GPU.
All our test runs are repeatable, click the links below for area and details. Read our benchmarking methodology.
- DOTA2 – Kiev Major Grand Finals Game 5: OG vs Virtus.Pro (54:05 – 55:05)
- Counter-Strike: Global Offensive: FPS Benchmark Workshop Map
- Rainbow Six: Siege – Benchmark Mode
- The Witcher 3 – Woesong Bridge
- Grand Theft Auto V – Palomino Highlands
- Shadow of the Tomb Raider – Kuwaq Yaqu
- Call of Duty Warzone
- Monster Hunter World: Iceborne – Wildspire Waste
- F1 2020 – Benchmark Mode
- PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds – Training Mode
- Apex Legends – Firing Range
- Valorant – Custom Game
- Destiny 2 – The Tower
- Cyberpunk 2077 – Little China, noontime
See our Youtube playlist for benchmark sequences.
CPU Benchmark Results – Synthetics
CPU Benchmark Results – Productivity/Creativity
Gaming Performance – CSGO, DOTA2, Siege…
Gaming Performance – Witcher 3, Cyberpunk 2077, GTA V…
CPU Power-to-Temperature Behavior
Back2Gaming is proud to work with OCCT to be our partner for this test. Which allows us to set various stress loads without using mixed-load benches like AIDA64. OCCT allows granular control on the testing.
It also features monitoring and logging for troubleshooting problems and performance analysis as well. OCCT is available as a free download for all users with a paid version for power users and businesses.
This stress test goes through different workloads in with 5-minute breaks in between. The loads run for 10 minutes and goes thru SSE, AVX and AVX2 workloads. The last test is a combined CPU and GPU test which should push our unit to a very intense loading scenario which should show us a good indicator on the peak load temps of this laptop.
We can see the all-core clocks when loaded in the charts and we the AMD Ryzen 7 5800H around 3400Mhz on SSE loads, and drops significantly on AVX with the later half of the benchmark seeing it drop down to 1500Mhz as expected from AVX workloads. This does seem to be throttle-inducing though as our temperature reading shows AVX load at peak is below 80*C, so this might just be how the CPU is tuned to compensate for AVX workloads. Mixed AVX2+GPU load sees a more sustained clock speed at 2500Mhz but temperature peaks higher as the combined CPU and GPU workload sees the Lenovo Legion 5 2021 with the Ryzen 7 5800H and NVIDIA RTX 3060 drive this laptop at 89*C.
This other charts shows us the CPU wattage in relation to the frequency which which shows how the laptop is compensating in such loads. The pattern here seems that around 83*C, the CPU drops its clocks down further, taking power draw along with it. This might be again, related to how the CPU is tweaked whether its from boost or Lenovo tuning, this will be your expected behavior especially in extended heavy usage.
GPU Power-to-Temperature Behavior
In this section we’ll see how the laptop behaves under gaming load and see if it holds its target TGP while also check what operating temperature the GPU is operating in. We use Final Fantasy XV Benchmark to simulate a gaming workload. This is runs 330 seconds.
The Lenovo Legion 5 2021’s RTX 3060 model operates with an average of temperature of 64.6*C with a sustained GPU clock speed of 1435.3Mhz. We can see the temperature rising throughout the workload with the laptop set to Turbo which puts the fans in an audible speed setting.
TGP rating for the card is set around 60-80W and the chart above confirms the RTX 3060 on the Lenovo Legion 5 2021 operates at an average 78.7W, peaking at 88 watts. As mentioned, Lenovo lists this laptop at 130w TGP on the GPU but from tests from other laptops, we’ve never seen an RTX 3060 laptop GPU exceeding 90W on a 15″ model although they do exist on paper.
Conclusion
If you’re jumping to this section to just skip to the conclusion: at Php89,995, there are other options that are competitive specs-wise to the Legion 5 2021. Still, aside from the new color option, Lenovo’s Premium Care has been a hit especially during this pandemic, something you won’t get from grey-market or import versions of Lenovo laptops.
Diving down, the Legion 5 2021 iteration sees some good improvements over last years Ryzen 4000-based model gaining the improved CPU performance of the latest Zen3 uarch together with higher performance throughout. This also is coupled with the new NVIDIA RTX 30-series graphics cards for laptops. Specifically, on this model we have an RTX3060 6GB with an 8-core Ryzen making this a heavy hitter on multi-core aware applications with the GPU allowing a decent gaming experience.
There is a reason why the Legion 5 has gained its popularity in recent years and whether your getting the classic Storm Grey or Stingray White, you’re getting a well-built laptop with excellent customer support on top.
The Lenovo Legion 5 Stingray White is now available. Please check with your favorite authorized Lenovo and Legion dealer and e-tailer or visit the nearest Legion concept store near your for price and availability.
Lenovo backs the the Legion 5 with a 3-year Premium Care warranty. We give it our B2G Recommended seal!