The Legion Pro 5 earns its stripes with an excellent OLED screen and a punchy keyboard, making it a compelling midrange gaming rig. Its CPU grunt and battery life don’t inspire, but its gaming performance is very solid for the money.
Finding a quality midrange gaming laptop is a struggle: You want a dream machine, but you still have to make compromises. Lenovo’s Legion Pro 5 Gen 10 (starts at $1,569.99; $1,659.99 as tested) at least makes calculated sacrifices. Lenovo prioritizes a beautiful 16-inch OLED display, backed by a potent Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 GPU, to make games pop and play smoothly. Combine that with a punchy keyboard and well-tuned speakers, and this Legion Pro becomes a compelling buy. While this is a relatively affordable gaming laptop at list price, especially considering it has this much memory and an OLED panel, we’ve seen the base model for as little as $1,234.99 during this review, which is a steal.
The sacrifices this model demands are short battery life and a middling CPU. That may be important to some, but it has little bearing on the Legion Pro’s gaming performance. We like this machine with reservations, but Lenovo’s own Legion 5i Gen 10 serves the midrange market even better, holding onto our Editors‘ Choice award in the category.Configurations: Best Bought on Sale
While not a budget gaming laptop by definition, the Legion Pro 5 Gen 10 is relatively affordable, especially for a gaming rig with a sharp OLED display. It costs $1,659.99 (as tested) for an AMD Ryzen 7 8745HX processor, an RTX 5060 (8GB) graphics chip, 32GB of RAM, a 1TB solid-state drive, and a 16-inch WQXGA (2,560-by-1,600-pixel) 165Hz OLED display. But I wouldn’t rush to this model just yet.
The model we tested was available at Best Buy for $1,299.99 at the time of writing (although we’ve seen the pricing fluctuate), and it was even cheaper on sale from Lenovo directly at just $1,234.99. Lenovo offers several other pre-built configurations on its web store, and you can also customize your own model there.
Lenovo’s available configurations and prices are incredibly scattered, and some are difficult to suss out the target audience for. At any rate, the most potent Legion Pro 5 Gen 10 configuration features a Ryzen 9 9955HX CPU and RTX 5070 GPU, both with the same RAM and SSD capacities, for $2,099.99 in Lenovo’s configurator tool. However, it can be purchased for as low as $1,899.99 on sale as a pre-built model. It all depends on when you look.
When on sale, this is an incredible laptop deal from Lenovo, but when it’s not, the Legion Pro 5 is just another midrange laptop for exactly as much as you’d expect it to cost. It’s a drastic enough difference in price to send this laptop from the midrange into nearly budget pricing.Design: A Subtle Starfighter Aesthetic
While I’ve grown tired of the clichéd black-slab design of gaming laptops, Lenovo added a touch of flair to the Legion Pro 5. Its lid is just slightly smaller than the deck, and the rear features a carved depression with a glossy silver brand logo. It gives off a racecar vibe, and the grilles in the back really sell it. The look is subtle, but the vents seem like the exhaust of a spaceship.
Despite cutting some off the top, the Legion 5 Pro is slightly thick, measuring between 0.85 and 1.02 inches at its thickest point. The laptop weighs 5.07 pounds, which isn’t too heavy for its class, and it feels sturdy enough to withstand some wear and tear. I feel minimal flex on the lid.
One thing that all laptops should have is a lip on the screen lid—lifting the lid feels smooth and as sturdy as it should be. The interior reveals more of the same black design, but the soft font on the keyboard lends a cozy aesthetic, which is refreshing when most gaming laptops appear to be in their edgy teenage years. However, the RGB lighting is a bit weak, perhaps another minor concession to prioritize the OLED screen and gaming performance. Speaking of which, the display’s bezels are quite thin, a welcome premium touch.Display and Audio: The Best Kind of Popcorn Movie
Nothing soothes my eyes more than a vibrant OLED display, which is why I was excited to take a gander at the Legion Pro 5’s 16-inch WQXGA (2,560-by-1,600-pixel) screen. Lenovo also sells an IPS option if you’re worried about the glare on a glossy OLED panel, but the glossiness helps everything look that much bolder versus a matte screen.
Needless to say, running around the streets of Night City in Cyberpunk 2077 looks like a vibrant fever dream. The blue neon lights of the Haven clinic, set against the looming shadows, evoke a sci-fi noir thriller.
