Go slim without skimping on performance
With the Legion Slim 5 Gen 8 (starting at $1,299; $1,549 as tested) gaming laptop, Lenovo took its Lenovo Legion Pro 5 Gen 8 laptop and gave it a generous trim. Effectively, Lenovo slashed some off the sides, squeezing it all down into a thinner, lighter package while keeping the big display and brilliant keyboard. Plus, souped-up Nvidia GeForce RTX 40 Series graphics make this laptop a joy to game on, putting up fierce competition for other laptops in its price range. In fact, this slimmer Lenovo is close in capability to laptops costing hundreds more, like the Gigabyte Aero 16 OLED (2023) and Origin EON16-S. For that, we give the Lenovo Legion Slim 5 Gen 8 our Editors’ Choice award for midrange gaming laptops.Like All the Other Legions, Just a Hair Slimmer
The Legion Slim 5 Gen 8 borrows from the Legion formula seen on the Lenovo Legion Pro 5 Gen 8 and the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 8, but with some tweaks. It still has an anodized aluminum display lid, but it keeps the price down with a hard plastic casing for the lower chassis. All the same, it feels thoroughly robust, with minimal flex. While most Legion Pro models have sides that flare out near the back, the Legion Slim 5 Gen 8 keeps it tight. The rear exhaust, also, does not protrude as much as it previously did.
All of the trimmings helped Lenovo shrink the Legion Slim 5 Gen 8 down to 5.17 pounds and just 0.92 inch thick and 14.16 inches wide, though it’s still just as deep as the Legion Pro 5 Gen 8, at 10.25 inches. While Lenovo has “Slim” in the name, it’s not outdoing rivals on that front, as the recent Gigabyte Aorus 15 BMF measured in at just 0.82 inch thick.
The Lenovo Legion Slim 5 Gen 8 also includes thin rubber feet on the bottom that add a hair of thickness, which also reduce the ability to slide it into especially tight laptop sleeves. The trade-off is that those rubber feet do an excellent job holding the laptop in place on your desk or lap.
Despite the trimming, Lenovo hasn’t cut much in the way of features and ports here. The left side of the laptop includes two USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C ports with DisplayPort 1.4 support (one also capable of 140-watt power delivery) and a headset jack. The capabilities here are decent, but it would have been better to see the new USB4 ports for the increased bandwidth.
The right side includes a full-size SD card reader—a major get for creative users and a feature not even seen on the beefier Legion Pro 5 Gen 8 or Legion Pro 7i Gen 8. You’ll also find a switch to disable the webcam.
Of course, the back edge includes ports as well, where you’ll find two USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A ports, an Ethernet jack, and a full-size HDMI port with a peak throughput of 8K at 30Hz. Lenovo also includes its proprietary AC power port on this back edge.
With this handy selection of ports on the back, the laptop is simple to set up at a desk without a ton of visible wire clutter. All of the rear ports are labeled along the top of the laptop as well, so they’re easy to find without spinning the laptop around. When you don’t want wires, you can enjoy a fast wireless connection with Wi-Fi 6E support.
Lenovo didn’t make sacrifices to the keyboard to get the Lenovo Legion Slim 5 Gen 8 slimmer. It’s still the poppy, large keyboard found on the other Legion models. That’s exciting news if you want a usable number pad. It’s even better news if you hate the cramped little arrow keys found on many laptops or the shrunken right Shift key found on many gaming laptops. Lenovo’s solution is just to shift the arrow keys down below the rest of the keyboard, allowing them to remain large. The isolation makes them easier to use, as well. The keyboard has four-zone RGB lighting, and Lenovo actually lists it as spill-resistant, though I was hesitant to test that.
Above the keyboard, Lenovo pulled a similar move to what I saw on the Acer Predator Helios Neo 16, which has a speaker-style grille above the keyboard but actually uses it for air intake. It’s the same for the Lenovo Legion Slim 5 Gen 8, which has down-firing speakers at the front corners of the laptop.
The Lenovo Legion Slim 5 Gen 8 is available in two configurations. The model tested (number 16APH8) has an MSRP of $1,549 and includes an AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS CPU with 16GB of DDR5 memory. It packs an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 with 8GB of dedicated VRAM. This model will come with 1TB of storage, though our test unit only had 512GB. The display on this version has a 2,560-by-1,600-pixel resolution, a 165Hz refresh rate, and an sRGB color coverage rating of 100%.
Lenovo’s cheaper configuration comes out to $1,299 and drops the CPU to an AMD Ryzen 5 7640HS, swaps out to an RTX 4050 with 6GB of VRAM, and lowers storage to 512GB. This unit also sees a big display downgrade, using a 1,920-by-1,200 panel with a slower 144Hz refresh rate and much lower color coverage.
Regardless of configuration, you’ll get a 16-inch display from this laptop, and Lenovo significantly trims the bottom bezel to keep it more in line with the side and top bezels. The display attaches to a fairly sturdy hinge that keeps the screen from jiggling too much after positioning it.
The webcam on the Lenovo Legion Slim 5 Gen 8 may be a 1080p one, but it feels like a name-only upgrade to the common 720p options found on most laptops. The image is soft and looks rather blocky even in bright lighting conditions. Without Windows Hello facial recognition or a fingerprint scanner, you’ll be signing into this machine with a password or PIN.Using the Lenovo Legion Slim 5 Gen 8: A Cut Above Budget
Using this laptop’s keyboard, I was able to get my typing up to 113 words per minute with 100% accuracy measured in Monkeytype, though it took more concentration than I’d like. The keys put up stiff resistance, making for consistent and tactile typing, but they require more care to ensure they actually depress. In particular, that stiffness makes hitting the same key in rapid succession slightly trickier.
These keycaps don’t feel quite as dished as some of Lenovo’s other laptops, presenting more potential to go off the edge of a keycap without feeling it. For any minor nitpicks I have around typing, though, the quibbles are more than balanced out by the standard arrangement of the number pad and the full-size, offset arrow keys, which all make editing text and data entry significantly smoother.
