Verdict
More powerful than the HP Omen Transcend 14 and cheaper than the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 , the Lenovo Legion Slim 5 Gen 8 is a perfect portmanteau of high public presentation , efficiency , portability and affordability .
Pros
Cons
Key Features
Introduction
High - last compact play laptop are like buses : you waitress ages for one , and then three number along at once .
We recently tested Asus ROG ’s excellent but expensiveZephyrus G14and HP ’s rather tastyOmen Transcend 14 . Today , it ’s the turn of Lenovo ’s sport on the radical , the Legion Slim 5 Gen 8 .
The three machines have many similarities . They all have 14 - column inch 2.8 K 120Hz OLED projection screen , useNvidia RTX 40 - seriesGPUs , as well as AMD CPUs in the case of the Legion Slim 5 and Zephyrus G14 .
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Those high - final stage OLED screens also indicate that these machine are aimed as much at creatives as consumer , which assign them in lineal competition with Apple’sMacBook Pro .
Design and Keyboard
Weighing 1.7 kilogram , the Lenovo Legion Slim 5 is the same weightiness as the Omen Transcend 14 but somewhat labored than the 1.5 kg Zephyrus G14 . At 328x251x21.3 millimetre , the Lenovo is a tad bigger than the HP or Asus machines , but recall that the Legion Slim 5 has a big display 14.5 - column inch screen door , so it has every right to be a fiddling larger than the contest .
Made whole from Al , the Legion Slim 5 is impressively solid , while the Storm Grey anodised finish essay impressively resilient to greasy fingerprints .
Compared to the HP , Asus and Apple option , the Lenovo looks rather dull ; it is moreThinkPad - usable than the gamer - newsflash of the stylish Asus and HP automobile . Of course , in some circumstances , have a more sober and grown - up - see laptop computer may be a good thing , so I ’ll not beat the Lenovo too hard for its conservative styling .
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Lenovo has undoubtedly design a very practical auto . On the left side , you will receive twoUSB - C3.2 Gen 2 port , while on the back is anHDMI 2.1video output , two USB - A 3.2 Gen 2 embrasure , and a proprietary rectangular power old salt . Rounding thing out on the right-hand side are an SD card reviewer , a 3.5 mm audio recording Jack-tar , and a webcam isolator .
With both Type - C port wine confirm DP Alt Mode video yield , it makes for a comprehensive and well - organised selection of I / O ports that only the Zephyrus G14 comes close to matching .
Wireless communications are plow by a MediaTek RZ616 card , which supports6Ghz W - Fi 6Eand Bluetooth 5.2 . It wait a little date compared to the card inside the Omen Transcend 14 , which support the latestWi - Fi 7and Bluetooth 5.4 , while the Zephyrus G14 supportsWi - Fi 6Eand low sound recording latencyBluetooth 5.3 .
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Look at the top of the ledge that protrudes behind the lid hinge , and you ’ll see an exemplar of the attention to detail that typify Lenovo design . Each of the rear ports has a absolved logotype above it on the ledge , so you’re able to easily locate them without have to feel for them or spin the laptop around .
The TrueStrike keyboard could have been pinched from a ThinkPad laptop . That ’s good because it ’s pleasant to typewrite on with a precise action and perfect 1.5 mm of traveling , but bad because it miss any gaming features like a distinguished WASD array , be it by a physical design or ignition effect . The backlight is an effective but mundane two - stage clean affair .
The only nod to the play brotherhood is the Fn+Q and FN+R shortcut that let you cycle through great power modal value and expose refresh rates , respectively .
The buttonless glass surface multi - touch trackpad worked perfectly and , at 120 x 75 mm , is about as large as it could be give the size restrictions inherent in a 14.5 - inch laptop computer physical structure . The click - military action was very quiet , something I appreciated while working in Manchester Central Library for an afternoon .
The only biometric login pick is a fingerprint reader built into the large power clitoris below the centre of the filmdom . The LED lightness that fence the power push button changes colour depending on the power setting you choose , which is a nice design touch .
Removing the base control panel from the Legion Slim 5 is straightforward . While you ca n’t upgrade the RAM , which is soldered in place , you’re able to easily add a second 2280 PCIe 4 SSD , a must - have feature of a serious gaming laptop computer , given the ever - increase sizing of modern AAA titles .
Screen and Sound
I am thoroughly impressed by the Legion Slim 5 ’s 14.5 - inch 2880 x 1800OLEDscreen . It ’s usefully bright , hitting 385nits in SDR mode and 615nits inHDR manner , the latter more than sufficient to earn the display its VESA HDR500 rating .
It ’s a colorful display withgamutcoverages of 100 % sRGB , 98.7 % DCI - P3 and 93.7 % Adobe RGB . With such gamey grade of colour and brightness , depicted object looks very telling on the Legion Slim 5 , specially HDR TV , which really pops out at you , helped by the shiny panel finish .
The Legion Slim 5 comes pre - put in with the ten - Rite Color ( sic ) Assistant app , which lets you swap the display color profile betweenAdobeRGB , DisplayP3 , sRGB , Rec.709 , and a default mise en scene . Testing the Delta E variance against the first three profiles return score of 1.8 , 1.0 and 0.9 , severally , which means the Legion Slim 5 can be used for colour - critical work out of the box without further calibration .
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The combining of the 120Hzrefresh rateand the low G2 deoxyguanosine monophosphate response pace built-in in OLED technology intend that motion fidelity is good , with very little ghosting or smearing noticeable . This makes the concealment ideal for both gaming and CAD vitality .
On newspaper , the speaker organisation is a basic 2 x 2W social occasion with Nahimic sound modification . Still , it produces an telling amount of loudness , pump out 78dB(A ) measured against a pink haphazardness source . The sound also lands easily on the spike , with a adequate amount of freshwater bass , telling detail levels and an heroic soundscape .
Lenovo get to few claim regarding the Legion Slim 5 ’s environmental encroachment other than that it meets the middle EPEAT Silver enfranchisement for recyclability and harmful substance extenuation . The promotion uses two orotund polystyrene bumpers to keep the laptop secure when in transit , which is less than ideal from an environmental linear perspective .
Performance
go the show in my mental test automobile was an AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS CPU and Nvidia RTX 4060GPUwith a TGP of 105W. The 7840HS is n’t one of AMD ’s latest ultra - hefty Dragon Range or AI - friendly Hawk Point central processing unit , but it is a powerful and efficient 8 - core affair with a maximal clock of 5.1GHz .
In the Cinebench R23 multi - core trial , the Lenovo scored 17,164 , ahead of the Omen Transcend 14 ( 13,399 ) and the Zephyrus G14 ( 15,946 ) . The novel Lenovo necessitate the subject area in the PCMark 10 challenge too , scoring 7832 to the Zephyrus G14 ’s 7192 and the Omen Transcend ’s 5,957 .
If you still fancy something with even more operation , you’re able to specify the AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS central processor for an redundant £ 150 , but I do n’t think the difference in performance is deserving that sort of money . spend an extra £ 50 to reduplicate the 16 GB of LPDDR5X-6400MHz RAM , on the other helping hand , is in all probability a good usance of your hard - earned cash .
Regarding semisynthetic graphics tests , the Lenovo has HP Omen Transcend beaten like the family mule , scoring 10,607 in the 3DMark Time Spy to the Omen ’s 5,947 . The RTX 4070 - power Zephyrus G14 scored 11,116 thanks to its restrictive 90W TGP . That departure is so small as to be unobtrusive in genuine - world use .
Playing Cyberpunk 2077 at QHD withoutray tracing , the Legion Slim managed an mediocre physical body rate of 41fps , compared to the Zephyrus 14 and Omen Transcend 14 , which managed around 30fps . Turn ray tracing on , and the skeleton rate take a dive : the Legion Slim 5 manages only 33fps at FullHD , compared to 32fps for the Zephyrus G14 and 21.5fps for the Omen Transcend 14 .
Of naturally , when it comes to electron beam tracing , Nvidia ’s DLSS 3.5upscaling and Frame Generation technology follow to your rescue . With beam trace set to Ultra , DLSS on Balanced , and Frame Generation on and running at 1920 x 1200 , the Legion Slim 5 deal 80fps , which is impressive by any standards .
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Lenovo has choose well with the 1 TB SKHynix PCI4 4 SSD , which recorded impressively consistent sequential read and publish speeds of 5874MB / sulfur and 5750MB / s , respectively . That ’s the flying write velocity I ’ve ever find in a laptop without a RAID organization .
The Legion Slim 5 present telling thermal management and ran the CPU and dGPU at 100 % for a full hour without any performance drib - off . The heart of the keyboard deck hit a maximal temperature of 39 ° C , which is not bad for a small machine with a sinewy dGPU inside , and the fan racket never exceeded 58.5dBA , among the lowest public figure I ’ve recorded from a laptop with serious gaming pretentiousness .
Software
Lenovo has split the computer hardware and secret plan library management roles between two disjoined apps : Lenovo Vantage for the former and Lenovo Arena for the latter . It ’s a clever move because both apps are easy to voyage and skipper without flicking through uncounted tab .
Usefully , Arena lease you manually add biz directly off your hard drive that you may have acquired by nefarious methods alongside your cosher Steam and Ubisoft Connect titles .
Other objet d’art of software deserving keeping let in the Nahimic sound control jury , the 10 - Rite show manager and Lenovo ’s Hotkeys app , which let you assign various functions to the F9 key .
The AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS processor miss the AI smarts render by theNPUsinside the modish AMD and Intel processors , so the 1080p webcam lacks Microsoft ’s Studio effects like blurred background and regard trace . Otherwise , it does a comely caper , though there is rather a muckle of interference in low - light-colored environs .
Battery Life
Regarding battery life story , the Lenovo Legion Slim 5 beatnik both the prodigy Transcend 14 and Zephyrus G14 but not the MacBook Pro .
Running the PCMark 10 Modern Office benchmark , the Legion last just over six and three - twenty-five percent hours . Using it as my daily equipment driver , I could get hold of the end of the do work Clarence Day more often than not , even if I was running on fumes by clocking out time .
That run - time was achieved with the MUX switch set to take the Nvidia dGPU out of the equation . Run project postulate the discrete GPU , and that battery clip can be cut in one-half .
For video streaming , an hour of Netflix with the brightness turned up to 80 % drained the battery by 12 % , while looping a locally stack away 1080p video using VLC did the same in 8 hours and 30 minutes .
According to Lenovo , you may charge the Legion Slim 7 via the front Type - C port , but you ’ll call for a 140W courser . It certainly would n’t playact formal with my 100W charger . The proprietary 170W courser in the box is among the smallest and light I ’ve happen .
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Should you buy it?
If you need a powerful , omnicompetent laptop for serious gaming and equally serious creative study that wo n’t break the bank , the Legion Slim 5 14 should be gamey on your inclination of potential candidates . For the price , it is simply outstanding .
The only negative thing I can think of about the Legion Slim 5 14 is that the processor is not the latest , so it lacks the AI Neural Processor found in the latest Intel and AMD silicon . Is that a practiced rationality not to bribe it ? Not in my book .
Final Thoughts
Where Lenovo scores over the competition is in price : a amply - loaded Lenovo Legion Slim 5 14 Gen 8 with a 1 TB SSD and 32 GB of RAM only costs £ 1474 . That makes it a echt buy .
TheHP Omen Transcend 14range starts at £ 1699 , but that only get you an RTX 4050 GPU . promote to the RTX 4060 locomote the price to £ 1799 , which still only bags you 16 GB of RAM . Apple ’s new M3MacBook Pro 14range starts at £ 1699 , and for that , you must suffer with a 512 GB SSD . The 1 TB role model costs £ 200 more . TheAsus ROG Zephyrus G14will place you back £ 1899.99 for the RTX 4060 interpretation on Amazon .
Of naturally , there are many gaming / originative laptop that can give the Legion Slim 5 a good spanking when it do to carrying into action like theAsus ROG Zephyrus G16but they are much bigger , much heavier and much more expensive . If you are await for the stark Cartesian product of carrying out , value and convenience , that ’s where you ’ll find the Legion Slim 5 14 Gen 8 . contain out ourBest LaptopandBest Gaming Laptopguides for more options .
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How we test
Every laptop we brush up goes through a serial publication of uniform chip designed to estimate key thing include build calibre , carrying into action , screen character and assault and battery life .
These include schematic celluloid benchmarks and written mental testing , plus a serial publication of real - human beings handicap , such as how well it bunk pop apps .
FAQs
Lenovo advertises the Legion Slim 5 as a 14 - column inch twist but the screen is 14.5 inch corner - to - box . That makes it bigger than even the 14.2 - in MacBook Pro 14 .
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 GPU is rated at 105 W maximum graphic power and has 8 GB of vRAM .
Test Data
Full Specs
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