Pros & Cons
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- Superb OLED display
- Potent GPU speeds for its price class
- Frequent sales below the list price
- Punchy keyboard and impactful audio
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- One-step-behind CPU performance
- Short battery life in our video rundown test
- So-so webcam
Lenovo Legion Pro 5 Gen 10 Specs
| Boot Drive Capacity (as Tested) | 1 |
| Boot Drive Type | SSD |
| Class | Gaming |
| Dimensions (HWD) | 1.02 by 14.4 by 10.6 inches |
| Graphics Processor | Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Laptop GPU |
| Native Display Resolution | 2,560 by 1,600 |
| Operating System | Windows 11 Home |
| Panel Technology | OLED |
| Processor | AMD Ryzen 7 8745HX |
| RAM (as Tested) | 32 |
| Screen Refresh Rate | 165 |
| Screen Size | 16 |
| Tested Battery Life (Hours:Minutes) | 2:48 |
| Variable Refresh Support | G-Sync |
| Weight | 5.07 |
| Wireless Networking | Bluetooth 5.4 |
| Wireless Networking | Wi-Fi 7 |
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.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)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.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)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. However, the laptop's RTX 5060 will struggle to meet its maximum resolution and refresh rate simultaneously. The system might be capable of the task with detail settings tuned way down—otherwise you'll have to prioritize speed or sharpness at high detail settings. But overall, the Legion Pro 5 captured the ensuing gunfight through the streets with bloody veracity.
Whether shooting my way out of a building in Cyberpunk 2077 or listening to Epic: The Musical, the Legion Pro 5’s speakers produce a surprisingly well-balanced range. Highs and voices are crisp, and the mids and lows sound complete. However, they are further in the background than they should be. For example, footsteps are more difficult to hear than they should be. Regardless, you can draw a lot out of the audio if you tinker with the Nahimic app.
Keyboard, Touchpad, and Webcam: Punchy and Smooth
Whether typing out this review or weaving my way through enemies in Cyberpunk 2077, the Legion Pro 5’s keys provide punchy feedback. They’re not clicky per se, but they give enough travel and bounce for some satisfying typing. The keys are large, well-spaced, and feature a curved design that feels more natural to navigate. However, I wish the backspace button were larger or shifted left by a few centimeters.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)While it's no glass touchpad, the Legion Pro 5’s touchpad is soft to the touch and doesn’t generate much resistance when your fingers glide across its surface. That’s even the case when I’m benchmarking all day, and my hands start to sweat.
Laptop webcams have grown increasingly higher in fidelity, but the Legion Pro 5’s camera has lots of catching up to do. Under the camera's 720p resolution, my face appeared out of focus at times, and the contrast balance is subpar. In a live feed, my entire background was washed out due to the light from the window. It’s fine for chatting with friends, but I might get an external webcam for videoconferencing at work (especially important calls like job interviews).
Ports: Combat-Ready Connections
Like any effective gaming laptop, the Legion Pro 5 is equipped with a multitude of ports, ready for battle. Despite the protruding rear portion of the machine, all ports are located on the left and right sides of the chassis. On the right, we have an RJ45 Ethernet jack for direct internet access, two 10Gbps USB Type-A ports for legacy peripherals, and a headphone jack, in case you lack Bluetooth-enabled cans.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)On the left, you’ve got the power connector, two 10Gbps USB Type-C ports (both supporting DisplayPort 2.1 output for external displays, and one with power delivery), and an HDMI 2.1 port. For wireless connectivity, the Legion Pro 5 features Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4, the latest versions of these standards.
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(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)Performance Testing: Midrange Graphics With Might
With lower-midrange specs, the Lenovo Legion Pro 5 Gen 10 swings as hard as it can with an eight-core Ryzen 7 8745HX processor, an 8GB RTX 5060 GPU, 32GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD. It’s not the strongest configuration on the block, but it’s a very hearty assortment of parts in its price range.
Here, we'll pit the Legion Pro 5 against the Alienware 16X Aurora ($1,649.99 as tested) and the Legion's sibling, the Lenovo Legion 5i, which both feature the same RTX 5060 but with Intel CPUs (of two different generations) in each. For comparisons with a proper budget system, I threw in the MSI Katana 15 HX ($999.99 as tested) for its RTX 5050. Finally, we have the Razer Blade 14 ($2,699.99 as tested), with its RTX 5070, for an ultra-premium comparison.
Productivity and Content Creation Tests
Our primary overall benchmark, UL's PCMark 10, tests a system's performance in productivity applications, ranging from web browsing to word processing and spreadsheet work. PCMark 10's Full System Drive subtest, meanwhile, measures a PC's storage throughput.
Three more tests we rely on are CPU-centric or processor-intensive: Maxon's Cinebench 2024 uses that company's Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene; Primate Labs' Geekbench 6.3 Pro simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning; and we see how long it takes the video transcoder HandBrake 1.8 to convert a 12-minute clip from 4K to 1080p resolution.
Finally, workstation maker Puget Systems' PugetBench for Creators rates a PC's image editing prowess with a variety of automated operations in the seminal image editor Adobe Photoshop 25.
The Legion Pro 5 operated as clean as I needed it to when navigating my day-to-day apps, even while running games in the background. However, its Ryzen 7 8745HX CPU hit top marks only once, and that was on our Adobe Photoshop test, likely boosted there by its 32GB of RAM. We’re just crunching numbers here, so don't expect to see the laptop strain unless in compute-intensive tasks like asset production, but it was not a leader among the Ryzen AI 9, Core Ultra 7, and Core i7 chips here.
Graphics and Gaming Tests
We challenge all test systems’ graphics with a quintet of animations or gaming simulations from UL's 3DMark test suite. The first two, Wild Life (1440p) and Wild Life Extreme (4K), use the Vulkan graphics API to measure GPU speeds. The second pair, Steel Nomad's regular and Light subtests, focus on APIs more commonly used for game development, like Metal and DirectX 12, to assess gaming geometry and particle effects. Last, we turn to 3DMark Solar Bay to measure ray tracing performance in a synthetic environment. This benchmark works with native APIs, subjecting 3D scenes to increasingly intense ray-traced workloads at 1440p.
Our real-world gaming testing is based on the in-game benchmarks of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Cyberpunk 2077, and F1 2024. These three games—all benchmarked at the system’s full HD (1080p or 1200p native) resolution—represent competitive shooters, open-world games, and simulation games, respectively. If the screen is capable of a higher resolution, we rerun the tests at the QHD equivalent of 1440p or 1600p. Each game runs at two sets of graphics settings per resolution, for a total of up to four runs on each game.
We run the Call of Duty benchmark at the Minimum graphics preset—aimed at maximizing frame rates to test display refresh rates—and again at the Extreme preset. Our Cyberpunk 2077 test settings aim to push PCs to the max, so we run it on the Ultra graphics preset and again at the all-out Ray Tracing Overdrive preset without DLSS or FSR. Finally, F1 2024 represents our test of DLSS effectiveness (or FSR on AMD systems), demonstrating a GPU’s capacity for frame-boosting upscaling technologies. The capacity of these frame-rate boosts changes with the version of frame generation tech available, with DLSS 2 and 3 stitching in one AI-generated frame for every originally rendered frame, and the latest DLSS 4 inserting up to three additional frames. (FSR can generate up to four new frames per original, while XeSS can only stitch in one new frame per original frame.)
The Legion Pro 5’s RTX 5060 displayed potent midrange performance, but don’t expect to take full advantage of that 165Hz refresh rate in AAA games at the very highest settings. That said, you’ll be able to play most modern AAA games and even future ones, especially thanks to DLSS 4’s frame generation technology in games that support it.
Up against a range of RTX 5050, RTX 5060, and RTX 5070 competitors, the Legion Pro 5 won some and lost some. That’s no bad thing, especially since it surpassed or kept pace with an RTX 5070 on occasion, albeit a rather restrained one inside the smaller Razer Blade 14.
I dislike playing games at a lower resolution when I have a high-resolution screen, so if you’re like me and want your gaming laptop to truly shine, I recommend adjusting the frame generation and/or lowering the overall graphics settings to achieve the best experience at 1600p.
Battery Life and Display Tests
We test each laptop and tablet's battery life by playing a locally stored 720p video file (the open-source Blender movie Tears of Steel) with display brightness at 50% and audio volume at 100%. We ensure the battery is fully charged before the test, with Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting disabled.
To gauge display performance, we also use a Datacolor SpyderX Elite monitor calibration sensor and its Windows software to measure a laptop screen's color saturation—what percentage of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 color gamuts or palettes the display can show—and its 50% and peak brightness in nits (candelas per square meter).
We didn’t expect the Legion Pro 5 to win any awards, but we also didn't expect it to sputter out as early as it did on our battery test. It acted like it was toting around an RTX 5090 with how quickly it tapped out. Needless to say, it was hours behind the competition. While battery life is usually a secondary priority for a gaming laptop, which spends most of its life plugged in, this is nonetheless dramatically short.
What I did expect, however, was for the Legion Pro 5 to ace our display benchmarks. Its scores reflect the vivid colors and vibrant brightness that were on display while navigating the concrete jungle that is Night City. The high brightness is also incredibly helpful since the panel is glossy and catches some glare as a result.
Final Thoughts
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
Lenovo Legion Pro 5 Gen 10
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.