Lenovo Legion Slim 5i review: No Nonsense performance

Lenovo Legion Slim 5i as the name suggests, is a gaming laptop by Lenovo that comes in a slimmer portfolio. Who is it targeted towards? Well, for gamers who hate to carry very bulky gaming laptops yet want to enjoy a stutter-free experience in modern games, the Legion Slim 5i is the one.

Yes, it’s a 13th Gen Intel chip-powered gaming laptop with RTX 40-series graphics to give you the best performance in a slim form factor. However, whether it’s a good buy for gamers or productivity enthusiasts? Let’s find out in our review:

Lenovo Legion Slim 5i Specifications

Design & Build Quality

The Lenovo Legion Slim 5i retains the design elements characteristic of the previous and current Legion lineups. Its aesthetic features a sleek and understated dark grey look with an industrial design, which may be perceived as somewhat simple by certain gamers, although I always find it quite attractive but the design needs to be improved

From the start, the laptop’s design has been strategically executed, achieving a perfect balance between a gaming aesthetic and a tasteful appearance. With its variety of color options, the laptop avoids being overly flashy or gaudy. Instead, it exudes a sense of elegance and sophistication through its sleek design and carefully chosen colors.

Display

This new Legion Slim 5i gaming laptop boasts a 16-inch IPS display with a matte finish, featuring a 16:10 aspect ratio. Its lid is flexible, allowing it to open up to 180 degrees. I was impressed by the sturdy hinge, which made it easy to open the display with one hand. Additionally, the display offers a resolution of 2,560 x 1,600 pixels, with a variable refresh rate of up to 165Hz and response times as fast as 3ms. 

You will really love the 16:10 form factor and the extra screen real-estate you get with this laptop, however, for the RTX 4050 its very hard to give a good QHD performance though.

Still, you will do enjoy media streaming as it also supports Dolby Vision and as we see in our display tests, the display of this Legion Slim 5i does help to give around 99% sRGB color space, which for a budget laptop like this is quite good. Overall, in terms of display, the Legion Slim 5i is a good option for gamers who not only want to enjoy gaming but also a complete experience.

Performance

Lenovo has equipped this Legion Slim 5i with the Intel Core i7-13700H processor alongside 16GB DDR5 RAM and 512GB PCIe Gen4 SSD storage for the best everyday performance. So, from opening this laptop to doing your everyday chores, the performance is really smooth with no hiccups at all, also having up to 32GB upgradable RAM does help to use this laptop in future.

Here are some of the benchmark numbers for your reference:

From the numbers its clear that the Core i7-13700H + RTX 4050 combo is giving a decent performance for those who love to use their laptop day and night for any kinds of work. The Core i7 chip here remains strong in almost all tasks whatever you will throw at it, whereas though the RTX 4050 GPU is not the outright strongest but still gets the job done.

Gaming

In terms of gaming, the Lenovo laptop, although having a sleek chassis does manage to hold of pretty well in heavy games like Cyberpunk 2077 or even Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Though I was surprised to see Lenovo use a QHD display with the RTX 4050, however, the combo of Core i7 CPU and this NVIDIA GPU has given surprisingly good results in heavier games as well.

Not only do you enjoy 100s of fram rates in Battle Royal games but also you get 60+ FPS at higher settings natively and it becomes even better when you use DLSS. Here we have tried some of the most demanding triple-A titles to see how this gaming laptop performs in real-world tests in Turbo mode:

As you see, you can enjoy games even at 1440p or 1080p gaming with good frame rates thanks to this powerful combo, the numbers are pretty good, DLSS the performance gets even better.

Keyboard and Trackpad

Lenovo offers some of the best keyboards on its laptops, and the Legion Slim 5i is no exception. It comes in full size with a dedicated number pad on the right and a standard row of function keys up top. The keys offer a nice tactile feel with 1.5mm travel distance and the keys also come with RGB backlighting but it is very limited in terms of customisation. 

The trackpad’s functionality is not an issue, but its placement on the left side poses difficulties. This positioning can cause inconvenience for users with larger than average hands when typing. As someone with hands of average size or even slightly larger, I personally experienced numerous instances where the trackpad obstructed my work, so better to use a gaming mouse anyways.

I/O and Connectivity

For I/O you get two USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C ports on the left, both of which support DisplayPort 1.4. The one closer to the vent additionally offers 140W power delivery. On the right side, there’s an SD card reader and a switch to disable the camera for security purposes. The rest of the ports are placed at the rear of the laptop including two USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A ports, a gigabit Ethernet port, HDMI 2.1 and the power connector. 

In terms of connectivity both Bluetooth and WiFi works well without any issues, giving you consistent network speeds as well as the freedom to connect to as many Bluetooth devices possible.

Battery Life

In terms of battery life, the Lenovo Legion Slim 5i comes with a modest 4-5 hours of battery life and for most people that will enough, then, you get this 170W slim adapter that charges the laptop quite fast.

Verdict

Overall, the Lenovo Legion Slim 5i with this Core i7-13700H and RTX 4050 looks to be a nice combo for gamers who want good performance from their gaming laptops without sacrificing on the design, weight of a gaming laptop. With all the good-to-have features, this gaming laptop by Lenovo seems to target those people who want a classy 16-inch notebook that performs well, gives you the freedom to take it anywhere and play any game at your disposal.

Buy Lenovo Legion Slim 5i from Amazon: https://amzn.to/3PWTXeA