Lenovo Legion 15.1" 5i Eclipse Black 2025

The Lenovo Legion 5i pairs a top-tier CPU with a breathtaking OLED screen, making it a joy for gaming and media. The soldered 16GB of RAM and a mid-range GPU that's outmatched by the high-res display are the main drawbacks. It's a great buy if you find it at the lower end of its price range and don't need more memory.

The i7-14700HX is a beast, plain and simple. It rips through multi-core workloads and keeps frame rates high in CPU-heavy games, landing in the 91st percentile for its class. The RTX 5050 is a capable mid-range GPU, sitting around the 80th percentile, but it's the bottleneck here. You'll get smooth gameplay at 1080p with high settings, but pushing the full 2560x1600 resolution in demanding games requires some settings compromises. The 1TB SSD is snappy and well above average, so load times won't be an issue. Just don't expect to run local AI models well, that's a real weak spot with a score in the 40s.

Stacked against the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14, the Legion wins on raw CPU power and screen size, but the Zephyrus is far more portable and often comes with more RAM. The HP OMEN Transcend 14 is a closer match in spirit, but the Legion's OLED panel is a clear step up. If you're cross-shopping a MacBook Pro M4 Pro, you're in a different universe for battery life and build, but you'll sacrifice gaming flexibility. The Legion 5i carves out a niche as a desktop replacement that can actually game, but it's not the most balanced machine in its class.

Pricing is a bit of a rollercoaster, ranging from $1700 to $1999 across vendors. At the lower end, you're getting a fantastic CPU and a gorgeous screen for the money. At the high end, it's a tougher sell when competitors offer more RAM or a stronger GPU. Memory Express has the best deal right now, and at that price, the value proposition is solid. Just know that the soldered RAM means this laptop has a hard expiration date if your needs grow.

The Lenovo Legion 5i knows exactly what it wants to be: a gaming laptop that doesn't scream about it. You get a 20-core i7 and a fresh RTX 5050 tucked into a relatively clean chassis. That 15.1-inch OLED panel is the real star here, hitting 500 nits with perfect DCI-P3 coverage. It's a screen that makes games and movies look fantastic, and the port selection is basically a dock replacement.

But there's a catch. The 16GB of RAM is soldered, which feels stingy on a machine with this much CPU horsepower. And while the RTX 5050 is a solid 1080p performer, it's not going to set any records at the native 1600p resolution. You'll be leaning on DLSS more than you might like for newer titles.

If you need more than 16GB of RAM for heavy multitasking, video editing, or future games, look elsewhere. The soldered memory is a dealbreaker. Also, if you need all-day battery life away from a wall outlet, this isn't the machine for you.

This laptop is for the gamer who also needs a serious workhorse and values a killer display above all else. If you primarily play esports titles or slightly older AAA games and can snag it near the $1700 mark, you'll be very happy. It's a powerful, well-built machine held back by a shortsighted RAM decision.