The Lenovo Legion 5 Pro 16 is not as graphically impressive as some of the 2022 models we have seen so far this year, and we had hoped that would be reflected in the price. But it doesn't. For much less than the £1,600 Lenovo is asking for such a Legion, you can get a gaming laptop with RTX 3060. You won't get DDR5 memory and Intel's latest 12th generation chips in the cheaper model, but even these somewhat in-demand features make it nearly impossible to justify the big price tag of this Legion laptop.

The exact model of the Lenovo Legion 5 Pro I am using for my review is not currently available in the U.S., but a close model with the slower RTX 3050 Ti can be found listed for $1,780 (though "temporarily unavailable" and therefore may differ from the actual price). The 12th generation Intel Lenovo laptops are not currently available in the U.S., but even if they are, they are not likely to be cheap.

We were unable to find a model with the same SSD configuration as this review model in the UK, but a similar model with 1TB of storage sells for £1,600. Legion's problems are certainly not hardware issues, as there are plenty of things here. [For example, the 12th generation CPUs are great chips; the Alder Lake architecture is primed for modern gaming and productivity, and the Core i7 12700H in the Legion 5 Pro is a great example. This CPU has six performance cores (P-cores) for low-latency gaming and eight efficient cores (E-cores) for everything else you might put into this device or for background tasks. A laptop bearing the Pro designation needs a CPU powerful enough to handle CPU-intensive tasks, and the Core i7 12700H is just that. It is also not far behind the P-Core Boost 4.7 GHz (reachable) and E-Core Boost 3.5 GHz, and slightly faster than its successor, the Core i7 11800H.

The 12th generation CPU in the latest Legion 5 Pro is definitely a step forward over last year's 11th generation model.

One is faster DDR5 memory: the Legion 5 Pro comes with 16GB of DDR5. The rated speed of these two kits is 4,800 MHz (RMS), a fairly common speed for SO-DIMM modules of this kind in notebook PCs and the basic DDR5 specification. Faster kits are starting to appear and, more importantly, have lower latency. However, it may be some time before these are installed in gaming laptops in large numbers.

However, part of this high price is likely being spent on sourcing DDR5 sticks for these machines.

However, Lenovo is leaning more toward the prosumer market than the gaming market, as the benefits of DDR5 are not really felt in gaming workloads. That's not necessarily a bad thing if you're looking for a laptop with the ability to handle spreadsheets and 100 Chrome tabs as well as it handles frames in the latest games; in Cinebench R20 and Time Spy CPU tests, other laptops from previous generations absolutely beat them. However, it's worth remembering that in our tests, the faster 2022 model is only a few frames faster than other RTX 3060 laptops, so if gaming is your primary concern, you may want to look elsewhere.

Since the Legion5 performs reasonably well there at 1080p, we tested it this way primarily to benchmark it against other laptop models. In reality, however, you are looking at a more detailed and demanding 1600p screen with this model. Using a native-resolution, frankly gorgeous IPS 16:10 panel, the RTX 3060 struggles a bit to achieve the kind of frame rates I'd like to see at this price point.

But when it does, it looks great; the IPS panel is crisp, the colors are stunning, and the screen size nicely complements the 1600p resolution. It is also a 16:10 panel, which I definitely like on both laptop and desktop monitors; even with the 16:10 panel, the chassis doesn't feel like it's getting any bigger, which is a good thing, as the 16:10 panel is a good size for the size of the monitor.

The Legion 5 Pro is definitely not the slimmest or most beautiful laptop around. However, despite its size, it is well built. Even this model requires carrying a larger power brick; the 300W brick seems a bit tall for the RTX 3060, and certainly not compact.

Most of the I/O is located on the back of the machine, keeping pesky cables away from any gaming mice you might connect; there are plenty of ports, including multiple USB Type-C, if you want to dock this machine to your desk for gaming at the end of the day. However, I had trouble removing the underside of this laptop to access the SSD and RAM.

When it comes to cooling, the Legion 5 Pro's chassis manages to keep the RTX 3060 at a steady 67°C, probably thanks to its rather large size and the potential for a more powerful GPU. This is an impressively low temperature compared to other RTX 3060 gaming laptops we have reviewed. On the flip side, the 12th generation CPU reached a temperature of 95°C. This is within specs, so there is no need to worry, but it is a bit on the hot side.

Overall, the Legion 5 Pro will not sell for £1,600. The fact that it is not yet readily available in the U.S. is one obvious drawback, but even if it becomes more readily available in the U.K., it is not compelling enough to recommend it over cheaper models with similar specs and previous-generation CPUs. [The Lenovo Legion 5 Pro 16-inch with AMD Ryzen 7 5800H, RTX 3070, 16GB of DDR4 RAM, and a 1TB SSD is currently available for £1,399, even with a 1600p IPS display, and yet it is still cheaper than the new 12th generation model by It's £200 cheaper. We also reviewed its AMD version, which is simply a faster gaming laptop, and while the 2022 model has a better CPU and RAM, it can't overshadow the RTX 3070 being the more powerful GPU.

If you're considering a more productive device, the Lenovo Legion 5 Pro 16-inch has a natural advantage due to the benefits of more cutting-edge technology. That said, it feels a bit different from the part-gaming, part-productivity, all-around laptop needed to justify its price tag for us PC gamers alone; it has everything PC gamers are looking for in a gaming laptop in 2022, and more.