Lenovo has nailed the winning formula for a compact, game-worthy laptop with the Legion Slim 5 Gen 8 (starts at $1,295.99; $1,479.99 as tested). This AMD-powered gem undercuts its competitors on price while delivering equal or better performance without compromising on battery life. Its 14.5-inch OLED screen is sure to delight, as is almost everything else, including a sturdy aluminum chassis. With little to hold it back, this Legion earns an Editors' Choice award in the 14-inch gaming laptop segment.
Design: A Gaming Laptop That Doesn't Scream 'Gaming'
The $1,479.99 Legion Slim 5 Gen 8 I'm reviewing here from Best Buy qualifies as a midrange gaming laptop with its AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS processor, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 GPU, 16GB of RAM, 1TB solid-state drive, and 2,880-by-1,800-pixel OLED screen with a 120Hz refresh rate. Lenovo also sells a 16-inch version with a numeric keypad and an IPS display, though it has shorter battery life (as we'll see later). Consider the 14.5-inch Slim 5 a separate model.
This Legion's design moves the slider more toward "understated professional" than "garish gaming rig." Legion lettering on the lid and a prominent rear protrusion are giveaways that it's a high-performance machine, but a lack of flashy graphics and LED lighting help it stay low-key.
The inflexible Storm Gray aluminum covering every surface inspires confidence when moving or handling this laptop. It's no featherweight at 3.85 pounds, but it's relatively light for a 14-inch gaming laptop—the MSI Stealth 14 Studio is lighter at 3.75 pounds, but the Razer Blade 14 and the Alienware x14 R2 tip the scales at 4 and 4.2 pounds, respectively. The Legion is the thickest of the bunch, measuring 0.84 by 12.9 by 9.9 inches (HWD), while the Alienware is just 0.57 inch thin. The Razer and MSI are 0.7 and 0.75 inch, respectively.
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Port selection begins around back with an HDMI 2.1 video output, a pair of 10Gbps USB Type-A ports, and the AC adapter connector. I appreciate rear-facing ports since they keep cables out of sight.
The remaining ports include a pair of 10Gbps USB-C ports on the left flank and a full-size SD card reader and an audio jack on the right. Both USB-C ports support DisplayPort, and the rearward one supports 140-watt power delivery.
Also on the left edge is a switch to disable the webcam centered above the screen. Its 1080p sensor records reasonably sharp images and properly exposed my face in medium light without blowing out highlights or showing excess grain. It doesn't support IR face recognition, but you can still use Windows Hello to skip typing passwords thanks to a fingerprint reader built into the power button.
Using the 14.5-Inch Legion Slim 5 Gen 8: Working and Playing With OLED at 120Hz
Gaming laptops typically use in-plane switching (IPS) displays for their high refresh rates and low response times, but OLED panels are becoming more popular as their refresh rates climb north of 60Hz. The Legion's 120Hz is plenty, given that its GeForce RTX 4060 GPU will have its hands full at the native 2,880-by-1,800-pixel resolution.
The Slim 5's screen has the same wow factor as other OLED displays I've tested, driving exceptionally vivid color and contrast. A glossy surface adds clarity at the expense of mild reflections. Competitive esports players will want to look for a still faster IPS panel, but this screen is a stunner for cinematic gaming and movie viewing.
I'm also a fan of the Legion's keyboard. Trying the 10FastFingers online test, I scored 116 words per minute with 99% accuracy, a stellar result for me. The keys have affirmative, communicative travel and highly visible white backlighting. The layout lacks dedicated Home and End keys, but Lenovo deserves a nod for separating out the arrow-key cluster. The Alienware x14 R2 and the Razer Blade 14 feature fancier RGB backlighting if your pockets are deeper. The touchpad tracked accurately under my fingers, though I found its physical clicks to be on the shallow side.
The downward-firing speakers beneath the Legion's palm rest sound adequate at best. I noticed slightly harsh treble and not a lot of instrument separation in Steve Winwood's "Higher Love" and minimally punchy bass in Kygo and Whitney Houston’s version. The default equalizer in the included Nahimic app improves clarity, though I turned down the bass boost to give the speakers a little more volume.
Lenovo also includes its familiar Vantage app for support, system updates, and settings, which I found easy to navigate. Some bloatware is unfortunately present, including a McAfee trial and a Dropbox promotion. The standard warranty is one year.
The Legion's twin cooling fans were quiet during everyday use but ramped up when gaming. I didn't notice motor noise, but the air streaming through the narrow vents was audible across my living room. The chassis remained cool enough to touch during gameplay.
Testing the 14.5-Inch Legion Slim 5 Gen 8: Compact and Powerful
As mentioned, Best Buy sells our 14.5-inch Legion Slim 5 Gen 8 review configuration for $1,479.99, though I did see it drop briefly by $200 during my testing. It combines an AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS CPU (3.8GHz base, up to 5.1GHz boost), an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 GPU (105 watts maximum graphics power), 16GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD. Lenovo.com sells configurable models with a Ryzen 9 7940HS chip, but the LPDDR5X memory tops out at 16GB and can't be upgraded after purchase. Windows 11 Home is standard, as are Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.1 wireless.
The Slim 5's price compares well with the Alienware x14 R2 ($1,899.99), the Razer Blade 14 ($2,399.99), and the MSI Stealth 14 Studio ($1,499.99), all of which it will face in our benchmark comparisons. We rounded off the charts with the 16-inch version of the Legion Slim 5 Gen 8 ($1,529.99 at Best Buy) to see if going up a screen size brings any gain in performance.
Productivity and Content Creation Tests
We run the same general productivity benchmarks across both mobile and desktop systems. Our first test is UL's PCMark 10, which simulates a variety of real-world productivity and office workflows to measure overall system performance and also includes a storage subtest for the primary drive.
Our other three benchmarks focus on the CPU, using all available cores and threads, to rate a PC's suitability for processor-intensive workloads. Maxon's Cinebench R23 uses that company's Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene, while Geekbench 5.4 Pro from Primate Labs simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning. Finally, we use the open-source video transcoder HandBrake 1.4 to convert a 12-minute video clip from 4K to 1080p resolution (lower times are better).
Finally, we run PugetBench for Photoshop by workstation maker Puget Systems, which uses the Creative Cloud version 22 of Adobe's famous image editor to rate a PC's performance for content creation and multimedia applications. It's an automated extension that executes a variety of general and GPU-accelerated Photoshop tasks ranging from opening, rotating, resizing, and saving an image to applying masks, gradient fills, and filters.
The 14.5-inch Legion placed highly in PCMark's productivity test, led the group in the storage test, and finished competitively in Photoshop. It impressed the most in our CPU-centric benchmarks, where it outran the Ryzen 9 Razer and matched or came scary close to the Core i7-powered Alienware and MSI.
Graphics and Gaming Tests
For gaming laptops and other mobile gaming hardware, we run both synthetic and real-world gaming benchmarks. The former includes two DirectX 12 gaming simulations from UL's 3DMark, Night Raid (more modest, suitable for systems with integrated graphics) and Time Spy (more demanding, suitable for gaming rigs with discrete GPUs). Additionally, we use the cross-platform GPU benchmark GFXBench 5, which gauges OpenGL performance. These GFXBench tests are rendered offscreen to accommodate different native display resolutions; more frames per second (fps) means higher performance.
Our real-world gaming testing comes from the in-game benchmarks of F1 2021, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, and Rainbow Six Siege. These three games—all benchmarked at 1080p resolution—represent simulation, open-world action-adventure, and competitive/esports shooter games, respectively. Valhalla and Siege are run twice (Valhalla at Medium and Ultra quality, Siege at Low and Ultra quality), while F1 2021 is run twice at Ultra quality settings with and without AMD and Nvidia's performance-boosting FSR and DLSS features turned on.
The 14.5-inch Legion showed large numbers across the board, performing well ahead of the Alienware and even besting the RTX 4070-equipped Razer Blade 14 in our real-world benchmarks. Its 16-inch stablemate didn't do much better. This is likely thanks to the smaller Legion's increased thickness compared with its other 14-inch rivals, which went for much thinner designs that inevitably impact cooling and therefore performance.
We also tried the real-world games at the Slim 5's native 1800p display resolution: It reached 83fps in F1 2021 (Ultra settings with DLSS), 95fps in Assassin's Creed (Ultra High), and 190fps in Rainbow Six (Ultra). Those numbers suggest the GeForce RTX 4060 has performance to spare.
Battery and Display Tests
PCMag tests laptop battery life by playing a locally stored 720p video file (the open-source Blender movie Tears of Steel) with screen brightness at 50% and audio volume at 100% until the system quits. Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting are turned off during the test.
We also use a Datacolor SpyderX Elite monitor calibration sensor and its 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 brightness in nits (candelas per square meter) at the screen's 50% and peak settings.
OLED screens typically top our color gamut chart. The 14.5-inch Legion's proved no exception, though the other 14-inch laptops are also exceptionally colorful. The 16-inch Legion was simply outclassed. The smaller Legion didn't lead the pack in brightness, but OLED laptops don't need to exceed 400 nits to appear sufficiently bright.
The little Legion also showed commendable battery life, outlasting the 16-inch model by several hours and putting the MSI to shame. The Alienware and Razer showed even more stamina, but more than nine hours from a gaming laptop is absolutely praiseworthy.
Verdict: Compact Gaming Excellence
The 14.5-inch Lenovo Legion Slim 5 Gen 8 impresses on all fronts, especially value, keeping pace with or outperforming more costly competitors like the Alienware x14 R2 and the Razer Blade 14 in our benchmarks. It makes no major compromises, not even battery life, which isn't something we can say about MSI's Stealth 14 Studio. A beautiful OLED screen, a comfortable keyboard and touchpad, a wide enough array of ports, and admirable build quality solidify its appeal and earn it a well-deserved Editors' Choice award for gamers seeking an easily portable system.
Lenovo's affordable 14.5-inch gaming laptop is an excellent performer with a gorgeous OLED display for a competitive price.
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