Lenovo Legion 5 82JW0012US Champions Budget-gaming

In recent years, budget gaming laptop have continued to get better and better. While there are expensive laptops – some costing $2500 or $3000 even – there are are budget options that satisfy the needs of a casual gamer. Our favorite gaming laptop brands include ASUS ROG and Acer Predator. Both these brands have consistently given tough competition to more established brands like Alienware.

Another addition to that small list is Lenovo Legion lineup. Lenovo – the company that’s known for ThinkPad, IdeaPad and Yoga brands – has slowly climbed up to be a choice among gamers. Recently-launched Lenovo Legion 5 82JW0012US further proves Lenovo’s ambitions to become a preferred brand for gamers.

The Legion 82JW0012US model is nearly a sub-$1000 laptop that’s full of exciting features and performance capabilities making it one of the best budget gaming laptop available right now.

Design and Build

Lenovo Legion 5 lineup has always carried minimalist aesthetics, setting itself apart from crown of fancy gaming rigs. Lenovo Legion 5 82JW0012US carries on with the clean, minimalist approach that is not flashy or attention-grabbing. It’s subtle, bold and pleasure to look at. Its hinges feel sturdy but easy to adjust while those bezels are barely there.

The Legion ‘Truestrike’ keyboard features 1.5mm key travel distance and has large arrow keys. The 4-zone colorful RGB backlighting on the keyboard makes the laptop attractive but without affecting the rest of the modest aesthetics of the body. Many users will appreciate the keyboard for including number keys. The touch pad is smooth to work with but you won’t be using that for gaming. It’s not bad but it’s just not that good.

More interesting choices are instead made into designing the laptop. Lenovo has put nearly all ports at the back of the chassis where you will find 3x USB 3.2 ports, an HDMI 2.1 port, an Ethernet port, a USB power delivery port and the power-in port. All these ports sit nearly behind the scene while a USB C and the headphone jack sit on the left side of the laptop.

Air vents are placed on both sides as well as at the back and the bottom. Powered by Coldfront 3.0 technology, this Lenovo Legion keeps itself cool and quiet during extended gaming sessions. The latest Coldfront version increases the stakes with an ‘intelligent intake system.’ Lenovo says it’s a ‘dual fan design with quad-channel exhaust systems and improved thermal fins, and intake vents underneath each keyboard switch.’ Without going too much into the technicality of this, it’s easy to say that Lenovo has tried to design this laptop with sufficient thermal cooling.

Tech Specs and Performance

Under the minimalist body of Lenovo Legion 5 82JW0012US hides all the fun. This Legion 5 model features an AMD Ryzen 7 5800H processor with 8 high-performance cores that produces ample processing power. Couple with 16GB DDR4 RAM, this Legion 5 has no scarcity of power and multitasking is a breeze. A 512GB NVMe SSD is included for storage. Although this might not be a lot, it helps boost the speed of booting up, launching of apps, file transfers, game installs etc.

Dedicated 4GB NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Ti DDR6 graphics feature Boost Clock rate of 1695MHz and Total Graphics power of 95W. The graphics feature 2nd-generation real-time ray tracing and 3rd-generation AI Tensor cores to offer crisp and smooth output. The graphics performance of Legion 5 82JW0012US is eye-popping for it’s price and truly comes alive on its 15.6-inch Full HD IPS display. The display runs at 165Hz refresh rate and its response time it less than 3ms. Moreover, the display features solid 100% color accuracy.

The in-built 2 x 2W speakers with Nahimic Audio are okay for casual listening but for gaming or movies, you would be better off with an external speaker. There’s a 720p webcam with e-shutter for privacy. Yes, it’s only 720p but hey, we are talking about a budget gaming laptop, remember?

In the end, the inclusion of WiFi 802.11ax (WiFi 6) and Bluetooth 5.0 is worth mentioning. Thanks to the latest WiFi standard, online gaming is uninterrupted and run pretty much without a drop in the frame rate as long as your internet is fast enough, along with your router. And not to forget the battery which is well, it’s not so good. Of course, you shouldn’t be gaming without connecting the charger but even when not gaming, the battery hardly lasts about 5 hours. If this was going to be your all-day gaming cum productivity laptop, just remember that you will need to carry the charger around.

Lenovo Legion 5 82JW0012US: Final Words

The end-result of this hardware combination is nothing short of astonishing. Lenovo Legion 5 82JW0012US offers great gaming performance for its price thanks to the powerful AMD processor, plenty of RAM, fast SSD storage, and dedicated NVIDIA graphics. And mind you, this is nearly a $1000 gaming laptop.

As one might expect, there are compromised to make at this price. The webcam, in-built speakers and battery are not so great. But in exchange of this compromise, you get a gaming laptop that’s full of performance-oriented additions. The best part about Lenovo Legion 5 82JW0012US beside its overall gaming performance is its price. At the time of this being published, this Lenovo Legion 5 laptop is available for $1,049.99 on Amazon.

Other option in the budget gaming laptop range worth checking out is ASUS TUF Dash 15 516PE-AB73.