At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Matte display is bright and easy to see Build feels great Good everyday battery life and performance Cons Expensive for what you get Thermal throttles Lags behind competition Our Verdict I had high hopes for the Intel ThinkPad T14s Gen 6, but its performance is held back by poor cooling and significantly reduced battery life. It might have been worth recommending if it weren’t nearly twice the price of the Snapdragon model. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 Retailer Price Check Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket Best Prices Today: Check today’s prices Qualcomm really shook things up in 2024 when it introduced its Snapdragon X Elite chips alongside Windows for ARM. The promise was performance and efficiency. While that performance was occasionally hard to see because of compatibility issues, the efficiency made itself apparent when I tested the Snapdragon-powered Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 and saw it run for almost 24 hours in our battery test. When I saw that Lenovo was introducing an Intel version, the potential was exciting: more consistent performance and compatibility alongside that amazing battery life. Unfortunately, potential is hard to realize, and the Intel-powered ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 struggled. It may be faster, but it ran as long, and somehow it earned an almost doubled price tag. When competitors like the HP EliteBook X G1a and Asus Vivobook S 14 offer more for less, the ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 ends up feeling like it has very little merit. Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6: Specs CPU: Intel Core Ultra 7 258V Memory: 32GB LPDDR5x Graphics/GPU: Intel Arc 140V Display: 14-inch 1200p IPS, Anti-glare Storage: 512GB PCIe Gen4 SSD Webcam: 5MP + IR Connectivity: 2x Thunderbolt 4 / USB4, 2x USB-A 5Gbps, 1x HDMI 2.1, 1x 3.5mm combo audio, 1x Kensington Nano  Networking: WiFi 7, Bluetooth 5.4 Biometrics: Windows Hello fingerprint, facial recognition Battery capacity: 58 watt-hours Dimensions: 12.3 x 8.6 x 0.66 inches Weight: 2.79 pounds MSRP: $3,079 as-tested ($3,079 base) At the time of writing, Lenovo only lists a pair of different configurations for the Intel-powered ThinkPad T14s Gen 6. Our test configuration actually isn’t among them, as it features just 512GB of storage while the available models both include 1TB PCIe Gen 5 SSDs. If it were configured with 1TB of storage, the unit tested here would cost $3,079 and otherwise have all the above specifications. Lenovo also offers a $3,429 model with a largely similar configuration except it bumps up to an Intel Core Ultra 7 268V chip while swapping out the display for a touchscreen model with a far lower color gamut and lower brightness. While these are the configurations available now, Lenovo appears to have more planned. A product specification reference sheet mentions 10 different CPU options, memory ranging from 16GB to 64GB, additional IPS displays and a sharper OLED display, and even an alternate gray color.  Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6: Design and build quality IDG / Mark Knapp Familiarity is the name of the game for this version of the ThinkPad T14s Gen 6. It bears the same name as the model I tested late last year for a reason — almost nothing has changed externally (or internally for that matter), save a crucial CPU switch. This model comes in the same blacked out, coated aluminum chassis that’s become such a staple of the ThinkPad line. Like its Snapdragon-powered counterpart, this model weighs little at just 2.79 pounds. It’s not as thin as can be, but it’s still compact and feels fairly sturdy, exhibiting a good deal less flex in the display than some thin-and-light laptops. It stands with two small rubber feet at the front and a wide rubber foot at the back. These should provide more than adequate clearance for air to reach the single intake fan on the underside of the laptop, which is tucked away underneath a small section of grille. The rest of the base is otherwise flat, solid, and unadorned.  The top surface of the keyboard deck is a little busier. It features the ThinkPad logo engraved into one corner. Speaker grilles flank either side of the keyboard, with the right grille a little smaller than the left as the power button cuts into its space. That power button also doubles as a fingerprint scanner.  The display has a wide hinge that holds the display firmly in place. There’s an extra lip built onto the display lid for opening the laptop up, but the hinge is just firm enough and the base of the laptop just light enough that one-handed doesn’t work out. The little lip at the top of the display has the webcam and IR system for Windows Hello facial recognition built into it, and there’s a hardware camera shutter as well. When slid into place, this covers the camera with a bit of plastic that has a red dot on it, so it’s easy to see when the camera is covered and disabled. The lid of the ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 also features little adornment, but it includes a ThinkPad logo in one corner with a red, illuminated dot in the “i” of “ThinkPad,” and a silver Lenovo badge along one edge. Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6: Keyboard, trackpad IDG / Mark Knapp Like its Snapdragon-counterpart, the keyboard on this laptop is good but not excellent. The keys aren’t firmly stabilized, so they can wiggle at the edges, leading to a mushier feel that stands in the way of consistency. They still benefit from a slight contour and good spacing, making it all the easier to feel them out and remain centered for quick touch-typing, but I struggled to go much beyond 100 words per minute without seeing my typing accuracy sink as I dealt with missed taps.  Beyond typing, there are positive aspects to the keyboard. Its white backlights effectively illuminate both the primary and secondary legends on the keys. The function row has distinctly grouped clusters, so you can readily feel out the keys you want instead of having to peek down at the keyboard. And because these function keys are compact, Lenovo was able to squeeze in Home, End, Insert, and Delete into an additional cluster at the top-right corner of the keyboard. The arrow keys are also compact and offset. While their size can make them feel a little cramped, the offset makes it easier to access them and helps avoid mistaken presses, as they don’t take up space that would otherwise have belonged to the right Shift key.  The trackpad is wonderfully smooth and respectably wide. The physical buttons for use with the TrackPoint nib cut into the touchpad’s vertical space, but they provide a useful role if you prefer the nib for navigation. Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6: Display, audio IDG / Mark Knapp You don’t get the most gorgeous, vivid display in the world from the ThinkPad T14s Gen 6, but you get an almost ideal screen for productivity. I measured it reaching exactly the 500-nit brightness level advertised. Combine that brightness with the incredible anti-glare finish, and you’ve got a display that’s easy to see even in some pretty heinous conditions.  The screen isn’t crazy sharp, but 1920×1200 on a 14-inch screen still provides clarity even for tiny text. The strong contrast, which I measured at 1,900:1 also helps with clarity. Though color may not be as precious for productivity, this display achieved 100 percent coverage of the sRGB color space and has a reasonable degree of accuracy, so you shouldn’t run into issues of web content not appearing as intended.  The speakers put out a good bit of volume, more than enough to listen to speech in videos in a quiet room. But the audio sounds a little resonant in the chassis at full volume. The speakers sound a bit cleaner at 50 percent volume, and the audio is still loud enough at this level.  This ultimately isn’t a great entertainment package, but the combination of serviceable speakers and a high-visibility display offer excellent utility. The screen isn’t crazy sharp, but 1920×1200 on a 14-inch screen still provides clarity even for tiny text. Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6: Webcam, microphone, biometrics IDG / Mark Knapp As tested, the ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 comes with a 5MP webcam that also supports Windows Hello facial recognition. This is a quick and convenient way of logging in. The camera can also play some extra security roles, serving to dim the display if you look away or lock the system if you walk away through Windows settings. The camera itself is good, offering a sharp picture with natural exposure even in slightly dimmer environments.  The microphones come together nicely with the camera, offering clear vocals when recording. They don’t pick up too much echo and they do a decent job eliminating background noise.  Beyond the camera, the ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 includes a fingerprint scanner built into the power button. This works with Windows Hello, but Synaptics’s software also allows you to set whether it will provide authentication “through all security levels.” Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6: Connectivity IDG / Mark Knapp Like the Snapdragon model, this Intel-powered system has respectable connectivity. It’s essentially the same with two USB-C ports, an HDMI 2.1 port, and a 3.5mm combo jack on the left of the laptop and two USB-A ports and a lock slot on the right. The only difference is that the USB-C ports here support Thunderbolt 4 while the other model supported USB4 (though both protocols offer 40Gbps speeds) The laptop offers Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4, and both have proven quick-to-connect and stable in my testing.  Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6: Performance This version of the Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 has a lot of promise for general users worried about the limitations of the ARM-based model. The Intel-powered version supports x86-coded software natively, and that can mean better performance than the other system when it relies on translation. That said, neither version of the ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 is alone in the market. The HP EliteBook X G1a offers a similarly professional-oriented system and has a competitive price at $2,749 as tested. And there’s no ignoring the consumer-focused models out there that don’t come with the same kind of prosumer premiums. This lets models that can compete on performance come in at considerably lower prices, like the $1,199 Asus VivoBook S 14 and $1,499 MSI Summit 13 AI + Evo.  IDG / Mark Knapp Overall performance is solid. The ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 lines up nicely against its competition here, with about the performance I’d expect out of a high-end, thin-and-light laptop. Hitting 5,000 points in PCMark 10 is generally a good sign for everyday performance, and higher scores only suggest faster, snappier experiences and a bit more muscle for workloads like photo and video editing and design work. Much higher scores in 8000s and 9000s tend to be the exclusive domain of powerful workstations and gaming laptops, not models running efficient processors like these.  While overall performance was good, it’s not too surprising to see the ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 lagging behind in brute force. Our HandBrake encoding test works the system hard, and the longer the test goes, the more heat builds up, and the slower the system gets. Very few thin-and-lights can zip through this test, but with strong thermal management and a decent processor, they can do a decent job. The ThinkPad has neither here. Its processor is neither extremely fast nor is its modest cooling system very robust. As a result, we see the ThinkPad get the worst result here, and the cooling seems the culprit. The ThinkPad uses a low-power processor that didn’t have much chance keeping pace with the HP EliteBook’s high-power processor (the tides turn in battery life, though). But The Asus VivoBook and MSI Summit both use the same processor as the ThinkPad. Their leads here show the benefit of better thermals. IDG / Mark Knapp The performance gap is further borne out in Cinebench. Earlier versions of Cinebench ran quick CPU tasks, and that let the ThinkPad actually come close to the VivoBook in single- and multi-core performance, and it even saw the ThinkPad consistently beating the Summit in those tests. But Cinebench R23 pushed it harder and hotter, and its ability to keep pace sank it back behind the Vivobook. With Cinebench R24 running the test for a minimum of 10-minute, heat is guaranteed, and the ThinkPad’s weaker cooling continues to drag it behind. Interestingly, it’s in Cinebench that we also see the difference between native x86 and ARM translation, as the Intel-based ThinkPad outperforms the Qualcomm-based in Cinebench R15, R20, and R23. But the tides turn in Cinebench R24, which can run on ARM natively. There, the Qualcomm-powered ThinkPad took the lead in multi-core performance, even if the Intel model still had superior single-core speeds.  That single-core performance is also Intel’s strength. All three Intel machines led with 122-123 points in single-core performance in Cinebench R24. So even though the HP EliteBook’s powerful AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 375 sped away in multi-core performance, it may not promise better responsiveness in everyday tasks.  IDG / Mark Knapp The graphics performance of all of these systems is middling. While you can do some light 3D work or gaming on the integrated graphics these come with, the performance is still night and day between all of these systems and a laptop running even a low-tier discrete GPU like the RTX 4050. At least the ThinkPad regains some ground on the EliteBook thanks to its more capable Intel Arc 140V graphics and on the MSI Summit, presumably because it’s managing power to the CPU and iGPU better. Still, the VivoBook’s performance lead (yet again) can’t be ignored.  Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6: Battery life When I tested the Qualcomm-powered ThinkPad T14s Gen 6, I was amazed to see it offer the best battery life I’d ever seen from a laptop. It ran for almost 24 hours. That was almost enough to make up for its performance deficits. So the prospect of having almost the same machine but running on an Intel chip with broader compatibility sounded great. Alas, the Snapdragon chipset was key to the efficiency. IDG / Mark Knapp In our video playback test, the Intel-powered ThinkPad doesn’t even come close to the Snapdragon model. It’s still a very worthy machine, reaching over 19 hours of runtime in our test. And in day-to-day use, it also proved capable of lasting through the workday. It also proved more efficient than the HP EliteBook, which fell just short of 11 hours. Unfortunately, the Asus VivoBook and MSI Summit that have posed so much trouble for the ThinkPad in performance also pose a threat in longevity, as both lasted just over 21 hours. It’s not that they’re more efficient, though. The Vivobook has a larger 75Wh battery and the Summit has a 70-watt hour battery.   Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6: Conclusion The ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 ends up in an awkward position where 1. If you care about the quality of the hardware, you’re better off elsewhere. 2. You care about the performance, you’re better off elsewhere. 3. You care about the battery life, you’re better off elsewhere. Or 4. If you care about all of those things, you’re better off elsewhere. Plenty of machines beat it in more than one respect there. The Asus VivoBook S 14 may not be as well built, for instance, but it has the lead in performance and battery life (plus an OLED display for what it’s worth). Meanwhile, the HP EliteBook XG1a may lag behind in battery life, but it has a nice build, great display, and largely superior performance.  And all of the laptops I’ve compared here have the advantage of being much cheaper — including the EliteBook. At over $3,000 for this configuration, this ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 has an undeniably premium tacked on. Some of that may be chalked up to enterprise features, but if you’re not in desperate need of those, it’s hard to see the worth, especially next to these rivals. 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Normally, automatic software updates are a good thing. They keep you running the latest versions of software, including essential security and stability updates, often necessary for everything from tiny apps to Windows. But there are some good reasons why you might want to avoid these, as exemplified by Windows updates. Now it appears Microsoft has removed automatic app updates from the Microsoft Store. Previously, you could disable automatic updates for Windows apps and games in the Microsoft store by diving into the Settings menu. But as German site Deskmodder (spotted by PCMag) notes, this menu now restricts you to a maximum delay of 5 weeks, after which Windows Update presumably installs updates again whether you want them or not. Security and stability are the obvious reasons for this mandatory change, but I can’t help but worry about some fairly obvious malicious applications here, if you’ll pardon the pun. We’ve seen companies buy up popular browser extensions only to fill them with adware, and apps have been hijacked to spread viruses, trojans, and other bad stuff before. Having an integration with the Microsoft Store and Windows Update (and by extension, Microsoft Defender) would seem to bring in a lot of extra security you don’t get from a manual download or an update system fully integrated into the app itself. But these integrated systems, while more secure in general, aren’t perfect either. The security of an “app store” setup has been circumvented many times. And beyond that… maybe you just don’t want an app to update because it’s changed in ways you don’t like, or it’s broken some particular feature. I’ve got plenty of installers for old, outdated versions of programs squirreled away on my PC for exactly that reason. Read...

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At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Respectable 1080p performance Excellent OLED display Fans aren’t very loud Not wildly heavy Cons Lenovo’s pricing is all over the place Short battery life Our Verdict The Lenovo Legion 5i 15IRX10 pairs an excellent display with solid internals for a great gaming experience. With a $1,199 price tag on a configuration close to our test unit, the value looks good. Just avoid Lenovo’s unnavigable first-party pricing. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: Lenovo Legion 5i Retailer Price $1,599.99 View Deal Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket Best Prices Today: Check today’s prices Lenovo has a new generation of gaming laptops out, and Legion 5i 15IRX10 sits at the affordable end of the stack without cutting down too much. It features powerful processor options and a few RTX 50-series GPUs to power your games. Though Lenovo makes finding a good value hard with a chaotic pricing system, this Walmart configuration comes closest to our test unit and pegs the system at a solid bargain of $1,199. At that price, things look real peachy for the potent Legion 5i 15IRX10. Lenovo Legion 5i: Specs and features Model number: 15IRX10 CPU: Intel Core i7-14700HX Memory: 32GB DDR5 Graphics/GPU: Nvidia RTX 5060 (40-watt TGP) Display: 15.1-inch 1600p OLED,165Hz, Dolby Vision, VESA Trueblack 600 Storage: 1TB PCIe Gen4 SSD Webcam: 5MP Connectivity: 1x USB-C 10Gbps with Power Delivery and DisplayPort 2.1, 1x USB-C 10Gbps with DisplayPort 1.4, 3x USB-A 5Gbps, 1x RJ45, 1x HDMI 2.1, 1x 3.5mm combo audio Networking: WiFi 7, Bluetooth 5.4 Biometrics: Windows facial recognition Battery capacity: 80 watt-hours Dimensions: 13.58 x 10.05 x 0.85 inches Weight: 4.3 pounds MSRP: Approximately $1,199 as-tested ($1,299 base) Though our test unit has the above configuration, Lenovo does not appear to offer this exact setup to consumers. There is plenty of customization available though. The Legion 5i 15IRX10 can come with 13th or 14th Gen Intel Core processors in this configurator, or even bump up to 2nd Gen Intel Core Ultra processors in a separate configurator. At the low end, you can get an Intel Core i7-13650HX with 16GB of memory, 512GB of storage, and an RTX 5050 for an “Est Value” of $1,634 (but an actual price of $1,299 at the time of writing) using the custom configuration tool. Bumping up to a Core i7-14700HX or Core i9-14900HX is also possible, but entails a swap to the RTX 5070 as well. Arrow Lake configurations have the same memory and storage options, but they start out with an Intel Core Ultra 7 255HX and RTX 5060 for an “Est Value” of $1,704 and actual pricing at $1,309. This can be upgraded to an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX, which also comes with an RTX 5070 instead, and brings the price to $1,559 (though the “Est Value” shows as $1,954). One notable difference of the Core Ultra models is that they upgrade one of the USB-C ports to Thunderbolt 4.  Using Lenovo’s custom configurations, there’s not a huge delta between the Raptor Lake and Arrow Lake options, and the Core Ultra models are likely to have superior single-core performance and battery life. That said, the configurator tends to have significantly higher prices than pre-configured models and therefore doesn’t offer a great value.  For those seeking the best price, Walmart offers the closest configuration to what we’re testing here. It’s available for $1,199 at the time of writing, and includes all of the above specifications except only 16GB of memory. Thankfully, that DDR5 is user-upgradeable, so you can cheaply bump it up to this system’s 32GB if needed. The Lenovo Legion 5i has an excellent display for gaming and entertainment, a sturdy build, solid performance, and surprisingly quiet fans. Lenovo Legion 5i: Design and build quality IDG / Mark Knapp The Legion 5i 15IRX10 isn’t remarkable in its design, but it’s not disappointing either. The system is completely blacked out aside from its Legion logo power button, the white keyboard legend and their RGB lighting, and a little gray Lenovo branding on the rear thermal shelf. All that black looks fine briefly, but it starts to show finger oils quickly.  The looks are largely clean with rounded corners and chamfered edges around the base that may not be super ergonomic but are at least more comfortable than sharp 90-degree angles. The base is all plastic with a smooth polycarbonate upper and rougher ABS plastic bottom. The base is fairly sturdy, not exhibiting much flex. The display is surrounded by modest plastic bezels. The back of the display gets the one premium aspect: an aluminum lid with Lenovo’s Legion branding embossed with a smoky mirror finish. The construction is similar to many of Lenovo’s other Legion laptops. The top of the display has an extra-large section to both house the camera and provide a lip for opening the lid easily. The display attaches to the base with two hinges slightly shifted forward from the back edge of the laptop. This creates a little butt (thermal shelf) at the back with extra room for heat sinks. That back edge is largely occupied by exhaust vents. No exhaust goes out the sides.  Underneath, the Legion 5i 15IRX10 sits on three large rubber feet that hold it firmly in place and lift it up a good ways to provide airflow into the two bottom fans. There’s a large grille underneath, though only a small percentage of this is actually grille — mostly right under the fans. In this case, this at least allows sufficient air intake and doesn’t provide any extra opportunity for dust to get in.  All told, the Legion 5i 15IRX10 isn’t particularly inspired or exciting, but it feels decent and is a sturdily built laptop. The choice of a 15.1-inch display provides decent screen space while keeping the laptop small enough to fit into even some tight laptop sleeves. It’s not so heavy either at just 4.3 pounds. And thanks to the very thin display and modest base, the build isn’t very thick for a gaming laptop.  Lenovo Legion 5i: Keyboard, trackpad IDG / Mark Knapp My experience with the Legion 5i 15IRX10’s keyboard has been somewhat mixed. On one hand, the keys are surprisingly well stabilized, and they have a decent dish to help feel out the center and edges. But their travel is kind of rubbery, giving them a somewhat odd feel, like they also push my fingers back when resetting. With some adjustment, I could see this actually turning into a positive, as a quick-resetting key is ready to press that much sooner, but as it stands, it sort of throws my fingers into a funk. I was ultimately able to get up to a typing speed of 114 words-per-minute with a decent 97 percent accuracy, but this still isn’t quite exceptional.  I still love that Lenovo accommodates a full-size set of arrow keys on many of its gaming laptops. This makes navigation so much easier. There’s also a full number pad on the right side of the keyboard, though this has slim keys that end up feeling a little cramped.  Lenovo packed in 24 RGB lighting zones, which ultimately kind of feels like overkill for any system that’s not just going to buckle down and give you per-key lighting. The 24 zones do allow for a slightly smoother wave or lighting that responds to audio playing from the computer. But the zones are all vertical columns, not functionally useful zones. Customization options are rather limited. And the edges of zones blend together when displaying different colors, so you won’t get an impactful and precise customization no matter how you shake it. The keyboard will let you cycle through backlighting presets by pressing Fn+Space, but there’s no key for adjusting backlighting brightness. That must be done through Lenovo’s Legion Space software. On the bright side, the lighting effectively illuminates the key legends.  The trackpad is nothing special. It’s fairly small for a laptop this size, but still spacious enough for four-finger gestures and general navigation. It’s far over to the left side of the computer, though, which can make it awkward to use for right-handed users. It’s mylar surface is also not as smooth as it could be. Lenovo Legion 5i: Display, audio IDG / Mark Knapp The Legion 5i 15IRX10 offers an excellent display. Just about every aspect of it delivers quality, and that’s great to see from a gaming laptop that skews toward the budget side of things. The 2560×1600 panel is plenty sharp at the size. It has the perfect contrast of OLED, not to mention the ultra-fast pixel response times. And with a 165Hz refresh rate, you’ll get smooth visuals both in and out of games. OLEDs weren’t always very bright, but this panel happily hits 523 nits. And to top it off, the panel is accurate. I measured its color accuracy at an average dE1976 of 0.51 with a max dE1976 of just 1.33. If you’ve got to do serious color work or just want to see your games the way they’re meant to look, this screen is up to the task. The audio isn’t quite as impressive, but it’s not bad. The speakers rely on the Nahimic app to provide sufficient sound, and it thankfully helps deliver on that. Playing games and watching movies, it provides plenty of audio generally, though I did find some spoken videos surprisingly quiet while listening with the app set to its default Music mode. There’s not much stereo separation from the little bottom-firing speakers even though they sit at the outer edges of the laptop, so they don’t make for the most engrossing game audio.  Lenovo Legion 5i: Webcam, microphone, biometrics IDG / Mark Knapp You’ll get a decent camera from the Legion 5i 15IRX10. Even though it’s sharp, it will appear a bit soft in modestly lit spaces. Even with several lights on in my small office, footage appeared soft and grainy. That said, it managed a very natural exposure. Though the camera offers a high resolution, it doesn’t have the infrared tech to enable facial recognition. The laptop also lacks a fingerprint scanner, so you’re out of luck for biometrics. The mic array on the Legion 5i 15IRX10 fails to impress. In a busy environment, it struggles thoroughly to capture my voice clearly. It does successfully eliminate background noise to a degree, but fully at the expense of its ability to pick me up. As soon as I talk in that loud environment, the background noise merges with my voice and makes anything I say unintelligible. Even in a quiet environment, my voice sounds rather distant with some room echo noticeable.  Lenovo Legion 5i: Connectivity IDG / Mark Knapp There’s little to get excited about from the Legion 5i 15IRX10’s various connections. It’s not making the most of its size, offering just two USB-C ports on the left side along with a USB-A port and Ethernet. The right side includes two USB-A ports, a 3.5mm jack, and a camera kill switch. The laptop’s charging port is located on the rear along with an HDMI port. The ports on the sides are rather awkwardly spaced with gaps of varying sizes between them. For instance, the USB-A ports on the right have the entire height of the keyboard dividing them. None of the ports are terribly fast either, with the USB-A ports topping out at 5Gbps and the USB-C ports hitting just 10Gbps — no 20 or 40Gbps ports. At least the HDMI port is up to the 2.1 spec. Both USB-C ports can also handle video output with one offering DisplayPort 2.1 and the other DisplayPort 1.4. The wireless connections are managed by a MediaTek card that offers Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4. It’s been fast and reliable in my testing, though as with many MediaTek cards I’ve used over the years, there is often a small delay when waking up the laptop from sleep before it will reconnect to known networks.  Lenovo Legion 5i: Performance The Legion 5i 15IRX10 is built with high-performance in mind, even if it isn’t aiming for the highest levels possible on modern hardware. This kind of horsepower generally makes everyday operation and even light creative workloads a breeze. We can see that quite clearly in PCMark 10, which measures holistic performance of the system. The Legion 5i 15IRX10 performs wonderfully. It’s not exceptional in this category, though. Most gaming laptops have plenty to offer in this area, and the Legion 5i 15IRX10 actually ends up looking less impressive next to even older machines. The Dell G15 and Gigabyte G6X both ran on a lower-tier CPU and a prior-gen RTX 4060 GPU, and yet they came out ahead in this test. The previous generation Lenovo Legion 5i also came out well ahead thanks in part to a more potent CPU and faster storage.   IDG / Mark Knapp On the bright side, the Legion 5i 15IRX10 lagging behind those systems in PCMark isn’t the biggest deal, since all of the systems are offering smooth and responsive operation. And when it comes to raw horsepower, the Legion 5i 15IRX10 claws back some ground. Its processor offered substantially higher performance in Cinebench’s multi-core testing, dramatically outstripping all but the earlier Legion 5i’s Core i9-14900HX. This also helps us see why Lenovo opted for an older CPU. The newer Intel Core 7 240H falls well shy of the Core i7-14700HX’s performance, even failing to match its single-core speeds. It means little that the Core 7 240H is newer, though, as it’s actually a Raptor Lake CPU in disguise and not one of the newer Lunar Lake or Arrow Lake architectures.  IDG / Mark Knapp The combination of a potent CPU and newer RTX 5060 GPU works in the Legion 5i 15IRX10’s favor when it comes to graphics performance. Where it had fallen behind the prior-gen Legion in some cases, it turned the tides back into its favor in 3DMark’s Port Royal test, where it pulled well ahead of the Legion 5i. It also demonstrates how a strong CPU can avoid bottlenecks by thoroughly outpacing the Alienware 16 Aurora despite this machine running the same GPU. IDG / Mark Knapp Its performance in synthetic benchmarks translated well to actual games, too. It churned out an average of 153 fps in Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Here again, it shows the difference a CPU can make, as the RTX 5060-powered Alienware fell behind all the RTX 4060-powered machines because its CPU was holding the GPU back. The Legion 5i 15IRX10 doesn’t have the same issue, and that lets its RTX 5060 show the generational uptick in performance it’s capable of.  IDG / Mark Knapp This performance checks out in Metro Exodus as well, where the Legion 5i 15IRX10 again leads the pack by a decent margin. The balance of a strong CPU and GPU help it stay ahead of these other systems, which appear largely held back by the limitations of the RTX 4060 (or Intel Core 7 240H in Alienware’s case). Of course, this does also highlight the limitations of the Legion 5i 15IRX10. In very demanding games, like Metro Exodus, it can struggle to meet the 60 fps threshold. That said, the system could hit an 82 fps average in Cyberpunk 2077 at 1080p Ultra.  IDG / Mark Knapp Performance is consistent, too. Running a string of Steel Nomad benchmarks, the Legion 5i 15IRX10 maintained nearly the same average framerate between runs. CPU and GPU temps also settled in and stopped increasing after just a couple minutes. The fans aren’t even terribly loud to manage the thermals.  Since the Legion 5i 15IRX10 has a 2560×1600 display, you might be tempted to play games at this resolution. In some lighter games, that will be readily doable. The Legion 5i 15IRX10 managed a 98 fps average in Shadow of the Tomb Raider at its native resolution. But in Cyberpunk 2077, it only hit 48 fps. For native resolution gaming, you’ll likely want to tap into DLSS and potentially frame generation technology.  Lenovo Legion 5i: Battery life As we see all too often, performance advantages tend to come at the peril of battery life. And sure enough, the Legion 5i 15IRX10 struggles to offer much longevity where runtime is concerned. In our local video playback test, it fell a little bit shy of four hours. That’s not only a bad result for a gaming PC, but it’s bad among this group, especially compared to the Alienware 16 Aurora’s surprisingly strong 10-hour runtime IDG / Mark Knapp In normal use, the battery life isn’t any better. I was able to stream a two-hour movie with the display at about 50 percent brightness and still have an hour of battery left. Web browsing, research, and writing consumed the battery at a similar rate, with it just scraping by at over three hours. Lenovo Legion 5i: Conclusion The Legion 5i 15IRX10 has plenty going for it as an affordable gaming laptop, assuming you steer clear of Lenovo’s inscrutable pricing and just go with the Walmart model closest to our test configuration. For $1,199, the Legion 5i 15IRX10 is offering a lot. It has an excellent display for gaming and entertainment, a sturdy build, solid performance, and surprisingly quiet fans. Though the design is decently portable, the battery doesn’t last long. So you’ll want to bring the charger if you plan to do much on the go. A lot of the value here hinges on the low price though. With upgraded internals, the price of different configurations can truly soar, and the quality of this laptop doesn’t quite feel like it stacks up against $2,000 systems. But as a low-cost option, it’s great. Read...

For many months, AMD offered a special treat to enthusiasts wishing to run AI chatbot LLMs on their PCs: configurable VRAM that significantly improved performance. Now Intel can say the same. Bob Duffy, who oversees Intel’s AI Playground application for running AI art and local chatbots on your PC, tweeted that the company’s latest Arc driver for its integrated GPUs now offers a “shared GPU memory override” that offers the ability to adjust your PC’s VRAM, provided that you have a supported processor. This is a big deal for AI and even some games, though not an obvious one. Until now, laptops with an Intel Core processor split the available memory down the middle, assigning half to the PC’s operating system and half to VRAM. If you owned an Intel Core laptop with 32GB of memory, 16GB of it would be assigned to AI and games. AMD took a different route: Although a Ryzen laptop would generally do the same by default, users could either use AMD’s Adrenalin software or the laptop’s BIOS to manually adjust the VRAM. In day-to-day office work, the split means little. But to an AI model, more VRAM theoretically means more performance. In my tests with AMD’s Ryzen AI Max in March, for example, simply reallocating 24GB of the Asus ROG Flow Z13 gaming tablet’s available system memory to VRAM boosted performance by as much as 64 percent in some AI benchmarks. A similar test with 64GB of memory inside the Framework Desktop significantly boosted performance in AI art, chatbots, and some games. To an AI model, VRAM is basically system memory. More VRAM means that you can run a larger AI chatbot with a greater number of parameters. In general, the AI with the largest number of parameters gives you the most insightful responses; more VRAM also allows for a greater number of tokens to be processed, both as input and as the response the AI chatbot provides. Bigger numbers are better, basically. Placing the Shared GPU Memory Override feature inside the Intel Graphics Software package means that you’ll be able to reassign free RAM to serve as VRAM before you load up an AI chatbot. Although I haven’t tested the new software myself, I would assume that the default behavior is to leave a minimal amount of RAM (8GB is typical) for Windows, and assign the rest to VRAM. For now, this is a manual procedure, although it seems likely that Intel’s AI Playground and Intel’s Graphics Software package would work together to reassign memory when the latter package is booted. The only problem is that reallocating memory typically requires you to reboot your PC. Note that this only works with laptops with an integrated Arc GPU, not discrete cards. You’ll still need to buy a laptop with a substantial amount of memory to be able to take advantage of the new capabilities, and users are reporting (via VideoCardz) that it only works with Intel’s Core Ultra Series 2 processors, not the “Meteor Lake” chips inside the Intel Core Ultra Series 1 lineup. However, this is a big boost for Intel laptops that’s long overdue. Read...