I got here the Asus Vivobook 14 OLED X1405ZA model, powered by Intel i5 12th gen. If you are looking into the mid-tier laptop segment, you should really be reading this review in full to make the right buying decision for you.

Specification of Lenovo Legion 5 2022 15IAH7H

Box contents:

• Asus Vivobook 14 OLED laptop
• Charging adapter
• User guide
• Quick start guide
• Office product activation card
• Asus OLED sticker

Design and Build Quality of Asus Vivobook 14 OLED

Outside their Gaming series lineup, Asus usually go for a minimalistic design with their mainstream laptops and that is evident with the Asus Vivobook 14 OLED too. The build material is polycarbonate to keep the cost low, the treatment is matte finish and it looks good. The lid has the Asus Vivobook branding on the right side. Weighing 1.60 kg, the laptop doesn’t feel very heavy and also a fairly slim profile makes it good to carry around. There is a bit of flex pressing on the top lid, but Asus claims the laptop confirms to US MIL-STD 810H military-grade standard.

The lid cannot be opened with a single hand, there is a slight groove to lift the lid. The hinges are stable and can do 180 degrees flat lay of the display.

The right side is where most of the ports are nested. You get a 3.5mm audio jack, a single USB Type-C slot, two USB Type-A 3.2 standard ports and an HDMI 1.4 port. The power port also sits over here.

The left side has a USB 2.0 Type-A, two tiny indicators and air vents. There are no ethernet ports or card readers.

At the bottom, there is the ventilation grill and the speaker cutouts.

Keyboard and Touchpad of Asus Vivobook 14 OLED

It’s a backlit chiclet keyboard with a full-size six-row and has a 19.05 mm key pitch. There is no Num pad. The 1.4mm key travel is adequate. I did not face any issues with the typing experience. The backlit is white. There are three levels of brightness. And you can also turn off the lights if you would want to. There are dedicated function buttons, pressing F9 toggles the mic on or off and the F10 key controls to electronically turn on and off the camera. There is a bit of flex to the keyboard but not very bothersome. The trackpad is pretty large and very responsive. There is a right mouse button option to access the menus. The trackpad supports gesture-based inputs. The touchpad also has a Fingerprint sensor at the top right corner.

Speakers, Webcam and Biometrics

The speakers are placed at the bottom and tuned by their in-house ASUS SonicMaster. The sound quality is average. There is a 720p webcam on top and it comes with a physical shutter. Alternatively, you can also you the F10 key to control the webcam shield electronically. The webcam is good enough for your daily meetings. Biometrics include the fingerprint sensor which is placed on the trackpad’s top right corner. It works pretty well. It supports Windows Hello fingerprint recognition.

Display of Asus Vivobook 14 OLED

Asus has made a noticeable effort to prioritize the display of their laptops, and the Asus Vivobook 14 OLED laptop follows suit. Equipped with a 14-inch OLED display with a 90Hz refresh rate, the device ensures a superior streaming experience for users. It is not a touch display, the display can be 180 degree flatly laid.

The laptop’s display boasts a maximum resolution of 2880×1800 pixels, and users have the option to adjust the refresh rate to either 90Hz or 60Hz to suit their preferences. The screen also offers peak brightness of up to 600 nits and an 86% screen-to-body ratio. The display is Pantone validated and has a 100% DCI-P3 colour gamut, so the colour accuracy is well taken care of. It’s a glossy display.

Upon usage, I observed that the Vivobook 14 OLED laptop causes less eye strain while watching content or typing compared to my usual device. Additionally, the device is equipped with an SGS Eye Care Display feature, which helps to prevent eye fatigue during prolonged usage

Performance of Asus Vivobook 14 OLED

The Asus Vivobook 14 OLED comes with a 12th-generation Intel core-i5 1235U processor, paired with an Intel IRIS XE graphics processing unit (GPU). While it may not match the performance of heavy-duty machines available in the market, it is perfect for day-to-day professional work, as evidenced by the laptop’s benchmark scores.

However, it is important to note that the laptop is not suitable for playing games that require high FPS, as it can only reach a maximum of 65 FPS. It would be pretty decent enough to handle games like Fortnite in moderate graphic settings. The laptop has 16GB DDR4 RAM and a 512GB NVMe PCIe SSD, which offers reading and writing speeds of up to 3,041MB/s and 1,655MB/s, respectively. Despite being not primarily for gaming, the laptop performs well in daily tasks such as web browsing, running average-level software, and multitasking.

In terms of benchmark scores, the laptop achieved a score of 7,197 on the Cinebench R23 and 6,496 in the multi-core tests on Geekbench. It also scored around 5,169 in the PCMark 10 multi-core tests.

The laptop’s battery backup is decent, with the company claiming it can last up to eight hours once fully charged. However, during practical testing, it lasted only around five and a half hours. On the bright side, the laptop’s charging speed is impressive, as it can go from zero to 100% in just two hours.

Verdict

Clearly, the 90Hz OLED panel is the winner here. If you are someone who wants a laptop for regular use, works on MS Office, and presentations, do lighter photo and video edits, and watches a lot of video content and even for browsing, the OLED panel especially is a deal clincher here. This is not a laptop for heavy games or heavy software but otherwise, the i15 12-gen should be good enough for most normal use cases.

What is Good

• Brilliant 90Hz OLED panel
• Good performance for mainstream use cases
• Fingerprint sensor
• Privacy shutter for webcam

What is bad

• No ethernet port
• No card reader (both of which are ignored by most laptop models in this segment oflate)

Specification of Lenovo Legion 5 2022 15IAH7H

Design and Build Quality of Lenovo Legion 5 2022

The 2022 Legion 5 adds a metal lid cover, while the rest of the case is polycarbonate plastic. It has a matte finish. The metal lid reduces the flex compared to the last year’s plastic lid. Being a mid-tier segment, the chassis does have a bit of flex to it compared to the high-end Legion 7 series. While Lenovo has managed to make the 2022 model a bit more compact than the previous generation, the weight remains around 2.4 kg, considering it has a metal lid cover in the new model. Being a full-sized laptop and that too a gaming laptop, keep in mind this is still a slightly oversized machine with a dimension of 14.13 x 10.33 x 0.79 inches. This makes it slightly heavier and bulkier to some of the competitors but not considerably more.

The lid can be opened with a single hand. The little projection on the top housing the fullHD webcam, makes it easier to open. The hinges are stable and can do 180 degrees flat lay of the display.

Most of the IO ports are placed towards the back behind the screen, which in my opinion is good, and is also unobtrusive. You get a LAN port, another USB Type-C 3.2 (Gen. 2), an HDMI 2.1 connector, two USB Type-A 3.2 (Gen. 1) ports, and the power connector at the back.

On the right, there is a USB Type-A 3.2 (Gen. 1) port and an Audio jack. Also you find the e-shutter physical switch for the webcam here.

And to the left, there is a USB Type-C 3.2 (Gen. 2) port with DisplayPort 1.4 output, as well as a USB4

At the bottom, there is the ventilation grill and the speaker cutouts. The heat exhaust happens through two vents on the back and one on each side of the laptop. The footers are prominent and keep the laptop fixed in position when placed on the table.

Keyboard and Touchpad of Lenovo Legion 5 2022

Typing on Legion 5 is very comfortable and well, am typing this review right on this machine now. It has a full-size key and the spaced well. It has a Num-pad section and full-sized arrow keys as well. There is an array of function buttons on the top. The power button with a LED light is placed at the middle on top above the keyboard deck. The power button LED shines in blue, white or red depending on the performance mode you select.

The keyboard has an RGB backlit. There are 4 zones for illumination, and a profile in the Lenovo vantage software to customize it along with other lighting effects. There is no light-dimming button on the keyboard. You need to fiddle with the software for the tweaks.

The touchpad is quite big with a size of 75 by 120mm. Its Mylar surface is smooth, the tracking is good, and the response time is super quick, which is further aided by the 165Hz display.

Speakers, Webcam and Biometrics

There is a fullHD webcam housed in the small projection on top of the display, flanked by microphones. There is no privacy shutter for the webcam, but it can be electronically disabled by a press of a switch, which is found in the right side of the laptop. There is no fingerprint sensor or face recognition.

Display of Lenovo Legion 5 2022

The configuration of the Legion 5i 2022 we got for testing has a Quad-HD 165Hz IPS panel with a 15.6-inch size. It has a matte finish. The resolution is 2560 x 1440 pixels with a pixel density of 188 ppi. The screen ratio is 16:9. Do note Lenovo offers many display options in the series.

The viewing angles are excellent. The display as mentioned earlier can be flat-laid. The maximum brightness is around 390 nits in the middle. The display has a 97% sRGB, 71.6% DCI-P3, 73.8% AdobeRGB. The panel has GSync and Advanced Optimus support.

The panel is good for daily use and the 160Hz in my model makes it good for gaming too with good response time.

Performance of Lenovo Legion 5i

Lenovo has refreshed the intel lineup with the 12th gen. The machine I have is powered by Intel Core i7-12700H, with NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060, 16 GB of DDR5-4800 memory in dual channel, and 1 TB of GB of fast SSD storage. The graphics are handled by Nvidia RTX 3060 dGPU with 6 GB of vRAM and the Iris Xe iGPU integrated within the Intel processor.

A MUX is offered here, with several modes including dGPU-only or Advanced Optimus (several Hybrid modes). Switching to dGPU requires a restart while opting between the Hybrid modes does not.

For those who are interested in the synthetic benchmark tests, I have run a few tests for you and also benchmarked the FarCry 5 and Forza 5. Please note these tests are run on balance mode, and it might be notch higher score on performance mode.

In PCMark 10 test, it delivered a score of 7195 in the Timespy test. In 3DMark test, it returned a healthy 9344 score.

In the FarCry 5 benchmark test, it returned an average FPS of 125.

In Forza Horizon 4, the average FPS achieved was 81 fps.

The gaming performance is as expected for a high-power RTX 3060 laptop in 2022.

Lenovo has taken care of thermals with a two fans, four radiators and four heatpipes, there is an extra heatpipe for the GPU. Plus, there are radiator shields on top off RAM modules, SSDs and even the WiFi card. Legion 5 2022 manages a good thermal control for the gaming segment laptop. While playing game in balance mode, the thermal around the keyboard deck was manageable and was under 40 degree, it was only at the back bottom, you see it raises to 50 degree.

The read and write speed has pretty impressive results in the CrustalDisk Mark test.

Lenovo Vantage software

The Lenovo Vantage app is the one-stop place to access power profiles, updates, and other settings. The power profiles are Quiet, Balanced, and Performance, and you can select them from Vantage or switch between them with Fn+Q. Performance is only available with the laptop plugged into the wall. These profiles apply different power settings to the CPU/GPU and different fan profiles. The RGB illumination lighting can also be tweaked with various presets here.

There are three thermal mode settings – performance mode, which works when AC adapter is plugged in and delivers the maximum performance. It also gets noisier a bit since it runs on higher fan speed but helps in better thermal management too when you engage in full-throttle gaming.

Battery

My model of Legion 5 comes with an 80 Wh battery. The display panel is 165Hz and if you want more battery life you can manually set the refresh rate to 60Hz if battery life is your priority, you might end up with a bit more battery juice. The power brick is a chunky one, weighing around 1.2kg, adding considerably more to your travel weight. It is a 300W power brick. Alternatively, you can also use a 135W USB-C charger but optimal performance might be hampered with the USB charger while gaming. In my video loop test, I barely got 2 hours of battery life, which is disappointing. So basically it works, if you use it majorly on desk, connected to power.

Lenovo Legion 5i (2022 ) Review – Verdict

Overall, the Legion 5i is a good mid-tier gaming laptop that won’t disappoint you in gaming and also other intense use cases. It is a full-sized laptop, slightly oversized and a bit heavy at 2.4kg. It also comes with a chunky power brick, though you can use a type C charger.

What is Good

• Good inputs, IO and ergonomics
• Good performance.
• Comfortable keys
• Good display for gaming with 165Hz

What is bad

• Bit bulkier and heavy but it is expected being a gaming laptop
• Chunky power brick
• Poor battery life.

Specifications of Asus TUF 15 (2022) FX507ZM

• Processor: 12th Gen Intel® Core™ i7-12700H Processor 2.3 GHz (24M Cache, up to 4.7 GHz, 14 cores: 6 P-cores and 8 E-cores)
• Graphics: NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 3060 Laptop GPU, 115W (140W with Dynamic Boost) 6GB GDDR6 RAM
• Memory: 16GB DDR5 RAM, 2400Hz
• Storage : 1TB M.2 NVMe™ PCIe® 4.0 SSD
• Display : 15.6-inch, FHD (1920 x 1080) 16:9, anti-glare display, sRGB:100%, Refresh Rate:300Hz, IPS-level, MUX Switch + Optimus
• Keyboard: Backlit Chiclet Keyboard 1-Zone RGB
• I/O Port: 1x 3.5mm Combo Audio Jack, 1x HDMI 2.0, 2x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A, 1x RJ45 LAN port, 1x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C support DisplayPort™ / G-SYNC, 1x Thunderbolt™ 4 support DisplayPort™
• Speaker: Dual speaker with Dolby Atmos, Hi-res audio certification
• Battery: 90WHrs, 4S1P, 4-cell Li-ion
• Wi-Fi 6(802.11ax) (Dual band) 2*2 + Bluetooth 5.1
• 720p webcam
• Dimensions: 35.4 x 25.1 x 2.24 ~ 2.49 cm
• Weight: 2.2 kg
• Operating System: Windows 11 Home
• Software Included: MS Office 2019

Design and Build Quality of Asus Tuf F15 (2022)

Visually, there is no change to the Asus TUF F15 2022 model over the previous year, it is tad lighter by around 100 gms though and also marginally compact. It screams the same gamer centric design languages. A bit chunky, plenty of vents, gunmetal body complete with fake screws on the lid. I have seen more audacious gaming laptop designs which can have a very split in th middle opinions about it, but I feel this TUF F15 will have more acceptability in terms of design in this segment. Of course, if you are a non-gamer consumer, you might still have some reservations.

It has an angular design. the fake screws adding a dash on interest and TUF series logo embossed in the middle. The lid can be lifted by single finger. Asus claims the build quality meets MIL-STD-810H standards for resistance to shock, vibration, and other environmental extremes. In India it is available in two design variants but both are in grey color.

There is a unique clover-like arrangement of four LED indicators built into the keyboard deck which is also accessible when the lid is closed, these four LEDs give a status glance on key system information.

On the left, there’s the power jack, an RJ45 gigabit Ethernet port, HDMI 2.0, a Thunderbolt 4 port, USB 3.2 Type-C port, USB-A and a 3.5mm headphone jack. Thankfully, the Thunderbolt is labeled to clear confusion with the adjacent identical USB C port.

On the right, you’ve got a Kensington lock and the second USB-A. I think these would sort every needs, well there is no card reader slot if you want to nitpick.

The bottom side has a maze of air vent grilles, speakers and firm footers, that also allow the air to flow underneath.

Keyboard and Touchpad

The deck that houses the keyboard, and trackpad is made of plastic. Having tested their premium ROG and Strix machines, you know some cost-cutting has gone into here. It looks slightly cheaper but in terms of practicality, it serves the job. The keyboard is spread edge to edge, almost the entire width of the deck. It’s backlit, while there is only a single zone but the RGB lighting can be customized via the Armory crate software, you get static, breathing, strobing and colour cycle lighting modes to choose from. There are four dedicated key rows on top – for volume controls and one button to quick launch Asus Armory Crate software. The W A S P keys stand out in white translucent keys.

The keyboard also makes way for the number pad on the left side. With an array of special keys, function keys, and number pads, the keyboard deck does feel a bit cramped. The keys felt good while typing, I did not find it very cramped and hard to type the way it seemed to be. I quite liked the tactile feedback and the key bounce.

The touchpad is large enough measuring 5.7 x 3.1 inches. The touchpad also has the TUF logo at the top right corner. There are no dedicated mouse buttons but the whole area works as a clickpad for your right and left clicks. The gliding is smooth.

Speakers , Webcam and Biometrics

The FX507 has dual speakers with Dolby Atmos and Hi-res audio certification. There are two speakers firing on the bottom and to the sides. It is Ok for daily use.

The webcam is housed in an outward protruding cutout. It houses the webcam and microphone. You get a standard 720p webcam, which does a basic job. There is no privacy shutter. The laptop does not support Windows Hello support, fingerprint scanner is also not available.

Display of Asus TUF F15 FX507ZM

The laptop I got here has a 1080p panel with 300Hz refresh rate, but the F15 series also offers other variants that have 1080p panel with 144Hz as well WQHD 2K resolution panel with 165Hz. All variants support MUX Switch + Optimus. .

If you are looking for eSports gaming, you should be going with FHD screen with a very smooth 300Hz refresh rate offering. You get a matte panel with a 16:9 aspect ratio. The 320 nits brightness, just about makes to the agreeable limit. While this is a decent display, if you want top-notch you need to shell out more for the premium series. While binge-watching movies, I was ok with the display but in certain games, you might find the colour contrast bit wanting. Nevertheless, for gaming, the higher refresh rate and MUX Switch + Optimus are a welcome addition.

Performance of TUF Gaming F15 FX507Z

This is where the FX508X sprints a home run. Equipped with Intel Core i7-12700K CPU, 16GB of DDR4 RAM and a 1TB PCIe Gen 4 SSD, it makes mince meat of almost everything you throw at it. Open over two dozen Chrome tabs, 4K video editing, and multi-tasking everything is a breeze.

On the 3D Mark Time Spy test, it got an 8442 score, and PC Mark 10 returned a 7064 score.

In the Far Cry 5 benchmark score, it threw an impressive 125 avg FPS, making for a good gameplay on high graphics. Even in the Handbrake benchmark, it crushes most other competitors in the segment by transcoding 4K video to 1080p in just four-minute 40 seconds much lesser than the segment average time.

The F15 transcoded a 4K video to 1080p in just four minutes and 49 seconds on our HandBrake benchmark,

So if you are going by performance yardstick, the variant I have is a beast at work. Be it gaming or video editing, it does a brilliant job.

Battery

The TUF 15 2022 comes with a 90Whrs 4-cell battery. The battery life is pretty impressive. For non-gaming usage, I got around 6 hours of battery life which is pretty good for a gaming laptop.

Verdict

The latest refresh to the TUF F15 series makes the series a serious contender in the affordable gaming laptop segment. The TUF F15 FX507ZM I tested, proved to be a very capable machine for gaming as well as video editing and other heavy tasks.

Pros of Asus TUF F15 FX507ZM

• Impressive performance
• Good battery life
• Good array of I/O
• Slightly smaller and lighter than previous gen
• Competitive pricing in this segment

Cons of Asus TUF F15 FX507ZM

• Not exactly a con, but gameresque look and build do not exactly suits everyone

Logitech Pop Keys: design 

The Pop Keys come in three funky colour dressings: daydream (mint, yellow and lavender), heartbreaker (rose) and blast (black and yellow). Whichever colour you pick, you can coordinate with a matching Logitech Pop Mouse.

The keyboard is made from thick plastic. For years now, I been using a very sturdy chunky mechanical keyboard and this gives a totally different flair. I would term it a playful design rather than a premium design and have no complaints about it. This is the way Logitech had intentionally made it, and it does justice to the idea. It is a compact small keyboard with a dimension of 35.4 x 321.2 x 138.47mm. It won’t eat up much of your desk space. It weighs 799 gms. In spite of the small size, it still has a row of function keys and arrow keys.

What I really liked about this is the reminiscence of the good old typewriter but in a colourful avatar. The keys are rounded like in good old days, they bit close to each other. In my initial testing period, I fumbled with lots of mistyping, till you get used to the small frame and rounded keys. Moving from a full-sized big keyboard, it does need a bit of adjusting period. On the right of the keyboard, there are five programmable keys designed for typing different emoji symbols, which I would talk about in a while.

The mechanical keys give a satisfying click with a pleasing sound. If you prefer the quietest keyboard, you should stay away from mechanical keyboards in general. There are no underside legs if you prefer an inclined elevation.

Setting up the Logitech Pop Keys

I had no issues setting up the keyboard, it’s a completely wireless keyboard but pairs super quick. The box comes with a Logi Bolt USB receiver or you can simply connect to your PC using Bluetooth. It can have 3 devices paired at once, so shifting between devices is a breeze using the device’s keys along the top of the keyboard.

Logitech Pop Keys: features 

The star attraction of the Pop keys apart from the design elements are the array of swappable emoji keys. Logitech has chosen eight popular emojis including heart, thumps up, smileys, fire etc we most likely use in our online conversation. You can place four of them on board at once for direct access There’s a fifth emoji key on the keyboard to access the whole OS level emoji library. So basically, if you are on a Windows machine, you don’t have to press the Windows + semicolon key for the emoji library but you get a dedicated key to access it. For those who mix emojis a lot in your conversation, this would be cool stuff. Strictly not everyone’s cup of emoji though but Logitech believes emojis are part of our daily vocabulary and this would be a key selling point for this keyboard.

Again first time you are using the Pop keys, you need to install the Logitech Options Software and configure the emoji keys with their corresponding emoji from the OS level emoji library. Also you need to programme the first time, on different machines you use. So, yes bit cumbersome effort for starters.

You can also use the Logitech Options Desktop app to remap all of the keys on the keyboard to your preferences.

Battery life of Logitech Pop Keys

Logitech uses two AA batteries. Logitech claims a 3 years of battery life. Well, I would just have to trust their words here, since I can’t wait 1095 days to test. But it definitely would last longer.

Logitech Pop Keys Review Verdict

What I liked

Good Stuff

• Unique eye candy retro design
• Three-year battery life
• Swappable Emoji for the new age conversations
• Good multi device support

What could be better

• The round keys are not for everyone
• No incline support or wrist rest
• No backlighting

Spefications of Asus Vivbook Pro 14 OLED (K3400)

• Processor: Intel Core i5-11300H
• Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 4GB, Intel Iris Xe Graphics
• Memory: 16GB 3200MHz DDR4
• Storage : 512GB M.2 NVME PCI SSD
• Display : 14″ WQXGA+ (2800 x1800) 16:10 OLED panel, 90Hz, 100% DCI-P3 color gamut, TUV Rheinland Eye care certification, Pantone Validated
• Keyboard: Backlight, with Asus numpad on trackpad
• I/O Port: 1 x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A, 1 x USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-C Thunderbolt 4, 2 x USB 2.0, 1 x HDMI 1.4. 1 x 3.5mm Audio jack combo, 1 x micro SD card reader
• Speaker: Harman Kardon speaker system
• Battery: 63Wh Li-Ion battery
• Dual band Wifi 6 802.11 ax | Bluetooth 5.0
• 720p webcam
• Dimensions: 317 x 228 x 19.2cm
• Weight: 1.4kg
• Operating System: Windows 10 Home
• Software Included: Office Home and Student 2019

Design and Build Quality of Vivobook Pro K14 OLED

Vivobook is designed with a mix of metal and polycarbonate. The lid and the chassis are made of metal, giving it a fine balance between durability, weight and cost optimization. It felt comfortable and confident handling the device. It comes in Quiet Blue, Cool Silver colour options in India, with a Grey option in some markets. The unit I have here is their Quiet Blue colour variant, which actually borders towards the black territory, which I kind of like. Weighing 1.4kg, it is easier to carry around in your bag. The 14″ compact design makes it extremely portable. The lid flaunts their new re-designed Asus Logo in silver colour. The laptop lid can be opened with a single finger.

Connectivity options are well thought out. You get a Thunderbolt^™ 4 USB-C port, USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A and USB 2.0 ports, as well as an HDMI port and a microSD card reader. PD (Power delivery) is supported. It supports a wide range of standard 4-20V USB-C chargers. Additionally, it also supports ASUS 120-watt fast-charge adapter.

The bottom has the speakers flanking both the sides and the vents.

Display of Asus Vivobook Pro 14

One of the key highlight that stands out in this laptop is it’s display. It is simply put, brilliant. The 14-inch OLED display is one of the best I have come across. Packed with a 2.8k resolution ( 2800 x1800 ) it is very sharp. The colors are very vivid and you immediately understand the term “eye-popping” colors. The color contrasts are top notch and the blacks are deep. It’s a 90Hz panel, which makes it quiet smooth.

With 100% 100% DCI-P3 color gamut you are assured of good color reproduction .Pantone Validated display also is assuring for content creators since the colors are calibrated right way. Asus also boasts of TUV Rheinland Eye care certification, for those worried about spending too much on-screen time.

Webcam Privacy shutter

There are quiet many people who are worried about the always on webcam and you might have seen people taping the webcam even. Well, ASUS has included a physical privacy shutter for webcam, so you simply slide it and close the lens.

Keyboard and Touchpad

A full sized keyboard with a 1.35mm key travel finds place. The Enter key has a bit of zebra crossing line design to it to highlight it. The keyboard has backlit. I was quiet at ease typing on the keyboard, did not find any issues with it. It works the way it has to, no complaints.

The powerbutton also combines as the fingerprint sensor.

The trackpad is large enough for a 14-inch laptop. It supports gesture actions. What I like better though, pressing the small icon on the top right corner of the trackpad illuminates Asus Numpad. For those who number crunch a lot, this would be a sweet addition. The illumination also gets two dim levels.

Speakers , Webcam and Biometrics

While Windows Face login is not available, you get Windows Hello Fingerprint and it works fast. The powerbutton combines as fingerprint sensor. There is a 720p webcam which is like most laptops, just decent enough for video calls. The speakers are placed at the bottom, they are tuned by Harmon Kardonn and decently good adequate enough.

Performance of Vivbook Pro 14

The Asus Vivobook Pro 14 is powered by Intel i5, 11th gen ( Core i5-11300H) with Integrated Iris XE graphics but it also has dedicated GPU with NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 onboard with 4GB RAM. There is 16GB 3200MHz DDR4 RAM and 512GB M.2 NVME PCI SSD storage. This is a good specs for most use cases.

For those who are interested in benchmark tests, here are the screenshot,but I would delve more on the real life performance.

It is a promising laptop for gaming. In my Far Cry 5 gaming test, I got an average 88fps. This is pretty good benchmark for good gaming. I did not find any stutter while playing the game and it was quiet enjoyable experience. Plus, the stellar display means, the gaming is more immersive and treat to eyes.

For all my other experience with the machine, like video editing, photo editing on Adobe Premier pro and Photoshop, it handled well without any strain. So this laptop I find is a good find for those who want a compact laptop that can push itself as a good workhorse. Thermal is well managed, I did not find it heating much.

Battery

With a 2.8K OLED resolution and packing a lot within, I was bit sceptical about the battery performance. In my video loop test where I ran a 1080p video from 100% battery to 0%, I got a decent 6 hours battery life.

Verdict:

I been using the Asus Vivobook Pro 14 K3400 for over two weeks now, and it left me mighty impressed. A small laptop that punches a lot. If you are looking for a compact portable laptop, that you can mix for gaming and content creation, this is is a brilliant pick. Plus, the gorgeous display makes it great for media consumption.

Pros of Asus Vivobook Pro K14 OLED

• Gorgeous 2.8K OLED display
• Good array of ports
• Smooth performance
• Good build and design
• Decent battery life
• Physical shutter for webcam
• Asus Numpad

Cons of Asus Vivobook Pro K14 OLED

• I am afraid, there is nothing to crib about

Box contents:

• Printer
• Power Cable and USB Cable
• Ink Bottles – (1x 127ml BK, 3x 70ml CMY) , Extra Black
• User manual, Quick Setup Guide, warranty card

Epson L6490 Design

Most printers come as a monolithic block but L6490 has a refreshing design. It has very good aesthetics and has a modern design appeal. The print and copier/scanner bed has a good amount of separation between them, with the copious paper output zone dividing them. The printer has a dimension of 44 x 41 x 42 Centimeters, an almost square design. At 7.3 kg, it is slightly on the heavier side, but once kept at its place, very rarely the printers are moved around. . The build quality and finish are good.

Like most eco tank/ink tank models, refilling the ink is convenient and easy. You just need to open the tray and place the ink bottle head into the respective grooves for a spill-free refilling.

There is a large cassette tray that holds up to 250 papers.

The rear has an additional tray, suppose you need to stack photo papers instead of opening the front tray.

Epson EcoTank L6490 Features

This is a multi-function printer – so it can print, scan, copy and also work as a fax machine. While you can run it with the touch control panel on board, it also supports Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi Direct, Ethernet, mobile connectivity.

It is equipped with a 2.4-inch LCD touch screen. The touch experience is not that smooth, don’t expect fluid touch like you get on your mobile phones. The screen, gets the job done though. There is standard power and home buttons on the side of the screen. It also provides an animated tutorial to guide you through.

Wifi connectivity is pretty straight forward and once connected to your local network you can easily shoot prints from your smartphones and computers, which is what I did when I was testing the printer.

The EcoTank L6490 supports mono as well as colour printing. It uses pigment dyes. The printer is more for document printing, and not for photo printing. You can print photos but this machine is not made for photo print in mind., Being a pigment dye machine, the printed documents have Longer lasting print and better colour stability. The inks are also more smudge and water resistant.

Epson EcoTank L6490 Printing Speed & Performance

Here is the list of paper formats the printer supports: 9 x 13cm, 10 x 15cm, 13 x 18cm, 13 x 20cm, 20 x 25cm, 100 x 148mm, 16:9, Letter Legal, No. 10 (Envelope), DL (Envelope), C6 (Envelope), B5 (17.6 x 25.7cm), A6 (10.5 x 14.8cm), A4 (21.0 x 29.7cm), and A5 (14.8 x 21.0cm).

It offers duplex printing, which is very convenient with an automatic document feeder. For starters, the Epson L6490 offers three printing modes.

1. Draft Mode: Ideal for testing page layout before printing the final copy. This is the fastest, but lowest-quality mode on most printers. Apart from testing and measuring print speeds, Draft Mode can be used to print low-priority documents such as grocery lists.
2. Standard Mode: This is the default setting for most printers. It offers a balance between quality and speed that works fine for most printing needs.
3. High-Quality Mode: If you want to squeeze out the best possible quality from your printer, this is the setting to opt for. However, the quality improvement comes at the cost of print speeds

Black and White printing

When it comes to speed, for a single page printout it took 7 seconds in monochrome Draft Mode. The standard mode takes around 9 seconds, whereas it shoots up to 24 seconds in High-Quality Mode.

And now let’s take a look at the PPM or Pages Per Minuter, you can expect around 22 pages in Monochrome Draft Mode, 16 pages in the Standard Mode and if you are opting for all our high-quality prints, it takes a bit of time churning 2 prints per minute.

Color Printing

Here, it takes around 9 seconds for Draft, 14 seconds for Standard Mode, and 46 seconds for High.

Talking about PPM, on draft mode, the printer’s color print output is 9 pages per minute. In Standard Mode, you get 7 pages per minute. In High-Quality Mode, it prints one full image in a minute.

Overall, it was in my expected lines for multifunction printer speed. The print quality is good, the texts are sharp even in standard mode, the standard mode I feel would suffice for most printing requirements.

Copier and Scanner

The L6490’s flatbed scanner uses a Contact Image Sensor (CIS) and an LED light source to deliver great results. The 300dpi setting is good enough to scan documents. For images, 600dpi is a sweet spot. There’s also a software-based 1200dpi mode, which slightly improves the scan quality, but is painfully slow. Scanning a monochrome chart takes 9 seconds to scan at 300dpi, 15 seconds at 600dpi, and a whopping five minutes at 1,200dpi.

Epson EcoTank L6490 Print Cost

This was the Eco tank print economy kick. in. Since the machine does not use ink cartridges and uses refillable ink tanks, the effective running costs come down. As per Epson, the 70ml black ink bottle has a yield of up to 6,000 pages. Epson also offers a 127ml version that can print up to 7,500 monochrome pages. The remaining Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow ink bottles have a composite yield of 6,000 pages. The refill bottles are very affordable, the black ink bottle costs ₹309, whereas the colour ones are pegged at ₹449 each in India.

Epson L6490 Printer Verdict

When I checked Amazon, as on the date am writing this review, the Epson Ecotank L6490 is available for ₹29,688. It is a versatile multifunction printer that offers colour print, copier, scanner and fax functionality along with a plethora of wired and wireless connectivity options. The automatic duplex printing is convenient, anytime. If you are not looking at photo printing, this would be an ideal printer for a small business and home office setup.

Pros of Epson Ecotank L6490

• Modern design, looks good.
• Good build quality.
• Great for printing documents
• Plenty of connectivity options
• Duplex printing support
• Low printing cost
• Large voluminous printing tray

Cons of Epson EcoTank L6490

• Not ideal for photo printing

MSI GF75 Thin 10SC Specifications

• Processor: Intel Core i5-10300H, Comet Lake-H
• Memory: 8GBgb RAM @ 1600Mhz, single channel, DDR4 SDRAM , expandable upto 64GB
• Storage : 512 NVMe
• Graphics: GeForce GTX™ 1060 GPU with 4GB GDDR6 SDRAM
• Display : 17.3″ FHD (1920*1080), IPS-level TN display,144Hz , 45% NTSC
• Keyboard: Steelseries RED Backlit Keyboard
• I/O Port: 1x Type-C USB 3.2 Gen1, 3x Type-A USB3.2 Gen1, 1x RJ45, 1x (4K @ 30Hz) HDMI
• Battery: 51 WHrs
• Webcam: Yes
• 2.2 kg
• Operating System: Windows 10 Home

Design and Build quality

The lid is the first thing one notice in a laptop, the brushed metal finish of the MSI laptop along with their unique logo of a red dragon on a red shield has an appealing stance. Most of the parts are made of metal and the machine has a solid feel and presence though at 2.2kg, it is bit on heavier side to be carried around at ease. It follows angular design approach. The lid top edges are slightly angled. Considering this is a large 17-inch laptop, the GF75 thin, still manages well on its dimensions and weight distribution.

The bottom side has a very sci-fi style air ventilation cutouts. It gives a glimpse of the copper pipes and heat sinks under the hood for thermal controls. The screws are easily accessible to give access to the inside. The rubber footings are firm and give stability to the machine. The speaker grills are also placed down here.

On the right side, we get a lock, headphone jack, mic input, Type-A USB3.2 Gen1, one Type C USB 3.2 port, Ethernet port.

Towards the left, you get power input, HDMI port and two more Type-A USB3.2 Gen1 ports and a battery status LED.

Moving to the back you get two large exhaust vents at both ends. In addition to these two, there are also two more one each at the sides of the laptop.

Keyboard and Touchpad

Being a 17″ laptop, you get a wider keyboard deck but I feel MSI could have put the deck area to better use. The power button is aligned to the centre of the top edge of the deck. The idea of MSI seem to be to pull the keyboard closer to the user, which leaves a large unutilized area on the top. The trackpad though is not centered and is aligned towards the left. The keyboard is not bad, they have included NumberPad with half-sized keys. The Arrow keys are just crammed into the rest of the keyboard. I kept pressing the up keys many times instead of the intended Shift key.

There are an array of function keys that include an Fn key to shut off the webcam, shift to eco mode, etc. I was bit disappointed with the Trackpad, would have preferred a larger pad considering the size of the laptop and also aligned to the centre and too close to the edges as well. The two buttons at the bottom of the pad are too small for comfortable use. Nevertheless, the pad itself is responsive enough.

Display of MSI GF75 Thin

MSI states their display as “IPS-level”, a monicker which basically implies it is not IPS but IPS grade TN panel. To give due credit to them, the panel is unlike most TN panels I have seen. They are good. MSI GF75 Thin 10SC is equipped with a Full HD 144Hz panel. The screen ratio is 16:9, and we are looking at a pixel density of – 127 ppi. The viewing angles are adequate. The contrast ratio is good. The brightness works out to around 270 nits on average. Its display covers only 50% of the sRGB.

Biometrics and Webcam

There are no biometrics at work here. The display houses a 720p webcam at the top. There is a Fn key shortcut to disable the webcam when not in use.

Performance of MSI GF75

The machine I got here is powered by Intel i5 10th gen {Core i5-10300H), with 8GB of RAM and combined with GTX 1650 GPU. You can also find options with Core i5-10500H and also push further with Core i7-10750H. The laptop I received is a respectable config for budget gaming and content creation work. I mean for the price it is available now, it performance ratio works in favour of the machine. For those who like to know the synthetic benchmark scores, you can thank me later. I got the CrystalMark test, PC Mark 10 test, 3D Mark test and VRMark test results.

Moving to the real-life use scenario, I am pretty impressed with what I could do with the machine. I did a couple of test video editing, photoshop work and it was a handy machine for those needs. For budget gamers, this could again cheer them.

Battery life of MSI GF75 10SC

There is a 51Whr battery. In my video loop test, running a 1080p video at 50% volume, it exhausted 100% battery to 0% in around 3 hours 45 mins.

Verdict of MSI GF75 10SC

The MSI GF75 10SC is a good laptop option for budget gamers who are looking at a 17″ laptop without having to dig deep into the bank balance.

Pros

• Good sturdy build quality
• Decent display
• Good peformance for budget gamers and content creators
• Value for money
• Good thermal control
• Good weight ratio for a 17″ laptop

Cons

• No biometrics
• Small trackpad
• Only 50% of the sRGB color gamut
• Mediocre battery life
• No SD card reader

Box contents of Reno 6 Pro

• Reno 6 Pro phone
• 65W charger
• Earphone
• Type C Cable
• Sim ejector Pin
• Protective case
• Quick guides

Build and Design of Reno 6 Pro

Reno 6 Pro is available in three colour choices in India – Aurora, Majestic Gold and Stellar black. I guess the “Reno glow” Aurora colour might be the most popular choice, the Gold seems a bit outlandish for me and the black model I got is understated but must appeal to those who want a subtle colour. The matte frosted glass back makes it extremely good to grip and highly unlikely to get fingerprint smudges. The sides have a metal frame. It’s also strengthened by Gorilla glass 5. The phone weighs just 177 grams and is at 7.6 mm thickness, making it very comfortable to use for longer use. The curved edges at the front and back, add to the ergonomic handling.

The right side has the power button, with a green tint to it and the left side has the volume buttons, both offers good tactile feedback.

The top is laid flat and has a noise-cancelling mic. The bottom houses the speaker, type C port, mic and SIM tray. There is no 3.5mm audio jack and the SIM tray does not include a memory card slot. There is no dual speaker either.

A rectangle camera housing is at the back, with a small bump. Overall, I think Reno 6 Pro has a good design and build quality, something carried forward from the previous generation Reno 5 Pro.

Reno 6 Pro display

• 6.55 inches AMOLED
• 1080 x 2400 pixels
• 402 ppi density
• 90Hz, HDR 10+
• 500 nits (typ), 800 nits (HBM)
• 20:9 aspect ratio

I really liked the display of Reno 5 Pro and I have no complaints they have retained the same here in Reno 6 Pro. The curved display offers an immersive experience, I did not have any accidental touch issues in my usage. There is a Corning Gorilla Glass 5 protective layer.

While you might see panels offering 120Hz in this price segment, and outdoing the 180Hz touch panel offered here, I see no reasons why anyone can complain using this screen. The colours are punchy true to its AMOLED offering, sharp with sufficient brightness even under direct sunlight. While there is HDR 10+ technically, it cannot play HDR videos on streaming apps like Netflix and Prime video which is a bummer.

Audio and Speaker quality of Reno 6 Pro

Then watching a movie or online content needs a good sound backing, while the display is good enough, Oppo could have included a stereo speaker here. The sound is loud but I missed the stereo quality many phones in this category offers these days. Coming to Bluetooth audio codecs, it supports SBC, AAA, Qualcomm Apt X, Apt X HD, aptX Adaptive, aptX TWS+, LDAC, LHDC. I am delighted by the comprehensive list here, which would appeal to audiophiles.

Oppo Reno6 Pro: Performance

• Mediatek Dimensity SoC
• 12GB LPDDR4X RAM
• 256GB UFS 3.1 storage

The Reno 6 Pro sees a bit of upgrade from Reno 6 Pro here. To begin with, we have Dimensity 1200 SoC replacing the 1000+ and also the storage gets UFS 3.1 boost here over the UFS 2.1 in Reno 5 Pro. While I had used both the phones, trust me, the majority of people won’t notice much of a difference in the real-life performance but it would nevertheless be comfortable to know you are getting a marginal upgrade here.

In my good use, the apps opened pretty good, I did not notice any lag and it was a smooth operator. Well, I was similarly at ease with Reno 5 Pro, just putting it across here. While Snapdragon offers more firepower with their chipsets in this price range, if you are a keen nitpicking gamer, you could explore Snapdragon choices but for the majority again, the Dimensity 1200 carries enough firepower for enjoyable gaming. There is a bit of throttling happening here when games are played extensively.

The Reno6 Pro is a 5G Smartphone. It supports 11 bands, making sure you would not miss out on the 5G bus whenever it arrives in the country.

Reno 6 Pro Camera

• 64 MP, f/1.7, 26mm (wide), 1/2.0″, 0.7µm, PDAF
• 8 MP, f/2.2, 120˚ (ultrawide), 1/4.0″, 1.12µm
• 2 MP, f/2.4, (macro)
• 2 MP, f/2.4, (depth)
• 4K@30fps, 1080p@30/60fps; gyro-EIS, HDR
• Front : 32 MP, f/2.4, 26mm (wide)

There is no surprise here, it is equipped with the same camera hardware as on the Reno 5 Pro. The selfies come good, with good detailing, though the facial features tend to get smoothened. Surprisingly, I find many normal users like this aspect off the camera. Overall pictures come good, you can check some of the samples. The daylight shots look good with enough details. While there is macro photos and I love taking macro photography, this is not the best macro implementation I have seen. You can follow my Instagram (@LakshmiRajan) for more macro samples.

Oppo Reno 6 Pro Battery

The phone packs a 4500mAh battery. The 65W SuperVOOC charger top the phone from 0-100% in about 37-40 mins. I managed to sail through an entire day with a screen on time of around 6 – 6.5 hours.

Oppo Reno6 Pro: Software

As I write this review, the phone runs on Color OS 11.3 based on Android 11. Oppo has started beta testing Color OS 12 for the Reno 6 Pro, I haven’t tested it yet but you can expect the rollout in the coming months.

I personally like the Color OS treatment these days, they had made vast improvements, the UI looks pleasing. It offers tons of customization and features for users to fiddle around. The current skin is also light and gives a pleasant experience. The UI is not without its share of third-party bloatware apps, which you could remove. Few pre-installed Oppo apps have to be lived with.

There are some neat personalization options for the UI to tweak the icon styles, app layout, colours, fonts, icon shapes etc. While there is no LED notification indicator, you can opt for edge lighting for notification when the screen is off.

Features like gesture and motions actions, quick-access settings like smart sidebar, assistive ball, quick return bubble, quick launch, split-screen, screen recording google lens integration in screenshot etc along with granular control over app settings might delight some users.

Reno6 Pro Verdict

Pros of Reno6 Pro

• Good design and build quality
• Comfortable ergonomics
• Appealing AMOLED curved display
• Super quick fast charging
• Good performance for most use cases

Cons of Reno6 Pro

• No radical upgrade over Reno5 Pro
• No stereo speakers
• Unimpressive macro photography

Lenovo Legion 5 Ryzen 5 4600H Specifications

• Processor: Intel Core i7-11370H, Tiger Lake-H35
• Memory: 16GB RAM @ 1600Mhz, dual channel
• Storage : 1TB NVMe
• Graphics: GeForce RTX™ 3070 GPU with 8GB GDDR6 VRAM
• Display : 15.6-inch,FHD (1920 x 1080) 16:9,anti-glare display, 240Hz, IPS
• Keyboard: backlight chiclet keyboard
• I/O Port: 3 x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type A, HDMI 2.0, Thunderbolt 4.0 with Display port 1.4 and Power delivery, RJ45, audio combo jack, Kensington lock, power input.
• Speaker: 2 x 2W speaker system, DTS:X
• Battery: 76WHrs, 4S1P, 4-cell Li-ion
• Webcam: NA
• 2.0 kg, 19.9mm
• Operating System: Windows 10 Home

Design and Build Quality of TUF DASH F15

The Tuf Dash is available in two colours – Moonlight White or Eclipse Gray. White is a colour you don’t often come across, if you are good at cleaning the dirt off, you would definitely like it. For a gaming laptop, the Dash F15 is relatively lightweight at 2.0 kg and at 19.9mm thin as well for this segment. It makes it manageable for both work and play. The body is made of plastics and aluminium alloy, with the lid and keyboard, made more durable with a metal build. Asus states the machine matches with MIL-STD-810H standards. The 2021 model is significantly thinner and lighter than the previous TUF gaming laptops.

The top lid has prominent TUF branding. There are clean angles and cuts giving a sharper meaner look. The lid can be opened with one hand.

The machine would be easier to service or if you decide to upgrade, the underside is easier to open with a screwdriver. You can get quick access to the M.2 ports, there are two of them. The RAM can also be upgraded up to 32GB of DDR4. The bottom has nice prominent footers for good grip and vents.

The right side has two USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type A ports,

Towards the left, you get one more USB-A, along with a Thunderbolt 4, HDMI, Ethernet, a 3.5mm combo jack, and a dedicated port for charging. PD support is there, charge the TUF Dash F15 via USB-C.

Display of TUF Dash F15

The display could be one of the strongest points of TUF Dash 15. It’s a 15.6-inch FullHD panel with a 240Hz refresh rate. The screen is bright and has a good colour punch to it. It measures 100% of the sRGB spectrum. I liked the display. Especially, after immediately moving to this laptop after spending time with Legion 5 laptop that I reviewed earlier, the difference was palpable. The TUF Dash F15 screen stood out instantly. Additionally, it is also treated to anti-glare.

Speakers, Webcam and Biometrics

There are a pair of 2W speakers placed at the bottom. The loudness is not the best out there. It hit the max around 82db and hovered around 78-80db to the most part. It does not sound bad either. It is manageable.

Surprisingly, there is no webcam. It doesn’t mean the display bezels are so thin there is no provision for a webcam, there is placed above the display to accommodate but it could be a purely cost-cutting measure. So you might have to invest in a good webcam if you have a need. Anyways for gamers if they are streaming, it is always good to invest in a good webcam, since most laptop webcams are mediocre.

With no webcam, face recognition is obviously ruled out. There is no fingerprint sensor either. That means no biometric login and you have to rely on a good old trusted password.

Keyboard and Touchpad

Personally, when it comes to the territory of large 15.6-inch laptops, I prefer a full-fledged keyboard, one thing that I liked in the Legion 5. Asus has lots of space in the keyboard deck but still have not gone for a full-sized one, so there is no separate Numpad. Somehow, it took a while for me to get adjusted to the keyboard of TUF gaming. The key travel is good. The keyboard has a backlight, the white laptop comes with a light sea green lighting or teal colour. I assume it would be a white backlight in the black colour model, not sure. The WASP keys are transparent and distinct, which makes it a bit bright with the backlight on. There’s no RGB lighting customization. There are four special keys on top of the function keys array. The special keys are for volume adjustment, the mic on/off toggle and a special key to launch Armoury Crate, Asus’s own customization software, which I will talk about in a while. The power button is distinct too in shape and has a white LED to it.

The trackpad is large, supports windows gestures. The bottom of the pad has divided portions for the right and left clicks. I have no issues with the trackpad. They are functional.

Performance of TUF Dash F15

With Intel i7 11th gen combined with GeForce RTX™ 3070 GPU with 8GB GDDR6 VRAM and 16GB DDR4 RAM, I expected a good performance show from this machine. Let me begin with the benchmark tests if you are interested. On the 3D Mark Spy test, it returned a 7336 score, which is good. The PC mark test gave a 5817 score. On Crystal Mark Disc test, it showed 3526 MB/s read speed and 3085 write speed.

I played Far Cry 5, and I had no issues while playing. On the default high graphic setting, I got an average FPS of 82 and on the Ultra setting, it evened at 79 FPS. For an ultra-portable gaming laptop, this is a pretty good one. It could handle any games you can put it through and you should be satisfied. On a ultra-portable format, it might not bring the best out of the 3070 GPU but it still is impressive.

The Core i7-11370H based on the Tigerlake H35 architecture has four Willow Cove processor cores (4-core, 8-thread). All four cores can reach up to 4.3 GHz and the boost of a single and two cores under load can reach up to 4.8 GHz. For creative professionals, it cannot be a dream replacement for a workstation but I don’t see any reason why you cannot be doing a 4K editing on this, it should be capable of and the screen compliments it as well.

Armoury Crate software

Armoury Crate is Asus’s software package for the gaming laptop series that allows one to tinker with various settings and gives many performance insights. You can access CPU, GPU, memory stats. It offers system configuration and insight into various performance modes. While there is no RGB colour customization for this laptop, you can change the backlight to strobing or breathing effects instead of static. The game visuals also can be changed to various presets. It also has the option to customize profiles for various games.

Battery life of TUF Dash F15

The TUF Dash F15 comes with a 76Whr battery. In my video loop test with display brightness at 50% and volume at 60%, playing a 1080p video, gave me a battery life of 8 hours 15 mins.

Verdict

The Asus TUF Dash F15 is a good ultraportable gaming laptop, well designed and makes for solid work and play hybrid machine on the go.

Pros of TUF Dash F15

• Brilliant display with 100% sRGB and 240Hz refresh rate.
• Good battery life
• Good gaming performance for an ultraportable laptop segment
• Plenty of ports
• Thin and lightweight for the gaming segment

Cons of TUF Dash F15

• No webcam
• No RGB light customization

What is in the box

The device was rather bulky with good foam padding to ensure damage during shipping is highly unlikely. Inside the box you get the Legion 5 wrapped in a black protective cloth, some documents and a 170W power brick.

Lenovo Legion 5 Ryzen 5 4600H Specifications:

• Processor: Ryzen 5 4600H @3GHz
• Memory: 8GB RAM @ 1600Mhz, single channel
• Storage : 256GB NVMe (Micron), 1TB SATA (WDC)
• Display : 15.6-inch IPS 120Hz Full HD (1920×1080) display
• Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650Ti with 4GB GDDR5 VRAM
• Design:
• Keyboard: White backlight, 4 zone RGB optional,
• I/O Port: USB-A 3.1 Gen 1 (always on), 3 x USB-A 3.1 Gen 1, USB-C 3.1 (DisplayPort™), HDMI 2.0, RJ45 ethernet, Mic/headphone combo, Kensington lock slot, Audio jack
• Speaker: 2 x 2W Harman Kardon speaker system, Dolby Atmos headphone support
• Battery: 4 cells, 60Wh battery
• 802.11 ax | Bluetooth 5
• 720p webcam
• 2.3kg, 22-24mm
• Operating System: Windows 10 Home
• Software Included: Office Home and Student 2019

Design and Build Quality of Legion 5

Lenovo has carried forward the design profile from its predecessor, the Legion Y540 generation. Entirely built on plastic including the lid and bottom, it weighs around 2.30 kg and measures 22mm in the thinnest point and 24mm at its thickest. The lid can also be lifted by a single hand. It is a bit bulky as expected from most gaming laptops that include all those extra thermal precautions.

The branding are subtle and not flamboyant but still prominent. There is a small ‘Lenovo’ badge and a subtle but bigger ‘Legion’ branding at top edge. Both the branding are seen when you open the lid too beneath the display and on keyboard deck.

The build quality is pretty solid but I could still notice a slight flex on the main deck area. The keyboard deck area has a rubbery texture to it, which actually feels good when resting hand. It has a matte finish and less prone to fingerprints. Since I been using the machine for a week now, it is too early to know if the rubbery finish would have any visible marks in due course of use. I have a feeling it might be prone to it.

The side bezels are thin but the bottom bezels is prominent with the Legion branding. At the top the bezels widens a bit where the webcam is housed. This gives the little extra space for the physical shutter assembly. Yes, you can safely close the webcam with a shutter lid when not in use.

The bottom has an interesting looking round circular cutouts covered by a mesh, the sides and back has air exhaust vents. There are large rubber footers at the bottom that makes sure the laptop stays properly grounded at desk.

Talking about the ports, most of it are aligned at the back.The charging plug, an HDMI 2.0 connector, two USB Type-A 3.1 (Gen. 1) ports, one USB Type-A 3.1 (Gen. 1) port with DisplayPort 1.2 functionality, and an RJ-45 connector all finds a place here.

On the left side, you find USB Type-A 3.1 (Gen. 1) port which is always on and a headphone jack

And to the right, USB Type-A 3.1 (Gen. 1) port Both the sides have air vent cutouts.

Display of Legion 5

The lid opens full 180-degree movement to a flat down position. The display is a 15.6 inch IPS panel with 1920 х 1080 pixels resolution and 120Hz refresh rate. The panel has a matte finish, which I normally prefer over glossy screens. The screen ratio is 16:9 and offers a pixel density of 142 ppi. Viewing angles are fine. The display offers 280 nits brightness. The display covers 58% and 39% of sRGB and DCI-P3 colour space respectively. The contrast ratio is decent. I did not notice any backlight screen flickering. The display is slightly underwhelming especially when playing games like Far Cry 5.

Speakers , Webcam and Biometrics

There are two speakers on either sides of the laptop. Its a pair of 20W speakers tuned by Harmon Kardon. The audio is cleaner. I have no complaints about the speakers they are better than the average laptop speakers. There is a 720p webcam on top like I mentioned earlier with a physical camera shutter. There are no fingerprint or face login options available for biometrics.

Keyboard and Touchpad

Being a full-sized laptop, the keyboard deck has ample space to accommodate a full-blown keyboard complete with full-sized arrow keys and a number pad. The key travel is good for a gaming laptop with adequate clicky feedback. This is one of the most comfortable keyboards I have come across lately. There is a quick fan control shortcut that can be accessed by Fn key + Q key , that toggles between three modes – Quiet, Auto and Performance. The power button is positioned at the center above the keyboard. It has a soft white LED light when powered on. There is a bit of noticeable flex on the keyboard deck which was surprising since visually, the machine looks solidly built.

There is a fairly large touchpad. There are no visible physical buttons on the pad but it is underneath the surface, so you just see a rectangular pad. The touchpad is made of Mylar, a material that is more shatter-resistant than glass which is often used on laptops.

Performance of Legion 5

A good thermal management is expected of any gaming laptops worth it salt, which contributes to the bulkiness in general of the machines. Lenovo has done a good job here. There are two big metal plates shielding the VRMs and the graphic cards. They have thrown in three heat pipes, one each for CPU and GPU and another shared between them. There are additional four heat spreaders. All this effectively gives a good thermal control to the machine while gaming.

For those who would like to pour through synthetic benchmark scores, I got it covered here for you. On 3D Mark standard Time Spy test, it hit a score of 3402. On PC Mark 10 test, the result was 3342.

On CrystalMark read write test, it showed 3386.31 MB/s on read test and 1451.94 MB/s on write test.

Both the Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 7 models are equipped with NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Ti graphics cards. This might not be the latest graphics card to get but it is a tried and tested card and which offers decently good performance for a competitively priced gaming laptop. For the price range especially the Ryzen 5 which I got here is positioned it does a remarkable job with gaming. In my Far Cry 5 gaming, 64 fps in normal graphics and around 55 fps in ultra settings, which is a respectable gaming performance for this segment. The thermal management kicks in nicely, I did not find any alarming heating happening during gaming. Overall, it was a good machine for gaming.

Verdict:

In India, the Legion 5 powered by Ryzen 5 4600H is available around Rs 67,000. For this price, the Legion 5 does pretty well as a gaming laptop. It also can double up as a capable work laptop.

Pros of Legion 5

• Good performance
• Value for money gaming laptop
• Good port assortment
• Good thermal management
• Physical shutter for webcam
• Good keyboard layout

Cons of Legion 5

• No SD card reader
• sRGB and DCI-P3 colour gamut on the lower range