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

HP Omen 15 2020 has a wider choice of configurations to choose from. The HP Omen 15-ek0019TX I got for my review is powered by Intel Core i7 10th gen combined with a modest NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1650 Ti. You can also get more adrenalin rush with GeForce® RTX 2070 with Max-Q configuration, if you are into higher spectrum of gaming.

HP OMEN 15-ek0019TX Specification

• Processor: Intel® Core™ i7-10750H (2.6 GHz base frequency, up to 5 GHz with Intel® Turbo Boost Technology, 12 MB L3 cache, 6 cores)
• Graphics adapter: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1650 Ti (4 GB GDDR6 dedicated)
• Memory:  16 GB DDR4-2933 SDRAM (2 x 8 GB)
• Display: 15.6-inch, 1920 x 1080pixel, 300 nits, 144Hz refresh rate
• Storage:  1 TB PCIe® NVMe™ M.2 SSD
• Connections: 1 SuperSpeed USB Type-C 5Gbps signaling rate (DisplayPort™ 1.4, HP Sleep and Charge); 1 SuperSpeed USB Type-A 5Gbps signaling rate (HP Sleep and Charge); 2 SuperSpeed USB Type-A 5Gbps signaling rate; 1 Mini DisplayPort™; 1 HDMI 2.0a; 1 RJ-45; 1 AC smart pin; 1 headphone/microphone combo
• Networking: Intel® Wi-Fi 6 AX201 (2×2) and Bluetooth® 5 combo
• Battery: 52.5 Wh Li-ion (3-cell)
• Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit
• Camera: 720p
• Audio: SAudio by Bang & Olufsen; DTS:X® Ultra; OMEN Audio Control Support DTS:X® Ultra; Dual speakers; HP Audio Boost 2.0
• Weight:  2.36 kg

Design and Build Quality

With the 2020 model, HP had toned down the aggressive dash of curves and lines in their gaming machines. When you call out gaming laptops these days, there are flurry of offerings with strong accentuated cuts and psychedelic LED colors popping out. The HP Omen 2020 lineup is muted in comparison and follows traditional laptop looks with robust build. It can sneakily blend in an office environment.

It is made of a combination of aluminum and plastic with the underlying chasis in metal and gives a sturdy and robust feel to it and probably can handle few knocks too. The matte finish on the lid tend to catch grease easily and is a fingerprint magnet. The lid has a diamond-shaped mirror-like logo which glistens in green and blue, depending on the angle viewed. Personally, I find the logo too bland but on hindsight, this subtle logo would appeal to even non-gamers.

Weighing 2.36 kg, the Omen 15 2020 definitely has fair bit of heft to it and measures 22.6mm in thickness. If you are planning a machine to carry often, this should be kept under consideration. A Wide Vision 720p HD web camera is housed on the top bezel. There is no privacy shutter, a while light indicator glows when the camera is active. Like most webcams in laptops, this is passable for video calls. The power button finds an odd place between the F12 and delete button.

The bottom has a large ventilation grills, which could inhale lots of air towards the heat sinks.

Ports

The HP Omen packs a lot in terms of port selection. On the left, you get a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A port, an HDMI port, an full-sized SD card reader, a Gigabit Ethernet port, headphone/microphone jack, and power jacks.

On the right side, you get a pair of USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A ports along with a mini DisplayPort and a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Thunderbolt Type-C port. 

Display

The Omen 15 2020 laptops can be flat laid to 180 degree and the hinge mechanism is confident. The Omen 15’s 15.6-inch 1920 x 1080-pixel display is love at first sight. I liked the popping colors, deep blacks and the colors are vibrant. Details are crisp and you will not miss anything in good game scenarios. It clocks 313 nits brightness which I find to be adequate and 71.8% of the DCI-P3 colour gamut is impressive. In short, the display is extremely likeable. There is also Nvidia G-Sync support.

Keyboard and Touchpad

The chiclet keyboard is almost silent which I kind of like for my laptops unlike the mechanical keyboards I like for my desktops. HP might also have gone for the silent treatment inline with the design choice of blending it in office ecosystem. The keyboard is full-fledged with separate numeric keys and calculator and arrow keys. I didn’t have any issues while typing. The travel distance is comfortable to use.

Then there is the RGB lighting, which most games would love to see. The back lighting can be customized from the OMEN command center. They keyboard is split into four zones for RGB lighting. The customization is not free wheeling but you can pick the colors for the four zones and the lighting is static. There is no strobbing, breathing or other dynamic effects.

The trackpad is large and easy to use. There are no separate dedicated left and right buttons. Omen 15 supports gestures and responds very well to them

Performance

Coming to the performance, if you are looking at top-notch gaming performance you should go with the GeForce® RTX 2070 for the max performance but that also costs a bit more than the unit I have here. Though the RTX 1650 Ti is not the powerful GPU from Nvidia, you can’t disown it, it still has in it. If you are aiming to mix gaming and work and a machine for multimedia editing, this variant proved to be fairly good in my use. This could be a good mid-level gaming machine. I used it for some of my video rendering and real-life use cases and it proved it to be a good reliable workhorse.

In 3D mark benchmark test we got 3897 in Time Spy test and 1761 in Time Spy Extreme test.

It has a Samsung NVme 1TB SSD storage. On Crystalmark 7 test, we got the following results in real-life performance and peak performance tests. There is 16GB of dual-channel DDR4 memory (8GB x 2 sticks), which can be upgraded to 32GB.

Omen Command center is you go-for destination to customize the keyboard lighting, adjust fan speed, monitor system diagnostics. For gamers, it also has an AI-based software that maps your play and throws pointers on your weak points. The game stream functionality aids to stream your game to another device in the same local network.

Battery life

The Omen 15 packs a 3-cell 52.5 Wh Li-ion battery. I could get a bit above 6 hours on an average on Omen 15 laptop, which is pretty good for a gaming laptop.

Verdict

The HP Omen 15-ek0019TX is a great mid-segment gaming laptop. If you don’t fancy the over the top design cues of gaming laptops and want something that would blend with your office environment, this is a great buy. Plus, the display is stellar and you get decent battery life for this segment.

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