With Lenovo entering the gaming space, their Lenovo Legion Y740 is one heck of a machine encased in a thin and light, all-aluminum chassis. Being new to the space, Lenovo tapped Corsair for its iCUE lighting system, Dolby for its Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos to deliver a best-in-class system that’ll sure to deliver near-perfect gaming immersion.
Design
It seems that the gaming space is evolving into a more mature segment where you can get gaming laptops without it looking like something from Area 51. If you’re a fan of Thinkpads or Lenovo’s line of laptops, the Legion inherits some of its features. I love the Y740’s subtle design, bar the huge LEGION logo on its lid. Lenovo really delivered on its promise of stylish for work, savage for play. The Y740 weighs only 2.2kg and measure only 20mm.
Lenovo did right with placing some of the I/O ports on the back of the laptop, a trend we’d love to see in future machines. It just looks tidier when cables are coming off from the back. There’s a mini-DP port, a full-sized HDMI, 2x USB 3.1 ports, an RJ-45 lan port and the charging port. The left side houses the 3.5mm headphone/mic port and a Thunderbolt 3 Type-C. The right side has an additional USB 3.1 port and a NOVO hole, which is Lenovo’s proprietary recovery software. This hole allows you to perform system recovery with just a push of a button.
Lenovo has designed the Legion Y740 with heat in mind. Thanks to Legion Coldfront, heat is no longer a concern when setting up for long gaming sessions. Coldfront provides dual-channel thermal features, which gives the CPU and GPU its own individual cooling system with four thermal vents. The dedicated heatsinks keep the keyboard cool and comfortable to use and to top it all off, the 70 fan blades per channel is not as audible as you would imagine. But after playing for a few hours, you can still feel the underside of the laptop to be very warm.
Build Quality
The chassis is made up of thin and light aluminum. This also makes the Y740 durable while keeping the total system weight down. There’s minimal flex on the keyboard and the LCD due to its metal frame. The overall design is very minimalistic and reminds me of Thinkpads. The matte surface of the lid is good at keeping fingerprints at bay, so if you want a laptop that’s always neat to look at, consider the Y740.
The keyboard is also great to use. If you’re used to using Thinkpads at work, you’ll see the familiar shape of the keys. The RGB lighting is individually programmable through the use of Corsair’s iCue software. There are a set of additional keys on the left side, which takes a while to get used to. The touchpad is nothing remarkable, just your regular ol’ touchpad with clicky left and right buttons. Though obviously, you’d use a gaming mouse when playing games.
Panel
The Legion Y740’s panel is eye-poppingly good. The 15.6” display provides a near-edgeless visual experience thanks to its thin bezels. Although the webcam sitting at the bottom may be a distraction to some, but it’s still a good display. One of the best displays I’ve seen in a laptop recently. The FHD IPS panel has a refresh rate of 144 Hz and supports NVIDIA G-Sync to provide a tear-free gaming experience. The screen is also Dolby Vision-certified which makes colors pop and gives a more immersive experience with its high dynamic range. The vividness of the images really pop especially when playing games with Ray Tracing support.
Performance
The unit we got is powered by an 8th Gen Intel Core i7-8750H 6-core CPU with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 with 16 GB of DDR4 2666 Mhz RAM. Now the 2060 in this is a desktop-caliber GPU, which runs any current titles without breaking a sweat. I find the 2060 to be lacking if you plan to play the latest AAA titles with Ray Tracing on.
To test the Lenovo Legion Y740, we ran a couple of synthetic benchmarks and Assassin’s Creed Odyssey.
Conclusion
Lenovo Legion is a welcome addition to the gaming laptop market. Being an established name in laptops already, Lenovo just needed to tweak a few designs and kept what made their laptops a commonplace in the office. The subtle style paired with today’s latest technology enables this gaming laptop to deliver one of the most immersive gaming experiences you can find that can fit in your backpack. But with the price point of 119,995 php, there are a wide array of laptops in this price range.