Lenovo Legion Y530, a "gamer" laptop with very good value for money

Construction

This new Lenovo laptop may well belong to the gamer range "Legion", it is nonetheless particularly sober in terms of design. RGB point, colored neon and aggressive curves: the Chinese manufacturer opts for a very classic black chassis, very square, and a hardened plastic cover. The only fantasy here comes from the "Legion" logo which lights up in white once the PC is turned on. The coating on the top benefits from a light "brushed" effect which is seen very little with the naked eye, but is felt largely under the fingers.

The design of this PC, however, has an originality: that of extending the rear part to take advantage of a better air evacuation system, but also integrating almost all of the connectors. This gives a little more cachet to the product, even if this aesthetic choice will surely not be to everyone's taste.

By lifting the hood, we discover an input area surrounded by a "soft touch" rubber coating very pleasant to the touch and which has the advantage of not retaining fingerprints. The keyboard occupies the entire width of the chassis and has a numeric keypad, which is however strangely placed above the directional arrows. It takes some time to adapt to use it naturally, but it has the merit of existing. The keyboard itself is very satisfactory, offering very good typing comfort. The stroke of the keys is quite long and the return is very present. To type text and play, it will do the trick. The touchpad is however less convincing, especially because of its very small size. It is in the user's best interest to use a mouse to be truly comfortable.

The connectivity of the Legion Y530 is very good, and the fact that the majority of the ports are located at the back is pleasant and allows to gain "cleanliness" on the desktop. Two USB 3.0 ports and an audio jack are however wedged on the sides, for obvious accessibility issues. Turning over the PC, we also discover an additional USB 3.0 port, an HDMI 2 output, a mini DisplayPort 1.4, a USB 3.1 Type-C port, a gigabit Ethernet port. Yellow card, on the other hand, for the absence of memory card reader.

With fairly large openings at the back and sides, the Legion Y530 is a well-ventilated and noise-controlled laptop. Most of the heat is dissipated mainly behind and little on the sides, which avoids a hot breath on the hand when using a mouse. The underside of the PC, however, quickly rises in temperature, with a hot spot found at 52.5 ° C. At the front, the PC does not exceed 47 ° C just above the keyboard and 55.3 ° C at the back. The heat is therefore well distributed. When it is very busy (in our case an hour of benchmark under Metro Last Light), the Legion Y530 obviously makes a little noise, but the breath remains diffuse and not very annoying. We have noted a volume of 40 dB, which remains very acceptable for this type of product.

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Screen

The Legion Y530 incorporates a 15.6-inch screen, displaying a Full HD definition (1,920 x 1,080 pixels). The panel used is IPS and matt, which guarantees good viewing angles and limited reflections. Typical characteristics for a laptop dedicated to the game, although the use of TN technology instead of IPS could have offered a better persistence. This is the only real defect of this screen here, since we measured the remanence at 22 ms, which is high and regrettable for a product dedicated largely to video games. However, the screen has a very good occupancy rate of 81%, thanks to a very thin frame on the top and sides.

For the rest, this screen largely fulfills its contract, offering both good colorimetry and good readability. We thus note a contrast ratio of 1140: 1 as well as a maximum brightness of 320 cd / m2. The image is well developed, readable and clear, especially since the gamma curve, very stable, guarantees a good gray gradient.

As for the Delta E and the color temperature, they are respectively 4.3 and 6,716 K. Recall that the Delta E, that is to say the difference between the colors displayed and the real colors, must be as low as possible and that the temperature must be as close as 6,500 K to be balanced. The figures here are very good, allowing this screen to display faithful colors and a gray gradient which does not draw either blue or red.

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Performances

The Y530 model tested here incorporates the latest generation components and targets the high end. There is thus an Intel Core i7-8750H processor (6 cores / 12 threads, frequencies ranging from 2.2 to 4.1 GHz), 8 GB of RAM (DDR4 2666 MHz), a 256 GB SSD and a disk 1 TB hard drive at 5,400 rpm . On paper, a technical sheet that gives hope for an excellent level of performance.

In practice, this laptop PC does not disappoint at all and displays excellent results on all of our benchmarks (file compression, audio and video conversion, 3D calculation, photo editing). The score of 91 is thus one of the best of the moment in this category of laptops and the OS is particularly fluid and responsive. In practice, this laptop is therefore extremely versatile and is ideal for a very wide variety of tasks on the go.

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Games

In addition to being a particularly efficient PC in office automation, the Legion Y530 is a very good gaming machine, thanks to the integration of a GeForce GTX 1060 graphics card, with 6 GB of video memory. During our tests, this GPU behaved very well, displaying a maximum frequency of 1.8 GHz, and this, in a stable manner. In practice, this model is therefore suitable for video games in Full HD at 60 fps. Some games will, however, require a slightly lower level of detail to reach this score. Here are our results (tests carried out in Full HD, at maximum level of detail, with Hairworks disabled on The Witcher 3, however):

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Mobility / Autonomy

For a laptop dedicated to gaming, the Legion Y530 is doing very well in terms of transportability and autonomy. It is of course far from reaching the small footprint of an ultraportable, but its weight of 2.3 kg and its relatively small dimensions (365 x 260 x 24.2 mm) allow it to be slipped into a size bag average. However, you must deal with a fairly bulky diet.

Where the product really surprises, it is on its autonomy, particularly satisfactory for its category. If we should not expect a miracle in game (1 h 30 min, 2 hours, maximum on a gourmet game), our streaming video playback test (Netflix in Chrome, screen brightness at 200 cd / m2, keyboard backlight off, headphones plugged in ) reached 6 h 12 min. A very good score for a 15 inch with a GTX graphics card.

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Audio

The audio on the Legion Y530 does not shine particularly well, but remains in a fairly good average for this type of product. However, we deplore the position of the speakers, at the front just under the hood, which tends to muffle the sound, even more when you have your hands on the keyboard. What is more, the very great distance of the source from the screen causes an unnatural rendering when watching a video. A "Dolby Audio" software overlay is also offered and we have noticed a slightly better rendering when it is activated, in particular by activating the "Personalize" profile, but by deactivating all the effects (screenshot below). In this configuration, the mids are correct, the voices are intelligible and not too fuzzy. The treble extremes, however, have a whistling rendering and lack precision. In short, these speakers will do the trick for extra listening and communication, but no more.

The headphone output is more satisfactory, even if we deplore a bit of power for a laptop that wants to be "gamer". The distortion is controlled and the crosstalk is particularly good. A versatile outing, therefore, which will adapt very well to all consumer helmets.

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Conclusion

The Lenovo Legion Y530 brilliantly takes over from the Y520 and is positioned as one of the best value for money of the moment on the segment of the laptop dedicated to gaming. Powerful and well built, it also incorporates a quality screen and pays the luxury of good autonomy for this type of product. Only the high remanence of the panel - which could upset the most demanding players - and a touchpad that is too small provide some shade to the board.

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