NEW Lenovo Legion Y7000 15.6" FHD IPS Gaming Laptop review

NEW Lenovo Legion Y7000 15.6" FHD IPS Gamin gLaptop review

NEW Lenovo Legion Y7000 15.6" FHD IPS Gaming Laptop review

The Lenovo Legion Y7000 offers a great design, powerful performance and a supercolorful display, all for an affordable price.

A Lenovo Legion laptop with no hint of red? The Y7000 is a more mature step forward that drops the gaudy glossy look of older Lenovo gaming laptops for a smoother and more uniform narrow-bezel design. The end result is a notebook without all the bright or eccentric colors often associated with powerful gaming machines.

Lenovo unveiled the Legion Y7000 back in June alongside its Legion Y530 "twin". We use the term loosely as both 15.6-inch gaming laptops are visually distinct and different, but they are otherwise nearly identical from the inside as our review below will detail.

In short, the Y7000 and Y530 use the same motherboard design wrapped in different shells to cater to different market segments. While the Y530 experimented with a gamer-business hybrid design, the Y7000 is all gamer from top to bottom.

First Lenovo learned to make cheap gaming laptops. Now it’s learned to make cheap gaming laptops that also look good. I’ve spent the last few weeks with the Lenovo Legion Y7000, a stopgap release that sticks with Nvidia’s GTX 10-series graphics cards as Lenovo’s flagship Y500 and Y700 models start to transition to higher-end (and higher-priced) RTX 20-series GPUs.

Is it a performance monster? The type of laptop you buy to impress your friends? Absolutely not. But it’s a smart, sophisticated option that will perform admirably for at least a few years—and at a competitive price point.

FOR
Sleek, sports car design
Colorful display
Comfortable keyboard
Strong overall performance and graphics
Decent battery life

above average CPU Turbo Boost performance
more mature gaming-professional design
larger trackpad than Legion Y530
narrow bezels on three sides
2x upgradeable storage bays
strong hinges; no teetering
respectable battery life
quiet under low loads
full-size Arrow keys

AGAINST
Poor audio
Nose cam

average display response times; noticeable ghosting
port positioning could be better
suboptimal webcam positioning
no SD reader or Thunderbolt 3
no dedicated mouse keys
no per-key RGB lighting
lid could be more rigid
limited hinge angle
servicing is tricky

TECH SPECS
Bluetooth Bluetooth 4.2
Brand Lenovo
CPU 2.2 GHz Intel Core i7-8750H processor
Display Size 15.6
Graphics Card Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 GPU
Hard Drive Size 256GB SSD
Hard Drive Type SSD
Highest Available Resolution 1920 x 1080
Native Resolution 1920x1080
Operating System Windows 10 Home
Ports (excluding USB) USB 3.1, RJ-45, Mini DisplayPort, Headphone/Mic, HDMI 2.0, USB 3.1 with Type-C
RAM 16GB
Secondary Hard Drive Size 1TB
Secondary Hard Drive Speed 7,200
Secondary Hard Drive Type HDD
Size 14.21 x 10.5 x 1.06 -- 0.89 inches
Touchpad Size 4.1 x 2.7-inch
USB Ports 4
Video Memory 6 GB
Warranty/Support One-year limited warranty
Weight 5.27 pounds
Wi-Fi 802.11ac

Quality gaming at an affordable price is not impossible. the Lenovo Legion Y7000 features a strong Core i7 CPU and GTX 1060 GPU packed into a stylish chassis with a comfortable keyboard, a wildly colorful 15.6-inch display and above-average battery life. This machine has some flaws, including its irritating speakers and awkwardly placed webcam. However, the Legion Y7000 is a great overall gaming laptop for the price, and we even named it one of our best VR-ready laptops and best video editing laptops.

Case

Older Lenovo gaming laptops were overdone from a visual standpoint. The 15-inch Ideapad Y700, for example, had glossy brushed aluminum surfaces, rubberized matte palm rests, red grilles, and a reflective edge-to-edge display all in one. The Legion Y7000 is simpler, all matte, and much less showy than before for an ultimately sleeker gaming aesthetic. The three-sided narrow bezels are reminiscent to the Asus GL504 and FX705 series but with the webcam forced to a suboptimal position below the bottom edge. Fingerprints build up fairly quickly especially on the rubberized palm rests and keyboard deck.

Base rigidity is above average with excellent torsional resistance and no creaking. Nonetheless, it's still a step below the Alienware 15 as pushing down on the keyboard center visibly warps the surface compared to the more hardened Alienware. The lid of the Lenovo is also weaker and more prone to flexing when compared to the aforementioned Asus GL504 or Alienware.

The single center hinge is uniformly firm at all angles with no teetering when typing. Its biggest drawback is the low maximum angle of about 140 degrees compared to 150 degrees or higher on competing models. Even the lid of the Legion Y530 can open up to ~175 degrees if needed.

Construction quality is excellent from top to bottom with no unintended gaps or noticeable defects on our test unit. It's an improvement over our old Ideapad Y50 where the narrow rear grilles were cracked upon arrival.

Dimensions and weight are nearly the same as the Legion Y530. Its length is slightly longer than the MSI GF63 or HP Pavilion Gaming 15 since the extended "jet engine" rear improves cooling at the cost of added volume. The larger Alienware 15 and Asus ROG G752 have similar design approaches. Users who want something smaller and lighter with the same performance options as our Legion Y7000 should consider the MSI GS65.

Design

The Legion Y7000 features a sleek, Iron Gray aluminum hood that curves down to an angled hinge with vent grills that are reminiscent of a sports car. The white Legion logo sunk in the middle glows as if it were the source of the Y7000's power.

Its ABS plastic interior is lathered in black, and Lenovo's standard keyboard illuminates the keys with white backlighting. The Y7000's bezels are noticeably slim, but that comes at a cost for the webcam, which is placed on the bottom bezel. The hinge is attached by one solid piece in the center, creating a slim gap on the left and right side of that part.

At 5.3 pounds and 14.2 x 10.5 x 1.0-0.9 inches, the Legion Y7000 is lighter and thinner than the Acer Predator Helios 300 Special Edition (5.5 pounds, 1.1 inches) and the Asus TUF Gaming FX705 (6.1 pounds, 15.7 x 11 x 1 inches).

The Legion Y7000 measures 14. 2 by 10.5 by 1.0 inches and weighs a smidge over 5 pounds. That makes it smaller (and significantly lighter) than your average “desktop replacement” gaming machine, but still not nearly as portable as, say, the Razer Blade. The base is especially dense, a thick hunk of plastic that nevertheless hides some of its bulk with sharply tapered edges. It’s nicely complemented by the lid, thin and aluminum-plated, with Lenovo’s distinctive “Y” logo backlit in white. There’s no other external branding, which is a classy (and confident) touch.

Pop the lid open and you’ll find a 15.6-inch IPS display with a 1920x1080 resolution, a standard 60Hz refresh rate, and a slightly underwhelming 277 nits maximum brightness. It’s not a great screen, and you won’t want to do any color-intensive work on it, but there are no surprises here either. It’s exactly the display you’d expect to see in a mid-tier gaming laptop. And the Legion Y7000’s slim top and side bezels are a real coup at this price, helping reduce its overall footprint.

There’s a compromise, though. Or rather, two compromises. First of all, the webcam is placed at the bottom of the screen, which is never a flattering angle. It’s a shame Lenovo couldn’t figure out a way to embed it at the top like Razer did with the similarly slim Blade.

The second issue: Lenovo’s opted for a full keyboard complete with numpad and arrow keys, but because of the thin bezels there’s less room to work with on the base as well. Thus the keyboard is slightly condensed, with the Escape key pressed up against F1 and the right edge of the typing field brushing the numpad. Personally I think Lenovo would’ve been better off omitting the numpad entirely. You gain almost nothing from it, especially when it comes to gaming, and meanwhile it’s comically hard to pinpoint the Backspace key. I was constantly misfiring the “4” on the numpad, my finger expecting a gap and then not finding one.

On the other hand, it’s nice to have full-size arrow keys. Pointless, maybe—you rarely use them for games nowadays so again, they could have been omitted or shrunk to make more room for the main keyboard. But I often take advantage of the arrow keys when writing, or while browsing the internet, and the Legion Y7000’s setup is a lot more practical for those purposes than the half-sized arrow keys you usually find on laptops. It’s a fairly pleasant machine to write on as well, with a stiff but snappy response to the keys, and white backlighting.

The trackpad is offset to the left, centered on the space bar instead of the laptop itself. That’s fairly standard on gaming laptops, but it can take some time to adjust. More annoying is that there are no discrete mouse buttons, though if you’re gaming on a laptop you’ll probably want to plug a mouse in. Be warned that both trackpad and the surrounding soft-touch plastic pick up more than their fair share of fingerprints and grease smudges. The “Fresh New Laptop” look doesn’t stick around for long.

The speakers are unremarkable, but loud—which is good, because so are the fans. The Lenovo Legion Y7000 runs fairly cool for day-to-day use, enough so the fans didn’t kick on while watching video. Games result in an immediate whoosh of air though. That’s to be expected from gaming laptops of course, and the Y7000 is admittedly less shrill than slimmer laptops like the Blade, but even so the fan noise was loud enough to be distracting. Invest in a decent gaming headset.

My only remaining complaint: Rear ports. So many rear ports.

The Legion Y7000 has a 3.5mm jack on the left side, plus a single USB 3.1 port on both the left and right side. Everything else is on the back, including another USB 3.1 port, a USB-C port, HDMI and Mini-DisplayPort, ethernet, a lock, and the rectangular charging port. Rear ports are great if you plan to set your laptop up on a desk, as it’s easier to hide the clutter. They’re a pain when you want to use your laptop like an actual laptop though, and I prefer my inputs arrayed on the left and right sides with additional vents at the back.
Connectivity

Port selection and even positioning are identical to the Legion Y530. This means that most of the ports are located towards the rear of the system while the two sides have one USB Type-A port each. Lenovo's approach saves on desk space, but commonly used ports like USB Type-C and HDMI are more cumbersome to reach as a result. We can accept the lack of Thunderbolt 3 since the Legion Y7000 is technically a budget-mainstream gaming system, but the absence of a SD card reader sticks out like a sore thumb.

Communication

Whereas the Legion Y530 ships with a 1.73 Gbps Intel 9560 WLAN module, the Y7000 ships with the less expensive Realtek RTL8822BE running at half the maximum theoretical transfer rate. Casual gamers are unlikely to notice the difference in performance. Perhaps more importantly, we experienced no connectivity issues during our time with the test unit.

Ports

The Legion Y7000 has a good selection of ports for gaming and streaming.

On the left there's one USB 3.1 port and an audio jack, while the right side has one USB 3.1 port.

The back of the Legion Y7000 holds the rest of the goodies, like one USB Type-C port, one Mini DisplayPort 1.4, one USB 3.1 port, an HDMI 2.0 port, an Ethernet RJ45 port, the power jack and a Kensington lock slot.

Display

The Legion Y7000's 15.6-inch, 1920 x 1080p panel is surprisingly colorful and sharp, but it could be brighter.

In the latest trailer for Aladdin, I was practically hypnotized by the genie lamp's bold, sparking blue vortex. In the same scene, I could spot individual threads breaking off the top of the Magic Carpet's seams. I wish the display were a little brighter, however, because when Will Smith came out of the lamp, the surrounding background looked noticeably dark.

Display options include either 1080p60 or 1080p144 with no glossy, Gorilla Glass, or 4K alternatives. Contrast and maximum brightness are where we expect them to be for a gaming laptop at about 800:1 and 300 nits, respectively. The matte panel does not exhibit any major graininess issues for a very clean picture. A slight level of graininess is noticeable if viewing at an angle or from the side.

Whereas the Legion Y530 uses an AU Optronics B156HAN02.1 IPS panel, the Legion Y7000 uses a BOE NV156FHM-N61 IPS panel instead to offer a wider color coverage. This same BOE panel can also be found on the Xiaomi Mi Notebook Pro, Razer Blade 15 Base Model, and even the ThinkPad X1 Extreme. Consequently, all these 15-inch laptops share similar display properties.

The two noteworthy drawbacks of the display are pulse-width modulation and the slow black-white and gray-gray response times. We are able to detect a high PWM frequency on all brightness levels up to 99 percent that may impact a very small subset of users. Meanwhile, ghosting is more noticeable on our 60 Hz panel. We're unsure if the 144 Hz panel option will have faster 3 ms or 5 ms response times like on the Asus GL504 for an almost ghost-free gaming experience.

Backlight bleeding is very minor with just a hint of light along the right edge.

The Legion Y7000's 15.6-inch, 1920 x 1080p panel is surprisingly colorful and sharp, but it could be brighter.

As I played Shadow of the Tomb Raider, each strand of hair on Lara's head was sharp as it glistened in the light of the sun. The crashed plane in the distance had a distinct red-orangish color that glowed like an emergency flare in the forest. However, even as I explored the sunlit forest, the display wasn't very vibrant.

The Legion Y7000 covered 153 percent of the sRGB color spectrum. That result blows away the 111 mainstream gaming laptop average, which is impressive for a laptop this cheap. This Lenovo also wrecked the Helios 300 (113 percent) and the TUF FX705 (123 percent).

Color space is approximately 86 percent and 56 percent of the AdobeRGB and sRGB standards, respectively, with no options for full sRGB coverage unlike on the larger Asus GL704 series. The Legion Y530 alternative has a narrower color gamut to our surprise. For gaming purposes, however, a very wide gamut is usually not a priority.

Colorimeter measurements reveal just average colors and grayscale. Our calibration attempts improve nearly every aspect of the display and we recommend it for the most accurate colors and grayscale possible. Colors still become less accurate at higher saturation levels due to the panel's imperfect sRGB coverage.

At 277 nits, the Legion Y7000 beats the category average (273 nits) and the TUF FX705's score (270 nits) despite looking rather dim in real-world testing. However, it couldn't beat the Helios 300's luminous 312 nits.

Keyboard and Touchpad

The Legion Y7000's keys are so punchy and satisfying to type on that I would have thought my fingers were tap-dancing on a cloud if I didn't know better.

I also appreciate that the keyboard isn't the gaudy, gamer-aesthetic mess that you typically find on cheap gaming laptops. Instead, it's a standard black and white keyboard with a numpad and strong white backlighting.

The Legion Y7000's keys are so punchy and satisfying to type on that I would have thought my fingers were tap-dancing on a cloud if I didn't know better.

The keys measure 1.4 millimeters of travel, which is just a fraction off of our preferred 1.5 to 2.0mm, but they require a solid 71 grams of force to actuate (in line with a 60-gram minimum). I blazed through 78 words per minute on the 10fastfingers.com typing test, passing my typical 66 wpm.

The 4.1 x 2.7-inch touchpad is responsive and soft to the touch, and it offers a meaty click. It also smoothly registered Windows 10 gestures, like two-finger scrolling and three-finger tabbing

Key size, feedback, and layout are identical to the keyboard of the Y530 and so our same comments apply here. The 1.7 mm travel is deeper than on many Ultrabooks where <1.4 mm is common, but feedback is slightly softer than the keys on the Asus GL504 especially in regards to the smaller NumPad keys. Thankfully, the Arrow keys are large and not cramped unlike on most other 15.6-inch gaming laptops.

The single-zone white backlight has two brightness levels. Users who want RGB colors should consider the Legion Y730 instead.

Touchpad

Unlike the keyboard, the trackpad on the Y7000 is different than the one on the Y530. There are no more dedicated mouse keys in favor of a larger surface area (10.5 x 7.0 cm vs. 10.0 x 5.1 cm). Thus, it's a deliberate double-edged sword as clicking on the clickpad is softer, quieter, and shallower than on the Y530 while multi-touch inputs are now easier. The plastic texture is otherwise similar to the Y530 if not slightly weaker since the larger surface warps more easily to pressure. It's serviceable, but we wish it could have been firmer.

Maintenance

Serviceability requires a Philips screwdriver and a sharp edge. The bottom panel is tightly latched around the edges and it is consequently very tricky to pry open.

Once inside, users have direct access to the internal battery, WLAN module, both storage bays, and the cooling solution. The two SODIMM slots are inconveniently behind a metal shield.

The internal layout is almost identical to the layout of the Y530 as shown below despite their very different external designs.

Accessories and Warranty

There are no included extras in the box outside of the AC adapter and usual paperwork. A velvet cleaning cloth would have been a nice addition.

The standard one-year limited warranty applies. This model is not yet available on the official Lenovo website as of this writing which may impact its extended warranty options with the manufacturer. Please see our Guarantees, Return policies and Warranties FAQ for country-specific information.

Audio

The Legion Y7000's speakers were somewhat disappointing when I listened to Twenty One Pilots' "Stressed Out." The bassy beats that intro the song were muffled and lacked the proper impact. And when the vocals kicked off, they were too sharp, as if someone had cranked up the treble to max. It was also off-putting to hear the cymbals match and even overwhelm the vocals.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider's bustling forest was filled with birds and frogs, but the chirping and croaking sounded hollow. And when the background music hit a crescendo, it was unpleasantly sharp. The dialogue between Lara and Jonah was loud but lacked bass, so it didn't sound full. A similar effect happened when I fired my arrow and I didn't hear the satisfying bowstring snap I was expecting.

Armed with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 GPU with 6GB of VRAM, the Legion Y7000 didn't miss a step as I ran through the forest in Shadow of the Tomb Raider at max settings.

I tried messing with Lenovo Vantage's Dolby audio settings, but whether I changed my setting to Dynamic, Music or Gaming, the sound consistently sounded sharp and lacked bass.

System Noise
Fan noise (White: Background, Red: System idle, Blue: 3DMark 06, Orange: Witcher 3, Green: Maximum stress)

The cooling solution consists of two fans and three heat pipes between them not unlike on the Y530. One fan appears to be slightly smaller in diameter than the other (~45 mm vs. ~50 mm) likely in an attempt to reduce fan pitch when both fans are active.

The system fans will idle for a silent experience during light tasks like word processing. Nonetheless, we are still able to record a noise of about 31 dB(A) against a background of 28.4 dB(A) because of the spinning HDD in our test unit. Fan noise is similar to the MSI GS65 when gaming at about 45 to 46 dB(A). Extreme loads will induce a temporary fan noise of 50 dB(A) for just a few seconds before throttling kicks in. Overall, the Y7000 is louder than our lesser-equipped Y530 since the same fans and heat pipes must cool the more demanding GTX 1060 GPU.

Speakers

Visually, the Harman stereo speakers appear to be exactly the same as the speakers on the Legion Y530. Nonetheless, our pink noise graphs for the two systems are quite different. The Y530 is seemingly better at providing a more balanced audio experience between bass and treble sounds while the Y7000 is a bit louder. The palm rests reverberate slightly if on higher volume settings since the speakers are so close to the front corners.

There is no special Lenovo software included for fine-tuning the audio experience unlike on gaming notebooks from MSI, Asus, or Dell.

Gaming, Graphics and VR

Armed with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 GPU with 6GB of VRAM, the Legion Y7000 didn't miss a step as I ran through the forest in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, spotted a baby frog on a rock and shot it with an arrow, all at 35 frames per second (Highest, 1080p).

On the Rise of the Tomb Raider benchmark at Very High settings at 1080p, the Legion Y7000 nailed 37 fps, climbing over the 35-fps average for mainstream gaming laptops. Lenovo's machine also landed between the Helios 300 (38 fps) and the TUF FX705 (36 fps), both of which have the same GPU.

The Legion Y7000 hit 70 fps on the Hitman benchmark (Ultra, 1080p), a score that tops the category average (66 fps) and the TUF FX705's result but not the Helios 300's mark (72 fps).

While the Grand Theft Auto V benchmark (Very High, 1080p) pushed the Legion Y7000 to its limit, the machine just matched the category average, with 46 fps. Meanwhile, the Helios 300 and TUF FX705 came out ahead, with 51 and 47 fps, respectively.

The Legion Y7000 can perform decently in VR, as it scored a 7 out of 11 on the SteamVR Performance Test. That beats the 6.3 category average as well as the TUF FX705's result (6.9), but the Helios 300 scored a slightly higher 7.9.

Performance

Under the hood of this beast lies a 2.2-GHz Intel Core i7-8750H processor with 16GB of RAM that easily tore through 40 Google Chrome tabs, a 1080p YouTube video and Spotify, all while Shadow of the Tomb Raider was running in the background.

On the Geekbench 4.3 performance test, the Legion Y7000 nailed 22,474, leaving the mainstream gaming laptop average (20,748) and the Helios 300 (20,595) in the dust. However, the TUF FX705 topped both laptops, with 23,179. They all had the same CPU, but the TUF FX705 has double the RAM, at 32GB.

The Legion Y7000 took 38 seconds to match 65,000 names and addresses on our Excel test, meaning this machine is a few seconds faster than the 0:42 category average and the Helios 300 (0:45). The TUF FX705 finished the test at a much faster 9 seconds.

On the HandBrake benchmark, the Legion Y7000 transcoded a 4K video to 1080p in just 9 minutes and 24 seconds, crushing the category average (11:10), the Helios 300's time (10:30) and the TUF FX705's mark (10:45).

Lenovo's 256GB SSD copied 4.97GB of data in 8 seconds, for a blazing-fast transfer rate of 636 megabytes per second that nearly doubles the 328-MBps category average. While the 256GB SSDs in the Helios 300 and TUF FX705 trumped the average, at 364 MBps and 392 MBps, respectively, they weren't anywhere near the Legion's rate.

The Coffee Lake-H Core i5-8300H and i7-8750H are common options across the latest lineup of gaming laptops. Instead, it's the GPU that determines whether the gaming laptop is entry-level, mainstream, or high-end. The GTX 1050, 1050 Ti, and 1060 options on the Legion Y7000 place the system in the budget-mainstream category. RAM options range from 8 GB up to 32 GB DDR4.

Nvidia Optimus is included for automatic graphics switching to the integrated UHD Graphics 630.

Mid-tier price, mid-tier performance. That’s exactly what Lenovo promised with the Legion Y7000 and exactly what it delivered when we ran it through our benchmark gamut. The GeForce GTX 1060 is a well-established piece of hardware at this point, and even the i7-8750H is familiar territory. The Y7000 put up the expected numbers against similarly equipped peers like the Acer Predator Helios 300, and blew away the GTX 1050-equipped Lenovo Legion Y530 we tested last year.

First up is Cinebench, which measures a CPU’s short-term performance. The Y7000’s score of 1,020 won’t turn any heads, nor does it best the aforementioned Acer machine. It’s well within the margin of error though, which is no surprise. These machines are basically identical, and thus put up basically identical scores. That’s what you want to see, actually! It means there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the Legion Y7000, no aggressive throttling or heat-related problems to hunt down.

System Performance

PCMark benchmark scores are within single-digit percentages of other gaming laptops equipped with the same i7-8750H CPU and GTX 1060 GPU. Navigation is smooth and applications launch almost instantaneously as one would expect from a SSD-based laptop. We experienced no software or hardware issues during our time with the unit unlike on the recent Yoga C930 or XPS 15 9570.

NEW Lenovo Legion Y7000 15.6" FHD IPS Gaming Laptop review

Storage Devices

Two internal storage bays are available (2.5-inch SATA III + M.2 NVMe). Our specific test configuration includes a primary 256 GB Samsung SSD PM981 and a secondary 1 TB Seagate Barracuda Pro ST1000LM049. While sequential write rate from the SSD is good, sequential read rate is unusually slow at about 864 MB/s even after multiple retests. The same SSD in our MSI GS65, for example, returns a more impressive sequential read write of 1612 MB/s on the same AS SSD benchmark.

The Seagate HDD has a slow average transfer rate of 84 MB/s according to HD Tune. We were expecting a bit more from the 7200 RPM drive since the Hitachi Travelstar HTS725050A7E630 returns an average transfer rate of 101 MB/s on the same benchmark.

GPU Performance

The GTX 1060 is common on mainstream gaming laptops and so our Lenovo holds no surprises. Graphics performance is within 1 percent of the average GTX 1060 taken from 73 other GTX 1060-equipped laptops in our database. Fire Strike scores are 18 percent higher than the GTX 980M and almost 170 percent higher than the GTX 960M in the years-old Ideapad Y700. Users who want the lower-end configuration with GTX 1050 Ti graphics will take a 33 percent hit in graphics power.

Idling on Witcher 3 results in consistent frame rates with no recurring drops or disruptive background activity as shown by our graph below.

Battery Life

The Legion Y7000 has pretty decent battery life for a gaming laptop. When I continuously surfed the web over Wi-Fi at 150 nits of brightness, the battery lasted 4 hours and 28 minutes. The Legion performed slightly above the 4:26 category average and even outlasted the Helios 300 (3:00) and TUF FX705 (4:19)

Battery capacity is just slightly higher than on the Legion Y530, but battery life is strangely much longer. We're able to record a real-world WLAN runtime of almost 6 hours on our Y7000 compared to just 4 hours on the Y530 when subjected to similar loads and conditions. It's possible that background activity like Windows Update, McAfee Anti-Virus, or other auto-pre-installed software was active during the time of our Y530 test. Either way, 4 to 6 hours is slightly above average for mainstream gaming laptops.

Charging from empty to full capacity is slow at 2 to 2.5 hours. Most Ultrabooks take less time to recharge.

Power Consumption

The Lenovo demands anywhere between 5 W and 17 W when idling on desktop depending on the brightness setting and power profile. Power consumption is slightly higher than the Dell G7 during higher loads since the latter uses the more efficient Max-Q version of our GTX 1060.

Our graph below shows power consumption over time when running Prime95. Consumption is highest at about 136 W during the first few seconds of testing before promptly dropping and stabilizing at about 95 W. The results mirror our clock rate observations from the Stress Test section above since the CPU is unable to sustain maximum Turbo Boost clock rates indefinitely.

We are able to record a maximum draw of 175 W from the medium-sized (~15.4 x 6.4 x 3.2 cm) 170 W AC adapter when running both Prime95 and FurMark simultaneously. This high of a consumption is unsustainable due to throttling and so a larger AC adapter would likely not have increased system performance.

Webcam

Even if the Legion Y7000's webcam were good (it's not), it would still be completely useless because of its placement on the bottom bezel, as it just stares at my chest and nostrils.

The test shots I took were super grainy, and the ceiling lights in the background blew out half of the ceiling. However, to its credit, the webcam did capture the color in my blue and red shirt rather well.

Heat

While the Legion Y7000 can get hot under the hood, it's at most warm to the touch. After I played Shadow of the Tomb Raider for 15 minutes, the underside hit 123 degrees Fahrenheit, which is above our usual 95 degree comfort threshold. The center of the keyboard and touchpad measured 105 and 81 degrees, respectively. The hottest this machine got was 139 degrees, on the right vent on the underside.

On our normal heat test, the Legion Y7000's underside hit 102 degrees after the machine streamed a 15-minute HD video, while the center of the keyboard registered 85 degrees and the touchpad reached 94 degrees.

Processor
CineBench R15

The CineBench R15 Multi-Thread score is about 8 percent higher than the average Core i7-8750H in our database due to strong Turbo Boost performance. By running the benchmark in a loop, we can observe that processor performance in our Lenovo dips by about 11 percent over time due to throttling as shown by our comparison graph below. It's not perfect as we would've preferred a straight line to represent stable Turbo Boost clock rates, but the Asus Zephyrus S GX531GS with the same Core i7 CPU is consistently slower when subjected to the same loop test. Our Stress Test section below reveals that the Legion Y7000 is able to maintain a CPU core clock rate of 3.1 to 3.2 GHz even when under extreme processor stress.

Users who want the lower-cost configuration with the Core i5-8300H instead will take a 32 percent hit in multi-thread performance.

Software and Warranty

Lenovo throws in its usual Vantage app, which you can use to monitor your CPU, GPU, RAM and drives. The Optimizer tool can automatically manage your RAM, the Power tab lets you customize battery usage, and the Wi-Fi Security section can help you distinguish safe wireless networks from dangerous ones. You can also run a hardware scan and check your warranty through an app.

The Legion also features Lenovo's proprietary App Explorer, which hosts a bunch of apps and games, like Skype and Sonic Dash. And, of course, Windows 10 has its own apps already pre-installed on the device, like Cooking Fever, Candy Crush Saga and Township.

The Legion Y7000 comes with a one-year limited warranty. See how Lenovo performed on our Tech Support Showdown, Best and Worst Brands, and Best and Worst Gaming Brands rankings.

Bottom Line

The Lenovo Legion Y7000 is an affordable gaming laptop with premium features. On top of offering impressive gaming power via its GTX 1060 GPU, it has a quality chassis with a punchy keyboard, a vivid panel and solid battery life. However, the laptop's audio quality and webcam are disappointingThe Lenovo Legion Y7000 can be best described as an Asus ROG GL504GM but with fewer features and better performance-per-Dollar. Both systems carry the same CPU and GPU and both are nearly identical in size. Users who decide to pay extra for the Asus aren't necessarily paying for more performance, but they would be getting a few more features missing from the Lenovo including a SD card reader and multi-zone RGB backlight. From this perspective, the Legion Y7000 offers incredible gaming value for hundreds of dollars less while looking and feeling just as sharp.

The downsides of the system are relatively minor, but they certainly add up. Port positioning may not be ideal for some users and serviceability could have been easier. Better fan controls and webcam placement, a stiffer lid, more rigid trackpad, and perhaps less fingerprint-prone surfaces would have improved the user experience without needing to bump up the price. It's also slightly heavier or thicker than competing narrow-bezel alternatives like the MSI GF63 and the aforementioned ROG GL504. More serious FPS gamers should be wary of the base 60 Hz display option due to its relatively slow black-white response times.