Lenovo's Legion lineup includes the more portable Slim series of laptops, ideal for anyone who wants to trim some of the fat in the name of portability while still getting some high-end specs and a premium build quality.
The Legion Slim 5 14 (Gen 8) is a particularly impressive gaming laptop that will deliver a mid- to high-end gaming experience thanks to its AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS processor (CPU), Nvidia RTX 4060 Laptop GPU, and 2.8K OLED display with 120Hz refresh rate.
It's regularly priced at $1,480, but Best Buy has dropped it by $430 for a discounted price tag of $1,050.
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A high-end, portable design is key
Gaming laptops have a lot of performance hardware inside, and while they're still easier to carry around than a desktop, they can quickly become cumbersome. That's why I love the new trend of manufacturers offering 14-inch gaming laptops, ideal for anyone who wants to keep things as portable as possible.
In Lenovo's case, the Legion Slim 5 14 (Gen 8) is built into an aluminum chassis weighing about 3.86 pounds (1.75 kg) and measuring just 0.84 inches (21.3 mm) at the back where it's thickest.
I used this laptop last year and loved the overhauled design with rounded corners and a lid set forward on the main chassis. It's comfortable to use even for gaming marathon sessions, especially thanks to the TKL keyboard with 1.5 mm key travel.
The design isn't too aggressive, and you could easily use it for creative or productivity work that requires beefier hardware than your average Ultrabook. The model on sale at Best Buy has an AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS CPU, NVIDIA RTX 4060 Laptop GPU (running at 105W), 1 TB M.2 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD, and 16 GB of LPDDR5x RAM, altogether delivering respectable results in modern games even at the boosted 2.8K resolution.
Despite the smaller chassis, Lenovo's power balancing intelligently keeps the system from throttling, allowing you to eke out every last bit of potential from the hardware. And if you want to handle some non-gaming work, you can drop the screen's refresh rate and set the system to run on integrated graphics; I was able to get about five hours of battery life in my testing, which is not bad at all for a gaming laptop.
OLED is the only way to game
I was admittedly a holdout when it came to gaming on an OLED display, but testing a bunch of PCs with OLED displays has me converted. The incredible contrast ratio, the speedy refresh rates, and the deep color give all games a new look, even if you aren't using HDR.
Lenovo offers just one display for the Legion Slim 5 14 (Gen 8), but it's a true beauty. It measures 14.5 inches and has a 2880×1800 (2.8K) resolution, hitting a smooth 120Hz refresh rate that pairs very well with the RTX 4060 Laptop GPU. With 100% sRGB, 97% AdobeRGB, and 100% DCI-P3 color as tested, it can also work quite well for other tasks (like photo editing) that require accurate color reproduction.
All things considered, picking up this gaming laptop for about $1,050 with the $430 discount is an easy recommendation. It's one of my favorite gaming laptops from the last year or so, and it should prove to be a worthy device whether you only want to game or you want to split time between fun and work.
