• 3 hours ago
Transcript
00:00Hey, how's it going? Dave2D here. So this is Lenovo's Legion Y520, their mid-tier gaming
00:11laptop, and aesthetically, I really like this laptop. It feels nice to hold in your hand,
00:16and fingerprints don't show up too much. There's a faux carbon fiber top, and it's just black
00:20everywhere. Even the logo is pretty stealth. Most gaming laptops have some kind of red
00:24accent on the exterior. This doesn't. If you pull it out of a lecture hall, or even at
00:28work, no one would really notice. I also like the bronze or copper colored heatsink that
00:33you can see through the back. It's a pretty muted vibe to this laptop, until you open
00:36it and you realize there's red everywhere. Now to be fair, of all the low to mid-tier
00:42gaming laptops, this has not that much, but it's there. The build quality is good. It's
00:47on par with competitors in this price range. There isn't anything that feels poorly built.
00:52The chassis, the screen, the hinge is good too. Way better than the hinge on the older
00:56Y50 or Y700. The display is one of the better looking ones in the sub $1,000 gaming laptop
01:03market. 1080p, color gamut is kind of mediocre, and even after calibration, color accuracy
01:09isn't the best, but it's reasonably bright, and viewing angles are good, because it's
01:13an IPS panel. Bezels aren't too thick, and the webcam looks like this. The speakers are
01:19positioned nicely, just below the screen, and when you're playing games, it sounds like
01:23they're projecting right into your ears. The thing is, these lack bass. There's decent
01:28volume, but the lower frequencies just aren't there, even when I'm playing around with the
01:31EQ. Down at the keyboard, we have a couple of different textures. We have a brushed finish
01:36up here, and then the rest of the deck is this kind of soft touch finish. The keyboard
01:41has red accents, and red backlighting. The number pad on the right is a little different.
01:46I don't think I've seen a layout like this before. If you're a number pad pro, or just
01:49use number pads often, you'll probably find it strange. The rest of the layout is good.
01:54It's easy to type on. Keys have 1.2mm of travel. Keystrokes feel a little soft, but it's comfortable
02:00to use, and I think most people will easily get used to this keyboard. The trackpad itself
02:04kind of feels like glass, but I'm pretty sure it's plastic. It's just a nice, smooth finish.
02:09Synaptics drivers, but good tracking and gesture control. The buttons are not built into the
02:14trackpad. They're dedicated buttons, but they feel mediocre. The middle area acts like a
02:19lever, so the closer you get to the middle, the harder it is to click. You can only press
02:23it down on the sides, and I just don't love this trackpad. The port selection is good.
02:28There's Ethernet, USB 2.0, an audio jack, and on the other side we have HDMI, a pair
02:32of USB 3.0s, an SD reader, and a USB-C. There's no Thunderbolt 3.0 support, but that's just
02:37the norm at this price point. To get inside, you flip it over, remove some screws, and
02:42opening it up, we have a good amount of upgradeable components. There's a 2.5 inch drive bay,
02:47an M.2 slot that supports PCIe. The configurations with SSD drives have pretty good speeds, and
02:53if you pop off this metal shroud here, you can access the RAM. The battery's down here.
02:57It's relatively small. We're looking at a 45 watt-hour battery, and I'm getting a little
03:01less than four hours of regular use with the screen at 250 nits. If you're playing games,
03:06it's going to be closer to 45 minutes to an hour, so I really wish they'd put a bigger
03:09battery in this thing, but that's the compromise you got to make at this price point. Performance
03:14overall is good. It uses Kaby Lake CPUs and a GTX 1050 Ti, even on the base model. I'm
03:19running the upgraded i7 configuration, but the gaming performance is going to be really
03:24similar between this and the i5. There's a more detailed video linked in the description,
03:29but on the 1050 Ti and the 7700HQ, something lighter like Overwatch will hit 70 frames
03:34per second on ultra. On high, we're looking at almost 120 frames per second. Doom on ultra
03:40will still float above 60 frames per second. Basically, any of the more optimized shooters
03:44will play really nicely on this system. Something a bit more demanding like Battlefield 1, you'll
03:49need to drop the graphics to high to get into that 60 frames per second zone, but in general,
03:53any of the current titles will play nicely on the 1050 Ti. It's the best value GPU for
03:58gaming laptops right now. If you're editing videos, this is still a great choice, especially
04:02because there's two drives in there, but if you're doing color accurate work, I would
04:06totally plug up an external monitor. There is some thermal throttling if you push the
04:10device on benchmarks for long enough, but I never noticed it in any games, even after
04:13hours of playing, so it should be good. Surface temperature, even on load, stays comfortable
04:18to use. There's also an extreme cooling mode in software just to crank the fans up if you
04:22really want the best thermal performance. The heat pipe layout isn't my favorite. It's
04:27an older style design, like the heat from the GPU has to pass through the CPU along
04:32the pipe to get cooled. The fans often spin on idle, but it's still quiet. On load, it
04:37can get a little louder, not too bad, but if you hit that extreme fan mode, like I don't
04:41know when you'd actually use this, but if you do, it gets pretty noisy. Okay, so with
04:46the Lenovo Legion Y520, you're getting a device with a lot of plastic materials, but with
04:51good build quality. You're getting a decent IPS screen, bright but weak color gamut. Keyboard
04:56is good, trackpad is good, buttons on the trackpad are not so good. Inside, the Kaby
05:02Lake CPU options and the 1050 Ti deliver awesome performance for the dollar. Cooling is done
05:07reasonably well. The RAM and the storage are all easy to access for future upgrades. The
05:12battery is a little light, we're looking at around 4 hours of average use. So this laptop,
05:17there's not much I dislike about it. For this price point, it's really good. The one advantage
05:22that I would say that Lenovo has over other competitors in this price point is that they
05:27often have pretty good sales. Right now, you can get this thing for $850. That's with the
05:321050 Ti, that's really good in my opinion. Now, if you're trying to decide between this
05:36laptop and the three or four other laptops that are in this price range, I will be doing
05:40a comparative review. I wanted to do it sooner than later, but there's a fourth laptop that
05:45came into the mix, so Player 4 entered the game. I will be doing that video shortly,
05:50and then I'll be doing a comparative video for all of them. Hope you guys enjoyed this
05:54video. Thumbs if you liked it, subs if you loved it. See you guys next time.