We talked a while ago about the new the Lenovo Legion Y740, a high-end gaming laptop that does it all, but what about a mainstream gaming laptop like its little brother the Legion Y540? Can a mainstream gaming laptop handle the high-requirements of modern AAA games? Well we took the Legion Y540 for a test drive and here is what we found.

Let’s have a look at the Legion Y540 Design First

The entire chassis is made of plastic and there are three types of plastic on the chassis:

- the one on the cover of the laptop, which has a nice texture, but which gathers quite visible fingerprints,
- the one on the belly of the laptop and the one on the screen frame, which feels, both visually and tactile, quite cheap and finally,
- the one that covers the space around the keys and the wristpad.

This latter plastic is different, even of quality, has a feeling of rubber surface, very pleasant to the touch. Unfortunately, this also collects fingerprints, but it's not quite as visible and dramatic as other models tested by us. By the way, the entire trackpad by far gathers the most fingerprints.

The plastic case also has some unexpected, but noticeable advantages: the smaller weight of the laptop - yes, at 2.84Kg (we are talking about a 17 ”laptop) we have to admit, it is quite light for its category.

Overall the design is simple, sober, it works very well in an office environment, it will not stand out through anything. For some, this can be an advantage.

180 degree foldable screen

Like the high-end model recently tested by us, the current model comes with hinges that allow the screen to be flipped 180 degrees, an extremely rare thing.

The hinges are quite solid, the lid cannot be opened with one hand, the lower chassis must be held with one hand so as not to rise from the table. This offers extra rigidity to the chassis.

As a tip, always open the cover in the center of the screen and not holding / grabbing a corner of it, no matter how thick and well-made the lid is, the lead distorts a bit at the opening, given the rigidity of the hinges mentioned above.

Keyboard, Numpad and Touchpad

Ironically, we liked the keyboard on the Legion Y540l more than the high-end Y740.

And we are not referring only to subjective aspects, such as the key stroke or the force required to press a key to get a response, which was higher at the peak model. We are referring to simpler things, such as the lack of macro keys on the left of the keyboard, so we have not encountered problems caused by the Caps Lock pushed to the right, where we usually have WASD keys. The keys are soft to press, a totally different approach to ROG laptops for example.

We also liked that we have well-isolated directional keys of normal size.

The lighting is quite OK, but we must mention that the Y740 provided more precise, finer lighting. We don't have RGB and other crazy goodies, but we were pleased with the restful white light used for backlighting the keys.

The numpad exists, but the keys are a bit crowded and have gone through an intensive weight loss, about half as wide as normal keys. But that didn't really bother us, but the lack of an additional Enter, dedicated to this area - and although we used the numeric keys in this area, it is strange to use the left Enter. But it's not the end of the world. Everything is about the learning curve and the adaptation to the new layout.

Instead, the touchpad is tiny. Seriously, it's from another universe, like it was not even included in the original design and was added later because they forgot about it. We see that Windows laptop manufacturers keep running away from big touchpads and we don’t quite understand why.

17.3 "screen, FullHD, IPS, 60Hz

The screen is the second chapter where the budget cut was felt. Honestly, if you keep putting an NVIDIA RTX 2060 on a laptop, it's a shame to limit it to 60 frames. There are many games where many would opt for medium details but can reach 144 frames. That's it.

But the current model can also be found with 144Hz panel, unfortunately the price difference is somewhere around $200, because the model has benefited from an upgrade also on the processor - probably to guarantee more scenarios where you can keep a stable 144 frames/sec.

The 17.3 "IPS Full HD panel, produced by BOE is an ordinary one, with a brightness of 300cd/m2 and colors all in the category range, without high demands for color space.

Connectivity

As we praised the Y740, we will do so with the Y540 as well - the connectivity, largely hidden behind the laptop, is ideal in terms of ergonomics, leaving enough space, without wires, to the left and right of the laptop . That's right, we have on both sides a USB port, and on the left side an audio jack, but the power supply, HDMI port, miniDisplay port, LAN and USB Type C port are all nicely aligned in the back, between the two vents.

Hardware features and performance

Being the first gaming laptop we tested this year with the Intel Core i5-9300H here is where we are going to get an answer to the questions: does this Legion Y540 can handle serious gaming, when we run Ultra on everything? Is the Core i5-9300H and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 video card the right combination?

In all the games run, according to the test protocol, all settings are at maximum, ultra (except for Metro, where we ran the test High, without RTX enabled), you can see from the graphs below that the laptop is doing great in all games - even in Borderlands 3, which is quite demanding once you put everything on Ultra.

So the short answer after seeing these numbers is YES! The Lenovo Legion Y540 can handle itself very well in modern high demanding games without too much of an effort.

Battery Life

The 57Wh battery, produced by SMP is not impressively large, but it managed to keep the laptop "awake" for about 4 hours and 10 minutes, which is not bad (Google Docs, light Internet browsing, nothing too fancy).

Conclusion

The Intel Core i5-9300H processor and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 video card can work very well together.

No, there is no trick in the system, the only thing we would have wanted to see was a faster screen, but honestly, at this price, considering the solid construction, nice keyboard, very low noise, decent temperatures, very good autonomy, is a laptop with a price/performance very-very difficult to beat.