Lenovo Legion Y530 Review: An Excellent Gaming Laptop

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Lenovo Legion Y530: At First Glance

It is no longer news that the Lenovo Legion series is one of the leading gaming laptop lineups. As such, in this review, we will be discussing the Lenovo Legion Y530 which is one model from the Lenovo Legion series.

Although the Lenovo Legion Y530 was released in 2018, it is still very much in demand. Meanwhile, this laptop does not just come with high-end performances, it also comes at an affordable price tag.

Speaking of affordability, at the time I wrote this review in February 2022, you can get this laptop at a starting price of $929. However, the affordability of this laptop should not fool you to think it might sacrifice its performance.

To find out about the performance of this laptop, let us proceed to the following sections.

Lenovo Legion Y530: Design, Dimension, and Weight

Unlike most gaming laptops, the Legion Y530 comes with a modest and almost-formal design. However, it is made out of an all-plastic construction.

Despite its plastic build, the laptop’s lid is so strong that you might mistake it for a metallic build. The lid is spiral-patterned and it has a textured feel.

Furthermore, the left edge of the laptop lid features a glossy black ”Legion” branding with the “O” encircling a three-star logo.

The lid is indeed good-looking and it has a zippy feel when you rub your palm through it. However, rather than having the lid fixed at the rear end, the laptop’s lid was shifted into the keyboard’s deck.

Hence, the rear base of the laptop juts out allowing better cooling via the air vents. The protruding rear also gives room for more rear-facing ports.

The laptop lids end with a round edge securely fixed into dual hinges. These small dual hinges should be an improvement over the large ones from the predecessor – Lenovo Legion Y520.

Thankfully, the hinges are firm, sturdy, and allow just slight flex. Therefore, opening the lid with one hand is impossible.

Upon opening the lid, you will be welcomed by a beautiful and attractive 15.6-inch display. This display features a Full HD (1920 x 1080 pixels) resolution.

Not only that, but the display comes with other features such as anti-glare and IPS to enhance its quality. The anti-glare feature helps to reduce screen reflection while IPS helps to improve the viewing angles.

Furthermore, this laptop has a maximum brightness of 250 nits which makes it slightly behind the category average of 256 nits. However, the display is still bright enough for outdoor usage.

Additionally, with a 16:9 aspect ratio, you will enjoy widescreen videos without black bars surrounding them.

Also, the Legion Y530 has a 60 Hz refresh rate which makes it smooth enough for enjoying single-player and multi-player games.

Impressively, the Legion Y530 has its display surrounded by thin bezels compared to its predecessor. However, there is an awkwardly positioned 720p HD resolution camera on the bottom bezel for making conference calls.

Sadly, this camera only succeeds in capturing the nose and chin rather than the entire face.

Moving on, the Lenovo Legion Y530 has a well-spaced comfortable keyboard. Furthermore, the keyboard has white letterings that are visible on the black keys.

Additionally, the keys are backlit which makes them suitable for night typing sessions. The keyboard has a fairly good 1.7 mm key travel that feels soft when pressed.

If you’re confused about the term “key travel”, it means the distance a keyboard’s key depresses when you press it, until it registers an input.

Unfortunately, this laptop does not come with dedicated numeric keys like most gaming laptops. However, you will appreciate the big directional keys when playing games.

Not far from the keys at the edge of the keyboard deck is the dedicated trackpad. The Lenovo Legion Y530 trackpad has a small size of 100 x 51 mm with an accurate cursor movement.

However, the dedicated trackpad buttons are shallow and a bit noisy when clicked.

At this point, I need to inform you that the speakers are not placed on the keyboard deck. Instead, the two speakers are placed at the bottom of the laptop.

The laptop base is slightly elevated hence, the multimedia experience of the speakers is not limited. Although it seems like Lenovo forgot to add a hoofer and bass to this speaker, it is still reasonably loud.

Moving to the side of the laptop base, you will find the connectivity ports. Specifically, the Legion Y530 features one USB 3.1 on the left side.

Meanwhile, the right side of the laptop houses one USB 3.1 and a headphone/microphone combo jack. In addition to those, there are more ports on the laptop’s rear.

Specifically, the rear houses an A.C charging port and one USB 3.1 Type-C port. Not only that, but the rear also has one HMDI port, an Ethernet port, and a mini-display port.

When it comes to size and weight, Lenovo Legion Y530 weighs 2300 g. Meanwhile, it has a dimension of 360 x 267 x 23.9 – 24.9 mm (W x D x H).

Comparatively, the Lenovo Y530 weighs less compared to the Lenovo Legion Y520 which weighs 2524 g. However, the Lenovo Y530 weighs more than the ASUS ROG GL502VM gaming laptop which weighs 2240 g.

In conclusion, the Lenovo Legion Y530 design shows that is it a well-built gaming laptop. Therefore, I will be rating it a nine out of ten in this design and weight review section.

Lenovo Legion Y530: Processor (CPU) Performance

This laptop comes with two processor configuration options. Firstly, it features an Intel Core i5-8300H processor.

The Core i5 processor has a base frequency of 2.30 GHz and a maximum frequency of 4.0 GHz. Furthermore, it is a Quad-core processor and it comes with 8 MB of cache memory.

However, the Core-i5 processor is less performing compared to the second option.

Talking about the second option, the laptop is also available in an Intel Core i7-8750H processor. It is a Hexa-core processor with a base frequency of 2.20 GHz.

In addition to that, the Core-i7 processor has a maximum frequency of 4.10 GHz and 9 MB cache memory. Meanwhile, I need to let you know that the Legion Y530 reviewed in this article ships with the Core-i7 processor.

The Intel Core i7-8750H is a high-end processor that is capable of processing tedious tasks. However, to be certain about the processor’s performance, I will be sharing the Cinebench R15 result with you.

For better understanding, Cinebench R15 is a test tool that evaluates the processing ability of a processor by utilizing its cores. Meanwhile, the Cinebench R15 benchmark test evaluates the single-core and multi-core capabilities of the processor.

Hence, the Cinebench R15 test is in two parts.

The single-core part of the Cinebench R15 benchmark evaluates the processor when it processes tasks with only one Core. On the other hand, the multicore part of the test evaluates the processor when running tasks with all its cores.

Meanwhile, it is important to note that a higher score from the test denotes a better processor performance.

Consequently, the Lenovo Legion Y530 scored 175 points in the single-core test. Meanwhile, it had a score of 1219 points in the multi-core test.

In comparison, the Razer Blade 15 Base Model had the same 175 points in the single-core test. On the other hand, it scored 923 points in the multi-core test which is below the Legion Y530’s score.

This is an impressive performance from the Legion Y530 when compared with the competitor.

Based on the Lenovo Legion Y530’s impressive performance, I will be rating it a nine out of ten in this processor review.

Lenovo Legion Y530: Memory (RAM) Performance

The Lenovo Legion Y530 features DDR4 RAM with a speed of 2666 MHz. It also supports a large memory size of up to 32 GB.

Thanks to its two RAM slots, you can have up to 16 GB on each slot just like this review unit. With 32GB of RAM on this review unit, it exceeds the 16 GB memory recommended for a gaming laptop.

Therefore, this laptop memory should be more than enough for performing extensive multitasking. Nevertheless, to be sure of this laptop’s performance, I will be sharing the PCMark 10 benchmark result with you.

For clarity, PC Mark 10 benchmark measures a computer’s performance based on real-world activities. In this benchmark test, a higher score means the laptop performed better.

Therefore, in the benchmark test, the Lenovo Legion Y530 scored 5125 points.

In comparison, the Razer Blade 15 Base Model had 4896 points in the same benchmark test. This is below the Lenovo Legion Y530’s score.

Likewise, the MSI P65 8RF-451 scored 4910 points which are also below the Lenovo Legion Y530’s score.

In conclusion, the Lenovo Legion Y530 scored the highest points compared with other laptops in its category. Therefore, this laptop performed outstandingly in this memory section.

Based on this I will be rating it a nine out of ten in this memory review section.

Lenovo Legion Y530: Storage Options and Performance

The Lenovo Legion Y530 comes with two impressive storage options. The first option is HDD storage with a maximum capacity of 2 TB.

Also, the laptop features a PCIe SSD as the second storage option with a maximum capacity of 512 GB. From the storage specifications, it is easy to see that the HDD storage option has a larger capacity than the SSD.

However, the SSD storage option is better than HDD in terms of speed. This is because SSDs are faster and not prone to crash like HDDs.

Hence, if you prioritize speed you should go for the SSD storage option. However, if your priority is an expanse of storage space, then HDD is the best option.

However, the Lenovo Legion Y530 reviewed in this article comes with a 512 GB PCIe SSD. To determine the speed of this storage drive, we will consider a file transfer test performed by laptopmag.com.

From the test, the Lenovo Legion Y530 duplicated a 4.97GB of file from one hard drive to another in 44 seconds. These files were duplicated at a rate of 115 megabytes per second (MBps).

For more insight into the storage performance, I will be sharing with you the CrystalDiskMark test result. CrystalDiskMark benchmark is a test tool that evaluates the sequential read and writes speed of a computer.

Read speeds refer to how long it takes a laptop to open a file. On the other hand, write speeds refer to how long it takes to save a file on the computer storage.

From the test, the Lenovo Legion Y530 had a read speed of 1859 MBps and a write speed of 1840 MBps. Comparatively, the Lenovo ThinkPad X210 had a read and write speed of 1839.6 MBps and 1858.9 MBps respectively.

The test result shows that the Lenovo Legion Y530’s performance is in line with that of its competitor I pitched it against. Hence, I will be rating it an eight out of ten in this storage review section.

Lenovo Legion Y530: Graphics Card Performance

Being a gaming laptop I know you will be expecting much from this laptop in its graphics performance. On that note, this laptop comes with four graphics cards options.

Firstly, it comes with an integrated Intel UHD Graphics 630 graphics card. This graphics card has a based frequency of 350 MHz and a maximum frequency of 1150 MHz.

Secondly, it features a dedicated NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 graphics card. This graphics card has a base frequency of 1354 MHz and a maximum frequency of 1455 MHz.

Integrated graphics cards share the computer’s memory with the CPU hence, they are not suitable for intense gaming. On the other hand, dedicated graphics have a separate memory known as VRAM to handle graphics activities.

Being a dedicated GPU, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 has a 2 GB GDDR5 VRAM.

For the third graphics option, the Legion Y530 comes with NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti graphics card. This graphics card has a base and maximum frequency of 1290 MHz and 1392 MHz respectively.

Moreover, this dedicated graphics card has a 4 GB GDDR5 VRAM.

Lastly, the Legion Y530 features an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 dedicated graphics card. This GPU has a base frequency of 1506 MHz and a maximum frequency of 1708 MHz.

Additionally, this graphics card has a 6 GB GDDR5 VRAM. Now, you are aware that a dedicated GPU is more powerful than an integrated GPU.

Moreover, it is also important to note that a dedicated graphics card with a higher VRAM performs better. Hence, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 GPU should be more powerful than the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 GPU.

Meanwhile, this review focuses on a Legion Y530 model with NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 GPU. As a result, I am expecting an outstanding gaming performance from this laptop.

Talking about games, this Legion Y530 should be capable of playing The Witcher 3 at 78 fps at high settings. Also, the laptop should be able to play BioShock Infinite (2013) at 224.8 fps also at high settings.

Now that you have seen the gaming performance of this laptop, let me also share its 3D Mark 10 test result with you. 3DMark test evaluates a computer’s graphics performance where a higher score denotes better performance.

That being said, in the 3DMark test, the Lenovo Legion Y530 had 14692 points. Impressively, this score exceeds the 14351 points category average.

In comparison, this laptop performs better than the Razer Blade 15 Base Model which had 14351 points. Likewise, the Legion Y530 had a higher score compared to the Lenovo Legion Y7000P-1060 which scored 14508 points.

Based on the benchmark test, the performance of the Lenovo Legion Y530 is impressive. Therefore, it deserves a nine out of ten in this graphics review section.

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Lenovo Legion Y530: Battery Life and Performance

The Lenovo Legion Y530 comes with a 52.5 Wh Li-ion battery. Lenovo claimed that this battery will deliver up to 9 hours 5 minutes of battery life.

However, to verify Lenovo’s claim, I will be sharing a battery test performed by notebookcheck.com with you. Based on this test, this laptop survived for 8 hours 15 minutes on idle.

Furthermore, in a WiFi web surfing test, the Lenovo Legion Y530 lasted 3 hours 48 minutes. Lastly, the battery lasted for just 26 minutes on load.

In comparison, this laptop battery didn’t last as long as the Lenovo Legion Y7000P-1060 which lasted 49 minutes on load. Additionally, the Razer Blade 15 Base Model performed better with a battery life of 89 minutes on load.

However, these competitors have larger battery capacities than the Lenovo Legion Y530. Specifically, the Lenovo Legion Y7000P-1060 has a battery capacity of 57 Wh.

Meanwhile, the Razer Blade 15 has a battery capacity of 65 Wh.

Based on the comparisons above, the Lenovo Legion Y530 performed slightly lesser than its competitors. Hence, I will be rating it a six out of ten in this battery review section.

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion

Every section of this Lenovo Legion Y530 has proved that this laptop is indeed a powerful gaming laptop. The power this laptop can deliver is backed by its high-end graphics options, the processor, RAM, and storage options.

However, there are some downsides to this laptop that you will have to live with. One of its downsides is its all-plastic construction.

Another downside to this laptop is its awkward webcam placement which will only succeed in capturing the chin during video calls.

Nonetheless, if you are a gamer, and you are in need of a competitively priced gaming laptop, you should consider the Lenovo Legion Y530.

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