The sleek 15.6″ Lenovo Legion Y540 gaming laptop is slim and lightweight (for a gaming notebook PC that is), and packs plenty of performance for its equally potent price bang of north of R20k. Unlike many of its gaming laptop counterparts, which can often sport gaudy or exaggerated designs, Lenovo opts to adopt a more sensible, mature, and ultimately still eye-catching design with the Legion Y540. It boasts narrow bezels that does a good job of hiding its around 2.3 kg girth, and an understated sleeper black design that in the case of Mercedes’ AMG– and BMW’s M cars, only hint at there being something a little more special under its bonnet.
Under that proverbial bonnet resides a 9th Generation Intel Core i5-9300H processor coupled with a highly capable NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 dedicated GPU. Also onboard is 8 GB worth of DDR4 2666 MHz RAM and a 1 TB HDD plus 128 GB SSD for ample gaming storage and snappy saving. All of these ensure snappy performance while navigating Windows 10 Pro, the worldwide web, performing productivity tasks within Microsoft Office 365 (comes with free 1-month trial), and most importantly gaming. Whether it is less demanding titles such as Civilization VI or Fortnite through to Apex Legends, Red Dead Redemption 2 or The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, the Y540 can handle them all at buttery smooth framerates.
These are brilliantly displayed on its 15.6″ FHD (1920 x 1080) non-touch IPS screen that can also handle higher frame rates of up to 144 Hz (though that is more for the less demanding side of the gaming scale), along with a 72% colour gamut, and adequate 300 nits brightness level. NVIDIA G-SYNC means chances of those annoying screen-tearing and stutters issues are far less diminished. In terms of ports, your needs are well catered to thanks to three USB 3.1 Gen 1 ports, a Mini DisplayPort, HDMI 2.0 port, RJ45 Ethernet port, 3.5 mm audio jack, and USB-C port amongst others. Sorry photography fans, no SD card slot is onboard for you guys, but then again this is targeted at gamers and not content creators such as illustrators and videographers.
The 3-cell 52.5 Wh battery delivers a claimed battery life of up to five hours (definitely not while gaming) but we only managed under four while doing productivity tasks and consuming media (Netflix and Showmax series). The onboard Harmon Kardon-tuned Dolby Atmos capable speakers also deliver good sound in this regard and is not too shabby either whilst gaming.
All in all, this is one stylish and portable gaming powerhouse that you will need a legion of well earned Rands for, but one that delivers on the sizeable expectations front for those needing a spec bang for their bucks. You can get one (although in Core i7 and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 guise) from local outlets like Evetech starting at around R21 500 and going up depending on configuration up to approximately R35k.
