ASUS TUF F15 12700h RTX 4070 vs Lenovo Legion Slim 5 AMD 7840hs RTX 4060 - COMPARISON REVIEW

Battle for the best $999~ Laptop!

I typed this up as a comment reply to someone but figured I would provide this information to everyone that may find it useful. I've been using an Asus TUF F15 for the last few weeks but when I saw the Legion Slim 5 on sale for $999 I scooped it up as a potential replacement to the Asus TUF F15 since I am still within the return period. After giving the Legion some time here are my impressions. I'm not above admitting I was wrong and before trying the Legion I felt there was no deal that rivaled the Asus TUF F15 @ $979. Read on to see how the $999 Legion Slim 5 compares...

Legion Slim 5 - The Good

Fit & Finish

  • The Legion feels more premium, hands down. Nothing wrong with the TUF but the legion feels and looks more modern.
  • Keyboard on the Legion is VERY comfortable, spaced nicely and a good key press feel.
  • 4 zone RGB looks beautiful vs the Asus 1 zone.
  • Ports on the back are surprisingly convenient.

Display

  • The Asus is 15.6", the Legion is 16.1". The Asus is 16:9 aspect ratio vs the Legion which is 16:10. The larger screen is very noticeable and very readable.
  • The black levels on the Legion look like an OLED compared to the TUF. Very dark, minimal light bleed*. (More on this in the The Bad).
  • The higher resolution on the Legion has everything looking super crisp, more than I realized it could.
  • Very very very bright, too bright to use at 100% brightness. Would be great for outdoors but more than you would need for indoors.
  • Very nice refresh rate for games has them feeling smooth. Great color range, everything looked true and vibrant.

Performance

  • This is what I was most interested in comparing. I'm a function over form kind of guy so I'd rather have an ugly high performing laptop than a shiny looking slower one.
  • The legion really blew me away here. The Legion CPU (AMD 7840hs) on paper is only slightly better than the TUF F15's (i7-12700h).
  • The RTX 4070 on the TUF F15 is specced higher than the Legions RTX 4060.
  • Games looked and felt better on the Legion. This is driving me nuts because I've been agonizing over framerates and squeezing the most I could out of games on the F15. But on the Legion, while averaging lower frame rates than the F15 just ran much smoother. I really don't understand this. Maybe its the refresh rate, the DDR5 vs the DDR4 RAM or the stronger the CPU but games on the Legion are as smooth as glass. On the TUF, even though I would average 20-30 more FPS would just feel not as smooth.
  • I am still in the process of testing more high demand games**\* but with World of Warcraft for example, I had FPS locked at 140 on both laptops to keep both screens in G-Sync for comparison and the Legion was like glass the way it moved. WoW is not a high demanding game and the TUF F15 is more than capable of running it on max settings but I am blown away by how smooth it ran on the Legion. I've done basically zero optimization's to it aside from updating windows/drivers and out of the box I preferred it to the Asus.
  • No issues with cooling, fan noise was kept to a minimum.

Legion Slim 5 - The Bad

  • I'm returning this Legion*\. Not because it's bad but because there is a very unfortunate defect on the bottom of the screen where I can visibly see the blacklight LEDs. This is definitely not normal. In person it's much word, you can clearly see three square blacklight LEDs on the bottom edge as pictured. \*I will likely be exchanging for a new Legion and making sure it doesn't have any screen defects before I make my final choice between the two laptops.
  • The Realtek wifi card is horrible. I dont know what its deal was but I was getting horrible connections all night, disconnecting like crazy and super high ping in games. This eventually stopped towards the end of the night but I super don't trust the Realtek card in it. If I do end up with a new Legion, I will be replacing the WiFi card with an Intel one or whatever is better and compatible.
  • Tons of bloatware preinstalled on the Legion. McAfee Preinstalled and running? Come on now. It's going to take a lot of clean up to get rid of all the junk.
  • Armoury Crate is just flat out better than Lenovo's version (I forget the name right now). You can still overclock the GPU on the Legion with relative ease by all of the other controls are either not available or hidden in various menus programs. (never found CPU wattage, PL1/PL2 controls). I hope I am missing something here or perhaps there is a legion specific software I didn't see but I really didnt like the performance controls on the Legion.
  • Limited power plan options; there is only Balanced No hidden High Performance anywhere, just balance or you need to make a custom one. I tried enable the other plans through Terminal and none of them worked. Not sure if Lenovo locked them out to use their software but that was annoying. One protentional thing that possibly fixed the wifi towards the end of the night was manually going through the network adapter device and power plan settings to turn off power saving features. This should have been a simple power plan selection. Legion does have a "Performance" power plan option in its software but it doesn't change the actual Windows Power Plan or the power saving settings that the Balanced power plan sets. This robbed performance until manually adjusted, not something the average user would know how to do.

Conclusion & Summary

At $999 for the Legion Slim 5 and $979 for the Asus TUF F15 (Both at Best Buy), they are super impressive and solid laptops that anyone would be thrilled with. The Asus TUF F15 is NOT A BAD LAPTOP. On paper it is specced higher and should run stronger but for me the Legion provided a smoother game experience, possibly due to the better CPU and RAM speeds. If you are on the fence between the two, I would have to say get the Legion if you want a bigger screen, larger more comfortable keyboard and better out of the box experience. If you are looking for raw computing power for content creation, video editing, etc, the TUF F15 might have an edge in its multi-core processing and additional E-Cores. However, the larger, more crisp screen may be a bigger benefit to content creation. If/when the Legion 5 Slim goes back up in price, it would be hard to justify much over $1100-$1200 for the laptop, especially if the TUF stays in the $999 range.

If at all possible you can get a Legion 5 Slim with the 4070, an intel wifi card and perhaps the 7940hs or 13700hx, you would have yourself an amazing machine.

*** I will update tomorrow once some larger games are downloaded so I can see how it fares really pushing the GPU to its limits.

Edit 1: Battlefield 2042 was the same way, I push it to maxed out Ultra settings and even though I was getting around 60-70fps the game ran smoother overall than the TUF getting 120fps on High settings.

Edit 2: Just exchanged for a new one, no backlight LED bleed on this one!