Lenovo Legion Y7000 review: Excellent gaming performance at a reasonable price

Last year's redesigned Lenovo Legion Y530 and Y730 laptops were a couple of my favorites for mainstream gaming. The Legion Y7000P is an offshoot of those two with a bit more gaming flare to the design and, oddly enough, better components than what you can currently get in the higher-end Y730. 

7.9

Lenovo Legion Y7000

The Good

The Lenovo Legion Y7000P adds an edgier design to the company's current gaming laptop lineup without going over-the-top and loaded it with top components for its price.

The Bad

If you need a thin-and-light with long battery life, really like gaming extras like RGB per-key lighting and keyboard macros or need a wide-color-gamut display, this is not for you.

The Bottom Line

Lenovo's Legion Y7000P outperforms its price making it a solid pick if you're looking for something better than your average entry-level gaming laptop.

Currently only available in the US through Lenovo's retail partners, the Y7000P sells for around $1,000 depending on the configuration. The version reviewed here available from Costco combines a midrange Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 and a hexa-core Intel Core i7 processor for $1,100 and includes Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 until the end of April. That converts to approximately £855 or AU$1,550 for reference.  

For the same price you can get the Y7000P from B&H with less storage than the Costco configuration, but with a 144Hz full-HD display. But you can also find it for less than $900 from NewEgg, but with a GTX 1050. In the long run, though, you're better off to save up and get the GTX 1060. 

Basically, the Legion Y7000P is a solid value with the CPU/GPU combo I tested when you add in its other specs, display, keyboard and overall build quality. If you want something that's a step above entry-level gaming, it's worth tracking down. 

Black and red out, black and gray in

Entry-level gaming laptops seemed to be stuck with the same designs over the past couple years: Black with red accents and a red blacklight for the keyboard along with the WASD keys outlined in red. That started to change late last year, which is when Lenovo originally announced its new Legions. 

The Y530/Y730 looked like a clean black Thinkpad workstation with subtle Legion branding. The Y7000P is a little more aggressive with flared cooling vents and an angular, iron-gray metal lid with a big glowing Y symbol. It's not over the top, but it's also not your average thin-and-light laptop, especially not at 5 pounds (2.3 kg). 

Like its linemates, most of the Y7000P's ports and power input are on back between those two vents. It's a good setup for controlling cable clutter, particularly if it's going to regularly be at a desk connected to an external display, mouse and keyboard. However, it can also be a pain until you remember which port is which. 

There are single USB-A ports on each side and a headphone jack on the left in addition to what's in the rear, but no SD card slot. That's a shame given the extra graphics horsepower under its hood. 

The subtle design continues inside with a slim bezel around its nice-looking 15.6-inch full HD display. Although it does have a chin where you'll find the webcam that's either pointing at your knuckles or up your nose. Display brightness is average for its class at around 300 nits and color performance is good enough for gaming. If you need a wide color gamut for photo and video work, this won't cut it. 

The keyboard is good, but nothing special. There's 1.7mm of key travel, which is nice, and they readily pop back up when pressed. However, they do have a softness to them that some might not care for, but I found comfortable for long gaming sessions. The shrunken number pad might bother some as well, although it does allow for larger separate arrow keys. (I still prefer the dropped arrow keys of the Asus TUF line.) There's a single-color white backlight with two levels of brightness. 

The touchpad is fine, but missing discrete buttons, which is kind of annoying not to have for casual gaming. It's a Windows Precision touchpad, too, so you get multitouch gesture support. It's smooth and responsive, but you should feel free to adjust the sensitivity to tame your cursor. 

Play away 

Getting a six-core Intel processor and Nvidia GTX 1060 graphics for a little more than $1,000 is pretty great. Lenovo isn't alone in hitting that price for those components, but the rest of the package helps it stand out. 

You'll be able to play the latest games at high or ultra settings and it gives you headroom for the future. Not a lot mind you, but it's room that you won't get by going with a GTX 1050 or 1050 Ti. Also, if you're toying with the idea of getting a VR headset, the GTX 1060 can handle it.  

Despite the laptop's relative portability, battery life is still that of a typical gaming laptop. This configuration hit 5 hours and 46 minutes on CNET's streaming video test. Don't expect to get anywhere near that playing games, though -- you'll be lucky if you get past an hour and a half. Still for day-to-day stuff like web browsing, streaming video and music and office or school work, you'll be able to get four or five hours out of it. 

Lenovo Legion Y7000P-1060

+16 More

See all photos

While the gettin's good

Last year there were a lot more gaming laptops available around the $1,000 mark worth buying than in the past. With Nvidia adding its new 20-series mobile graphics chips to the market this year, it looks like that's not going to stop as prices start coming down on older models with Nvidia's GTX GPUs. That's where you'll find laptops like Lenovo's Legion Y7000P, which offer a lot of processing and graphics power for less. You sacrifice some gaming extras that you'll find even on its similarly priced Legion Y730, but you get better performance instead.