Lenovo Legion Y520(-15IKBN) 15.6″ Gaming Laptop

The Lenovo Legion Y520(-15IKBN) is an entry-level 15.6-inch gaming laptop. It offers excellent, but not top-notch gaming performance. With prices starting at around $750, it is very affordable by gaming notebooks’ standards.

The plastic-clad Legion Y520(-15IKBN) boasts Full HD display resolution which is standard in the gaming category. The screen is IPS, which means wide viewing angles, and it has anti-glare coating. The display isn’t touchscreen enabled. For interaction with the system you can use the notebook’s full size keyboard with numeric pad and red backlight and (a bit strangely) trapezoid-shaped touchpad.

The laptop uses mid range and upper mid range Nvidia video cards – either the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti or noticeably faster GTX 1060. These GPUs paired with the 7th Gen quad-core processors – the i5-7300HQ or i7-7700HQ ensure you’ll be able to play all the latest games. But in some of them, you’ll have to dial down graphics settings a bit for smooth gameplays. Especially, on the 1050 Ti. The basic 8GB system memory option is enough for majority of games and comfortable multitasking in daily scenarios. A 16GB RAM size option is provided for completely worry-free gaming and multi-tasking. Data storage options of the Lenovo Legion Y520(-15IKBN) are very flexible. You can select a capacious 1-Terabyte hard drive, faster but smaller 256GB solid state drive or the best of both worlds in terms of space and speed – 1TB or 2TB HDD combined with 128GB and 256GB SSDs, respectively. A DVD optical drive has been omitted.

Furthermore, the Lenovo Y520(-15IKBN) is equipped with stereo speakers, a 720p web camera, 802.11AC Wi-Fi and Gigabit LAN network connections, Bluetooth, HDMI video out port, two USB 3.0 ports, a USB 2.0 port, and a compact USB-C port, a headphones / mic audio connector, and a media card reader.

The 45 WHr battery capacity is medium. According to Lenovo, the battery can provide up to 4 hours or battery life. Of course, playing demanding game titles off the power grid will drain the battery much faster than 4 hours.

Weight of the laptop is 5.3 pounds. The profile is 1.1″ thick.

The machine ships with Windows 10 Home operating system.

As a side note, Lenovo offers the same laptop with the less popular AMD Radeon RX 560 4GB video card instead of Nvidia GeForce. It’s the Y520-15IKBA model. Roughly speaking, the RX 560 performs slightly slower than the Nvidia 1050 series, but it can be still considered as a mid-range laptop GPU.