Believe it or not, Lenovo – the brand behind the ThinkPad, the executive’s laptop of choice – also dabbles in the gaming space. Its Legion Y530 is a gaming rig built for the ultra-budget consumer. At just $830, it’s by far the least expensive rig in this roundup. Let’s find out why.
Design
A bit of an odd beast, the Legion Y530 is immediately distinguished by an unusual ridge that juts out from the back of the laptop. There’s about an inch of space behind the hinge, where the screen folds down, giving the system a distinct – and slightly strange – appearance. That aside, the Y530 has more in common with the businessy ThinkPad line than it does with most of today’s flashy gaming rigs. Keyboard backlighting is white, not in color, and with the exception of some scalloped ridges on the sides, the Legion offers few physical flourishes. While the screen bezels are generally thin (the bottom of the screen excepted), the system feels a bit lopsided, with its center of gravity shifted heavily toward the rear of the machine.
Features
As you might expect, the Y530 is fairly limited in terms of features, though its revamped thermal optimization is successful at keeping the fan reasonably quiet even during heavy-duty gaming sessions, and the Harman Kardon speakers are good at drowning out any noise. The quirky hinge design also lets Lenovo shift most of the ports to the rear of the machine, which makes managing cables easier if you have a more complex, desk-bound setup. On the downside, the system’s webcam is located not above the display but below it, which has the unfortunate impact of making any user on a video chat look like they have a monstrous and misshapen head. Lenovo is known for its keyboard work (and the inclusion of full-size function keys is an impressive addition here), but I found typing on the Legion Y530 to be only so-so. The touchpad is small for the category, but the inclusion of separate, discrete mouse buttons may be particularly appealing to those with nostalgic tastes.
Specs
The Legion Y530 has lower-end specs than the other laptops in this roundup, which largely account for its rock bottom price tag. Instead of a Core i7 CPU, the laptop includes a slower, eighth-generation Core i5-8300H, running at 2.3GHz, coupled with just 8GB of RAM. As well, the use of a slower Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 graphics chip (vs. a 1050Ti) brings down graphics performance (see below). While the storage configuration – a 256GB SSD plus a 1TB traditional hard drive – is the most capacious in this lineup, the Y530’s relatively dim screen (15.6 inches at 1920 x 1080 pixels) didn’t overly impress. Finally, the Y530 does manage to shine in the realm of ports, which includes two standard USB ports, a USB-C port, full-size Ethernet, and a whopping two graphics output options: a full-size HDMI jack and a mini DisplayPort connector. Users looking for optimal flexibility in their inputs and outputs will find plenty to go around here.
Performance
Given the Y530’s lower-end CPU, limited RAM, and slower graphics card, I wasn’t expecting the world from the laptop’s benchmarks. However, I was surprised to find that some of the battery of tests I ran failed to complete at all, crashing during the running time. This is a slight cause for alarm, though the good news is that the machine still managed to pull out an above-average score on general applications (which includes web page rendering, business productivity applications, and digital media creation work). More graphics-intensive tests weren’t as successful, with scores 20 to 30 percent below the average on most of the tests I ran, due to the lower-end video card as noted above. A representative selection of benchmark scores can be found in the table below.
Battery
With 8 hours, 1 minute of running time on my full-screen video playback test, the Legion Y530 is a monster when it comes to running untethered from an outlet. That’s nearly double the lifespan of the worst laptop tested in this roundup, and a score that should be more than good enough for any type of user, gamer or not.
Conclusion
The Legion Y530 is ultimately a study in compromise. It’s significantly cheaper than the field, but it’s also significantly slower on graphics tests and has some troubling stability problems that might be a deal-breaker for some users. That said, if the quirky design doesn’t bother you and your budget is extremely tight, it’s at least worth a look.
