Lenovo Legion Y530 review

With any entry-level gaming laptop, expectations of low to modest performance should be set accordingly. You can’t go into a gaming session of Far Cry 5 at Ulta settings and expect an incredibly smooth experience at 120 frames per second (fps). Instead, you’re more likely to find a decent experience of 30 fps at Ultra.

In the case of Fortnite on the Y530, we let the game select the best performance settings on its own. That resulted in a Low setting with the frames per second capped at 60. At those settings, gameplay was smooth enough to get around the island. If we were any better at playing on a PC, rather than a Nintendo Switch, we have no doubt we could battle our way to a victory royale on the Y530. 

After a couple matches with the frame rate capped at 60, we bumped up the limit to 120 just to see how far the Y530 could push low settings. For the next few matches, we kept an eye on the fps counter and saw it consistently stay between 70 and 80 fps. 

With the game’s graphic settings to set to high, the frame rate stayed between 28 and 30. This is not the best experience, but it’s playable. 

Performance outside of gaming on the Y530 is impressive. Apps launch fast, and there’s no lag or stuttering when quickly switching between common tasks. The Y530 offers more than enough performance for any task, including gaming, It’s just more impressive when it comes to getting work done.

The Y530’s performance throughout all benchmarks shows a laptop that’s powerful enough for work and school, along with heavy video or photo editing, but can’t quite keep up with AAA games at higher settings. The Y530’s test results are slightly below the Nitro 5 and G3 15, despite the Nitro 5 using a standard GTX 1050.

Speakers

There are two speakers on the Y530, both of which are located at the front face down. The volume level is OK, with the sound somewhat muffled due to their placement.

We find it hard to discern the direction of nearby building or footsteps in Fortnite when using the speakers. 

In other words, you’re going to need a pair of headphones to do any serious gaming on this machine. 

Battery life

Gaming laptops rarely set any records when it comes to battery life, and the Y530 is no different. Our tests came back with 2 hour and 54 minutes in the PCMark 8 battery life test, and 3 hours and 38 minutes in our movie test. 

Neither result, backed up by our own experience, is terrible. Comparatively, the Nitro 5 registered 2 hours and 32 minutes and 3 hours and 20 minutes in the same tests, respectively. As for the Dell G3 15, it outperformed both laptops with 4 hours and 0 minutes, and 4 hours and 21 minutes. 

Software

While setting up the Legion Y530, we looked for the Nvidia GeForce Experience app, so we could make sure the graphic drivers were up to date. Only, we couldn’t find it. Keeping the GTX 1050 Ti’s drivers up to date on a gaming laptop is something every gamer will want to do, and the main tool used to update said drivers was missing on first boot. 

Instead, we were left to deal with the obnoxious reminders from McAfee to sign up for a subscription and to scan for viruses. Annoying is the only word that comes to mind. 

As far as customizing performance or adjusting settings for gaming performance, the only pre-installed app found is the Lenovo Vantage. Using the app, you can check your system resources, enable cooling boost and view your device info. It’s one of the most basic gaming performance programs we’ve seen, and overall it’s a letdown.

Final verdict

The Lenovo Legion Y530 is a laptop that’s designed with gamers in mind, but not for hardcore gamers. Whether you go with the base model, or a personal configuration, you’re still locked into a GTX 1050 or 1050 Ti.

Neither graphics option is bad, but they’re not going to push the limits of any AAA games. That’s OK, so long as you know what to expect the first time you launch your favorite game.