Lenovo Legion Y530 and Y730 – New look, new hardware
The E3 is the biggest game fair of the year and games are logically announced there. However, the software is useless without the hardware, which is why Lenovo took the opportunity to introduce its new gaming laptops , in two models, the Y530 and the Y730. The Y530 is the cheaper version of the two and will be available with a 15.6″ screen, while the Y730 is the more expensive version, which will be available with 15.6″ and 17.3″ screens. at E3, but at a Lenovo event in Barcelona, briefly working with the new laptops.
Design and cooling
The predecessors of the Y530 and Y730, the Y520 and 720 series, were characterized by the red and black appearance, which was richly finished with carbon fiber-like material. For the new Legion laptops, Lenovo has done extensive research within the target group – people who have a job, but like to play games after work – and developed the new Legion based on that feedback. The intention of the design is to build a not too loud laptop, which is still fast.
In terms of looks, the new Y-series has worked out pretty well. The Y530 has a sleek black housing without too much frills, except for the light in the back of the screen. The housing is made of plastic and when you lift it you notice that it is a laptop with content. In other words: the extra hardware and the accompanying cooling makes it feel quite heavy, although it weighs 2.3 kilograms less than its predecessor.
The housing is therefore made of plastic and feels quite sturdy, although it also gives a somewhat cheap impression. The back of the screen has ridges that we tend to associate with cheap laptops, and so do the buttons below the touchpad, which give a very short click and feel as if they stay down if you press too hard. Perhaps that is an attempt to push the potential Y530 buyer towards a more expensive Y730, because it does not feel cheap with its metal housing and also has a touchpad with better buttons that you can press further and are nicely muted, which is a firmer and more ‘luxurious’ feeling.
The Y730 also gets a more gamer-oriented decoration in the form of – of course – RGB LEDs. Lenovo has placed the LEDs in the heatsink, making it look like you have some kind of ‘luminous exhaust pipes’ on your laptop. As far as we’re concerned, it’s not really necessary, but there are undoubtedly people who can appreciate it and if you don’t like it, you can just turn it off.
The keyboard of the Y730 is also backlit with RGB LEDs, unlike the Y530, which has to do with regular white LEDs. The flat keys have a touch that feels familiar; clear and muted, just like the IdeaPad 720S, but with more travel. Lenovo sees the Y530 as a laptop on which you should also be able to do serious work in addition to gaming, and that is why it is equipped with a numeric keypad, just like the 17.3″ version of the Y730. The layout is somewhat unconventional because there are still four arrow keys are located below the numerical part, although there is no doubt that you can get used to that.
What we can’t get used to is the placement of the webcam. Dell’s XPS laptops are known for their ‘nose hair’ cameras, in which the webcam is placed at the bottom of the screen, showing your face from below, and Lenovo has gone down the same path with the 15″ versions of the Legions. of the webcam ensures that the top screen edge is quite thin, we would have preferred to see the screen half a centimeter lower, with the webcam above it, which results in a normal webcam image.
Let’s go back to the Y530, because the new design is quite a change compared to its predecessor. With that predecessor, the connections for peripherals were on the side, while the entire back was free for the exhaust of the cooling. Enough space, but unfortunately that cooling consisted of two heat pipes that ran next to each other, to a heatsink, where two fans positioned next to each other blew past. With the Y530 and Y730, that cooling has been adjusted and the heat pipes run to the two corners of the laptop, with each fan sucking in its own fresh air on the side and blowing it away at the back. With the better cooling, the CPU and GPU should be able to run at higher frequencies for longer before clocking themselves back, which ultimately translates into higher frame rates.
Hardware: more speed in the long term
The new Legion laptops feature Intel quad-core or hexa-core processors. That shouldn’t surprise anyone, as the introduction of those processors in April has caused many manufacturers to upgrade their Kaby Lake laptops to Coffee Lake. Lenovo has chosen completely new models and does so with striking configurations. The CPU in the Y530 and Y730 is either a quadcore i5-8300H, or a hexacore i7-8750H – no surprises so far. For the GPU, however, the choice is currently limited to a GTX 1050 or GTX 1050 Ti – not really the fastest of the fastest. Barrie Rankin, head of consumer laptops in Lenovo’s emea region confirmed that it won’t stop there and that a GTX 1060 Max Q video card will soon be available for the Y530 as well. That will strangely not be the case for the more expensive Y730, which therefore has to make do with a GTX 1050 Ti video card as the fastest video card. ‘For now ,” adds Rankin, before explaining that the new laptops are built with future chips in mind. In the future, we can therefore expect new versions of the Legion laptops with different hardware, which also immediately answers the question of why Lenovo can supply the Y530 and Y730 with a 144Hz screen. The 1050 (Ti) is an entry-level GPU and not of the caliber with which you will often reach 144fps, unless you stick to minesweeper and solitaire.
Preliminary conclusion
At the time of writing, the Legion Y530 is available in two versions on Lenovo’s site. For 950 euros you get a Core i5-8300H processor, 8GB memory, a 128GB SSD, a 1TB hard drive and a GTX 1050 video card with 2GB memory. For five bucks extra you have the version with a twice as large SSD. In the Pricewatch stands for a little less and with a 1050Ti a new Acer Nitro 5 and for a little more and with the same hardware MSI delivers the GL63. There is plenty of competition, so the question is of course how well the new Legion laptops will hold their own among all those new gaming laptops. In any case, the new cooling seems to be an improvement and the new design, especially of the Y730, also appeals to us. We cannot draw a definitive conclusion until we have reviewed the laptops at the editors, but the new design and especially the cooling look good – and we have our doubts about the webcam.