All language subtitles for Lenovo Legion 5 vs ASUS TUF A15 (2022) Comparison-en

Lenovo’s Legion 5 and ASUS’s TUF A15 are both
great mid-range gaming laptops this year,

but which should you get? I think
the answer is going to surprise you!

The build quality of both laptops is quite good,

they’ve both got metal lids and plastic
interiors which feel nice. There’s only

minor flex to the keyboards and the lid, nothing
to complain about for mid-range gaming laptops.

The TUF A15 is a little smaller in both
width and depth, and the TUF is thinner

too. It’s hard to fairly compare because Lenovo
only lists the thinnest point at the front,

and although the thinnest point
of the TUF is a little thicker,

side by side the back of the
Legion is thicker than the TUF.

Not only was the Legion 5 bigger, but
I found it noticeably heavier too. The

Legion is also available with an even larger
300 watt power brick in some regions too,

which would increase its total weight further.

On the left the Legion just has two USB
3.2 Gen 2 Type-C ports. The TUF also has

two USB 3.2 Type-C ports here,
but they’re slower Gen 1. The TUF

otherwise also has its power input,
gigabit ethernet, HDMI 2.0b output,

a USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A port and 3.5mm
audio combo jack right down the front.

They’ve both got a USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A port on
the right, and that’s all the TUF has on this

side. The Legion has its 3.5mm audio combo
jack on this side, as well as a switch to

physically disconnect the camera to ensure
privacy, a feature the TUF does not have.

The TUF doesn’t have any ports on the back,
while the Legion has its gigabit ethernet port,

a third USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port, HDMI 2.1, 2
USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A ports, and its power input.

Personally, I prefer the port layout on the
Legion, because it keeps those larger and

bulky cables like the power and ethernet
running out the back and out of the way.

The ports on the Legion are also
just objectively better too.

The TUF has two USB Type-A ports,

while the Legion has three. The TUF also has
two USB Type-C ports while the Legion has 3,

and not only that but the Legion’s are faster
USB 3.2 Gen 2 while the TUF uses slower Gen 1.

Now only that, but the TUF does not have
Type-C charging, while the Type-C port on

the back of the Legion can be used to charge
the laptop with up to 130 watts. Only one of

the Type-C ports on the TUF can be used to
connect an external screen with DisplayPort,

while all three of the Type-C
ports on the Legion support that.

The Legion also has HDMI 2.1, so you can connect
a 4K 120Hz 8-bit screen with G-Sync, while the

TUF on the other hand maxes out at 4K 60Hz
8-bit with G-Sync, due to it being 2.0b.

I preferred the keyboard on the Legion,
it’s probably personal preference,

but the keys just felt clicker
and nicer to press to me.

The Legion also has larger arrow keys that
are easier to press, while the TUF has clear

WASD keys, making it more obvious that it’s
a gaming laptop. The lid of the TUF also

just makes it look a bit more like a gaming
laptop, while the Legion looks a bit cleaner.

Both keyboards have one zone of RGB backlighting,

and although the key brightness
was a little higher with the TUF,

the TUF’s lighting looked a bit more patchier
compared to the consistently lit Legion keys.

The touchpads on both were good. I
preferred the clicker feel with the

Legion more, but the TUF’s was about a
centimeter wider and still worked well.

The Legion’s power button was more
useful, as it lights up to show you

the current performance mode in use. The
Legion’s screen also goes the full 180

degrees back for sharing, while the
TUF tops out at around 130 degrees.

Both laptops have speakers underneath towards
the front on the left and right sides.

The Legion’s speakers sound clearer, but
also more tinny. The TUF has more bass,

and overall just sounds better to me.

The latencymon results weren’t particularly
impressive from either of these laptops.

The ASUS TUF A15 comes with a 720p
camera, and this is how it looks

and sounds. The Legion 5 on the other
hand has a higher quality 1080p camera,

but it is also available with a 720p
option, so expect a bit worse with that one.

Both of my laptops have the same key specs with

AMD’s Ryzen 7 6800H 8 core CPU
and Nvidia RTX 3060 graphics.

Both laptops have their batteries towards
the front, cooler at the back with two fans,

two memory slots, two M.2 slots for
storage, and a removable Wi-Fi card,

it’s just hiding underneath the SSD in the TUF.

Wi-Fi performance wasn’t that
amazing from either laptop,

but the Legion 5 had a slight lead
over the TUF A15 in my testing. You

could of course upgrade the Wi-Fi card
to something better for like $20 though.

Although both of my laptops came with 512
gig SSDs, the one in my Legion 5 supports

faster PCIe Gen 4, so it has much faster read and
write speeds. This might vary by region though,

and as both laptops have the 6800H CPU you can
use faster PCIe Gen 4 drives in either laptop.

It’s worth noting that the TUF A15 I bought
only came with one 16 gig stick of DDR5 memory,

while the Legion 5 had two 8 gig sticks. This
might give the Legion a benefit in some tests,

but from my own testing one stick of
DDR5 is still similar to dual channel.

Both laptops have control panel software that
lets you set different performance modes. The

A15 gives us some control over the fans with the
option to set the fans to full speed, while the

Legion 5 does not have any fan control out of
the box, you need third party software for that.

As for thermals, generally the TUF A15 was
running warmer. The A15’s idle temps were

like 15 degrees Celsius warmer, though I
don’t personally think this matters at all.

When under a combined CPU and GPU stress test
to represent a worst case full load scenario,

the A15’s CPU was reaching thermal throttling
at 95 degrees Celsius. Although the Legion’s CPU

wasn’t thermal throttling, the GPU was thermal
throttling in its highest performance mode,

though the A15’s GPU was thermal throttling
in performance and turbo modes too,

the highest manual mode with the fans
maxed out was needed to avoid it.

Both the CPU and GPU were clocking higher
with the A15, which may excuse the higher

CPU temperatures on the TUF. The A15 was
able to run all 8 CPU cores at 4GHz in

manual mode while the Legion 5 maxed out
below 3.7GHz in the exact same workload.

This explains why the TUF A15 was generally
running warmer, especially on the CPU. The

Legion’s CPU was power limited to a little
over 30 watts, while the A15 could surpass

45 watts. More power means more performance, but
at the expense of more heat. The Legion was able

to reach higher GPU power limits, though as we
saw the TUF was still clocking a little higher

on the GPU. It was a small difference in any
case, and could come down to silicon lottery,

or perhaps the faster and louder fans in
the TUF allow the GPU to boost higher.

The Legion’s keyboard area was cooler to
the touch with both laptops just sitting

there idling. The TUF was also a bit warmer on
the keyboard when under heavy load, but this

was mostly in the middle section, the WASD area
was fine. Let's have a listen to the fan noise.

The Legion was quieter in most cases, especially
when running under full load with a combined CPU

and GPU stress test, but don’t forget the TUF
does give us some fan control to make changes.

Red Dead Redemption 2 was tested with the
game’s benchmark, and at 1080p the Legion

5 was just 1 FPS ahead, which honestly is a small
difference and within the margin of error range.

It’s definitely not going to be a change that
you’re actually going to notice when playing,

in any case. Stepping up to the higher 1440p
resolution and now the TUF A15 was a little ahead,

but again it’s a 1 FPS difference, so no
major change either way, I doubt you’d be

able to tell which laptop you’re playing on
in a blind test with performance so close.

Cyberpunk 2077 was about 1 FPS
ahead on the Legion 5 at 1080p,

however the Legion had a 13% higher 1% low, so
less dips in performance. It’s possible that

this is a result of the TUF A15 only having one
stick of memory, but from my own testing so far,

this doesn’t really matter as much with DDR5 as
it did with older DDR4. The 1% low gap closes

in a bit at the higher 1440p resolution,
though the A15 was still a little behind,

but the difference in average
FPS is even closer together now.

The TUF A15 was also a little behind
in 1% lows in Control at 1080p,

though its average frame rates were
slightly ahead of the Legion. The 1%

low difference again gets smaller at the
higher 1440p resolution, and again the TUF

was about 1 FPS or so ahead of the Legion,
so really not much of a difference at all.

Here are the 3DMark differences
for those that find them useful.

Outside of gaming, raw CPU performance was
also quite close. Both laptops were basically

scoring the same in single core performance in
Cinebench, and the Legion was only a couple of

hundred points ahead of the TUF in multi core
score. We’re talking about a 1.4% increase there,

so again like the games, only a minor difference
that you’re not going to notice in practice.

That said, things change when we unplug the
charger and run the same test on battery

power. The single core scores are still fairly
close together, however the Legion’s multicore

performance suffers much more, dropping back over
5000 points. This results in the TUF performing

much better in multicore performance
when you’re unplugged from the charger.

Not only does the TUF perform better when
running on battery, it’s also able to last

longer when running on battery too. The TUF’s
battery is 12.5% larger than the Legion’s,

but it’s able to last 21% longer in the
YouTube video playback test with both

screens at 200 nits. The Legion was lasting a
bit longer when running an actual game though.

The Legion was also ahead when it
came to content creation workloads,

despite both laptops having the same CPU and
GPU. Again some of this may be a result of

the two sticks of memory, but the Legion does
also have a higher minimum GPU power limit,

and as we saw in Cinebench earlier it has a
slight edge in CPU performance too. Blender

was an exception, in this entirely GPU
only workload the TUF had a small lead.

Although both laptops have a 15.6”
screen, they’re both available with

1080p or 1440p options. Unfortunately
I’ve got a 1080p TUF and a 1440p Legion,

so not directly comparable, but
I’ll still share my screen results.

The 1440p panel in the Legion gets brighter
at full brightness, but at 90% brightness

or below the TUF was brighter with
a more consistent brightness curve.

Color gamut was much better with the Legion,

the 1080p 144Hz panel in my TUF
just doesn’t seem that great.

The screen response time was way better
with the 1440p panel in the Legion too.

Again this isn’t a fair comparison, because
the 1440p A15 screen is probably better

than the 1080p version, but it’s clear
that the 1080p panel in the TUF isn’t

great. The 1080p panel in last year’s
Legion was better than the newer TUF,

so based on this I’d hope the 2022 Legion’s
1080p screen isn’t as bad as the TUF’s.

The total system latency shows how long
it takes between a mouse click and when

a gun shot fire appears on the screen in CS:GO,

and the faster screen in the Legion would be the
biggest reason that it was faster than the TUF.

Although both laptops have a MUX switch,
only the Legion takes things to the next

level with advanced optimus, meaning you don’t
have to reboot to swap between optimus on or

off. The TUF would need a manual reboot
to change. The Legion also has G-Sync,

at least with my 1440p panel. I believe the
1080p 165Hz Legion 5 screen also offers G-Sync,

but the 144Hz and 60Hz options do not, and I don’t
think any of the TUFs screens offer G-Sync, though

both laptops can do FreeSync with the integrated
Radeon graphics as long as optimus is on.

The Legion gives us much more
customization options through the BIOS,

the TUF on the other hand only
offers extremely basic options.

Alright so what about the price difference?
This is difficult to fairly compare,

because both laptops often go on sale,

so refer to those links below the video
for current prices and current deals.

And speaking of deals, if either
of these laptops do have a good

sale I’ll be sure to add them to
my new website gaminglaptop.deals,

so make sure you check out that website
to save money on your next gaming laptop!

At the time of recording, the ASUS TUF A15 with
lower tier RTX 3050 Ti graphics is on sale for

$700 USD at Bestbuy. Lenovo’s Legion 5 with
the same RTX 3050 Ti graphics starts at $1100,

but that’s with the 6 core 6600H instead of the
6800H. The 6800H version is an extra $70. The

3060 version of the Legion 5 that I’ve tested in
this video is $1450 right now on Lenovo’s website,

which really isn’t great as I’ve seen the 5
Pro with 3070 Ti on sale for around that in

the past. Still though, this is cheaper
compared to buying the same laptop from

other sites like Newegg, which have it for
$100 more. The TUF is also available at

Newegg with the same 6800H CPU and 3060
GPU for $100-200 less than the Legion.

Alright so generally speaking, the
ASUS TUF A15 seems to be cheaper

compared to Lenovo’s Legion 5 wherever I look.

So then the question becomes, is it worth
paying more money to get the Legion 5?

Honestly, probably not. In more cases than
not, the TUF A15 was the better laptop,

so the fact that you can get it for
less money is just icing on the cake.

Things like performance in games were basically
tied, and CPU performance in Cinebench was very

close too. The TUF does perform better
when running on battery power though,

and the TUF also lasts longer
when running off of the battery,

at least when not gaming. The Legion did
seem to have an edge in content creation

tasks though. Granted as mentioned, that
could be due to the memory difference.

The TUF did run hotter, but this isn't
something I'd personally be worried

about. The tradeoff is of course that
it’s able to reach higher clock speeds,

though as we saw in the game tests, that
doesn’t really seem to translate to extra

performance. Although the insides of the TUF
are hotter, the laptop isn’t hot to the touch,

but the fans can get louder which is
something you'd be more likely to notice.

The TUF is a little smaller and more
portable as it’s a fair bit lighter too,

and its speakers sound better too.

The Legion does have some nice extras
though, including more and better ports,

and in my opinion the better
keyboard and touchpad. Build

quality was fairly evenly matched,
maybe a slight edge to the Legion.

All things considered though, unless you really
need the extra or faster ports of the Legion,

or if you’re lazy and you want advanced optimus
so you don’t have to reboot to turn optimus on or

off, then you really can just save the money
and get the cheaper TUF A15 in most cases.

Maybe not with the lower quality 1080p 144Hz
screen that mine has though, as that was notably a

step down compared to what my Legion had. I never
thought I’d be recommending a TUF over a Legion,

but here we are. The A15 has definitely
grown up since it first launched in 2020.

If you need more information on either of
these two laptops, then check out the full

review videos over here next, as I go into
more depth in those. Both of these laptops

are also available with Intel 12th gen CPUs,
it’s not just AMD only, so find out which CPU

you should get in your next laptop over here
next before wasting your hard earned money!