Laptop Comparison lenovo legion 5 and hp omen

The Lenovo Legion 5 and HP Omen 15 are both  excellent Ryzen gaming laptops, but which one  should you pick? I’ve compared everything  to help you decide which is right for you.

The two configurations I’ve got here  have basically the same key specs.  Both laptops have the 8 core  Ryzen 7 4800H processor, Nvidia GTX 1660 Ti graphics and 16gb of  memory in dual channel with 144Hz screens.

You can configure both laptops a bit differently,  you can find examples and updated  prices linked in the description.

Both laptops have similar build quality, they’ve  got plastic lids and the Omen has an aluminium  interior while the Legion has a soft rubberised  finish. The Omen has a little more flex to the lid  and the front of it could be a little sharp,  so I’ll give the Legion a slight edge here.

The Legion 5 was heavier than the Omen 15, and  this weight difference gap widens further when  including the power bricks, as the Legion  5 has a larger and higher wattage brick.

Along with weighing more, the Legion 5 is  bigger in all dimensions. It’s slightly wider, thicker, and about ¾ of an inch or 2cm deeper.

Both laptops have a 15.6” 1080p 144Hz  screen. They both have FreeSync, however the Legion has a larger FreeSync  range. The Legion 5 also has a MUX switch,  

which lets you disable the integrated  Radeon graphics after a reboot and only  use the Nvidia GPU. This will boost frame  rate in games, giving an edge to the Legion.

The Legion also gives us the option of enabling or  disabling overdrive which affects screen response  time. Even with overdrive disabled, the response  time on the Legion is faster than the Omen,  

then the Legion takes it to the  next level with overdrive enabled.The screen in the Legion can also  get brighter at full brightness,  though the Omen was ahead at lower brightness  levels. 

The Legion’s screen also has better  colour gamut, it’s not far ahead but it is  better. Backlight bleed was pretty similar,  I didn’t notice a problem with either of my  units, but this will vary between panels.

Both laptops have a 720p camera  above the screen in the center,  the Lenovo also has a privacy shutter.

The camera on the Omen 15 is pretty average, but  it’s way better than what the Lenovo has to offer.

Both laptops have decent keyboards with white  backlighting. The Legion has both a numpad without  sacrificing the arrow keys, while the Omen instead  skips the numpad to prioritize the arrow keys. I  

liked that the Omen has function keys on both left  and right, and although the power button is next  to the delete key, an accidental mispress doesn’t  put it to sleep.

The power button on the Legion is  better though, because the lighting changes  based on the performance mode you’re using,  allowing you to quickly know. The Omen also  has some holes for air flow above the keyboard.

In terms of actually typing on the keyboards  though, they’re close and both good.

but personally I preferred the Legion,  it just felt a bit more tactile.Both have precision touchpads which worked  well, though the Omen’s was a little larger  which I liked, but I preferred the click feeling  of the Legion, completely subjective though.

Let’s get into the I/O differences. On the  left both have a USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-A port  and 3.5mm audio combo jack. That’s all for  the Legion, the Omen otherwise also has its  power input at the back, gigabit ethernet port,  HDMI 2.0 output and full sized SD card slot.

On the right the Legion just has a second  USB Type-A port, while the Omen has a USB  3.1 Gen1 Type-C port with DisplayPort 1.4 support,  mini DisplayPort, and two more  USB 3.1 Gen1 Type-A ports.

The Legion has the rest of its I/O on the back,  which I personally prefer as it  keeps bulky cables out of the way,  

though as we saw in the dimensions earlier this  does make it stick out a little more. It’s got  icons above the ports so you can easily see where  to plug in without turning the machine around.

The back of the legion has its gigabit ethernet,  USB 3.2 Type-C port with DisplayPort output,  two more USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-A ports for 4 in total,  HDMI 2.0 output, power input and Kensington lock.

Neither laptop can be charged over Type-C  and neither has Thunderbolt support.  All display outputs connect directly  to the Nvidia GPU, bypassing optimus.

So basically to recap, the  Lenovo has more Type-A ports,  but the Omen has a mini DisplayPort  and an SD card slot instead.

Underneath is pretty similar, they both  have adequate air ventilation towards the  back half directly above the intake fans.  The rubber feet on both were comparable,  both prevented sliding on my desk.

Inside both have the battery towards the  front. My Legion 5 also has a 2.5” drive bay,  

but you can also get it without that and a  larger battery instead. Both have 2 M.2 slots,  though again for the Legion you need  to remove the 2.5” mount to use one,  otherwise both have dual  channel memory and WiFi 6 card.

As the battery in the Omen is larger,  it’s lasting longer as you’d expect,  but yeah if you got the Legion  5 with its 80Wh battery option Instead of the 2.5” drive bay then  I’d expect that to do better instead.

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

Listening to both side by side,  I think the Legion sounds better,  it was clearer with more bass,  though the Omen gets a bit louder.

The latencymon results were quite similar, though  the Legion 5 was a little better in that regard.

Next let’s take a look at thermals. Both  laptops were tested in an ambient room   temperature of 21 degrees Celsius,  and both have two fans with shared heatpipes. 

The Omen has one side exhaust,  while the Legion exhausts from both sides.I’ve done all testing in the highest performance  modes available, so performance mode, but I’ve also covered all other performance modes in  the full reviews linked in the description.

These are the temperatures of the CPU. I’ve got  the Omen in red and Legion in purple, so in these  tests the processor was a little warmer on the  Omen. When we look at the GPU results for the same  tests though, the Legion was now a little warmer  outside of idle, no major differences either way.

When we look at clock speeds during the same  tests, they were extremely close together,  there was an ever so slight lead from the Legion,  though it was also a bit warmer. Things are even  closer together when looking at GPU clock  speeds, basically no difference in practice.

Here’s what we’re looking at in terms of  Cinebench R20 scores from these machines  with their respective highest performance modes  in use. I’ve got two results from the Omen, out of  the box stock, the Legion 5 was around 6% faster  in multicore performance, however you can use the  third party Ryzen controller software to boost  performance and make it comparable to the Legion.  

I didn’t find this to change the Legion’s score,  it already seems to perform as best as it can As for the areas where you’ll  actually be putting your hands,  the Legion was just a tiny bit warmer  at idle, no big differences though.  

When under heavy stress test in  the highest performance modes, the Omen was noticeably cooler, but it does this  by running the fans louder, let’s have a listen.

Both were still audible when idling, though the  Legion was a little quieter. When under load,  the Omen was always louder, though the Omen  does at least give us the option of setting  the fan to max speed should we wish, there’s  no further fan controls with the Legion.

Let’s compare some games next. All laptops  were tested in their best performance modes,  and the Legion 5 was tested with optimus  disabled, aka hybrid mode off.

The Legion  was tested more recently, so the Nvidia drivers  are a little newer, but this shouldn’t make a practical difference. The Legion also applies a  GPU overclock through the Vantage software too.

Red Dead Redemption 2 was tested with the games  benchmark tool. I’ve got the Omen 15 in red,  and the Legion 5 in purple, and the Legion  was clearly ahead at all setting levels,  with more of a difference  noted at lower setting presets.

Battlefield V was tested by running through  the same campaign mission on both machines.  

Again the Legion 5 was ahead  regardless of setting levels in use,  both in terms of average FPS, and in most  instances even further ahead in 1% low.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider was  tested with the built in benchmark,  again the Legion was in front of  the Omen at all setting levels.

CS:GO was tested with the Ulletical  benchmark, and I’ve chosen this game as   it’s heavily affected by the option of disabling  Optimus. Basically the processor’s integrated graphics can act as a bottleneck compared  to only using the Nvidia discrete graphics,  especially at higher frame rates, and this  is why the Legion 5 is 31% faster here.

Control was tested by running through the  same part of the game on both laptops.  The Legion was ahead again, but at  higher setting levels I doubt it’s  going to be a difference you’d  actually notice in practice.

Call of Duty Modern Warfare was tested in the  same manner, quite close results in terms of 1%  low performance, while the Legion was  further ahead in average frame rate.

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey was tested with the  games benchmark tool. The Legion 5 was ahead  in average FPS at all by very high settings,  though it was super close, but what was more  interesting is that the Omen was ahead in 1%  lows at all but the highest setting preset.

The Legion 5 was back on top in  The Witcher 3 in all aspects,  again not huge gains at higher setting levels, so  it seems like once the 1660 Ti gets loaded up the  

difference is negligible compared to lower setting  presets where the CPU generally matters more.The results can vary a fair  bit based on the specific game,  on average out of these 16 games though, the  legion 5 was almost 6% faster than the omen 15.  

It’s being held up by the CS:GO outlier, without  that the Legion is instead around 4.3% faster, either way still a reasonable win  given they have the same CPU and GPU.

I’ve also tested 20 plus games on each of these  laptops at all settings and compared them with  a bunch of other laptops, links to those videos  are in the description if you want more results.I’ve also got the results from  3DMark’s Firestrike and Timespy,  and the Legion 5 was a little ahead in all cases.

I’ve also tested some content creator workloads  with the Puget Systems benchmark tools.  Adobe Premiere was scoring less than 4% higher  on the Legion 5, but hey, winnings winning.

The difference was more pronounced in Adobe  Photoshop, where the Legion was now scoring  14% higher than the Omen. This kind of makes  sense given the test is heavier on the CPU,  and at stock the Legion had an edge there.

DaVinci Resolve depends more on the GPU,  and both have the GTX 1660 Ti at 80 watts  so the scores are similar again, though the  Legion was 4% better like we saw in Premiere.

I’ve tested both 512GB NVMe M.2 SSDs with Crystal  disk mark, the read speeds were close but the  drive in the Omen had better write speeds. The  Omen also has an SD card slot which goes alright.

Now for the final difference, the  price. You can check updated prices  using the links in the description  as prices will change over time. At the time of recording, the Lenovo Legion 5  can be picked up on Amazon for under $1000 USD.  

The Omen 15 was on sale for $1050 USD in the  past, but the regular price seems to be $1250. Stock levels of both are in flux  due to Ryzen processor shortages,  so if you see a deal don’t sleep on it.

With all of that in mind, let’s summarise the good  and bad parts of both gaming laptops  to help you decide which is better.

Build quality was quite similar, I  preferred the metal interior of the  Omen over the rubbery Legion, but I  think the Legion is a little better  as it was slightly less flexible but  also doesn’t have a sharp front edge.

The Legion just straight up has a  much better screen. That’s not to  

say the Omen’s is as bad as say  the ASUS TUF A15 or anything.

but the Legion’s is brighter, has better  colour gamut, faster response time, higher contrast ratio, and a larger FreeSync range  - it’s basically better in all measurable aspects.

In addition to that, the Legion gives us the  option of disabling Optimus or hybrid mode  which gives a performance boost in games as  this bypasses use of the Integrated graphics.

This is likely the main reason as to why the  Legion was performing around 6%  better in games than the Omen,  of course results can vary a fair bit based  on the specific game though, as shown here.

Whether under stress test or gaming,  both machines offered similar CPU and GPU clock speeds. The internal  temperatures weren’t that different, in general the Legion was warmer on the GPU  but the Omen was warmer on the CPU, either  way no thermal throttling and neither were even  passing 90 degrees Celsius, so no issues there.

The Omen was a bit cooler on the  keyboard area when under load though, 

but this is at the expense of louder fans. I don’t  think the Legion was particularly hot or anything,  so it’s just a trade off as to which you  prefer. Neither have fan curve control, however the Omen does let  us set the fan to max speed.

The Legion has an edge in CPU performance, at  least stock out of the box. If you’re willing  to use software like Ryzen controller it is  possible to get comparable performance from  the Omen. This probably explains why the Legion 5  was doing better in the content creator workloads.

The Omen lasted longer in my battery  tests, however the Legion does also  have the option of a larger 80Wh battery  if you don’t want the 2.5” drive bay,  so I’d expect that to put it ahead of the Omen.  

Internals were otherwise generally the same,  2 M.2 slots, WiFi 6 card, and 16gb of dual  channel memory, so I’d say the Legion is at  least a bit more flexible as you can optionally  go 2.5” drive or not based on your preference.

The SSD in the Omen was faster when  it came to write speeds though,  and content creators are going to miss out  on an SD slot which the Legion does not have.

I think the I/O selection on the Omen was a bit  better overall. It’s got just one less USB Type-A  port but instead has a mini DisplayPort and that  SD card slot.

It still has three Type-A ports  which honestly is probably enough, I’d prefer one  less for the SD slot and Mini DisplayPort anyway.  

That said, I prefer the I/O layout of the  legion, bulky cables run out the back and  stay out of the way, though this seems to be why  it’s ¾ of an inch or 2cm deeper than the Omen,  and for that matter slightly larger than the Omen  in all dimensions, and a bit heavier. 

This doesn’t  make it that much less portable or anything,  but the Omen is a little lighter and smaller.

I personally preferred the  keyboard on the Legion 5,  the presses felt more tactile and it still has a  numpad. The omen’s touchpad was a little bigger,  but I preferred the feel of  the clicks on the Legion.

All things considered, I think the Lenovo Legion 5  is the better machine, especially if you’re after  a gaming laptop. 

Simply put, the Legion performs  better in games and has a better screen in all measurable regards, and it costs less money too.  I don’t think all the other differences like I/O  and battery life for instance are that big, both  are offering a great range of features at this  

price point so it’s hard to go wrong with either,  but yeah given the choice, I’d pick the Legion 5.