Lenovo Legion 5 Pro vs Razer Blade 14: My favorite 2023 gaming laptops face off

Gaming laptops are exorbitant pieces of hardware and you have to be prepared to spend up to $5,000 if you’re looking for the highest quality. However, we’ve previously gone over how buying an RTX 4080 laptop or higher is setting your money on fire. I’m also quick to say don’t spend more than $3,000 on a gaming laptop, as it’s not remotely worth the value you’re getting.

Considering these two stipulations, it’s no surprise that my favorite two laptops of 2023 both feature an RTX 4070 graphics card and are each under $3,000. In fact, I loved them so much I wrote separate highlight articles for each. One highlighting that the Lenovo Legion 5 Pro is the best gaming laptop under $1,500, while the other focused on the Razer Blade 14 and how it was my favorite gaming laptop at the time.

Both of these laptops are easily my favorites of 2023, but if we were to put them in a hypothetical gladiator’s arena where only one victor could emerge, who would win?

Lenovo Legion 5 Pro vs Razer Blade 14: Specs compared 

Lenovo Legion 5 Pro vs Razer Blade 14: Price 

Both the Blade 14 and Legion 5 Pro are RTX 4070 gaming laptops, yet the former costs $2,699 while the latter is $1,399. The reasons for this massive gap in price is not clear solely by looking at specifications. The Legion 5 Pro features an AMD Ryzen 7 7745HX processor, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card, 16GB of RAM, 1TB of SSD storage and a 16-inch, 2560 x 1600, IPS display at 165Hz.

On the surface this is pretty similar to the Blade 14, which has a AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS processor, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 GPU with 8GB of VRAM, 16GB of RAM, 1TB of M.2 PCIe SSD storage space, and a 14-inch QHD+ 240Hz, 2560 x 1600-pixel display. The ways in which the Blade 14 is more premium can be seen in its design, battery life and display, but solely on price, the winner here is clear.

Winner: Lenovo Legion 5 Pro 

Lenovo Legion 5 Pro vs Razer Blade 14: Design 

Considering the Legion 5 Pro is nearly half the price of the Blade 14, it’d be a total shock if the former featured a superior design. The Blade 14 benefits from a beautiful, minimalistic black aluminum lid and chassis. Gaming laptops can suffer from shoddy exteriors even when they’re expensive, but Razer didn’t take the cheap way out here.

This isn’t to say the Legion 5 Pro’s exterior feels poor, as it holds up firmly when placing pressure against various points on its chassis. Its hinge also held up even when placing the lid near its deck, maintaining its own weight without issue. But the Blade 14 has the benefit of a near unbendable metal exterior.

However, they’re vastly different products in size and weight. The Blade 14 is a 14-inch laptop that comes in at 12.2 x 9 x 0.7 inches and 4.1 pounds, while the Legion 5 Pro is a 16-inch laptop that measures 14.3 x 10.3 x 0.9-1.1 inches and weighs 4.1 pounds.

Winner: Razer Blade 14 

Lenovo Legion 5 Pro vs Razer Blade 14: Display 

The Legion 5 Pro features a 16-inch, 2560 x 1600-pixel IPS matte display at a 165Hz refresh rate, while the Blade 14 has a 14-inch, 2560 x 1600-pixel matte display at a 240Hz refresh rate. These specifications are pretty similar outside of the difference in refresh rate, so we can quickly jump into our test results.

The Legion 5 Pro produced 82.4% of the DCI-P3 color gamut with a brightness of 319 nits, while the Blade 14 hit 114.3% DCI-P3 with a brightness of 465 nits. This isn’t surprising considering the two laptops feature a massive difference in price, but it’s important to note that the Legion 5 Pro actually has an incredible score considering its inexpensive nature. But without a doubt, the Blade 14 snags this victory.

Winner: Razer Blade 14 

Lenovo Legion 5 Pro vs Razer Blade 14: Performance 

While the gap between these two laptops has been considerable thus far, this is where things begin to change. The Legion 5 Pro is built with an AMD Ryzen 7 7745HX processor, 16GB of RAM and a 1TB Samsung PM9A1 SSD. The Razer Blade 14 has an AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS processor, 16GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD.

You’d think the near two times difference in price would guarantee an easy victory for the Blade 14, but this is where the Legion 5 Pro turns into somewhat of a miracle. On the Geekbench 6 overall performance test, the Legion 5 Pro’s multi-core score of 13,063 absolutely crushed the Razer Blade 14 (11,425).

This only continued when converting a 4K video into 1080p resolution using the handbrake app, a task it performed in 4 minutes and 5 seconds. The Blade 14 (4:45) just could not keep up. And finally, its 1TB SSD duplicated 25GB of multimedia files in 12.5 seconds at a 2,150 megabytes per second transfer rate. This left the Blade 14 (1,230 MBps) in the dust with a performance nearly twice as good. 

Winner: Lenovo Legion 5 Pro 

Lenovo Legion 5 Pro vs Razer Blade 14: Graphics

Both the Legion 5 Pro and Blade 14 are built with an RTX 4070 mobile graphics card with 8GB of vRAM, so it’s expected that the two laptops will feature relatively close performance metrics—yet that’s not remotely what happened in our tests.

In our Borderlands 3 test, the Legion 5 Pro managed an average of 110 fps at 1080p on maximum graphics settings. The Blade 14 (98 fps) was quite a bit behind, not only in this test, but every other gaming test we put it against. Both in Far Cry 6 and Red Dead Redemption 2, the Legion 5 Pro (97 fps and 78 fps) demolished the Blade 14 (85 fps and 73 fps).

We also put it to the Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition test, and the Legion 5 Pro managed 107 fps on High, 84 fps on Ultra and 53 fps on Extreme. The Blade 14 (88 fps High, 76 fps Ultra, 48 fps Extreme) was once again bested.

Winner: Lenovo Legion 5 Pro 

Lenovo Legion 5 Pro vs Razer Blade 14: Battery life

So far, the two laptops are neck and neck, each scoring a few victories thus far, but battery life is a particularly sore subject for gaming laptops. It’s easy to find super powerful hardware, but can it last more than a few hours? At the very least, both the Legion 5 Pro and Blade 14 last a decently long time, but one does far better than the other.

The Legion 5 Pro manages admirable longevity at 4 hours and 38 minutes, but the Blade 14 nearly doubles that at 8 hours and 35 minutes. It’s rare to see a gaming laptop last this long, but it’s one of the many reasons why the price gap between these two laptops is so vast. The Blade 14 does more than just provide excellent performance; it’s a reliable beast in many avenues.

Winner: Razer Blade 14 

Overall winner

Choosing a winner in this battle is tough considering the two laptops are made for drastically different price brackets. Under most circumstances, we’d happily call this a draw and say which one is better depends entirely on your overall needs. But that’s too easy, and as mentioned previously, we’re imagining a hypothetical scenario where the two laptops are tossed into a gladiator’s arena: There must be one victor.

For those who need an inexpensive gaming laptop that can do it all with style, the Legion 5 Pro is an easy pick. Both the performance and gaming metrics, alongside the decent display and sturdy chassis, make it pretty clear why it’s one of our favorites of the year. All of that power for $1,399 is mindblowing.

But for those who are willing to pay a lot of extra money for an incredible jack-of-all-trades gaming laptop, the Blade 14 is hard to argue against. With battery life over eight hours, an excellent exterior build, beautiful display and solid performance metrics, it does everything well. 

Yet at the end of the day, a gaming laptop is a gaming laptop, and if something at half the price can still be packed with a decent display and destroy its opponent in performance metrics, it’s hard to argue with that resourcefulness. The Lenovo Legion 5 Pro is simply unstoppable, and I’d easily recommend it to anyone seeking to purchase a gaming laptop.

Winner: Lenovo Legion 5 Pro 

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