Lenovo Legion Y740 First Impressions: Another laptop with a lot of promise

Gaming laptops are fast gaining popularity and companies are making the most of it. Everyone has been ramping up the number of SKUs for gaming machines, with Lenovo being the most conservative of the lot. Today, the company finally launches their upgraded Legion laptops, the Y540 and the Y740 in India. We got our hands on the higher-end Y740 and after spending some time on it, playing games and whatnot, here’s our initial impression of what Lenovo has to offer.

Under the Hood

Powering the new Lenovo Legion Y740 is Intel’s 9^th generation Core i7-9750H which has been paired with 16GB of RAM. Taking care of the graphics is an Nvidia RTX 2060 and for storage, a whopping 1TB of NVMe drive. The matte 1080p display has a refresh rate of 144Hz which is also G-Sync enabled. As far as gaming laptops go, this one comes fairly decently spec’d. Lenovo also offers a version of this laptop with an Nvidia RTX 2070 Max-Q, in case you feel the entry level RTX GPU isn’t enough for you.

A touch of colour

There are a number of things that sets the Lenovo Legion Y740 apart from the Lergion Y540, but probably the one that would be the most obvious is the RGB keyboard. Lenovo has also thrown an extra row of keys aligned vertically on the left of the keyboard island. The key caps are fairly large and comfortable to type on, but the extra row of keys moves all the other keys a little to the right, which messes with muscle memory a bit. What is nice is the extra LEDs that light up the exhaust vents and even the underside of the laptop.

The RGB keyboard is powered by corsair's iCue software

More than Just Gaming

The Lenovo Legion Y740 may have “gaming-grade” insides, but it also seems to be a machine worthy of consideration by creators also. Thanks to an IPS panel, fast storage and a Thunderbolt 3.0 port, the Legion Y740 has all the right components that creators could leverage for their workflow. The Thunderbolt 3.0 port means easy daisy chaining of external monitors with high speed storage like the Samsung X5 SSD. All of this comes in a laptop that’s only 0.8 inches thick. Another measure of thickness is the bezels, which have significantly narrowed down in comparison to the previous generation

The Legion Y740 offers a very generous I/O selection

In the short time we spent with the Legion Y740, there were some aspects that really stood out. While this may be a gaming laptop, Lenovo is not shying away from using the USP of their other line of laptops. For example, the keycaps and travel very closely resembles the ones from the Thinkpad lineup. The display, which can be folded back to lie flat gives off a very Yoga-like feel (even if it may not actually serve a real purpose). Did we mention the keyboard is spill resistant? Yes, this is another feature borrowed from the high-end Thinkpad laptops.

Thunderbolt 3 opens up some really high speed avenues of connectivity

First Impressions

Lenovo as a brand has an impressive product portfolio. Between the Thinkpads, Yogas and the Ideapad lineup, there’s plenty in Lenovo’s bag of tricks to make an impressive gaming laptop. We see that here not just in terms of specifications, but also the careful attention to detail as far as design goes. We have yet to fully test the laptop. While our short gaming stint on the laptop was fairly positive, we are yet to test for thermals and see if there is any particular hotspots or even issues with throttling. Stay tuned for our full review for more details.

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Swapnil Mathur

Swapnil was Digit's resident camera nerd, (un)official product photographer and the Reviews Editor. Swapnil has moved-on to newer challenges. For any communication related to his stories, please mail us using the email id given here. View Full Profile