Lenovo legion y540 review in Spanish (full review)

For all those who are looking to buy a next-generation gaming laptop at a reasonable price, the Lenovo Legion Y540 will be one of the best options they will have except for offers from other rivals. The gaming-oriented family has been upgraded to ours 9th generation Intel Core i7 and Nvidia RTX, delivering impressive gaming performance in this case starting at 1000 euros to 1800 for this model.

We will analyze the most supporting model in the series, whose design is not exactly the strength of this team, with a very classic and simple cut, but the quality is there. It features an i7-9750H with 16GB of RAM and an Nvidia RTX 2060 Max-Q to deliver over 60 FPS in all games in high quality. To this is added a 144 Hz IPS panel and 512 GB + 1 TB hybrid storage, not bad.

We began this review not without first thanking Lenovo for trusting us by temporarily transferring this laptop to us.

Lenovo Legion Y540 technical characteristics

Unboxing

As always we start with the Unboxing of the Lenovo Legion Y540, which has come to us in a standard rigid cardboard box with a silkscreen covering all the faces on a black background. This characterizes the Lenovo gaming notebook series, also showing the variant of the acquired model and some of its characteristics.

The opening of this box is direct and case type, with no other inside that isolates the laptop. The equipment comes with a basic protection between keyboard and screen, and well placed in a cardboard mold along with the other accessories, which will not be too many.

The bundle then has the following elements:

• Lenovo Legion Y540 Notebook 15 Warranty and Support Book Charger and Power Cord

And it would already be, extremely brief as you can see and with what is fair and necessary for the user. We also do not need anything extra, it is definitely a laptop. Without further ado let's see what its design is like, perhaps the weakest point of the team.

Classic cut design

In terms of taste there is nothing written, so for many the Lenovo Legion Y540 15 will be an attractive laptop and for others not so much. Personally I include myself in the second group, but recognizing that the finishes are of good quality in general.

We can clearly see a fairly classic cut in the design, being a set with flat and fairly square lines especially in the area of ​​support on the ground. Only aluminum has been used in the display lid. We see it quite elegant, with a relief in the form of stripes and the family emblem on the side edge that give it a peculiar and attractive effect with the "o" illuminated in white.

It is still a very compact laptop, especially in width, with measurements of 365 mm wide, 265 mm deep and 25.9 mm thick, weighing about 2.3 kg with battery and mechanical hard disk included. It's a thickness tight enough for a gaming rig, and the lid is slightly thicker than that of rivals MSI, Asus, or Acer, but it ensures better screen rigidity and security.

Something that doesn't look too good on it is the bottom, especially this rear that sticks out with very square and basic style. That in turn cause having a forward hinge giving the feeling of an old team. In fact, in the back area we find part of the ports, not too accessible although at least the space between the ventilation grids is used.

The sides of the Lenovo Legion Y540 15 have very few ports, although small but welcome vents. In its entirety it is an area made of hard plastic. Like the lower part, where we have a large opening for the air intake that we value very positively. In addition, a cloth filter has been placed to prevent the entry of dust.

The entire front and part of the side is inclined inwards, giving us a fairly pronounced edge on the equipment to give the feeling of less thickness and improve grip. This logically causes the port space to shrink here.

We are already going to the inside of the Lenovo Legion Y540 15, to see that its 15.6-inch screen is extremely adjusted to top and sides, with 6 mm frames. The lower part is much wider, with a 30 mm frame and the webcam integrated in this area. The keyboard has the usual situation, provided with a white backlight and a numeric keypad. The touchpad sits slightly to the left, and has a huge clearance on the sides for comfortable handling, as well as physical click buttons.

Ports and connections

We leave behind the general design of the Lenovo Legion Y540 15, and now we focus on the ports that the team has, which in this case will be quite varied.

Starting from the right side we have:

• USB 3.2 gen1 Type-AJack 3.5mm 4-pole combo for audio and microphone Ventilation grille

The left area has:

• USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-AOther ventilation grille

These two areas are quite concise in terms of ports, and we believe that a greater number of them would have been quite good for accessibility, although the design has deprived them of space.

In the back we find the rest:

• USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-CMini DisplayPortUSB 3.2 Gen1HDMI 2.0RJ45 Ethernet portRectangular AC adapter Kensington slot for universal padlocks

In this back we have most of the video connectors and another pair of USB ports. We see that the Lenovo Legion Y540 15 does not have any Gen2 USB at 10 Gbps, remember that a USB 3.2 Gen1 is equivalent to a 3.1 Gen1 and a 3.0. Of course we don't have Thunderbolt either.

The thickness does allow us to implement wired network connectivity and more video ports such as the Mini DisplayPort, something that is especially appreciated considering that we do not have WiFi 6 on the wireless card.

15.6-inch 144Hz display

We now continue analyzing the screen of the Lenovo Legion Y540 15, which as its name suggests is a 15.6-inch panel in standard 16: 9 format. Its IPS LCD technology gives us a native resolution of 1920x1080p, undoubtedly the most used for a gaming laptop as is normal due to the performance of the GPU.

As good gaming, this screen has a refresh rate of 144 Hz with flicker-free and very good features as we will see later. Its brightness power is the standard for these devices, ensuring constant 300 nits, but without HDR support. It seems that we do not have G-Sync or FreeSync dynamic refresh technology on this screen, at least neither the Nvidia application nor the pendulum test show this.

As for color coverage, not providing too much data, only that it covers 72% of the NTSC spectrum and consequently, almost 100% sRGB, we will also check if this is true. The viewing angles are as always 178 ^or both vertically and horizontally, checking for the images, and much better in person that the color degradation is nil and the representation of them perfect.

Lenovo also does not have any software to modify the color temperature of the screen, so its profiling will not be possible unless we use external software. In this case, the Nvidia drivers do allow us to modify the color of this one, so we would have a little more play in terms of screen calibration.

Calibration

We've done some calibration testing for the Lenovo Legion Y540 15's main IPS panel with our X-Rite Colormunki Display colorimeter, and the free DisplayCAL 3 and HCFR programs. With these tools we will analyze the color graphics of the screen in the DCI-P3 and sRGB spaces. We have also verified the presence of artifacts such as ghosting or tearing because it is a game-oriented screen.

Flickering, Ghosting and other image artifacts

For this test we will use the Testufo website . We have configured the test at 960 pixels per second and a separation of 240 pixels between the UFOs, always with a Cyan background color. The images taken have been tracked with the UFOs at the same speed at which they appear on the screen in order to capture the trail of ghosting that they may leave.

And we can say that we have not detected any ghosting on this screen after testing with testufo and with the respective games. Very good benefits in this regard, as expected from a gaming panel.

In everything else we see perfect performance in both blink and bleeding. We do have a slight tear on the screen due to not having dynamic refresh technology, or if so, the application does not detect it. Being a small panel, this effect is not greatly appreciated, at least we have that advantage.

Brightness and Contrast

Brightness Max.	Contrast	Gamma value	Color temperature	Black level
330 cd / m 2	1139: 1	2.49	6882K	0.2765 cd / m 2

Of course what is true is the maximum brightness of 300 nits, rising to no less than 330, which is a point in favor of the quality of the panel of the Lenovo Legion Y540 15. The contrast also exceeds the typical 1000: 1 solvency that we have in this type of technology, giving a very good black level at maximum brightness with only 0.27 nits, that is, a very deep and close to zero black.

The gamma value is a little out of adjustment, having measured almost 2.5 against 2.2, which is the ideal. Then we will see that it generally affects the color accuracy and panel calibration. Likewise, the color temperature clearly tends to bluish colors, something that could be rectified by modifying the panel's color temperature.

In the uniformity test we see that in almost all the regions of the screen we have the 300 nits or more promised, and only in the periphery there are two values ​​below with 297 nits rounding. Uniformity is considerably good since from the brightest region to the least, there are only 32 nits of difference.

SRGB space

As we had previously anticipated, the calibration is not great on the panel, the tendency to cool colors and the gamma of 2.5 affects even the grayscale. In this case, it is worth doing a calibration to see if we can improve the results. The average Delta E of the panel is 3.48, quite far from 2 or less which would be ideal.

Color coverage in this space is 86.5%, also far from a possible 100% if 72% NTSC were met. This coverage will be difficult to expand, although with the LUT curves it is possible to expand the range of colors if we planned to use the laptop for design, the use of which we do not recommend.

DCI-P3 space

In this color space we have a coverage of 66.3% DCI-P3 and an average Delta E of 4.3, also very far from ideal. The HCFR graphs show data in general far from the ideal, in almost all cases, although we do see good values ​​in the black and white graph.

In general, it is not a panel as accurate as in others of the competition, such as the MSI, GS series and GE series gaming equipment, or the Gigabyte ones, especially OLEDs that are at another level on the screen.

Results after a calibration

DCI-P3 calibrated

sRGB calibrated

After calibrating and tweaking the gamma a bit from the Nvidia panel, we see that the compared color palette improves considerably in both color spaces, especially in sRGB.

Sound system and webcam

The sound system that has been mounted on this Lenovo Legion Y540 15 consists of a double speaker from the manufacturer Harman with Dolby Atmos technology and a conical rectangular format with a small sound box.

Although they are very small, their performance, especially their maximum volume has surprised us, with very little distortion in the acute part even at its maximum capacity. We do not have very noticeable bass as usual, but for ambient music they are especially great, as well as movies for their spoken fragments.

We certainly believe that the signature behind it shows, as we have noticed them superior to general-purpose notebooks and computers that use rectangular plastic membrane speakers. Although they are not for example at the level of the Giant Speakers of the MSI Raider and company. However, we expected lower performance and we have been very satisfied.

Regarding the webcam, we have no news on the sensor used, since as usual, the HD 1280x720p resolution is used, capable of recording content on it and at 30 FPS maximum. Next to it, the typical double microphone array with omnidirectional pattern has been installed, which will make a good role for conversations without too many demands.

Touchpad and keyboard

We now continue with two important elements such as the keyboard and touchpad of the Lenovo Legion Y540 15.

And the truth is that the keyboard of this laptop reminds me a lot in size and sensations of the Acer Predator. It is a keyboard in full configuration, that is, with a numpad panel and row of F keys, of course with a bubble gum membrane. These two elements are slightly separated from the normal keyboard and the arrow keys, something that we like to access and better differentiate the different regions.

The keys have a considerable size, being of the island type and with a slight curvature in the lower area that helps to notice them closer together and to fail less in the quick keystrokes. The route is somewhat greater than other gaming keyboards, about 2 mm even a little more, noting a very soft membrane and without any sinking in the central area.

The keys include white and backlit backlighting, that is, the edges are also illuminated to improve the overview. We cannot change color, but we can change the intensity of the light or turn it off directly. It seems that it also has an anti ghosting of at least 10 keys from the tests we have done and of course in perfect Spanish.

The touchpad has a fairly standard size of 100 × 50mm with the separate buttons on the touchpad. This gives a more basic aesthetic to the set, but for its benefit we have a much more rigid panel without sinking on the edges and click buttons that will last longer if we play with it or use it a lot.

It supports typical two, three and 4 finger Windows system gestures. On the part of the buttons, they are of a considerable size and not protruding from the plane of the base. It has very little travel and a direct click with relative hardness, perhaps a little softer would give a better feeling, but it is a matter of taste once again.

In general, it is another section that has surprised us due to its good level, especially the keyboard, which I find very comfortable and with a good membrane. Great job for the lords of Lenovo.

Lenovo VANTAGE software

As with other brands, Lenovo could not give up its own management software for the laptop. This software has an extremely simple and well-distributed interface, with few sections and including monitoring of hardware activity.

Over time they will add more functions, we imagine, since currently there are rather few that we find in it. Some of them are the cooling performance control, the occasional basic adjustment of the screen, sound and fast charging of the laptop.

Internal features and hardware

We now continue with the hardware section of the Lenovo Legion Y540 15, the final part of the analysis before reaching the testing phase.

To remove the back cover, it was necessary to loosen a few screws around the bottom edge of the laptop, and then remove a rubber to make more hidden screws visible.

Network connectivity: Ethernet and WiFi 5

In this case we do not have excessive news regarding connectivity from a year or two ago, since we have WiFi 5 as wireless connectivity and Ethernet as wired connectivity.

In the first case, an Intel Wireless AC-9560 NGW card is used as not mounted on an M.2 slot in 2230 CNVi format. This is an advantage in the face of upgrading to an Intel AX200 WiFi 6, something that any user can do after the product warranty. The 9560 operates over 802.11ac and consequently offers a maximum speed of 1.73 Gbps over 5 / 2.4 GHz at 160 MHz and is therefore Dual Band.

On the part of the Ethernet chip, it is a standard Realtek Gigabit Ethernet that delivers 10/100/1000 Mbps. The port is located on the back of the laptop, not very accessible but at least comfortable so that the cable does not get in the way.

Main hardware

We now turn to see the main hardware of the Lenovo Legion Y540 15, consisting of GPUs, CPUs, memory and storage.

For the graphics section we have a Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 Max-Q 6 GB GDDR6 graphics card. A GPU that offers a performance of 70% compared to its desktop version, consuming only a third. In this RTX 2060 we have a 960 MHz GPU in base mode and 1200 MHz in turbo mode, under a 192-bit interface and with 1920 CUDA Cores, 160 TMUs and 48 ROPs, consuming only 80 W of power. In the other 14 models that the manufacturer has, we can find Nvidia GTX 1650 and GTX 1660 Ti dedicated cards of lower performance and price.

We now continue with the CPU, whose bet is of course the Intel Core i7-9750H, the 9th generation CPU that comes to replace the i7-8750H. It works at a base frequency of 2.6 GHz and 4.5 GHz in turbo boost mode. A CPU that also has 6 cores and 12 processing threads, under a TDP of only 45W and a L3 cache of 12 MB. In the other versions we can find the Core i5-9300H as an economic version.

Next to it we have a motherboard with HM370 chipset and a total of 16 GB of 2666 MHz RAM memory manufactured by Samsung. In this case they will be two 8 GB modules and therefore taking advantage of the Dual Channel of their two SO-DIMMs. The maximum capacity will be 64 GB as is normal in the maximum performance chipset for this Intel platform.

Finally, the storage section has left us with conflicting feelings. On the one hand we have a 2.5 ”mechanical hard drive and 1 TB of storage built by Seagate. This will come in handy for storing games and files in general, something to be appreciated on a 15-inch laptop.

But on the other hand, a 512 GB Western Digital PC SN520 SSD has been chosen. The storage is fine, but its PCIe 3.0 interface works on x2 instead of x4, with almost all of its competition a step above with the Samsung PM981 and other variants. It is a much faster drive than a SATA, that is clear, but we can still ask for more in a laptop of 1800 euros like this

Refrigeration system

The cooling system of the Lenovo Legion Y540 15 stands out for being quite compact and well designed, opting for two turbine-type fans and three wide-width heatpipes for heat transport.

Both chips are completely covered by copper cold plates that capture all the heat transferring it to the ends thanks to these copper tubes. In addition to the chips, they also capture the heat from the GDDR6 memories and the on-board VRM. Very nice design made by Lenovo that is even aesthetically attractive. Although we can also say that it is noisy when we are playing and demanding from the team.

For the RAM memories, an aluminum foil cover has been used for its protection and cooling. While in the bottom case itself we have the M.2 SSD thermal pad and a foam protection for the mechanical hard drive.

Battery life

The next stop is the autonomy of the Lenovo Legion Y540 15. A team that installs a 4840 mAh Lithium Polymer battery and delivers a power of 55 Wh. For charging, we have an external 230W power supply of considerable size as you may suppose.

In the tests that we have carried out doing basic tasks such as editing articles and watching videos, we have obtained an autonomy of 3 hours. Data delivered with 50% screen brightness, better battery profile, balanced, with illuminated keyboard and using audio and WiFi network. This means that we can get a little more juice out of it, but we think not more than 30 extra minutes.

Test of performance

We move on to the practical part where we will see the performance offered by this Lenovo Legion Y540 15. As always, we have carried out synthetic tests and tests in games, and in this case with a configuration exactly the same as other gaming equipment with high-end RTX GPUs.

All the tests that we have submitted this laptop have been carried out with the equipment plugged into the current and the power profile at maximum performance.

SSD performance

Let's start with the unit benchmark on this solid 512 GB Western Digital PC SN520, for this we have used the CristalDiskMark 7.0.0 software.

These values ​​are practically the maximum available for a PCIe interface using two lanes, so at least the unit draws most of the juice. In fact there are many x4 drives slower than this M.2 SSD, which is why we consider it to be up to the team.

Benchmarks

Let's see below the synthetic test block. For this we have used:

• Cinebench R15Cinebench R20PCMark 83Dmark Time Spy, Fire Strike, Fire Strike Ultra and Port RoyalVRMark

As for the performance of the CPU and GPU there are not too many new features, being close to the MSI P75 Creator 8SE that also has an RTX 2060, as well as a laptop with RTX 2070. Regarding other combined programs such as PCMark 8, it has been obtained an exceptional score that places it as one of the best.

Gaming performance

Now we go to see the performance that we will get with the Lenovo Legion Y540 15 and its Nvidia RTX 2060 card with Turing architecture. For this we have used these titles with the following configuration:

• Final Fantasy XV, standard, TAA, DirectX 12 DOOM, Ultra, TAA, Open GL Deus EX Mankind Divided, Alto, Anisotropico x4, DirectX 12 Far Cry 5, Alto, TAA, DirectX 12 Metro Exodus, Alto, Anisotropico x16, DirectX 12 Shadow of the Tomb Rider, High, TAA + Anisotropic x4, DirectX 12 Control, High, with RTX, DirectX 12

As far as games are concerned, it has certainly surprised us for good, since it is on par with computers with the same CPU and RTX 2070 graphics card as for example the Gigabyte AERO 15. Very good performance of Lenovo, possibly because of its great temperature and frequency setting of your hardware.

Temperatures

The stress process to which the Lenovo Legion Y540 15 has been subjected has taken around 60 minutes, in order to have a reliable average temperature. This process has been carried out with Prime95 on CPU and Furmark on GPU, and temperature capture with HWiNFO.

Lenovo Legion Y540 15	Repose	Maximum performance	Peak
CPU	49 o C	79 o C	89 o C
GPU	46 o C	73 o C	78 o C

Having an average of 79 ^o C with a Core i7-9750H is praiseworthy, as it is a complicated CPU to cool for most laptops with normal cooling systems. Despite having only two rows of heatpipes, the system responds perfectly.

At specific times we have found thermal throttling, but it is perfectly normal. Its operating range is between 4.2 GHz at low temperatures and 2.8 GHz when it reaches figures close to 85 ^o C.

Final words and conclusion about the Lenovo Legion Y540 15

We come to the end of this review, and the Lenovo Legion Y540 15 has left us with very good overall feelings, especially in performance. Something that is personally improvable is its design, it has a clear classic cut and the back is not the most refined we have seen. However, the metal top cover and its finish is extremely original and if you liked it a lot.

The hardware is no different than many rival gaming laptops, since we have an RTX 2060 GPU and a Core i7-9750H CPU, but in the performance scores, especially in games, it is one step above its direct rivals, which is not to say little and comfortably beating 70 FPS. We have 1.5 TB of total storage, space for a 2.5 ”HDD and an M.2 that this time is PCIe x2 instead of x4.

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Keyboard and touchpad are also at a better level than we expected. In the first case, it reminds us a lot of those of other companies in terms of key size and backlight, very large, with numpad and somewhat separated F keys, which is appreciated. The touchpad is a standard size securely fastened and with physical buttons for durability. Finally, the Harman sound with Dolby Atmos is above equipment like the Asus ZenBook and other Max-Q, great power and audio detail.

The screen of course, is 144 Hz and IPS, a 15.6-inch panel without any ghosting, flickering or bleeding, although it seems that it does not have FreeSync. Something else is lacking in calibration, with Deltas E close to 4, which in this case we can fix a little by adjusting the Gamma from the Nvidia control panel.

The Lenovo Legion Y540 15IRH 81SX00CKSP we find it for a price of 1, 819 euros, which is about 100 to 300 euros cheaper than notebooks with RTX 2060 and Intel i7-9750H, which is not a little. In addition Lenovo does not give the possibility of customizing them with the components that we want, better or worse and thus adjust their price, something that others do not have.

ADVANTAGE	DISADVANTAGES
+ EXCEPTIONAL GAME PERFORMANCE	- PORT DISTRIBUTION
+ EXPANDABLE HYBRID STORAGE	- DISPLAY WITHOUT FREESYNC AND BETTER CALIBRATION
+ 144 HZ DISPLAY WITH NO GHOSTING	- CLASSIC CUTTING DESIGN
+ EXCELLENT REFRIGERATION
+ ENOUGH COMPACT AND 3H OF AUTONOMY
+ VERY GOOD KEYBOARD AND SOUND

The Professional Review team awarded him the gold medal:

Lenovo Legion Y540 15IRH 81SX00CKSP

DESIGN - 78%

CONSTRUCTION - 85%

REFRIGERATION - 90%

PERFORMANCE - 88%

DISPLAY - 85%

85%