Lenovo Legion Y740 review – a refresh with ray tracing capabilities

Not a while ago we laid our hands on a gaming device which had a glimpse at the premium laptop market. We are talking about the more expensive brother of the Lenovo Legion Y530 – the Y730. As you may remember it was maxed out with a Core i7-8750H CPU and, to our disappointment, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti. Not that the GTX 1050 Ti is a bad GPU, it just didn’t match the price tag. However, the company has placed that product as a, let’s say, Demo version of the real deal – the purpose of today’s review – Legion Y740.

We say Demo as it represents 99% of the newer model with the only difference lying in some additional “Lenovo” marks on its body, the rack on the bottom plate and in the cooling compartment – more on that later. Moreover, the Legion 740 is being offered with a choice between the RTX 2060 and RTX 2070 Max-Q (we tested the former). Despite our excitement over the RTX GPUs and newer laptops around them, we are a little disturbed with the lack of creativity from Lenovo. Well, yes, they have made a major divergence with the Legion Y530, but this is a third laptop which, looked from two feet away looks exactly the same way. Anyhow, let’s skip the formalities and hit this review straight away.

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/lenovo-legion-y740-15/

Contents


Specs Sheet

Lenovo Legion Y740 15 technical specifications table

Acer
Not available
Display
15.6”, Full HD (1920 x 1080), 144 Hz, IPS
HDD/SSD
512GB SSD NVMe
M.2 Slot
1x 2280 M.2 NVMe slot See photo
RAM
16GB DDR4, 2666 MHz
Dimensions
361 x 265 x 19.95 - 23.85 mm (14.21" x 10.43" x 0.79")
Weight
2.20 kg (4.9 lbs)
Body material
Plastic / Polycarbonate, Aluminum
Ports and connectivity
  • 1x USB Type-C 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps)
  • 1x USB Type-A 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps)
  • 1x USB Type-A 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps), Sleep and Charge
  • 1x USB Type-A 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps)
  • HDMI 2.0
  • Displayport mini
  • Card reader
  • Ethernet lan Gigabit Ethernet
  • Wi-Fi 802.11ac (2x2)
  • Bluetooth 4.1
  • Audio jack 3.5mm audio jack
Features
  • Fingerprint reader
  • Web camera 720p HD
  • Backlit keyboard
  • Microphone Digital-array microphones
  • Speakers 2x 2W
  • Optical drive
  • Security Lock slot

What’s in the box?

Well, the Legion Y740 made a staggering appearance in our office. Its box is HUGE! And by no means it holds anything special besides the laptop and the 230W power brick – or should we say cutting board. And the rest of the space is taken by – you guessed it – a lot of foam.


Design and construction

Design-wise we are talking about a mostly aluminum body with some plastic panels around it (the back part of the bottom plate and around the screen). As we already mentioned, the device follows a path, which Lenovo undertook with their gaming models last year. It basically represents a body panel and a lid which looks like it’s placed there is somehow not right. However, the whole end product looks sleek and a lot less aggressive than some other manufacturer’s work – HP Omen 15 (2018) or Alienware 17 R5 for example. In addition to that, the laptop remains its 2.20 kg weight as its predecessor, while it is ever so slightly thicker (probably thanks to the higher rubber legs).

As you can see from the images below, the camera is placed right underneath the screen which will result in a funny nose drill imagery. Expectedly, the lid pops open with the help of a single hand and goes all the way downwards, resulting in 180-degree movement.

This device features the same centered – NumPad-less keyboard design as its predecessor. Optional is an RGB illumination, while the mainstream model features a bluish single-colored backlight. We still have a decent keyboard experience with a relatively short travel and not very loud keystrokes. On the left side of the main keys are located the custom ones – two of them are meant for backlight strength control, two of them are custom mappable and one is dedicated for screen recording.

Legion Y740 features a nice trackpad, which combined with the 144 Hz screen results in a pretty immersive feel… yes touchpads can be immersive as well.

Here you can see how the bottom plate is a significant diversion from the last year’s model. Its circular holes offer more airflow and 50% better cooling… okay, okay we are obviously joking. In fact, we think that the difference is mainly for the sake of being different, rather than having practical or performance implications.

Ports

Ok, the situation here goes like that: left side – USB Type-C 3.1 (Gen. 2) Thunderbolt and a headphone jack; right side – a single USB Type-A 3.1 (Gen. 2); back side – Mini DisplayPort 1.4, HDMI 2.0, an RJ-45 connector flanked by two USB Type-A 3.1 (Gen. 1), finishing with a USB Type-A-sized charging port.


Disassembly and upgrade options

Legion Y740’s whole bottom plate goes off when you remove the 11 Phillips-head screws and help it up with a plastic pry tool.

On board, there are just three heat pipes, one of them shared between either of the chips. In addition to them, you can see two large metal plates covering the VRMs and GPU’s memory. Plus they have been called “ROBIN”. You can see how Robin performs in the Temperature section of this review.

Once again, the RAM DIMMs are hidden beneath a metal protection cover. They are a total of two and support up to 32GB of DDR4 memory.

Storage-wise there are the regular SATA port and M.2 PCIe x 4 slot flanking the battery unit.

Speaking of which, it is rated at 57Wh and comprises of three cells.


Display quality

Lenovo Legion Y740 (15″) is equipped with a 144 Hz Full HD panel – LG LP156WFG-SPB2 (LGD05CF). Its diagonal is 15.6″ (39.62 cm), and the resolution 1920 х 1080 pixels. The screen ratio is 16:9, and we are looking at a pixel density of – 142 ppi, and a pitch of 0.18 х 0.18 mm. The screen turns into Retina when viewed at distance equal to or greater than 60cm (24″) (from this distance one’s eye stops differentiating the separate pixels, and it is normal for looking at a laptop).

It has excellent viewing angles. We offer images at 45° to evaluate image quality.

The measured maximum brightness of 293 nits in the middle of the screen and 296 nits as an average for the whole area, with a maximum deviation of 10%. The Correlated Color Temperature on a white screen is 6330K – slightly warmer the optimal for the sRGB standard of 6500K – not bad. The average color temperature through the grey scale before profiling is even warmer – 6230K.
In the illustration below you can see how the display performs from a uniformity perspective. In other words, the leakage of light from the light source.

Values of dE2000 over 4.0 should not occur, and this parameter is one of the first you should check if you intend to use the laptop for color sensitive work. The contrast ratio is good – 940:1 (870:1 after profiling)

To make sure we are on the same page, we would like to give you a little introduction to the sRGB color gamut and the Adobe RGB. To start, there’s the CIE 1976 Uniform Chromaticity Diagram that represents the visible specter of colors by the human eye, giving you a better perception of the color gamut coverage and the color accuracy.

Inside the black triangle, you will see the standard color gamut (sRGB) that is being used by millions of people in HDTV and on the web. As for the Adobe RGB, this is used in professional cameras, monitors etc for printing. Basically, colors inside the black triangle are used by everyone and this is the essential part of the color quality and color accuracy of a mainstream notebook.

Still, we’ve included other color spaces like the famous DCI-P3 standard used by movie studios, as well as the digital UHD Rec.2020 standard. Rec.2020, however, is still a thing of the future and it’s difficult for today’s displays to cover that well. We’ve also included the so-called Michael Pointer gamut, or Pointer’s gamut, which represents the colors that naturally occur around us every day.

The yellow dotted line shows Lenovo Legion Y740 (15″)’s color gamut coverage.

Its display covers 95% of the sRGB/ITU-R BT.709 (web/HDTV standard) in CIE1976.

Our “Design and Gaming” profile delivers optimal color temperature (6500K) at 140 cd/m2 luminance and sRGB gamma mode.

We tested the accuracy of the display with 24 commonly used colors like light and dark human skin, blue sky, green grass, orange etc. You can check out the results at factory condition and also, with the “Design and Gaming” profile.

Below you can compare the scores of Legion Y740 (15″) with the default settings (left), and with the “Gaming and Web design” profile (right).

The next figure shows how well the display is able to reproduce really dark parts of an image, which is essential when watching movies or playing games in low ambient light.

The left side of the image represents the display with stock settings, while the right one is with the “Gaming and Web Design” profile activated. On the horizontal axis, you will find the grayscale and on the vertical axis – the luminance of the display. On the two graphs below you can easily check for yourself how your display handles the darkest nuances but keep in mind that this also depends on the settings of your current display, the calibration, the viewing angle, and the surrounding light conditions.

Response time (Gaming capabilities)

We test the reaction time of the pixels with the usual “black-to-white” and “white-to-black” method from 10% to 90% and vice versa.

We recorded Fall Time + Rise Time = 11 ms – even faster than the Legion Y730 (13ms)!


PWM (Screen flickering)

Pulse-width modulation (PWM) is an easy way to control monitor brightness. When you lower the brightness, the light intensity of the backlight is not lowered, but instead turned off and on by the electronics with a frequency indistinguishable to the human eye. In these light impulses, the light/no-light time ratio varies, while brightness remains unchanged, which is harmful to your eyes. You can read more about that in our dedicated article on PWM.

Lenovo Legion Y740 (15″)’s screen is free from flickering across the whole brightness region. This makes it comfortable for extended gaming sessions in this aspect.

Blue light emissions

Installing our Health-Guard profile not only eliminates PWM but also reduces the harmful Blue Light emissions while keeping the colors of the screen perceptually accurate. If you’re not familiar with the Blue light, the TL;DR version is – emissions that negatively affect your eyes, skin and your whole body. You can find more information about that in our dedicated article on Blue Light.

Conclusion

With that said, let’s summarize what we learned here – Lenovo Legion Y740 (15″) is equipped with one of the best 15.6-inch gaming panels on the market. It is an IPS panel with Full HD resolution and comfortable viewing angles. Moreover, it covers 95% of sRGB and doesn’t use PWM for brightness adjustment. One of the main advantages – 144 Hz refresh rate, results in extremely fast reaction time, which gamers are going to love. However, it is not only appealing to gamers but web designers as well, since it has astonishing color accuracy when bundled with the appropriate profile.

Buy our profiles

Since our profiles are tailored for each individual display model, this article and its respective profile package are meant for Lenovo Legion Y740 (15″) configurations with 15.6″ FHD IPS LG LP156WFG-SPB2 (LGD05CF).

*Should you have problems with downloading the purchased file, try using a different browser to open the link you’ll receive via e-mail. If the download target is a .php file instead of an archive, change the file extension to .zip or contact us at [email protected].

Read more about the profiles HERE.

In addition to receiving efficient and health-friendly profiles, by buying LaptopMedia's products you also support the development of our labs, where we test devices in order to produce the most objective reviews possible.

Office Work

Office Work should be used mostly by users who spend most of the time looking at pieces of text, tables or just surfing. This profile aims to deliver better distinctness and clarity by keeping a flat gamma curve (2.20), native color temperature and perceptually accurate colors.

Design and Gaming

This profile is aimed at designers who work with colors professionally, and for games and movies as well. Design and Gaming takes display panels to their limits, making them as accurate as possible in the sRGB IEC61966-2-1 standard for Web and HDTV, at white point D65.

Health-Guard

Health-Guard eliminates the harmful Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM) and reduces the negative Blue Light which affects our eyes and body. Since it’s custom tailored for every panel, it manages to keep the colors perceptually accurate. Health-Guard simulates paper so the pressure on the eyes is greatly reduced.

Get all 3 profiles with 33% discount


Sound

Lenovo Legion Y740 (15″) produces deep loud sound from its speakers. In addition to that its tones are clear in the low, mid and high-frequency range.


Drivers

You can find the latest drivers and software for your Lenovo Legion Y740 here: https://pcsupport.lenovo.com/bg/en/products/laptops-and-netbooks/legion-series/legion-y740-15ichg/downloads

Battery

Now, we conduct the battery tests with Windows Better performance setting turned on, screen brightness adjusted to 120 nits and all other programs turned off except for the one we are testing the notebook with. This laptop is equipped with a 57Wh battery pack, which quite frankly, is not enough, given the 144 Hz screen with G-Sync.

Yep, it managed just over three hours in both web browsing and video playback. Miserable, but an inevitable price to pay for a 144 Hz G-Sync screen.

In order to simulate real-life conditions, we used our own script for automatic web browsing through over 70 websites.


CPU options

Since Legion Y740 is kind of an exclusive model, you can only get it with the Intel Core i7-8750H CPU. Not that it’s a bad thing, though. Intel Core i7-8750H is a direct successor to the Core i7-7700HQ. The new Coffee Lake processors feature six physical cores instead of the just four found on the Kaby Lake CPUs. Moreover, the blue company was able to fit the extra two cores on the same 14nm architecture while maintaining a TDP of 45W. In terms of clock speeds, we have a slight drop in the base frequency from 2.8 GHz to 2.2 GHz but the Turbo one is 4.1 GHz (up from 3.8 GHz), whatsoever. This means around 50% better performance on theory and 9 MB of cache (vs 6 MB on Core i7-7700HQ). However, the new Core i7-8750H will be more cooling-dependent, due to the higher clock count and the wide range of Turbo speeds.

On the iGPU end, there are no particular changes as the Core i7-8750H retains the HD Graphics 630 cores with 350 MHz Base frequency and 1100 MHz maximum Dynamic frequency. The only difference is the support of OpenGL 4.5.


GPU options

GPU-wise you can decide over two RTX GPUs – GeForce RTX 2060 and RTX 2070 Max-Q. Both of them are rated at 90W TDP, while the latter has slightly more CUDA cores than the former – 2304 to 1920 respectively. Yet another difference is the memory available for them, as the RTX 2060 is equipped with 6GB of GDDR6 video RAM, while the RTX 2070 Max-Q has 8 gigs of the same memory.

Lenovo Legion Y740 (15") GPU variants

Here you can see an approximate comparison between the GPUs that can be found in the Lenovo Legion Y740 (15") models on the market. This way you can decide for yourself which Lenovo Legion Y740 (15") model is the best bang for your buck.

Note: The chart shows the cheapest different GPU configurations so you should check what the other specifications of these laptops are by clicking on the laptop’s name / GPU.


Gaming tests

Our analysis on the gaming test places the RTX 2060’s performance somewhere between the GeForce GTX 1070 and the GTX 1070 Max-Q. We didn’t test the ray tracing capabilities yet, but you can expect more information about its RT performance from us soon.

GTA-V-benchmarks

Grand Theft Auto V (GTA 5)Full HD, High (Check settings)Full HD, Very High (Check settings)Full HD, MAX (Check settings)
Average FPS138 fps74 fps43 fps

Far Cry 5Full HD, Normal (Check settings)Full HD, High (Check settings)Full HD, Ultra (Check settings)
Average FPS97 fps89 fps84 fps

rise-of-the-tomb-raider

Rise of the Tomb Raider (2016)Full HD, Medium (Check settings)Full HD, Very High (Check settings)Full HD, MAX (Check settings)
Average FPS110 fps63 fps41 fps

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon WildlandsFull HD, High (Check settings)Full HD, Very High (Check settings)Full HD, Ultra (Check settings)
Average FPS78 fps69 fps45 fps

Temperatures and comfort

Max CPU load

In this test we use 100% on the CPU cores, monitoring their frequencies and chip temperature. The first column shows a computer’s reaction to a short load (2-10 seconds), the second column simulates a serious task (between 15 and 30 seconds), and the third column is a good indicator of how good the laptop is for long loads such as video rendering.

Average core temperature (base frequency + X); CPU temp.

Intel Core i7-8750H (45W TDP)0:02 – 0:10 sec0:15 – 0:30 sec10:00 – 15:00 min
Lenovo Legion Y7403.39 GHz (B+54%) @ 75°C3.24 GHz (B+47%) @ 81°C2.89 GHz (B+31%) @ 72°C
Lenovo Legion Y730 [Sample]3.43 GHz (B+56%) @ 91°C3.23 GHz (B+47%) @ 94°C2.69 GHz (B+22%) @ 79°C
Acer Nitro 52.89 GHz (B+31%) @ 72°C2.71 GHz (B+23%) @ 78°C2.52 GHz (B+15%) @ 74°C
ASUS TUF FX5042.59 GHz (B+18%) @ 71°C2.64 GHz (B+20%) @ 82°C2.46 GHz (B+12%) @ 74°C
Alienware 15 R42.86 GHz (B+30%) @ 93°C2.32 GHz (B+5%) @ 74°C2.31 GHz (B+5%) @ 66°C
ASUS ROG GL503GE2.89 GHz (B+31%) @ 66°C2.89 GHz (B+31%) @ 69°C2.53 GHz (B+15%) @ 71°C

Brilliant handling of the CPU temperatures from the Legion Y740. Not only it matches the performance shown by its predecessor (which lacked the fancy cooling plates by the way) but it does so with 10-15C cooler temperatures – nice huh? We would love to see this machine with a Core i9-8950HK.

Real gameplay

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060GPU frequency/ Core temp (after 2 min)GPU frequency/ Core temp (after 30 min)
Lenovo Legion Y7401526 MHz @ 70°C1499 MHz @ 74°C

Last year – the Legion Y730 topped out at GeForce GTX 1050 Ti and in our review, we stated that the laptop has the potency to easily take on something more powerful. Surely Lenovo has provided their latest and greatest with a GPU, which is rated at 15W more – the RTX 2060 (90W TDP). Unfortunately, we don’t have any reference for frequencies and temperature so the Legion Y740 is here to set the pace. However, given the fact that the maximum Boos frequency of this GPU is supposedly 1200 MHz, the results we got are quite impressive – especially at 74C at the end of the test.

Gaming comfort

Our IR images represent an a’la X-Ray image revealing where the fans are located. That area is slightly cooler than the palm-rest, although both of them are cool enough for comfortable contact experience. Additionally, we measured the hottest external temperature to be 47C just above the “V” key.


Verdict

You know, these gaming devices are getting sleeker and sleeker with every single year. And as we mentioned last year we were a little disappointed to see the humble GTX 1050 Ti in a machine like the Legion Y730. It happened like Lenovo have heard us and hastily switched it for the brand new RTX 2060 and RTX 2070 Max-Q. And the result is… this laptop is a beast. Aluminum build, good looks, ferocious internals, and great gaming power. When you insert a 144 Hz screen with a 95% coverage of sRGB and designer – level of color accuracy, things go near perfect with the Legion Y740.

We were impressed by the cooling of this laptop, mostly because it houses only three heatpipes, comparing to a total of seven found in the MSI GE63VR 7RF. Since we’ve tested the latter with GTX 1070, both devices are definitely comparable. It also came with a fast screen – 120 Hz – but the panel is of a TN type, which gives a massive advantage to Lenovo’s 144 Hz display.

Of course, every beautiful story has a dark side. As you probably have already expected, the major downside to this laptop is its battery life. Mostly due to the G-Sync technology of the screen, which makes it work at full 144 Hz all time. This results in a mere three hours of web browsing and video playback. Gaming on a battery is an option only for the most optimistic of you.

We guess the time has come to tell you whether it is worth it to buy laptops with RTX yet. As we mentioned with the other two RTX reviews (Acer Predator 500 and ASUS ROG GL704) it is still too early to buy them. However, some time has passed and there are more games with this technology. Not only that, but NVIDIA seems to know what to change with its drivers and is starting to optimize their GPUs – the Legion Y740 has shown performance closest to what we expected from the respective GPU.

Pros

  • Lightweight, compact with thin bezels
  • Rational port distribution
  • Comfortable keyboard with RGB option
  • Brilliant 144 Hz IPS display with accurate colors and wide color coverage (LG LP156WFG-SPB2)
  • Lack of PWM (LG LP156WFG-SPB2)
  • Good build quality
  • RTX GPUs onboard
  • Incredible cooling


Cons

  • Hilariously bad battery life

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/lenovo-legion-y740-15/

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Kevin K
Kevin K
5 years ago

The laptop has an Nvidia Optimus mode that you can toggle in the BIOS (and possibly through software), it disables G-Sync but should give better battery. Can you test again with this enabled?

LAKHAN LAL MEENA
5 years ago
Reply to  Kevin K

Hii
Can u plz find out and tell me that when will the Lenovo legion y740 Rtx 2060 16 gb ram will be available in India

Also should i prefer Asus scar 2 1060 or this one?
Plz reply

Thank you

Charles Fu
Charles Fu
4 years ago

Hello, I wonder if you have a refreshed color calibration profile for the latest y740 15inch 500nits panel. It seems like new panel covers better color gamuts. Still not truly 100% SRGB tho. I’m not doing content creation work on it. But I’d appreciate it if someone can provide a tuned profile whatsoever.