[In-Depth Comparison] Lenovo IdeaPad 5 Pro (16″) vs ASUS VivoBook Pro 16X OLED (N7600) – Questionable decisions all over the place
Last time we compared two budget laptops that actually had the necessary features and characteristics to be considered as affordable Creator machines. The HP 470 G8 and the Lenovo IdeaPad 3 (17″) brought great displays and enough power to handle the workflow.
Today we have the next step in an already experienced Creator’s journey, who has already taken full advantage of the hardware that they already have and are looking for something more that can elevate their work to the next level.
The Lenovo IdeaPad 5 Pro (16″) presents a well-built laptop with amazing hardware and display selection, that an already experienced designer or video editor can really take advantage of. Also, a jump from the IdeaPad 3 to the IdeaPad 5 Pro seems like a great-written script deserving of an award.
To give you an alternative, as well as a powerful notebook in its own right that can more than challenge the IdeaPad, we have the ASUS VivoBook Pro 16X OLED (N7600). As you can guess from the name, it offers an OLED display, and both Intel and AMD hardware.
The two notebooks are well powered in terms of graphics as well, offering the RTX 3050 (50W), which might not be the best gaming card, but will accelerate the overall workflow thanks to NVENC and other NVIDIA technologies that optimize the performance of the devices.
Today we are giving you an in-depth comparison between the Lenovo IdeaPad 5 Pro (16″) and the ASUS VivoBook Pro 16X OLED (N7600).
Lenovo IdeaPad 5 Pro (16″): Full Specs / In-depth Review
ASUS VivoBook Pro 16X OLED (N7600): Full Specs / In-depth Review
Lenovo IdeaPad 5 Pro (16″) configurations:
ASUS VivoBook Pro 16X OLED (N7600) configurations:
Contents
Design and construction
While the IdeaPad is much more incognito in terms of design, the VivoBook will let everyone know that it’s here. Both notebooks come with an aluminum lid and chassis, making them feel premium and durable to flex and twist.
The IdeaPad has softer features, with a sloping lid, while the ASUS notebook is more angular and even across the board. The Lenovo laptop has a small badge on the side, while the other machine comes with a protruding element that bears a chevron pattern and the VivoBook brand. Being premium laptops, their lids can be opened with one hand.
In terms of weight and height, the VivoBook is 50 grams heavier and 0.5 mm thicker, which can’t really be felt, if we have to be honest.
Weight | Height | |
---|---|---|
Lenovo IdeaPad 5 Pro (16″, AMD) | 1.90 kg (4.2 lbs) | 18.4 mm (0.72″) |
ASUS VivoBook Pro 16X OLED (N7600) | 1.95 kg (4.3 lbs) | 18.9 mm (0.74″) |
Keyboard and touchpad
The IdeaPad 5 Pro features a decent keyboard that could be better, given the shallow key travel. The good things about it are the click feedback, backlight, and large keycaps, especially the arrow keys. The touchpad is great, with a Mylar cover and very accurate tracking.
The VivoBook Pro 16X OLED offers a similar experience, however, the keyboard here is a lot more colorful, featuring grey sides and an orange Escape key. The Arrow keys are smaller, around half the size of the ones on the IdeaPad. The key travel is on the shorter side, while the feedback is clicky. Since this is a Pro notebook that tries to mimic the Studio experience, the touchpad offers a virtual knob dial that can be used in a variety of apps. Pair that with the large real estate size and you get a pleasant experience.
Ports
The IdeaPad has a well-populated I/O with two USB Type-A 3.2 (Gen. 1) ports, a single USB Type-C 3.2 (Gen. 2) port, a 3.5 mm audio jack, an HDMI 1.4b connector, and an SD card reader.
On the other hand, the VivoBook offers two disappointing USB Type-A 2.0 ports, another Type-A 3.2 (Gen. 1) port, an HDMI 1.4 port, a USB Type-C 3.2 (Gen. 2) port, a MicroSD card reader, and a 3.5 mm audio jack.
Lenovo IdeaPad 5 Pro (16″)
ASUS VivoBook Pro 16X OLED (N7600)
Spec sheet
Lenovo IdeaPad 5 Pro (16", 2021) series
- Dimensions
- 356 x 251 x 16.9 ~ 18.4 mm (14.02" x 9.88" x 0.67")
- Weight
- 1.90 kg (4.2 lbs)
- Price
- Starting at $549.99
ASUS Vivobook Pro 16X OLED (N7600, 11th Gen Intel) series
- Dimensions
- 360.5 x 259 x 18.9 mm (14.19" x 10.20" x 0.74")
- Weight
- 1.95 kg (4.3 lbs)
- Price
- Not Available
Disassembly, upgrade options
Both laptops use Torx screws, with 9 for the IdeaPad and 11 for the VivoBook. In terms of upgradeability, there is only soldered RAM for both, along with a single M.2 PCIe x4 slot for storage expansion.
Display quality
The IdeaPad 5 Pro uses two 16.0-inch QHD+ IPS panels with either a 60Hz or 120Hz refresh rate. We tested the former panel, which offers a pixel density of 189 PPI, a pitch of 0.13 х 0.13 mm, and a Retina distance of 46 cm or 18 inches.
The VivoBook has a single display option, with the same size, but uses 4K UHD+ resolution and an OLED panel. It has a much higher pixel density of 283 PPI, a lower pitch of 0.09 x 0.09 mm, and a Retina distance of 30 cm.
Both laptops offer excellent viewing angles. We offer images at 45° to evaluate image quality.
The Lenovo device has a max brightness of 367 nits in the middle of the screen and 361 nits as an average for the whole area, with a maximum deviation of 9%. The color temperature on a white screen (6700K) is also quite close to the sRGB standard of 6500K. The contrast ratio of 1470:1 is good and the brightness uniformity as a whole is great.
The OLED panel of the VivoBook has a max brightness of 385 nits and a lower temperature on a white screen of 6400K, which is closer to the 6500K standard. Due to the nature of OLED panels, the contrast ratio is mathematically infinite.
Color coverage
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 on 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 the color coverage of both the Lenovo IdeaPad 5 Pro (16″, AMD) and the VivoBook Pro 16X OLED (N7600).
The IdeaPad 5 Pro offers only 89% of the sRGB color gamut. The VivoBook is a straight killer, showing full coverage of both the sRGB and DCI-P3 gamuts.
Color accuracy
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 check the results from the test of both laptops, with both the factory settings (left) and with our “Design and Gaming” profile applied (right).
Our profile greatly affects the display on the Lenovo device, lowering the dE value down to 1.7, all the way from 6.0.
On the other hand, the VivoBook Pro 16X OLED shows little effect from the profile, lowering the dE value from 4.0 to 3.6, with there still being a lot of room for improvement.
Lenovo IdeaPad 5 Pro (16″, AMD)
ASUS VivoBook Pro 16X OLED (N7600)
Response time (Gaming capabilities)
We test the reaction time of the pixels with the usual “black-to-white” and “white-to-black” methods from 10% to 90% and vice versa.
The ASUS VivoBook Pro 16X (N7600) absolutely dominates the test with a Fall + Rise time of 2.7 ms
Health Impact / PWM (Blue light)
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.
The Lenovo notebook uses no PWM across all brightness levels, while the VivoBook has low-frequency PWM up to 100 nits, after which there are small pulsations, which shouldn’t be a problem.
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.
Buy our profiles
Lenovo IdeaPad 5 Pro (16″) 16″ WQXGA IPS LEN160WQXGA (LEN9150) – Buy our profiles
ASUS VivoBook Pro 16X (N7600) 16.0″ Samsung ATNA60YV02-0 (SDC415D) (3840 x 2400p) AMOLED panel – Buy our profiles
Sound
Both laptops have their speakers on the bottom, which is still fine since the sound usually reflects from the surface that you put the device on. In terms of quality, both setups produce quality audio with no deviations across the entire frequency range.
Battery
The IdeaPad 5 Pro’s 75Wh battery is pretty big, but can’t match the 96Wh unit inside the VivoBook. In terms of battery life, the VivoBook lasts for 4 hours and 47 minutes more in web browsing, and 2 hours and 1 minute in video playback. 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.
Brightness: 180 nits; Display Mode: SDR
Time to Full Discharge: Higher is Better
In order to simulate real-life conditions, we used our own script for automatic web browsing through over 70 websites.
Performance
Both laptops offer the 5000H-series of processors from AMD, with the Ryzen 5 5600H, Ryzen 7 5800H, and Ryzen 9 5900HX. In addition to that, the VivoBook Pro comes with extra options from the Tiger Lake H35 series, which are lower-powered models that max out at 4-cores and 8-threads.
For graphics, you can either get integrated or discrete graphics, with up to the RTX 3050 for the IdeaPad and up to the RTX 3050 Ti for the VivoBook.
CPU benchmarks
Here we tested the Ryzen 7 5800H and the Core i7-11370H. Being that the Ryzen 7 chip is one of the best performing laptop CPUs, it crushed the 3D Rendering benchmark, finishing it with a lead of 66%. Photoshop scores were closer, but the Ryzen is still a second quicker. You also have to take into account that the Ryzen 7 has a higher TDP and twice the core and thread count.
Results are from the Cinebench R23 CPU test (the higher the score, the better)
GPU benchmarks
Here we tested the GeForce RTX 3050 on both devices. They perform really similarly, trading victories in the different benchmarks that we use here.
The results are from 3DMark Time Spy (Graphics). Higher is better.
Results are from 3DMark Fire Strike (Graphics) benchmark (higher the score, the better)
Results are from the Unigine Superposition benchmark (higher the score, the better)
Gaming tests
Shadow of the Tomb Raider | Full HD, Lowest (Check settings) | Full HD, Medium (Check settings) | Full HD, High (Check settings) |
---|---|---|---|
Lenovo IdeaPad 5 Pro (16″, AMD) – RTX 3050 (55W) | 105 fps | 70 fps (+3%) | 63 fps (+5%) |
ASUS VivoBook Pro 16X OLED (N7600) – RTX 3050 (50W) | 108 fps (+3%) | 68 fps | 60 fps |
Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands | Full HD, Medium (Check settings) | Full HD, High (Check settings) | Full HD, Very High (Check settings) |
---|---|---|---|
Lenovo IdeaPad 5 Pro (16″, AMD) – RTX 3050 (55W) | 69 fps | 64 fps (+2%) | 56 fps (+2%) |
ASUS VivoBook Pro 16X OLED (N7600) – RTX 3050 (50W) | 70 fps (+1%) | 63 fps | 55 fps |
Temperatures and comfort
Both laptops use standard cooling solutions with two heat pipes, two heat sinks, and two fans.
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 frequency (base frequency + X); CPU temp.
AMD Ryzen 7 5800H (45W TDP) | 0:02 – 0:10 sec | 0:15 – 0:30 sec | 10:00 – 15:00 min |
---|---|---|---|
Lenovo IdeaPad 5 Pro (16″) | 3.19 GHz @ 76°C | 3.07 GHz @ 79°C | 3.16 GHz @ 84°C |
Dell G15 5515 | 3.29 GHz (B+3%) @ 74°C | 3.14 GHz @ 74°C | 3.21 GHz (B+0%) @ 82°C |
HP Victus 16 (16-e0000) | 3.29 GHz (B+3%) @ 80°C | 3.20 GHz (B+0%) @ 80°C | 3.27 GHz (B+2%) @ 89°C |
HP Omen 15 (2021, 15-en1000) | 3.33 GHz (B+4%) @ 78°C | 3.33 GHz (B+4%) @ 85°C | 3.42 GHz (B+7%) @ 88°C |
ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 15 G533 | 3.43 GHz (B+7%) @ 76°C | 3.35 GHz (B+5%) @ 80°C | 3.47 GHz (B+8%) @ 82°C |
ASUS ROG Zephyrus Duo 15 SE (GX551) | 3.93 GHz (B+23%) @ 81°C | 3.82 GHz (B+19%) @ 86°C | 3.78 GHz (B+18%) @ 93°C |
ASUS TUF A17 (FA706) 2021 | 3.42 GHz (B+7%) @ 74°C | 3.34 GHz (B+4%) @ 78°C | 3.35 GHz (B+5%) @ 84°C |
The IdeaPad 5 Pro is the laptop with the worst-performing Ryzen 7 5800H, in terms of clock speeds and temperatures, and even then it still kills it when it comes to performance.
Intel Core i7-11370H (35W TDP) | 0:02 – 0:10 sec | 0:15 – 0:30 sec | 10:00 – 15:00 min |
---|---|---|---|
ASUS VivoBook Pro 16X OLED (N7600) | 4.01 GHz (B+22%) @ 95°C @ 61W | 3.81 GHz (B+15%) @ 95°C @ 53W | 3.80 GHz (B+15%) @ 95°C @ 49W |
ASUS ZenBook Flip 15 UX564 | 3.66 GHz (B+11%) @ 92°C @ 43W | 3.47 GHz (B+5%) @ 91°C @ 38W | 3.39 GHz (B+3%) @ 92°C @ 34W |
Acer Predator Triton 300 SE (PT314-51s) | 3.97 GHz (B+20%) @ 95°C @ 64W | 4.03 GHz (B+22%) @ 97°C @ 63W | 3.87 GHz (B+17%) @ 93°C @ 50W |
ASUS TUF Dash F15 (FX516) | 4.01 GHz (B+22%) @ 78°C @ 64W | 4.00 GHz (B+21%) @ 82°C @ 64W | 3.96 GHz (B+20%) @ 90°C @ 60W |
The VivoBook Pro heats up really quickly but also reaches high clock speeds.
Real-life gaming
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 | GPU frequency/ Core temp (after 2 min) | GPU frequency/ Core temp (after 30 min) | GPU frequency/ Core temp (Max Fan) |
---|---|---|---|
ASUS VivoBook Pro 16X OLED (N7600) | 1576 MHz @ 68°C @ 50W | 1571 MHz @ 69°C @ 50W | – |
Lenovo IdeaPad 5 Pro (16″) | 1651 MHz @ 72°C @ 55W | 1636 MHz @ 75°C @ 55W | – |
The 5W extra buffer results in higher clock speeds and higher temperatures, but the GPUs still don’t reach critical values that you would have to worry about.
Gaming comfort
The VivoBook is much cooler on the outside, with a difference of 6.5°C.
Verdict
Both laptops look to be very capable Creator notebooks and offer very powerful hardware. At the end of the day, it comes down to personal taste, and which features you prefer more. Both devices are durable with their aluminum bodies and are portable enough to be able to be carried with you. Their keyboards and touchpads offer a similar experience, but you have to factor in the virtual knob dial on the VivoBook.
The IdeaPad kills it in terms of I/O, but it’s easy to beat your opponent when he sports USB 2.0 ports. Upgradeability, or the lack thereof, is the same for both units. The OLED panel on the VivoBook does offer great color coverage with 100% sRGB and DCI-P3 coverage, but the accuracy needs to be improved as well, with our profile being unable to put it in check. On the other hand, the IdeaPad presents slightly lower coverage, but the accuracy is fantastic.
The audio that both laptops produce is pretty similar, with good quality and no deviations. The VivoBook scores big time in terms of battery life, which is to be expected from a 96Wh unit. The same can’t be said about performance, as the Core i7-11370H hinders the laptop’s performance in both 3D and 2D Rendering.
Since the two devices use the same GPU, there’s hardly any major difference in both benchmark scores and gaming FPS results. They also share a similar cooling solution, down to the number of heat pipes, fans, and heat sinks.
If the ASUS device can fix some things like the color accuracy, the use of USB 2.0 ports, and be configured with a more powerful processor, it will have a higher ceiling when it comes to performance and features.
Why choose the Lenovo IdeaPad 5 Pro (16″)?
- + Display with better accuracy and no PWM usage
- + Keyboard with bigger keycaps
- + More CPU performance
Why choose the Acer Swift X (SFX14-41G)?
- + Longer battery life
- + Display covers the sRGB and DCI-P3 gamuts fully
- + Cooler externals during load
Lenovo IdeaPad 5 Pro (16″): Full Specs / In-depth Review
ASUS VivoBook Pro 16X OLED (N7600): Full Specs / In-depth Review