Lenovo’s new 14-inch gaming laptop beats the ROG G14 in one key way

The ROG Zephyrus G14 has been a fan-favorite 14-inch gaming laptop these past few years, even with many recent competitors in the space. Lenovo’s new Legion Slim 5 14, though, has one major advantage of the G14. Its screen.

The Legion Slim 5 14, now in its eighth generation, is receiving a major upgrade in its display, moving from a standard IPS to a 120Hz OLED. This more advanced panel technology can, of course, produce unbeatable contrast, thanks to the individually-lit pixels. At a max of 400 nits, the HDR performance in games should look rather nice too.

Now, if you’ve been keeping up, you might know that the latest version of the ROG Zephyrus G14 did get an upgrade to mini-LED as an option. This was big news, bringing stellar HDR performance to a laptop this small (and affordable). And while the Legion Slim 5 doesn’t get quite as bright, its upper hand is in its price and availability.

The mini-LED version of the G14 only comes in the top-of-the-line configuration with the RTX 4090. That one sells for as much as $3,300. Yikes. The much more common configurations, such as those that sell for under $2,000, all come with standard IPS displays.

The Legion Slim 5’s premium panel, though, comes standard. That’s right — even the starting configuration of the laptop, which costs just $1,440, still serves up its 14.5-inch, 2800 x 1600 resolution, OLED panel. That’s a killer deal, and it’s in line with Lenovo’s other recent offerings to bring OLED panels to more affordable laptops.

In case you’re curious, other similar laptops like the Razer Blade 14 and Alienware x14 don’t even offer upgrades to mini-LED or OLED as an option.

Of course, there’s more to a laptop than just its screen, so I’m not saying the Legion Slim 5 outdoes all its competitors as a whole. First off, I haven’t tested the machine’s performance yet myself since it’s only just been announced.

But even just looking at the spec sheet, you can see the Legion Slim 5 isn’t nearly as “slim” as something like the ROG G14. It’s 0.82 inches thick and 4.19 pounds, whereas the G14 is 0.77 inches thick and just 3.79 pounds. The Legion Slim 5 comes with up to an AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS processor, 64GB of RAM, and 1TB of storage, but it doesn’t range up to as high of graphics options, maxing out at just the RTX 4060.

We’ll have to see how the comparison plays out once we can test them side-by-side, but when it comes to displays, there’s no question that the Legion Slim 5 14 Gen 8 seems to be at the top of the pack.

Lenovo says the Legion Slim 5 Gen 8 is expected to be available for purchase starting in September 2023.

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Luke Larsen is the Senior editor of computing, managing all content covering laptops, monitors, PC hardware, Macs, and more.