They
both have Adaptive Sync, however onlythe Legion 5 Pro has a MUX switch,
meaning we can disable the integrated graphics andoptimus with a reboot
to boost gaming performance, and the 5 Pro also gives you the option
ofG-Sync when in this mode. The color gamut on the M16 was quite a
bitbetter, though the Legion 5 Pro isn’t exactly bad or anything,
especially as far as gaminglaptops go. I’d say the M16, shown by the red
line here,also has a better range of brightness, the Legion 5 pro gets
dimmer much sooner and dropsoff quickly after 100%. Yeah the Legion gets
slightly brighter at100% brightness, but I think the M16 gives you more
control of the brightness at differentlevels. The M16 was slightly
ahead when it came toscreen response time, but it’s such a small
difference that I’d say this is well withinmargin of error, at least
considering in the past I’ve tested three ASUS TUF A15 laptopswith the
exact same panel model and I found the response time could vary by up to
3ms. The Legion 5 Pro was a little ahead when itcame to total system
latency however, which is the time between mouse click and gunshotfire
in CS:GO. This is likely because I’ve found laptopsthat have to send the
display output via the integrated graphics first, AKA no MUX
switch,generally have more overhead. Regardless, both were lower
compared to mostother laptops tested. My M16 had more backlight bleed,
however thiswill vary between laptop and screen, and honestly I never
noticed this during regular use anyway. Both laptops have a 720p camera
above thescreen, but neither have IR for Windows Hello face unlock. The
Legion has a switch on the right thatphysically disconnects the camera
for privacy. This is what the camera and microphone lookand sound like,
and this is what it sounds like while I’m typing on the keyboard. Now
here’s the same test over on the M16,the audio is a bit better, though
you can judge both for yourself, and here’s whatit sounds like while
typing on this one. The keyboard on my 5 Pro just has white
backlighting,but there is also a 4 zone RGB option too, while the m16
has an RGB keyboard, but withless customization as it’s a single zone.
Personally
I preferred typing on the Legion5, but the M16 was fine too. The
precision touchpad on the M16 seemed abit larger and though both were
good, I preferred using that one. Both have power buttons separate from
thekeyboard, but the M16’s is also a fingerprint scanner which I found
to work fast and accurately. The M16 has two front-facing speakers as
wellas subwoofers underneath, while the Legion has its speakers
underneath only. The M16 had more bass, but at higher volumesin my
opinion it didn’t sound as nice overall compared to the 5 Pro. The I/O
layout is quite different, the onlything in common on the left is that
both have a USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-C port and 3.5mm audiocombo jack. The M16
otherwise has its power input, HDMI2.0b output, gigabit ethernet, USB
3.2 Gen2 Type-A port and a Thunderbolt 4 port on thisside. Neither have
much going on over on the right,presumably to keep cables out of the way
of right handed mouse users. They both have a USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-A
port,but the 5 Pro has the camera disconnect switch while the M16 has a
MicroSD card slot andKensington lock up the back. The rest of the I/O
for the Legion is on theback, which I personally prefer as bulky cables
run out the back and stay out of the way. From left to right it’s got
gigabit ethernet,a second USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-C port, three USB 3.2 Gen1
Type-A ports on the back for 4 intotal, HDMI 2.1 output, and the power
input on the far right. I like that the ethernet port on the Zephyrusis
the opposite way to the Legion 5 Pro as it lets you pull out the cables
without theneed to lift up the laptop. The 5 Pro supports charging over
Type-C, butonly with the Type-C port on the back, while the M16 supports
this with both Type-C ports. Both of those Type-C ports on the M16
alsooffer DisplayPort 1.4 output, while again only the one on the back
of the Legion does,and the front most Type-C port on the M16 can be used
to bypass the integrated graphicsand optimus and get a speed boost in
games, which I’ll show you a bit later. The 5 Pro has newer HDMI 2.1
while the M16has the older HDMI 2.0b, but that’s only really going to be
a limitation if you’rerunning a 4K high refresh screen or something.
The M16 has two USB Type-A ports in totalwhile the Legion 5 Pro has 4,
but the M16 is Intel based so it also makes use of Thunderbolt4, which
isn’t possible with the Ryzen configuration of the Legion 5 Pro, and the
Zephyrus alsohas the Micro SD card slot. The Legion was definitely
easier to open,the front of the m16 is just all flat with nothing to
really grip onto, while the lidof the 5 Pro sticks out a bit.
The
lid of the M16 has a sort of prismaticrainbow finish below the CNC
milled holes, which has a subtle shine depending on theangle of light.
The 5 pro has the Legion logo in the centerwhich lights up, however you
can optionally turn it off with this shortcut. The 5 Pro appears to have
more holes for airintake up the back, and we can confirm this by seeing
where light shines through the panels. Inside both have the battery
down the frontand two M.2 slots for storage above, however the Intel
11th gen platform means one of theM16’s is faster PCIe gen 4. Both have a
Wi-Fi 6 card, but the 5 Pro hastwo memory slots while the M16 just has
the one. Now the Zephyrus M16 has either 8 or 16 gigsof memory soldered
to the motherboard, and this just seems to be something they do withall
of the Zephyrus laptops in order to keep it on the thinner side. You can
still upgrade the memory, it’s justmore limited as there’s only one
SODIMM slot, while the Legion 5 Pro has two SODIMMslots. Realistically, I
think if you get the 16 gigoption of M16 and install a 16 gig stick
you’ve got 32 gigs in dual channel, which will beplenty for most people
when it comes to gaming, at least in my personal opinion considering16
gigs still seems to be a pretty good sweet spot today, but regardless
the Legion 5 Prodoes technically support more memory. If you were to max
out the M16 best case youcould go up to 48 gigs, while the Legion 5 Pro
should be able to take up to 64, and ifyou were running different
memory sizes on the M16 to achieve that you’d face issuesdue to
asynchronous dual channel - a topic that I’ll cover in another video
soon. Now all that said, there are some memory issueswith the Legion 5
Pro to be aware of. I’ve already covered this in way more depthover in
this video over here if you want all the details, but basically the
Legion 5 Projust ships with slower memory. It’s an unfortunate side
effect of the currentsupply issues, but as I’ll show you later, we can
get a fairly significant speed boostin games by upgrading the memory on
the 5 Pro. The battery in the Zephyrus M16 is largerat 90Wh compared to
the 80Wh in the Legion 5 pro. Despite this though, the Legion 5 pro
waslasting quite a bit longer in the YouTube playback test, and 15
minutes longer whilerunning an actual game. The top of the graph is
littered with Ryzenbased laptops, so presumably these just do better
when it comes to battery life. This is also despite the Zephyrus
automaticallyswapping the screen refresh rate down to 60Hz when you
unplug from wall power. The Legion 5 Pro doesn’t automatically dothis on
its own, however you can press the easy function plus R shortcut key to
makeit do the same thing. So even with defaults, the Legion 5 Pro hasan
edge run time, but if we instead run the screen at 60Hz, as per the
green bar, we canfurther boost it by about 2 hours, making it one of the
better results recorded. Let’s check out thermals next. Both laptops
have two fans and exhaust airout of both the left and right sides as
well as the back, though the M16 appears to havemore heat pipes. The M16
uses liquid metal on the processor,while the 5 Pro has regular thermal
paste. The M16 also gives us control over the fans,while the 5 Pro does
not. The M16 also has a slight incline when youopen the lid, which helps
air get into the fans underneath. Both laptops have different
performance profilesin software, however personally I prefer that the
Legion makes it visually clear at alltimes what mode you’re running in
as the power button changes to reflect this. I’m only going to compare
with the highestperformance modes available on each laptop. If you do
want to see how both of these laptopsperform with different performance
modes then I suggest referring to the full reviews linkeddown below.
These
are the temperatures for both laptops,tested at different times but in
the same ambient room temperature. The Legion 5 Pro was significantly
coolerinside when just sitting there idle, however the M16 was cooler
when running a worst caseCPU plus GPU stress test, or while playing an
actual game. These are the clock speeds while gaming orunder stress
test. Under stress test the 5 Pro is reaching higherCPU and GPU speeds,
however in this particular game the M16 was hitting higher CPU
speeds,though the GPU was behind. This is explained by looking at the
powerlevels being hit. In the stress test the CPU power levels
aresimilar, however the GPU in the Legion 5 Pro is able to use much more
power, and more powerequals more performance, but also heat. The
difference between the GPUs is even largerin the game, though dynamic
boost on the M16 instead seems to boost its processor and lowersthe GPU
power. The M16 was doing better in a CPU only workloadlike Cinebench,
both in terms of multicore and single core performance. You could argue
that we’re comparing ani9 with Ryzen 7 instead of Ryzen 9 here, and yeah
that might change things a bit, you canget a rough idea with the other
Ryzen results higher up on the graph, such as with the Legion7. The M16
being an Intel based platform hasan ace up its sleeve though, it can be
undervolted. The M16 lets us undervolt the processor upto -0.08 volts
through the BIOS, and by doing this it’s able to get one of the
betterscores out of all laptops tested, even above most of the 5900HX
laptops, with the exceptionof the Strix G15 Advantage edition, though
it’s very close. The tables turn when running on battery powerthough,
generally Ryzen seems to be more efficient when running on battery
power, as most ofthe top results are now AMD based. That said, the M16
still has the lead whenit comes to single core performance. The M16 felt
quite a bit warmer when bothare just sitting there idle doing nothing,
most laptops I test are around 30 degreesCelsius like the Legion. The
Legion was still cooler when running stresstests too, the M16 has a
hotter spot in the middle though its WASD area is quite
coolcomparatively, let’s have a listen to fan noise next. Both were
quiet when sitting there idle. When under stress test in the highest
performancemode though, the M16 was louder, and it can get further
louder if we instead max out thefan, something that’s not an option on
the Legion. The M16 was also running cooler, at leastin terms of the
internals, so in addition to the lower power limits the increased
fanscould be contributing to that. Personally, I see louder fans as an
improvementas there’s user control. If you do want them quieter then you
can dothat, but if you want them louder at the expense of more noise
then you’ve got that optiontoo. Personally I just think user choice is
best,and it’s kind of sad that the 5 Pro doesn’t let us control the
fans. Now let’s compare both laptops in a fewdifferent games. I’ll be
looking at 1080p and 1440p resolutionshere as that’s what I’ve got data
for for the purposes of comparing. 16:10 resolutions are still pretty
uncommon.
We’ll
start out by looking at results withboth laptops running at stock, but
then after that I’ll connect an external screen tosee what sort of a
boost this gives the M16 and I’ll also upgrade the memory of the5 Pro to
see how that helps. Cyberpunk 2077 was tested in little Chinawith the
street kid life path on all laptops. The Legion 5 Pro is reaching around
12% higheraverage FPS when compared to the Zephyrus M16 with the same,
but lower powered RTX 3070graphics. The M16 isn’t the worst 3070 result
or anything,it’s actually ahead of the Zephyrus G15 with RTX 3080 here,
but the 5 Pro is the bestresult I’ve recorded from a 3070 so far in this
game. I’ve got less data at the higher 1440p resolutionas not a whole
lot of laptops have these screens yet. Regardless the Legion 5 Pro was
also aheadhere too with a slightly lower 11% higher average FPS, but hey
again the M16 is stillbeating the similar wattage 3080 in the G15 below
it. Red Dead Redemption 2 was tested with thegames benchmark, and the
Legion 5 Pro had a much higher 20% boost to average FPS inthis one,
though it’s not quite the best 3070 result anymore, being beaten by 5
FPSby the XMG Neo 15, while the M16 is now the lowest 3070 I’ve tested
here. The differences are even larger at the higher1440p resolution. The
Legion 5 Pro was now hitting 35% higheraverage FPS compared to the M16,
and the M16 was about 10% ahead of the regular Legion5 with RTX 3060.
Control was tested walking through the samepart of the game on all
laptops. This is a GPU heavy test at high settings,even with the lower
1080p resolution, so it’s no surprise that the higher GPU power
limitpresent on the Legion 5 Pro puts it ahead of the M16, though at 11%
higher it’s notas big of a difference as the last game. The M16 was
still close to 60 FPS at 1440p,but the Legion 5 Pro was still doing
better here, whether we’re looking at 1% low performanceor average
frames per second. If you want to see how well both of theselaptops
perform with their native 2560 by 1600 resolution then refer to those
videoslinked in the description, as I’ve tested both laptops in plenty
more games, and tobe fair this 16:10 resolution is what you’d be likely
to actually play with if you wereto buy either of these. Now the Legion 5
Pro has a MUX switch, soit can bypass optimus by itself, but the
Zephyrus M16 does not have this, but we can bypassit by connecting an
external screen to the front most Type-C port, as that connects
directlyto the Nvidia GPU. Shadow of the Tomb Raider was tested withthe
games benchmark, and I’ve got the external screen result with the M16
highlighted ingreen, which is around 6% higher than the Legion 5 Pro.
This is despite the M16 having a lower powerlimit GPU, so it would
appear that the i9 processor may have an edge here over Ryzen. Now hold
on just a minute, I mentioned earlierthat it’s possible to boost gaming
performance of the 5 Pro by upgrading the memory, so let’sdo that and
see how this helps. With better memory, the Legion 5 Pro is backin front
of the M16, and the m16 already comes with acceptable memory. This is
at the lower 1080p resolution. In general the memory upgrade will
matterless at higher resolutions, such as the native 2560 by 1600 that
both laptops support, thoughat the same time higher resolutions may also
see a larger benefit of the higher GPU powerlimit from the 5 Pro.
If
you plan on using either of these laptopsto play games with an external
screen then the M16 can certainly close the gap, but ifyou’re primarily
using the laptop screen then the MUX switch in the 5 Pro will giveyou a
performance advantage, and as we saw that can be further helped by
upgrading thememory. That higher GPU power limit is responsiblefor the
Legion 5 Pro doing better in all of the 3DMark tests, as per the purple
bars. The 5 Pro was scoring 6% higher in the FireStrike graphics score,
14% higher in the Time Spy graphics score, and 11% higher in thePort
Royal ray tracing test. Now let’s check out some content
creatorworkloads. Adobe Premiere was tested with the Puget
Systemsbenchmark, and I’ve noted in the past that this test seems to
benefit greatly from Intel’s11th gen processors, which seems pretty
clear given the top three results are all 11th gen,granted only the top
two are Tiger Lake, the 11900K is Rocket Lake. In any case the M16 had a
massive 25% leadover the 5 pro here. The M16 was also ahead when it
came to AdobePhotoshop, however the difference isn’t quite as big as
before. Nevertheless, the M16 was reaching a 8% higherscore in this
test. The 5 pro was tested with stock memory though,so it may be
possible to close the gap with the memory upgrade. DaVinci Resolve
typically depends more onthe GPU, however the M16 was still slightly
ahead of the 5 Pro, so it would appear thatthe processor difference is
offering a benefit too, which probably also explains why thesame CPU in
the Zephyrus S17 was the best score at the top. SPECviewperf definitely
depends more on theGPU, so it’s no surprise to see the 5 Pro in the
purple bars ahead in all but the 3DStudio Max test. Both laptops had a
1TB NVMe M.2 SSD, howeverone of the M16’s slots uses the faster PCIe
4.0, a benefit from Intel’s 11th gen platform,so much faster speeds are
possible, as seen by the read speed differences, though thewrites were
better with the SSD that came in my 5 pro. The M16 also has a MicroSD
card slot, a nicebonus for creators that the 5 Pro doesn’t have. Linux
support with an Ubuntu 21 live CD wasbetter on the Legion, because it
doesn’t need software to change the performance modesor keyboard
lighting effects, as these are baked into firmware you can still change
themwithout any software. The same shortcuts on the M16 didn’t workout
of the box in Linux.
I’d
say the BIOS on the Legion also hadmore customization, though that said
a lot of the changes can also be done through softwaretoo. The ASUS
BIOS is pretty standard and the sameas pretty much all their other
gaming laptops, though as mentioned there is a section forCPU
undervolting. Alright let’s discuss prices next, thiswill change over
time so refer to those links down in the description for updates. At the
time of recording, I’ve only beenable to find the price for the cheaper
RTX 3060 models. The M16 with the same i9 processor but 3060is $1850
USD, while the 5 Pro with Ryzen 7 5800H, RTX 3060 and the same amount of
RAMis $100 cheaper. All things considered, I think these are bothpretty
great gaming laptops, but personally I’d probably be leaning towards
the Legion5 Pro for the MUX switch. At least if the priority is gaming,
as wesaw the 5 Pro did do much better there, and it’s also $100 cheaper,
but what I wouldpersonally do is I’d take that $100 and I would upgrade
the memory of this machine,because as we also saw that could give a
pretty significant performance boost, but that’sdefinitely not to say
there’s not a place for the M16, so let’s recap the resultsfrom both.
The M16 is lighter and not quite as big, butthis is at the expense of
lower performance in games due to lower GPU power limit. Personally, I
don’t really have too muchissue with a slightly heavier and thicker
machine if I get more performance, as longas it’s still somewhat
portable and not a full on desktop replacement. That said, depending on
the workload, theM16 could do better. Take Cinebench for example, the
m16 was doingbetter both in terms of single and multi core performance,
plus the Intel platform has theadvantage of undervolting for a further
boost. Additionally, the M16 was ahead of the 5 Proin all of the content
creator tests, it’s got more brightness control on the screen,it’s got a
higher color gamut on the screen, and with that MicroSD card slot I
think theM16 would be a better option for someone also doing content
creation. The M16 was also generally cooler on the internals,at least
when under load and not idle, which is in part probably a side effect of
the lowerpower limits required to get this thinner design. In terms of
the actual exterior where you’llbe touching and using it though, the M16
was definitely warmer compared to the 5 Pro, andthis was in spite of
its louder fan noise, liquid metal application on the processor,and lift
up hinge design to get air underneath for cooling. The M16 is also more
limited when it comesto memory upgrades, as some is soldered to the
board, but for most people playing gamesI don’t think this will be a
real issue if you get the 16 gig soldered to the boardoption and install
a 16 gig SODIMM stick. The Legion 5 was lasting much longer whenrunning
on battery, and this could be boosted by using the shortcut to swap to
60Hz, somethingthe ASUS laptop does automatically, however the Intel
platform seems to just burn throughbattery faster. Ultimately, I think
both are pretty good gaminglaptops and it’s going to be kind of
difficult to go too wrong with either. It depends more on what you plan
on doing. If gaming is the priority with the laptopscreen I’d pick the 5
Pro, but if you do what to do some content creation the M16 doeshave
some nice extras there. But yeah, at the same time both of them
canhandle content creation and gaming just fine, especially with the
high end specs I’vegot in these models. It may have been preferable to
compare theLegion 7 instead of the 5 Pro, as that would be Ryzen 9 vs
Intel i9, but my Legion 7 hadRTX 3080 graphics and I wanted to keep the
same GPU for a fair comparison here. I suppose you could argue that the
M16 doesn’tgo higher than RTX 3070 graphics, so maybe it’s still useful
to compare a top specM16 against a top spec Legion 7? Let me know in the
comments if that’s acomparison that you would want to see.
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