// 9TO5GOOGLE — MOBILE & WEB
The Lenovo Legion Tab Gen 5 would be my perfect Steam tablet if it didn’t cost $900
For every Android-powered slate I’ve used, only Nvidia’s Shield Tablet really stands out in my memory. Part of the company’s occasional (and all-but-dead) dip into hardware products, the Shield Tablet — and its revitalized K1 follow-up, which I also owned through a recall program on the original — carried me through the back half of college, frequently keeping my Chromebook in my backpack in lieu of a mini Bluetooth keyboard or the Shield Tablet’s built-in stylus. Its front-firing speakers made it great for movie-watching, and while I’m not much of a mobile gamer, I did find it to be a great device for emulation, especially when paired with an external controller.
Even if Nvidia hadn’t abandoned the hardware game at the end of the last decade, it’s found new and much more destructive ways to make piles of cash at the expense of your easy access to RAM. And considering the market for Android tablets in general, it’s not all too surprising to see very few companies trying to make headway into offering a miniature, gaming-focused tablet that can easily be thrown in a backpack. Lenovo, however, has managed to fill its spot quite well. 9to5Google’s own Ben Schoon found himself smitten with the Gen 3 model nearly two years ago, and now, its Gen 5 successor has found its way into my nostalgic hands.
But expectations around mobile experiences have come a long way since 2016. Whether the Legion Tab Gen 5 can win over your heart really depends on your patience with some old-school Android jank — and whether your wallet can withstand an exceptionally-high asking price. Still, with recent advancements in PC emulation, it’s hard to say Lenovo isn’t onto something.
Considering the decade between their respective releases, I’m actually quite surprised just how much this tablet reminds me of the original Shield Tablet. Its 8.8-inch 16:10 LCD panel combined with a boxy matte-black design and a near-identical weight meant that I immediately felt at home holding this thing in my hands. You lose out on a couple of clutch features — most notably the built-in stylus — but largely speaking, this feels like the correct size and shape for a miniature gaming tablet.
Still, it’s not all perfect. Take, for example, the completely unnecessary camera bump that prevents this slate from properly laying flat on a desk. No one is buying this thing to use the camera, and judging by my very limited experience trying it out, I’m fairly confident whatever potato sensor is shoved in here would fit fine flush with the chassis. I’m pretty fed up with OEMs leaning on camera bumps to make any device look or feel more premium than it actually is, and that goes double quadruple for tablets like this.
Just like its predecessor, this thing still picks up smudges and fingerprints at an unreasonable level, its matte-black finish unable to hide anything. 360 grams is also a little heavier than I’d expect for a slate of this size, though to be fair, it’s much more noticeable in portrait than landscape. Holding the tablet with two hands to watch a movie or make my way through another round of Balatro made its top-heaviness much less noticeable.
This display is sharp and fast — with one minor caveat — and reasonably bright in all circumstances except direct sunlight thanks to its 600 nits of brightness (and 800 in HBM). Really, it’s the LCD of it all that gets me here; this thing is nearly $1,000, and the lack of OLED alone makes it difficult to recommend at this price. It’s not an outright bad panel, but I found its contrast levels to be pretty lacking, with most blacks only ever showing up as dark grays on-screen.
Oh, and that caveat: On two different occasions, I caught the tablet stuck in 60Hz mode, regardless of what refresh rate option I selected in settings. Switching back and forth between modes a few times eventually unstuck it, but it’s definitely a bug worth being aware of.
I think I’d feel a lot better about recommending this to someone looking for a content