Editor’s Pick: Lenovo Legion Y32p-30
Great both as an investment and as an OLED monitor for daily use
IN MANY WAYS, the Lenovo Legion Y32p-30 is on-paper perfection. What’s not to like about 32 inches of 4K, 144Hz, and 0.2ms refresh goodness? The fact that for similar money, you have various options, one being a 48-inch 4K OLED monitor from Gigabyte: the Aorus FO48U.
I say “monitor”—it is really a repurposed LG TV. What it can’t do is match the pinsharp, crispy image quality of a 32-inch 4K panel. That’s the attraction of the Lenovo Legion: the high pixel density combined with 144Hz refresh. It’s a recipe for not only epic in-game visual detail, but also lovely fonts. It’s everything you’d want in a premium PC monitor.
Indeed, it’s the high-DPI thing that no current OLED PC monitor can match. At best, you’re looking at about 110DPI with an OLED PC monitor. This Lenovo’s 140DPI is a step up. Of course, this isn’t the only 32-inch, 4K high refresh monitor in town, but it does stand out, courtesy of the aforementioned 0.2ms refresh.
That’s what Lenovo claims, but it’s via the MPRT response metric, which makes it a little misleading. In fact, Lenovo only claims 2ms by the more representative gray-to-gray measure of pixel response, which is more in line with IPS technology.
As IPS screens go, this is quick. Yes, an OLED panel is faster, but the subjective experience isn’t that different. Where OLED has an advantage is contrast and HDR performance—speaking of which, the Lenovo Legion Y32p-30 has local dimming support, but only 16 edge-lit zones.
In reality, that’s a checkbox feature, which helps with HDR certification, but does little to improve the real-world experience. Games and other HDR content look more punchy than conventional SDR images, but only a little. Bottom line: the black levels and HDR performance are very poor compared to an OLED monitor.
While we’re talking HDR, it’s worth noting that the Lenovo Legion Y32p-30 doesn’t do SDR content well in HDR mode, which is annoying, because you have to constantly toggle back and forth between image modes. Better calibrated displays can do SDR content perfectly in HDR mode, allowing you to leave a screen there.
That aside, this is a pleasing panel for broader SDR duties. The colors are vibrant without being oversaturated, and the 4K resolution on a 32-inch diagonal makes for oodles of desktop elbow room and nice, crisp fonts at the same time.
The 144Hz refresh keeps latency to a minimum—if you have the graphics firepower to drive this screen at high frame rates. Mercifully, GPU prices continue to head in the right direction, but it’s worth remembering that pushing a 4K screen above 100 fps in the latest games is a tall order, even with a powerful graphics card.
In that context, the Lenovo Legion Y32p-30 is best viewed as a long-term investment. You might not get the best out of it on day one, but in three years, 32 inches, 4K, and 144Hz will still be a killer combo, and a GPU that can get it moving will hopefully be a lot more affordable.
Long story short, there’s lots to like about the Lenovo Legion Y32p-30. It ain’t cheap, and the HDR support is patchy. But the feature set, including not only DisplayPort 1.4 and HDMI 2.1, but also USB-C with 75W of power delivery, is bang on. The build quality is excellent, and the image quality is mostly excellent. If you’re in the market for this kind of panel, you won’t be disappointed.
$750, www.lenovo.com