Lenovo Legion Y32p-30 Monitor Review

The Lenovo Legion Y32p-30 shares a common design with most Legion gaming monitors, including a wide ribbed base and silver "Legion" lettering in the bottom left corner. It also includes RGB lighting that you can customize with the monitor's software.

The Lenovo Legion Y32p-30 has good build quality, with minimal creaking and flex in its plastic frame. A similar force is required to move the monitor up and down during adjustment. Despite its 32-inch size, it has quick wobble recovery when tapped on an edge or corner.

The ergonomics are very good on the Lenovo Legion Y32p-30 as you can adjust it in a few different ways. It also has a cable management loop in the back as well as a retractable headphone hook.

The stand is primarily plastic, but the ribbing and metal frame in the base make it fairly solid overall.

In addition to the standard joystick control and power buttons, the Lenovo Legion Y32p-30 also has dedicated input switching and KVM switching buttons.

• DisplayPort cable
• HDMI cable
• USB-C cable
• USB-B cable
• Power cable
• User documentation

The Lenovo Legion Y32p-30's contrast is adequate. Deep blacks appear gray in a dark room. However, this isn't as noticeable in brighter environments. If you plan to use this in a darker room and contrast is important to you, consider a VA panel like the Gigabyte M32UC instead.

The local dimming performance is terrible. Lenovo doesn't list local dimming as a feature for this monitor, and there's no option for turning it on in settings. During our testing with Windows 11, it only activates when the monitor is sent an HDR signal and is in HDR 400 mode with Adaptive Sync off. However, local dimming activation varies between sources.

When local dimming does activate, it doesn't work properly. The backlight zones don't follow the object and light up sections of the screen with no content. Additionally, the object itself is inconsistently lit by the backlit zones. For this reason, in Windows 11, we suggest not using the HDR 400 mode if Adaptive Sync is turned off. Other modes like HDR Movie or HDR Game don't turn on backlight dimming; we suggest using them instead of HDR 400.

You can see this same test without local dimming, as well as a recording where we normalize the brightness of the object.

The monitor has good SDR brightness and overcomes glare in brighter rooms. If you want to use the monitor in darker rooms, you'll only reach the lowest minimum brightness level when Brightness Native is turned off. However, several functions like backlight strobing and dynamic contrast aren't available if you do this.

These results are from after calibration in the 'Standard' Game Mode, with Brightness set to max and Brightness Native turned 'On.'

The Lenovo Legion Y32p-30 has fair HDR performance. However, if local dimming is on, the monitor has problematic and inconsistent HDR performance, so we used HDR Movie mode to ensure it's off. This mode is similar in brightness and EOTF and is only slightly worse in color performance than HDR 400. However, this mode doesn't cause any local dimming issues.

When used in HDR Movie, the screen is bright enough to overcome glare from light sources, but highlights won't pop. Darker scenes have proper brightness, but more brilliant scenes fall short of the creator's intended brightness, as the monitor has only decent brightness and the PQ EOTF has an early roll-off.

These results are from the 'HDR Movie' HDR mode.

This monitor has only a decent horizontal viewing angle. While it's fine if you're sharing content with a colleague next to you, someone seated at a wider angle will notice the colors getting washed out.

The Lenovo Y32p-30 has a great vertical viewing angle. This makes it a great choice if colleagues stand above you looking at content on your screen.

The gray uniformity is great on this monitor, though it's somewhat unbalanced. The left side of the screen is notably less bright than the right. However, dirty screen effect is minimal, so it looks good when displaying solid backgrounds.

The monitor has disappointing black uniformity. When you turn off local dimming, the backlight bleed is visible in a darker room.

However, black uniformity with local dimming on is terrible. If you're using Windows 11 with local dimming and watching certain HDR content, some objects on the screen appear too dark, even as dimming zones with nothing in them are too bright.

The pre-calibrated color accuracy on the Lenovo Legion Y32p-30 is fantastic in the sRGB mode. However, darker and brighter areas are slightly over-brightened, and the monitor's color temperature is slightly too cold.

The 'sRGB' Color Temp mode locks out a few settings, like contrast, dynamic contrast ratio, and game mode. You can adjust the locked settings in an alternative picture mode that's less accurate, as you can see here in 'Standard.'

The monitor has truly outstanding color accuracy post-calibration. Additionally, some features that were locked in sRGB mode, like Dynamic Contrast Ratio, are accessible.

The Lenovo Legion Y32p-30 has superb SDR color gamut overall. However, it has only decent Adobe RGB coverage. Greens are notably undersaturated in Adobe RGB, making this monitor a poor choice for color-sensitive work in this color space.

The Lenovo Legion Y32p-30's HDR color gamut is good, particularly in the DCI-P3 gamut used by most HDR content. Like most monitors, it doesn't cover a significant portion of the Rec. 2020 color space.

The HDR color volume on this monitor is decent. However, it can't reproduce bright, vibrant colors with the DCI-P3 content often found in movies. Additionally, it can't reproduce deep blacks, showing only darker gray instead.

This monitor has superb text clarity due to its high pixel density. Turning ClearType on (top photo) makes text crisper and sharper. We took these pictures with Windows 10, and you can see them in Windows 11 with ClearType turned on and off.

This monitor has satisfactory reflection handling; content is visible in brighter rooms thanks to its good brightness levels.

The gradient handling is excellent on this monitor, and banding isn't visible in areas with similar colors.

The Lenovo Legion Y32p-30 has a fast refresh rate, with the maximum rate available over both HDMI and DisplayPort.

The Lenovo Legion Y32p-30 supports all VRR types, including HDMI Forum VRR.

The Lenovo Legion Y32p-30 has good motion handling with VRR enabled. Besides the 'Level 4' setting, most of the Overdrive settings perform similarly, but 'Level 3' is consistently the best. That said, it has more inverse ghosting at low refresh rates.

The refresh rate compliance is decent. Like other LCD monitors, its response time isn't fast enough to keep up with its max refresh rate, and it only gets better at lower frame rates .

The CAD at the max refresh rate of 144Hz is good. While there's some blur and smearing, the 'Level 3 Overdrive setting doesn't have any inverse ghosting as it has less overshoot than 'Level 4.'

The CAD at 120Hz is good. It performs similarly to its max refresh rate, as 'Level 3' has the fastest total response time without noticeable inverse ghosting, but it still has some motion blur.

The CAD at 60Hz is decent. There's noticeable blur, but unlike at higher refresh rates, the recommended Overdrive setting is 'Level 2' because the higher settings have too much overshoot that causes inverse ghosting.

This monitor supports backlight strobing to reduce persistence blur. While it does reduce persistence blur, it also causes image duplication.

The Lenovo Legion Y32p-30 doesn't have noticeable VRR flicker with changing frame rates, which is excellent for gaming.

The backlight has no flickering at any brightness level, which can help reduce eye strain if you're sensitive to flickering.

The input lag is excellent on this monitor, and games feel very responsive. Backlight strobing slightly increases the input lag, and you may want to leave it off if you're playing a game where low input lag is critical.

Although the Lenovo Legion Y32p-30 supports HDMI 2.1 bandwidth to take advantage of the PS5, it doesn't support 1440p at all, as you can see here.

The monitor only supports 1440p with the Xbox Series X|S if you enable the console's HDMI override setting, which disables VRR. Keep in mind that the console doesn't support HDR with signals lower than 4k, so this isn't a limitation of the monitor.

The Lenovo Legion Y32p-30 has four video-in ports, allowing you to connect to two game consoles, a desktop computer, and a laptop simultaneously. You can use the audio output with headphones or speakers when connected to consoles and computers.

The monitor has HDMI 2.1 bandwidth support, though only up to 24Gbps. Therefore, you can play games at 4k 120Hz over HDMI, but unless the device supports Display Stream Compression, content will have 4:2:0 chroma subsampling. However, this will have a minimal impact on most games.

A KVM switch is integrated into the monitor, allowing quick keyboard and mouse switching between multiple connected computers. When Smart Power is off, the monitor delivers 45W of power over USB-C but provides as much as 75W when turned on.

The Lenovo Legion Y32p-30 works well with macOS. The monitor displays 1080p over every connection type by default with macOS, but you can quickly change it to 4k. Older Macs with HDMI 2.0 bandwidth have a maximum refresh rate of 60Hz and no VRR support, though HDR is available.

Newer Macs with HDMI 2.1 bandwidth can take advantage of all the monitor's features, including a 144Hz refresh rate, VRR, and HDR. All these features are also available when using USB-C to DisplayPort. Some flickering can occur after VRR is used with this connection, though you can stop this by pressing the Alt + Tab keys.

If you're using a MacBook, windows return to their original places after opening and closing the lid, and the Lenovo display stays on while the MacBook is closed.

The Lenovo Legion Y32p-30 has several additional gaming and productivity features, including:

• KVM Switch: Switches between multiple inputs in 2–5 seconds.
• USB Hub with Power Delivery: Provides up to 75W of power over USB-C.
• Picture-in-Picture and Picture-by-Picture: Allows multiple inputs to be visible on the screen at once in several configurations.
• Smart Light: Adjusts monitor brightness based on ambient light levels.
• RGB Lighting: Adjustable RGB lighting at the bottom of the monitor.
• Dark Boost: Brightens darker scenes to assist in gaming.