Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Review: Laptop Gaming Taken To A New Level
Lenovo offers a 16-inch 240Hz IPS display, 14th Gen Intel Core i9 CPU and Nvidia RTX 4090 GPU in a bid to win over gamers
If you consider yourself a serious gamer, there’s a high chance that you will want a gaming laptop that enables you to play at the highest level. Powerful processor, a kickass GPU and thermals that can handle the heat coming out of all this silicon, are among the few desired things that games want in their machines. Well, we recently got our hands on a similar top-shelf gaming PC, the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i 6IRX9H and here is what we think of it. Keep reading to know if it is worth the Rs 3,56,999 price tag.
The Legion Pro 7i is a sturdy machine with great build quality. As much as it is strong on the outside, it is functionally capable on the inside. There’s no flex in the display or the keyboard whatsoever. The aluminium and magnesium-alloy chassis is strong and durable.
There are ample I/O ports for users to connect their auxiliary devices easily. 1x Thunderbolt 4 port, 1 USB-C port, 4 USB-A port, an HDMI 2.1, an ethernet port and a power port are all ready for users to get going with their gaming journey.
The keyboard is backlit with RGB lights. Users also have the option of customising the RGB via Lenovo’s own Vantage software. Users have the option of customising different sections of the keyboard and have different lighting effects to choose from. The trackpad deserves a mention here as well. It is responsive and fairly large in size.
The laptop offers a 16-inch 240Hz WQXGA (2560 x 1600) IPS panel with up to 500 nits in brightness. It provides a 100% DCI-P3 colour gamut which is optimal for gaming. The laptop is also clad with G-Sync and Dolby Vision, allowing users to get a fully immersive experience, whether it’s gaming or content creation.
On the inside, the laptop is laced with an Nvidia RTX 4090 mobile GPU and a 14th Gen Intel Core i9 14900 HX mobile CPU that can go as fast as 5.8GHz. These two pieces of hardware alone make this laptop a top contender for the best gaming PC in the market. We played games like Halo Infinite and Lies of P in some of the most intense gaming sessions we have ever had on review units and Legion Pro 7i performed with flying colours.
The Legion Pro 7i offers bottom-facing stereo speakers tuned by HARMAN. This allows for a better audio output compared to other affordable gaming laptops. However, when it comes to gaming laptops and audio output, we strongly believe that good quality headphones will always beat any sort of audio hardware pre-fitted in the laptop which makes this feature irrelevant if one is into serious gaming or content creation.
The Legion Pro 7i is among the loudest machines we have ever tried. From the moment we booted a game, the fans worked nonstop to dissipate the heat, which by the way, reaches high levels during prolonged gaming sessions. The hybrid cooling system in the laptop, although loud, is efficient enough in getting the heat out of the system with a combination of air cooling and liquid metal.
The laptop offers 1 TB of 4th generation PCIe NVME m.2 storage for smooth running of games. However, serious gamers will definitely opt for an external gaming drive regardless of the internal storage. Either way, it is good to have a quick and efficient SSD fitted into the laptop.
There’s ample software support as well. Nvidia Centre is a great way to choose the way users can enhance their gameplay experience.
There’s not much to complain about this laptop. It is a fine piece of machinery with ample firepower to handle all of the top gaming titles in the world. The RTX 4090 is just elite as it gives good number of frames per second even without DLSS and makes sure all games run smoothly without any sort of interruption. We even tried the holy grail feature of Nvidia GPUs, ray tracing and got extremely good results. The 14th Gen Intel Core i9 processor is just as one would imagine with its 24 cores and 5.8 GHz clock speed. As far as performance is concerned, it will never be an issue for the Legion Pro 7i.
There is a lot of expected heating from this setup. Although the thermals of the Legion Pro 7i are quite optimal, the constant fan noise can prove to be a hindrance in the overall experience. We did opt for the silent fan mode from time to time but intense gaming sessions required us to tap into the full extent of the laptops fans.
The display is one of the few areas where we felt Lenovo could have done better. At this price point, giving users a display that is not an OLED should be considered a crime. The IPS panel does what is needed and that too at 240Hz. However, in comparison to an OLED display, IPS displays are bound to fall short. The 16-inch WQXGA 500-nit IPS display doesn’t leave much room to complain about, though. Other aspects where the laptop falls short are battery life and portability. While the former stands at just below 5 hours (heavy gaming) on a full charge, the massive size and hefty weight (2.7 kg) of the Legion Pro 7i confirms the latter.
The idea is to get a laptop that gets the job done and the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i ‘gets it done’. This laptop is great in every aspect you can imagine. It stands its ground against some of the top machines in the market like the Alienware and the Predator series. To add the cherry on top, the Legion Pro 7i also comes with a 3-month free Xbox Game Pass.
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