Lenovo, like many other PC OEMs, continue to release new gaming laptops annually, each year iterating and improving on the pursuit of cramming monstrous power in a tight clamshell that can somehow keep itself cool.
The Lenovo Legion 7i is no exception to this. But this one of many (many) gaming laptops under the ever-growing Legion range of gaming products is quite the powerhouse. And yet it can sometimes struggle to keep itself cool to touch on high loads.
Build Quality
If you feel like the many OEM brands start to blend with each other, give them another look and you can spot a Lenovo Legion.
The brand’s no-fuss, clean aesthetic continues to shine brighter than any RGB light array.
Not to say the Legion 7i doesn’t have any- it has an RGB keyboard- but that’s about it. No RGB underglow. No glowing logo or feature on the lid. Very unassuming. Very demure.
The metallic sheen that goes around the side really exudes that premium feel, perfect for an RM8,000+ laptop. And with this matte white (Glacier White) finish, it looks clean. Hold it tall and from afar it looks more like a file of office work papers.
As a fan of non-gamer-coded gaming laptops, I approve. The shell has a sturdy thud when tapped on. The hinge for the screen has grip- and there’s a nice angular shape on the top that houses the webcam and Tobii tracker. Though the screen can wobble if light force is placed onto it which slightly cheapens the package, a common laptop issue.
But the screen itself is very, very nice to look at. The 16-inch screen has rounded corners (a new normal design trend of gadgets these days it seems) and what looks to be minimal bezel size. It’s bright, it has good viewing angles, nothing to complain here.
The keyboard, which uses Lenovo’s TrueStrike 3.0 switches, is a hybrid of the membrane keyboard switches (which has that gooey feeling and muffled thuds when keys are pressed) and some mechanical bits (so it still goes clickity-click in some aspects. It’s comfortable to type with, a fair balance between the two different keyboard switch types. But I recommend getting an external keyboard still for reasons I get to later. Keep reading.
If there’s one thing I feel a bit miffed about the laptop’s build is the power button. You need to press the button a bit deeper, and longer, than expected to turn it on or wake it from sleep mode. Otherwise, you’re tapping the button for nothing, which is odd.
Software
On the software side, the Legion 7i is packed with features. Too packed. Bloated even.
On the test account the review unit has, it has the full flavour of Windows 11 all baked in. And that means it’s just a lot of fluff and bloat coming from side to side. No really, why is there a side window with curated news ai never asked for and another side window suggesting you to write a prompt for an AI to answer or deal with?
Windows 11 as it is right now is so incessant on upselling you its services. From a glowing icon on the user profile when you hit Start to get you subscribed to OneDrive, to Copilot tantalising you with its premium offering of generated AI slop.
Can’t fault Lenovo, or any OEM brands, for this though. Windows is still too important to not have bundled in- even for gaming. But man, the state of Windows 11 right now is just not good. Also, when Windows 11 is downloading its updates in the background it sends the laptop into full power, raising fan speeds due its increased temperature. For just a background update.
The bundled McAfee software is, somehow, even worse than Windows’ upselling methods.
There are a few bundles software that’s nifty. There’s the X-Rite colour correction suite that can colour calibrate the display to various display standards. This laptop has the Tobii eye tracker which lets you use your eye movement for supported games.
And then there’s the Lenovo Vantage app. For the most part, is a useful app. From monitoring battery temperature (more on that later, keep reading) to adjusting power and fan settings. It has the good features a gamer would want to fiddle with.
Apparently you can do a one-button overclock for the GPU, with a big warning that if anything goes wrong, it’s not covered by the warranty. Yikes.
Speaking of warranty, you can subscribe to a warranty from the Vantage app, which Lenovo promises service repairs being covered by it. Though I don’t recommend subscribing for the Smart Performance, which feels like a service that you can do on your own for free.
If you’re buying a 2024 Lenovo Legion 7i, just be prepared to spend a good day decluttering and having the apps and services you care about.
Gaming Performance
If you’re buying a gaming laptop, one that costs over RM8,000, you would assume you can just play the latest games and run it at high settings. And you’d be right. The Lenovo Legion 7i almost effortlessly run modern AAA games.
But first, here’s the specs of the review unit I used, the Lenovo Legion 7i (16IRX9):
- CPU: Intel Core i9-14900HX
- GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Laptop 8GB
- RAM: 32GB
- Storage: 1TB SSD
- Display: 16-inch 16:10 3200×2000 (3.2K)100%DCI-P3, 430 nits, 165Hz
- Price: RM11,345
At a glance, this is already monstrous of a spec. A Core i9? An RTX 4070? 32GB of RAM? All in a laptop? Ridiculous.
The base model starts at RM8,800+. This review unit has all the upgrade options of the Legion 7i on offer for the Malaysia market.
And as expected, the Legion 7i breezes through the benchmark games we tested. Cyberpunk 2077 on Ultra High? No problem. Senua’s Saga Hellblade II all maxed out with ray-tracing? Not a sweat.
Even more mind-boggling is that it can run the latest AAA games at high settings with ray-tracing on in native resolution. 3200×2000 (3.2K) is more or less the 16:10 aspect ratio equivalent to the 16:9’s 4K (3840×2160) resolution. This thing can handle 4K gaming at 30-ish FPS average. With the use of upscalers including Nvidia’s DLSS, this monster can even make those games hover around 40-60 FPS. Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart was the one example of the game we tested where it musters only around 40 FPS at native resolution.
And that means if you lower the resolution down to a more reasonable 2560×1660 or 1920×1200, games run even smoother at higher frames per second. Forza Motorsport and Forza Horizon 5 looks so, so good when maxed out and runs on slightly below native resolution. Even more when ray-tracing is turned off, as high as the 130 FPS range.
If you could believe it, some games are still GPU limited in performance, as in the graphics card is fully utilised at 100%, at max settings in some games, especially when ray-tracing is available. Forza Motorsport (2023) blurts a warning of the graphics VRAM being overloaded, yet here I am blasting through the Nürburgring Nordschleife in heavy rain at 120+ FPS on maxed out settings. Simply lovely.
But there is one worrying point about gaming on the Legion 7i, it can get pretty toasty.
Of course, all gaming laptop makers actively address this in their engineering (and marketing). In this case, Lenovo is touting its ColdFront Hyper tech. The fans, while loud, do a good job keeping internal CPU/GPU temperature to stay around 60 degrees Celcius on light gaming loads (say an indie game like Shapez 2), 70 degrees on much heavier games but on medium settings, and dangling on the 80 degrees zone when settings are maxed out.
But you will feel the heat when gaming. The surface below the keyboard where your hand is resting will get uncomfortably hot. Peculiarly, what lays below there is just the battery. And even when plugged in, the battery will become a hotspot. And checking on the Lenovo Vantage app the battery does indeed get hot when handling heavy workload. For all the effort the engineers have put to ensure the heatsink itself is efficient at getting heat out through it’s back vents, now the front side of the laptop is accumulating temperature.
As such, using the laptop keyboard when gaming is not ideal. That left hand will start feeling all tingly from the heat it absorbs. Get a controller or an extra keyboard.
While one can safely assume a little heat is expected from any powerful gaming laptop, I just don’t buy it. Laptops have a limited timespan that gets diminished further if their components can’t handle the thermal load.
Remember, a busted laptop CPU or GPU will require a whole new motherboard to be replaced, which is usually the price of a brand new laptop.
And as someone who had been gaming on laptops long enough to experience the agony of a dead laptop due to overheating (more than once), I feel like that there’s still room to improve in the laptop cooling tech. A laptop surface which a user’s hands will touch should not emanate heat in any way.
There was a sense of dread during my first day using the review unit, as the laptop keeps whizzing with its fans on full throttle because a Windows 11 update was downloading in the background. Imagine an RM11K laptop dying from overheating. The overall cooling performance, while seems fine during my two weeks of testing, still doesn’t give me peace of mind. I was afraid of doing long sessions of gaming. Three hours tops and I let it rest a bit. The cooling fans do a great job at dropping the internal temps to normal 40 degrees in less than five minutes after operating at twice the temperature.
As long as you don’t game too long, ensure the room the laptop is in has good ventilation with not much dust, and have professional help to service it down the line (which Lenovo does offer for a price), the Legion 7i should be fine. Though it does feel like the specs placed here may a bit too powerful for this chassis to handle. This unit does have all the options on it after all. I assume the cooling is designed around the base model that’s less powerful and produces less heat.
Value
Starting at RM8,000+, purchasing a Lenovo Legion 7i is an investment. The CPU and GPU combo here is of the newest generation Intel and Nvidia chips on offer, and should last at least four years before it can’t keep up with the latest releases- maybe more now that the current console generation is maturing and graphical performance for multiplatform games start to plateau.
RM8,000 is a lot of money. That’s enough to buy 3 PS5s. But that’s the nature of gaming laptops these days. An entry level gaming laptop starts around RM4,500. The Legion 7i is no slouch, it’s near the top-end. This year’s Legion laptops have some weird overlaps in performance between the Legion 7i, Legion 5, Legion Slim and Legion Pro. But specs-wise, between the base model 2024 Legion 7i and the specced-out one as seen in this review unit, they sit in close to the top of the pecking order. You’re definitely getting what you paid for, performance wise.
Verdict
The Lenovo Legion 7i is one unassuming monster of a gaming laptop. Its sleek looks evoke a portable PC for the working person, but its glowing keyboard and specs overpowered enough to make your hands sweat says otherwise. The Legion 7i of 2024 retains that Legion brand of making non-gamer-coded gaming laptops.
If you prefer to not flaunt yourself as a gamer but seek the power of a true beast that can handle the latest releases, the Lenovo Legion 7i is a fine choice. This will sure fire up (for better or worse) your gaming sessions with its capability to show a video game in its best graphical light.
Review unit provided by Lenovo Malaysia.
Lenovo Legion 7i (2024) (Gen 9)
If you prefer to not flaunt yourself as a gamer but seek the power of a true beast that can handle the latest releases, the Lenovo Legion 7i is a fine choice. This will sure fire up (for better or worse) your gaming sessions with its capability to show a video game in its best graphical light.
- Build Quality 9.5
- Gaming Performance 10
- Value 8