Lenovo Legion 7i Gen 7 Review

The Lenovo Legion 7i Gen 7 (starts at $2,299; $2,979 as tested) is a high-end gaming laptop. A technology refresh of the Gen 6 model, the new 12th Generation Intel Core HX-class processor helped the Gen 7 achieve best-in-class performance among 16-inch machines. Its aluminum chassis, RGB lighting, Nvidia G-Sync screen, solid input devices, and ample connectivity are all highlights. However, its battery life is brief, and its fans tend to be a bit overreactive. We prefer the AMD Gen 7 version of this laptop since it gets better battery life, but the Legion 7i Gen 7 should still top your list if maximum performance is your goal.

The Design: Same Skin, New Hardware

The Legion 7i Gen 7 looks the same as the Gen 6 model. Its storm gray chassis and straight lines almost give it the appearance of a normal laptop until you switch on its extensive RGB lighting, which goes around every edge and covers the Legion logo on the lid.

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

Few laptops offer such extensive lighting. The Lenovo Vantage app lets you change settings and create up to six profiles. Vantage also shows system stats, battery health, warranty information, and provides access to Lenovo support.

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

An inch-long rear protrusion makes the Legion 7i larger than most 16-inch laptops, at 0.76 by 14.1 by 10.37 inches (HWD) and 5.51 pounds. The Gigabyte Aero 16 is 0.88 by 14.02 by 9.78 inches and 5.07 pounds. The 15.6-inch Razer Blade 15 Advanced (0.67 by 13.98 by 9.25 inches, 4.4 pounds) is more portable, but getting a Core HX-class processor requires a larger chassis for more potent cooling. (More on that special chip in the benchmarks section.)

The Legion 7i’s comprehensive physical connections begin on the left with a pair of Thunderbolt 4/USB-C ports.

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

The right edge has an audio combo jack and a USB-C 3.2 Gen 1 port. New for the Gen 7 is the webcam cutoff switch, which is more effective than a simple privacy shutter (which the laptop doesn’t have) since it physically disconnects the webcam from the laptop.

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

You’ll find the remaining connectivity on the rear, including Ethernet, a USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 port, HDMI 2.1 video output, and two USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 ports—the rightmost supporting device charging while the laptop is off.

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

Convenient illuminated port labels ensure you won’t fumble around for the ports in the dark. The far-right USB connector that looks like a USB port is for the power adapter.

The Screen Is a Stunner

The Legion 7i doesn’t change its screen for the Gen 7 model, and that’s a good thing. Sixteen inches diagonal, a tall 16:10 aspect ratio, and a fine (but not too high for gaming) 2,560-by-1,600-pixel resolution translate to an immersive picture. Its 165Hz refresh rate isn’t that high, but it’s appropriate for the resolution. (Had it been a 1080p screen, we’d be looking for at least 240Hz.)

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

The screen also has Nvidia G-Sync to eliminate frame tearing and an anti-glare surface to mitigate reflections. Tack on excellent brightness and color, and this screen seems to have everything. The brightness is almost blinding in a dark room.

The 1080p webcam above the display looks sharper than the 720p cam did on the Gen 6 model. It doesn’t support infrared scanning for Windows Hello facial recognition, but you can still log in without passwords, thanks to a fingerprint reader built into the power button. (The Gen 6 model didn’t have any biometric features.)

Meanwhile, speakers under the palm rest produce loud and clear sound. The included Nahimic app has sound presets and a graphic equalizer.

Input devices are also a strong suit for the Legion 7i. Its full-size keyboard is engaging and well laid-out, and even separates the arrow keys into their own cluster. The number pad keys are two-thirds-size but also retain a standard layout. The sharp per-key RGB backlighting is configurable in the Lenovo Vantage app. Intriguingly, the app allows you to assign macro keys to the number pad 0 through 9 keys.

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

A well-designed touchpad rounds it out; its smooth surface and tactile clicks make it intuitive. The pad is offset to the left so your palms won’t touch it while typing. External mouse users can disable the pad using the keyboard shortcut Fn+F7.

Core HX Power: Testing the Legion 7i Gen 7

The $2,979 Legion 7i Gen 7 being tested here is very well-equipped. Inside is an Intel Core i9-12900HX processor (eight Performance cores, eight Efficient cores, 24 threads), 32GB of DDR5-4800 memory, a 16GB Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti graphics card, Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth, and a 2TB PCI Express 4.0 solid-state drive (SSD) loaded with Windows 11 Home. The standard warranty is one year.

The $2,299 base model will still provide an excellent gaming experience with its Core i7-12800HX chip and 8GB GeForce RTX 3070 Ti GPU. It has half the drive space (1TB) and RAM (16GB), but those are both end-user upgradable.

The Core HX-class processor lends the Legion 7i some uniqueness. As the chip was just introduced, this is one of the first laptops using it. See our Core HX feature for a full writeup on this unique chip, but the skinny is that it offers more desktop-like performance than Intel’s oft-used Core H-class chips. The downside is extra heat, and that’s why you’ll find the Core HX only in larger laptops, like the Legion 7i, that have the means to keep them cool.

The 15.6-inch MSI GE67HX Raider is another Core HX gaming laptop for a lofty $3,699, but that price gets you an OLED screen. Lenovo’s own Legion 7 Gen 7 is also fair competition: its all-AMD hardware includes a Ryzen HX-class chip and a Radeon RX 6000 series GPU. Overall, for what it includes, the Legion 7i Gen 7 is as fairly priced as a laptop in this tier can be.

Now onto the benchmarks, where we compared the Legion 7i Gen 7 to the Gigabyte Aero 16, the Legion 7 Gen 7, the Razer Blade 15 Advanced (2022), and the monster Core HX-powered MSI GT77 Titan. The 17.3-inch MSI isn’t a direct comparison and much larger than the Legion 7i Gen 7, but it’s the only other Core HX laptop we’ve tested so far.

Our Flir One Pro showed the Legion 7i Gen 7 managing its heat well during a 3DMark Time Spy stress test. The peak temperature of 108 degrees F above the keyboard is not normally where you’d place fingers while gaming. The W, A, S, and D key area was just 101 degrees F, which is more than touchable for extended gaming.

(Credit: PCMag)

Fan noise is where this laptop could use some improvement. The fans tend to suddenly ramp up while web surfing, which can be distracting. The noise is tolerable while gaming, though, as it’s no louder than most powerful 16-inch gaming laptops that come through our labs.

Productivity and Content Creation Tests

Our first test is UL's PCMark 10, which simulates a variety of real-world productivity and office workflows to measure overall system performance and also includes a storage subtest for the primary drive. The Legion 7i achieved the best score we’ve seen from any laptop in the main test, even besting the GT77 Titan. Its storage score also suggests its PCIe 4.0 SSD is a good performer.

Our other three benchmarks focus on the CPU, using all available cores and threads, to rate a PC's suitability for processor-intensive workloads. Maxon's Cinebench R23 uses that company's Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene, while Primate Labs' Geekbench 5.4 Pro simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning. Finally, we use the open-source video transcoder HandBrake 1.4 to convert a 12-minute video clip from 4K to 1080p resolution (lower times are better).

Our final productivity test is Puget Systems' PugetBench for Photoshop(Opens in a new window), which uses the Creative Cloud version 22 of Adobe's famous image editor to rate a PC's performance for content creation and multimedia applications. It's an automated extension that executes a variety of general and GPU-accelerated Photoshop tasks ranging from opening, rotating, resizing, and saving an image to applying masks, gradient fills, and filters.

The CPU tests show the Legion 7i performing above what we’re used to seeing from Core H-class laptops, but it couldn’t catch the GT77 Titan, which uses the same Core i9-12900HX processor. The Legion 7i is likely throttling in some way, power or thermal. Nonetheless, the others generally weren’t close, especially the Legion 7 with its Ryzen 9 6900HX.

Graphics and Gaming Tests

For Windows PCs, we run both synthetic and real-world gaming tests. The former includes two DirectX 12 gaming simulations from UL's 3DMark, Night Raid (more modest, suitable for systems with integrated graphics) and Time Spy (more demanding, suitable for gaming rigs with discrete GPUs). Also looped into that group is the cross-platform GPU benchmark GFXBench 5, which we use to gauge OpenGL performance.

Moving on, our real-world gaming testing comes from the in-game benchmarks of F1 2021, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, and Rainbow Six Siege representing simulation, open-world action-adventure, and competitive/esports shooter games, respectively. On laptops, Valhalla and Siege are run twice (Valhalla at Medium and Ultra quality, Siege at Low and Ultra quality), while F1 2021 is run once at Ultra quality settings and, for Nvidia GeForce RTX laptops, a second time with Nvidia’s performance-boosting DLSS anti-aliasing turned on.

The Legion 7i is a real barnstormer, almost catching the GT77 Titan and trading blows with the Legion 7. (Strangely, neither Legion would run the Rainbow Six benchmark.) This is as fast as 16-inch gaming laptops get.

We also informally tested the games at the Legion 7i’s native 2,560-by-1,600-pixel resolution, which you’ll want to use for the sharpest picture. It achieved 61 frames per second (fps) in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla (Ultra settings) and 101 fps in F1 2021 (Ultra with DLSS enabled). The Assassin’s Creed number is a little low but still well playable.

Battery and Display Tests

PCMag tests laptops' battery life by playing a locally stored 720p video file (the open-source Blender movie Tears of Steel) with screen brightness at 50% and audio volume at 100% until the system quits. Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting are turned off during the test.

We also use a Datacolor SpyderX Elite monitor calibration sensor and its software to measure a laptop screen's color saturation—what percentage of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 color gamuts or palettes the display can show—and its brightness in nits (candelas per square meter) at the screen's 50% and peak settings.

Battery testing is where the Legion 7i falls flat, lasting just three hours off the plug. I verified Nvidia Optimus graphics-switching technology was enabled, which should have allowed the laptop to switch to its onboard Intel integrated graphics to save power, but perhaps that didn’t function as intended, or this laptop just consumes a lot of power. Either way, the AMD Legion 7 managed over three times the runtime.

On the upside, the Legion 7i’s screen is first-rate, with an outstanding peak brightness of 534 nits and covering 99% of the sRGB color gamut. The picture is truly hard to beat for gaming.

Verdict: Performance Yay, Battery Nay

The Legion 7i Gen 7 is a solid technology refresh and retains everything we liked about the Gen 6 model, from its snazzy RGB lighting and comfortable input devices to its fabulous screen and ample connectivity. Its new Intel Core HX-class processor vaults its performance to another level, and like its predecessor at review time, it’s one of the very fastest gaming laptops we’ve tested.

This laptop's only real downsides are ones you might accept for this level of performance: somewhat overreactive fans (at least for general use) and short battery life. The battery is the main reason we recommend the AMD version of this laptop, the Legion 7 Gen 7, as our Editors' Choice winner among 16-inch gaming machines. However, do not overlook the Legion 7i Gen 7 if battery isn’t a priority and you want every bit of performance that can be had without jumping up to the jumbo-sized MSI GT77 Titan.