Lenovo Legion Slim 7 Gen 7 Review

The Lenovo Legion series is a powerful line of gaming laptops, some of which rival the power of desktop rigs. That much was clear when we tested the Legion 7 Gen 7 and the Legion 7i Gen 7, high-end players with AMD and Intel CPUs respectively. While the thinner, more affordable Lenovo Legion Slim 7 Gen 7 (starts at $1,279.99; $1,749.99 as tested) isn't quite as potent as those notebooks, it packs enough performance to provide a surprisingly portable 16-inch laptop that's equally at home at a gaming party and a coffee shop. The Slim 7 hits nearly all the marks as a larger-screened alternative to the ultraportable Asus ROG Zephyrus G14, though it falls short of that system's Editors' Choice honors.

Big Power in a Slim Package

Gaming laptops are usually loud in terms of both noise and aesthetics; it can be hard to find a high-performance gaming rig without aggressive branding and garish RGB accents. Lenovo went the opposite route when designing the Legion Slim 7.

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

This 16-inch gaming laptop measures 0.67 by 14.1 by 10.2 inches (HWD) and weighs 4.9 pounds, undercutting several gaming rigs with smaller 15.6-inch displays. Its trim weight is likely due to its anodized aluminum chassis, which is cool to the touch and not as much of a fingerprint magnet as I'd have expected.

Of course, even thinner and lighter laptops are readily available, but you'll be hard pressed to find one with comparable gaming performance. The Lenovo fits easily into most backpacks and its 230-watt AC adapter, though by no means small, is trim enough to store in a separate compartment. The Slim 7 is definitely an easier commuting companion than some rivals like the 17-inch Acer Nitro 5.

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

While base models of the Legion Slim 7 sport an AMD Ryzen 7 6800H processor and a 1,920-by-1,200-pixel screen, our review unit steps up to an eight-core, 3.3GHz Ryzen 9 6900HX chip and a 2,560-by-1,600-pixel IPS panel with 165Hz refresh rate and AMD FreeSync support. It also features 16GB of memory, a 1TB NVMe solid-state drive, and AMD's 8GB Radeon RX 6800S mobile GPU.

Design and Display

The underside of the Slim 7 Gen 7 features a massive array of vents that help keep the system cool under the pressure of intense gaming. Two fans on each end act as air intakes, with more ventilation along the back of the chassis for exhaust. Placing your intake below your laptop is a sure-fire way to collect dust wherever you're gaming.

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

The narrow-bezel, non-touch display didn't dazzle in our color coverage tests, but it's still an impressive place to view movies and games. A notch above the webcam helps you open the lid, which stays securely closed thanks to a small magnet. While it takes a bit of force to open, it ensures the lid won't open accidentally in transit, reassuring since the panel is slim enough to show noticeable flex.

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

The Lenovo's keyboard is remarkably satisfying to type on. It isn't a true mechanical keyboard—that would be near-impossible in such a svelte chassis—but the keys have a distinctive physical response when pressed. You won't find per-key RGB lighting, but you can customize the backlighting color with the provided Lenovo Vantage app. There's even a handy macro to change between lighting profiles.

The glass touchpad also feels smooth and responsive, but a small gap forms along the bottom edge when you click. Lenovo describes the keyboard as spill-resistant, but this gap might concern users who could accidentally put that to the test.

All the Right Ports in Some of the Wrong Places

Some design aspects definitely peg the Slim 7 as a gaming laptop. Like other Legions, it has a protruding rear hump to accommodate the extensive cooling needed, as well as house some of the ports.

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

Connections along the back edge include the power connector, two USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A ports (one always on to charge handheld devices), and an HDMI video output that supports 8K video at 60Hz. The right flank holds a 3.5mm headphone jack, a webcam privacy slider, and an SD card slot. Finally, the left side offers two USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C ports with DisplayPort and power delivery.

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

While this is a pretty impressive set of ports for a slim laptop, some gamers might bemoan the lack of an Ethernet port, especially when they see a space between the power and USB-A ports that would be just right for one. Additionally, even though the world is moving to USB-C, a side-mounted USB-A port would have been welcome.

Testing the Legion Slim 7: A Mainstream Laptop With Gaming Guts

The Legion Slim 7 Gen 7 has an intriguing and relatively unusual set of components, perhaps the most interesting being the AMD Radeon RX 6800S graphics processor—a slightly underpowered but more efficient version of the Radeon RX 6800M. This GPU's low power consumption makes it ideal for thin-and-light systems such as the compact Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 reviewed here in March 2022. We rounded out our all-AMD comparison lineup with the thicker Lenovo Legion 7 Gen 7 and the Alienware m17 R5, to check out other implementations of the Ryzen 9 6900HX processor, and the Corsair Voyager a1600, with a similar Ryzen 9 6900HS.

Productivity and Content Creation Testing

Our primary productivity benchmark, UL's PCMark 10, executes a series of office tasks such as word processing, spreadsheeting, and videoconferencing to test a system's aptitude for mainstream applications; we consider a score over 4,000 points an indicator of excellent everyday performance. The benchmark also contains a storage test to rate the response time and throughput of a PC's boot drive.

Three more tests focus on the CPU, wringing out all available cores and threads. Maxon's Cinebench R23 uses that company's Cinema 4D engine to render a 3D scene, while Primate Labs' Geekbench simulates real-world tasks such as PDF rendering, speech recognition, and machine learning. We also put a stopwatch on systems as they use the open-source HandBrake 1.4 to transcode a video clip from 4K to 1080p resolution.

Our last test in this group is Puget Systems' PugetBench, an automated extension for Adobe Photoshop that runs a series of operations and filters in the popular image editor to test a PC's suitability for content creation jobs.

All five of these gaming laptops aced our PCMark tests, with the Slim 7 Gen 7 (by a whisker) taking the silver medal behind its Legion 7 sibling. The Slim finished toward the back of the pack in our media-crunching CPU tests, perhaps in part due to its relatively modest 16GB of RAM. According to Lenovo, one of the system's two 8GB SO-DIMMs is soldered to the motherboard, but the other can be replaced with a 16GB stick for a total of 24GB, which would still fall short of its rivals' 32GB.

Gaming and Graphics Testing

We test PCs' graphics performance with two game simulations apiece, from 3DMark and GFXBench. The former has two DirectX 12 benchmarks, Night Raid and the more demanding Time Spy, while the latter's tests, rendered offscreen to compensate for different display resolutions, emphasize OpenGL operations. We also run the built-in benchmarks of three real-world games—F1 2021, Assassin's Creed Valhalla, and Rainbow Six Siege—at different image quality presets with results measured in frames per second (fps).

The Legion Slim 7 Gen 7 landed in the middle of the field here, not setting any frame-rate records but breezing past the 60fps that serious gamers consider a playable minimum. Assassin's Creed Valhalla looked excellent at peak quality settings; I could even make out the intricate details of Eivor's gear at our 1080p test resolution. Less resource-intensive games like Flying Wild Hog's pseudo-side-scroller Trek to Yomi are more than capable of running on the Slim 7 at its native screen resolution, though Obsidian Entertainment's Grounded(Opens in a new window), a multiplayer open-world survival game, struggled to exceed 40fps.

Battery and Display Tests

To test laptops' battery life, we loop a 720p video file at 50% brightness and 10% volume, with Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting off, until the system hibernates. We also use a Datacolor SpyderX Elite monitor calibration sensor and software to measure the display's color coverage and 50% and max brightness in nits (candelas per square meter).

Unfortunately, a thinner laptop often means a smaller battery. Running everyday apps and games during my testing, I had to plug in the Slim 7 fairly frequently, and sure enough, the system had the shortest runtime in our video rundown. A laptop is by definition meant to be portable, but gaming rigs demand a lot of power. Luckily, the included AC adapter isn't too bulky or heavy, though it does get toasty during charging. The Slim 7's screen looked perfectly acceptable to the naked eye but managed only average scores in our SpyderX Elite color and brightness tests.

Verdict: Slim Pickings (Mostly, in a Good Way)

Each year, gaming laptops promise higher and higher performance, but that usually means more mass, power consumption, and price. The Lenovo Legion Slim 7 Gen 7 is a capable rig that easily outruns non-gaming notebooks of similar size. If you're looking for a laptop that can play present-day titles but is relatively easy easy to carry around, the Slim 7 is a fine choice, though the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 remains our lightweight favorite—albeit more gamer-garish and more expensive.