I once attended a three-day festival for gamers and anime fans, and I kid you not, I brought my three-year-old Lenovo Legion laptop to my Airbnb because I didn’t want to miss out on gaming lobbies with friends for three whole days.

I’m a laptop gamer. Most gamers would prefer using custom-built desktops, but they take up a lot of space and you definitely can’t bring them with you if you’re going out of town. Choosing Lenovo Legion was a no-brainer for me because of its design and specs.

It’s been three years since I bought my first Legion laptop and I’m excited to say that the newer generations of devices have consistently exceeded my expectations with each release. This year’s devices are no different. I got sent the latest Lenovo Legion Pro 7i and this device is just, ugh, chef’s kiss.

Made for gaming

The latest Lenovo Legion Pro 7i comes in two variants. The main difference between the two comes down to their GPU: one is powered by the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080, and the other a 4090. Another difference is that the 4090 has an added low blue light filter for its display.

Everything else is virtually the same.

This device houses a 13th Generation HX-series Intel® Core ™i9 13950HX processor 6, which offers desktop performance with its 24 cores, 32 threads, and larger L2 cache that can produce speeds of up to 5.4GHz. The processor also has more lanes of PCIe 4.0 and PCIe 5.0, contains faster DDR memory support, and WiFi 6E support.

This is a massive step up from the previous generation of Lenovo Legion Pro 7i devices. This new processor gives up to 49% faster multitask performance. For Counter-Strike Global Offensive players, this means 89% more FPS, and 52% more FPS on Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy 6.

The Lenovo Legion Pro 7i’s storage is a 1TB SSD M.2 PCie 4.0.

As mentioned, the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i contains the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4000 Series. While laptop GPUs aren’t the same as their desktop counterparts, this does produce promising results for gamers.

These multiprocessor graphics cards have improved performance and power efficiency. And thanks to its 4th Gen Tensor Cores and 3rd Gen RT Cores, they’re able to produce photorealistic visuals in games with ease. No frame drops detected here, sir!

The NVIDIA graphics cards make use of AI to boost speeds, but Legion has added an extra boost here by including the Lenovo AI Engine+ that can intelligently identify when a game launches and optimize the hardware and software to provide the highest frames per second (FPS) possible.

The Lenovo AI Engine+ is enabled through the Lenovo Vantage software, which also allows users to customize their experience further – from how the GPU works with the CPU, the screen’s refresh rate, down to the RGB lights ported into the keyboard and the laptop’s chassis.

Lenovo sent us the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 variant of the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 8’s variant, and here are the results from Cinebench 2024:

With performance like this, you can play AAA games with ease.

Great display, great cooling system

I fell in love with the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i’s display. This laptop has a 16-inch IPS panel (2560×1600, 16:10) with anti-glare. It can also reach up to 500 nits of brightness and comes with Dolby Vision. And the best feature in my opinion? Its refresh rate is a whopping 240 Hz! My own 144 Hz laptop shies in comparison.

Matched with the laptop’s processing speed, this display is a dream!

The laptop is also cooled with one of the best cooling systems in gaming laptops. With the Legion ColdFront 5.0, you get dual fans that use a vapor chamber system that draws air from the keyboard and bottom of the chassis. Hot air is then pushed out from the back and sides of the laptop.

It also uses liquid metal on parts of the laptop’s internals for better heat transfer.

Full-size keyboard

Personally, I prefer putting laptops on a riser and using an external keyboard, but I won’t be doing that all the time especially if I’m traveling. So it’s a good thing that the Legion line also paid close attention to the laptop’s keyboard.

The Legion TrueStrike keyboard is soft to the touch. It’s also full-sized so I still get my arrow and function keys, plus a Numpad (yes, I’m a Numpad user).

If you want a bit of flair, the keyboard has RGB backlighting that you can fully customize.

Sleek and classy design

Much like its predecessors, this generation of the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i comes in a black chassis. While some would argue that it looks dull, I say it looks elegant and classy. I can bring this to the office without attracting too much attention. But with just a few taps, I can turn on the RGB lighting on the keyboard and the base of the laptop, switching my persona from worker mode to gamer mode!

The official name of the device’s color is Onyx Grey. Its body is made of aluminum, 50% of which comes from recycled sources.

It weighs about 2.8kg which feels heavy, but is expected given the souped-up specs.

The Legion Pro 7i series also comes with Harman Super Linear Speakers for good sound quality, plus it is equipped with Nahimic Audio to help gamers fully immerse themselves into their games.

Surprisingly too, the Legion Pro 7i comes with a 1080p webcam, which is great for when you’re taking calls or even streaming games. And if you’re worried about privacy, there’s a switch on the side of the laptop that lets you manually shut off power from the camera.

This laptop is god-tier

I’ve been gaming and working on this laptop and can say it’s god-tier. It’s a beast of a computer, and its specs make it a great desktop replacement if you need the space and portability (or like me, just don’t want to fuss over parts so much).

It’s without a doubt very powerful, it’s a sophisticated and sleek piece of machinery, and is absolutely amazing and fun to play with.

Each purchase also comes with a three-year warranty via the Legion Ultimate Support whose technicians are available 24/7 via chat or phone. Fun fact, I needed some work on my three-year-old Legion laptop, and they actually came to my house the day after I submitted a ticket! Imagine that.

The 8th Gen Lenovo Legion Pro 7i starts at P198,995. If you’re interested to know more or get one yourself, you can visit this link. – Rappler.com