Lenovo Legion 7i 16 (9th Gen) Review: An Unlikely Contender For The 16-Inch Gaming Crown

I haven’t had the opportunity to review many of Lenovo’s modern gaming laptops. It’s a situation that I plan to rectify from here on out, especially if they are anything like the Lenovo Legion 7i 16 9th Gen. Dubbed as the thinnest Lenovo gaming laptop, the Legion 7i 16 offers stately good looks that can fit in at the office or a LAN party. The display is plenty bright with vivid color and sharp detail. And with a 240Hz refresh rate and Nvidia Advanced Optimus technology, you’re all but guaranteed a smooth gaming experience.

But it is what’s under the hood that counts, and the Legion 7i toes the line between high-end and mid-tier, combining an Intel Core i9 processor with an Nvidia RTX 4070. The end result is a laptop that can reliably handle most workloads as well as dish out some high frame rates, even on maximum settings. Which makes its mid-tier pricing astounding, but incredibly welcome. In fact, for its price, the Lenovo Legion 7i 16 (9th Gen) might be one of the best gaming laptops of the year.

There are a couple of caveats however. The otherwise lovely laptop is marred by a pair of substandard speakers; also, with a 99.9 watt-hour battery, I’d expect longer battery life than I observed. Still, for the cost, specs and portability, the Lenovo Legion 7i 16 (9th Gen) is one of the best gaming laptops for work and play.

About this review: Lenovo loaned us a Legion Pro 7i 16 (Gen 9) for review. The company did not have input in this review, and did not see its contents before publishing.

Lenovo Legion 7i 16 (9th Gen)

Editor’s choice

Great for work and play

The Lenovo Legion 7i 16 (9th Gen) is an excellent gaming laptop that can also handle a full work load. The thinnest gaming laptop in Lenovo’s arsenal, the laptop is portable, elegant, has a beautiful 2K display and a comfortable keyboard.

Pros

• Sleek, portable design
• Great gaming and overall performance
• Stunning 2K display
• Comfortable keyboard

Cons

• Audio could be better
• Short battery life
• Fans get loud when gaming

Pricing and availability

Taking a look at the specs, I expected the 9th Gen Lenovo Legion 7i 16 to be more expensive than it is. My review unit costs $1,786 on Lenovo.com ($1,999 on Best Buy) and has a 2.2-GHz Intel Core i9-14900HX processor, 32GB of DDR5-5600MHz memory, a 1TB M.2 2280 PCIe (Gen 4) SSD, Intel UHD Graphics, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 GPU with 8GB GDDR6 of VRAM, and a 16-inch, WQXGA (2560 x 1600) non-touch panel.

The base model is slightly cheaper at $1,740, which drops the RAM to 16GB.

Design and ports

A gaming laptop that looks good from all angles no matter where it is

Lenovo sent me the Glacier White interaction of the Legion 7i 16 as opposed to Eclipse Black. While I don’t mind a black or gray gaming laptop, I get excited when I see a white system –– especially when RGB backlighting is involved, as it really makes the color pop. And while the Legion does sport a glittering, technicolor RGB keyboard, the rest of the laptop is rather unassuming, so much so that it can pass as a fancy workstation, provided you turn off the keyboard backlighting for the office.

The Legion 7i chassis is made from bright white CNC aluminum, with gently brushed aluminum edges which are rather elegant. The lid has two glossy chrome embellishments. The first is a rather large Legion logo along the top-right corner and a smaller Lenovo emblem in the bottom left corner. The hinge that connects the display to the bottom portion of the laptop gives way to a rather large caboose that juts out the back. A closer look reveals a robust set of vents. The aluminum is fairly fingerprint resistant, unless, of course, you eat something oily like chips, which will definitely cause some prints.

There’s a slight lip at the top of the lid that makes opening the laptop a little easier. When opened, the full-size keyboard in its recessed keyboard deck immediately lights up, drawing the eye. Instead of placing it with the rest of the keys, Lenovo placed the power button at the top of the deck with white backlighting that mimics the trisected “O” in the Legion logo. The touchpad sits directly below the deck centered by the G and H keys. There’s another small chrome Lenovo logo stamped onto the bottom right corner of the deck.

One thing I’m missing is the light bar along the front lip of the laptop like you’d find on the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i 16 (9th Gen).

Flip the laptop over and you’ll see three white rubber feet on the undercarriage. The two front feet are flanked by a speaker grille. Directly below the back foot is another large vent to try to combat any thermal issues.

The notebook has a good collection of ports, including a USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 port, USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 port, a 4-in-1 SD card reader, and a physical e-shutter switch on the right. Sitting on the left are a Thunderbolt 4 port, USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 port, USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 port, and a headset jack. And finally, on the laptop’s rear among the vents are a full HDMI 2.1 port and a proprietary DC-in port.

According to Lenovo, the 14.1 x 10.3 x 0.69 ~ 0.78 inch, 4.9-pound Legion 7i is the company’s thinnest gaming laptop. It’s certainly slimmer and lighter than the Alienware m16 R2 (at 5.8 pounds, 14.3 x 9.8 x 0.93 inches). But it is nowhere near as thin or light as others, like the 2024 Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (3.3 pounds, 12.2 x 8.7 x 0.63 ~ 0.64 inches) or the 2024 HP Omen Transcend 14 (3.9 pounds, 12.3 x 9.2 x 0.67~0.71 inches), but bear in mind that those are 14-inch systems.

Display, audio and webcam

Matte doesn’t mean dim

Usually, I’m a rabid fan of glossy displays because I want my color seared into my retinas. But I’m seeing an increasing number of matte panels running across my desk, and I’m not going to lie, they look pretty good. The glare I have to fight on a shiny screen is barely non-existent on the Legion 7i 16 matte display.

I watched the trailer for “Earth Mama,” the details were so clear on the Legion’s 16-inch, 2560 x 1600 WQXGA panel, I could see the schmutz build up on the car window along with the wispy flyaway hairs on actor Tia Nomore’s head. Her caramel skin had deep red undertones that offset her mint green shirt. However, I did notice some muddiness in darker scenes.

Paired with its fairly thin bezel, I really appreciate the 16:10 aspect ratio as it gives gamers more screen real estate. Whether I was navigating my party through a dark crypt in Baldur’s Gate 3 or dissecting demons with the business end of my chainsaw in Doom Eternal, the 240Hz refresh rate paired with Nvidia’s Advanced Optimus and G-Sync technologies, I got silky smooth frame rates no matter how intense the action became.

My colorimeter measured the Legion 7i 16’s screen for 100% of the sRGB color gamut, matching Lenovo’s claim. However, the AbodeRGB, P3, and NTSC scores were not as rosy at 77, 78, and 72%, respectively. You can, of course, tweak the color temperature via the preinstalled Dolby Vision app as you have three presets (Vivid, Bright, and Dark) to choose from. There’s also X-Rite Color Assistant found in the Lenovo Vantage app, which offers its own presets.

It might not be glossy, but averaging 616 nits of brightness, the Legion 7i’s display is far from dim. I sat in my yard playing Baldur’s Gate in the direct sun with no problems.

I really loathe bottom-mounted speakers, they’re only a lap or a flat surface away from sounding muffled. It’s no different with the Legion 7i 16 with its pair of 2W speakers and Nahimic Smart Amp. It’s unfortunate, because Nahimic actually makes some of the better laptop audio software out there. But no matter what I listened to on Spotify and no matter how much I tweaked the settings in the Nahimic app, one thing remained constant. The vocals were louder than the instrumentals, leaving the audio experience sounding hollow. Throw in the aforementioned muffling problem, and you really need to invest in a great gaming headset or a pair of headphones to use with this laptop.

2:29

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The Legion’s 1080p webcam does an excellent job at accurately capturing color as evidenced by my test shots. It got the exact shade of my red shirt, as well as my pink, purple, green, and blue locs. The details, however, were fuzzy even at close range, which made it look like my knuckles got some weird mosaic filter.

But Lenovo wants you to do more with your webcam than take a pretty picture. Featured in the Legion Vantage app is Tobii’s eye tracking software that’s compatible with over 50 game titles, including several popular Assassin’s Creed games, both of Crystal Dynamics’ Tomb Raider games, Microsoft Flight Simulator and Dying Light. When enabled, Tobii’s eye-tracking technology lets you actually control the in-game camera with your eyes. The software also has productivity and security use cases such as dimming the screen or locking Windows completely when you’re not in front of it, and blurring the screen when you look away. It can even track how close the screen is in relation to your eyes and shoot you a reminder to take a screen break.

Keyboard and touchpad

Clicky, colorful, and comfortable

Similar to its business-centric ThinkPad brethren, the Lenovo Legion 7i’s TrueStrike keyboard sports the company’s icon ic smile-shaped keys that have come to represent a great typing experience. They don’t disappoint on the Legion 7i. With a 1.5-millimeter key travel, typing this review on the Legion’s keyboard was a springy dream. The backlighting is seriously bright, allowing you to clearly see the lettering in the darkest settings.

Thanks to the per key lighting, you can program every key on the keyboard, even the Num Pad keys. If you want to change the default rainbow pattern on the keyboard, you can do it yourself or choose from one of the other 11 presets Lenovo Spectrum offers, which you’ll find within the Lenovo Vantage app.

The touchpad is smooth to the touch and provides an agile and seamless response, even with multitouch gestures. The bottom corners provide a deep click, but I’d still recommend plugging a gaming mouse in when it’s game time. One more thing, maybe I’m just an RGB junkie, but I really wish the trackpad had some color of its own. It’s a minor quibble, but I think it’d be a good look esthetically.

Performance, heat, and battery life

A gaming laptop for work and play

Whether it’s work or play, expect great performance from the Lenovo Legion 7i 16 with its Intel Core i9-14900HX processor which has 24 total cores and 32 threads. The chip can get up to a 5.8GHz clock and operates at a 57W base TDP. The CPU teams up with an Nvidia RTX 4070 running at 115W TGP. You also have 32GB of swappable LPDDR5x RAM and 1TB M.2 2280 PCIe (Gen 4) SSD.

I ran our usual suite of performance benchmarks on the Legion, with the laptop’s performance profile set to Best. I started with the PCMark 10, where the Lenovo dominated its peers. It was, however, no match for the Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 and its Intel Core Ultra 9 185H CPU. Except for the G16, the Legion 7i 16 outperformed the HP Omen Transcend 14 and Alienware m16 R2.

The Legion 7i hung tough on my seemingly meager real-world testing, as I launched 70 tabs in Google Chrome with a mix of news, social media, videos, Google Docs and Presentations. Even when I had 10 videos running and parsing through a rather dense spreadsheet, I didn’t see any stuttering or slowdowns.

But you’re not here for spreadsheets, you’re here to game, which the Legion 7i 16 can definitely handle. Yes, the 4070 is a middle child of sorts, but that doesn’t mean the frame rates are subpar. On the contrary, I consistently saw great frame rates on most games. For instance, I got a smooth 60 frames per second during Baldur’s Gate at native resolution with every setting maxed out. On Doom Eternalthe laptop notched 131 fps while I got 88 fps on Warhammer 40,000 Darktide.

To test how well the Legion 7i deals with heat, I played Cyberpunk 2077 for 30 minutes and measured specific spots on the laptop. The second the game is launched, the dual ColdFront Hyper fans kick in, which spin inward instead of outwards in an effort to keep the subsequent hot air from coming anywhere near your hands. The center of the keyboard registered 99 degrees Fahrenheit, while the center of the undercarriage hit 112 degrees. The hottest point of the laptop is the rear vent right corner area which measured 116 degrees.

The Legion has a 99.9 watt-hour battery, the largest battery that the FAA will allow on an airplane. To test its endurance, I ran the PCMark 10 Modern Office benchmark. And as expected with all those snazzy specs, the laptop didn’t last long, tapping out after 4 hours and 29 minutes.

Should you buy the Lenovo Legion 7i 16 (9th Gen)?

You should buy the Lenovo Legion 7i 16 (9th Gen) if:

• You want a slick, stylish laptop that is portable and looks good in any setting
• You want a gaming laptop that can handle work as well as play
• You want a high-quality display that’s bright, vivid, and color accurate
• You want a comfortable, colorful keyboard

You shouldn’t buy the Lenovo Legion 7i 16 (9th Gen) if:

• You want a gaming laptop with loud, balanced speakers
• You want a laptop with quieter fans
• You want a laptop with longer battery life

Historically, Lenovo has been known for its business laptops, but if the Legion 7i 16 (9th Gen) is any indication, it also should be a top choice for gamers. The Legion backs a lot of impressive features, including a powerful 14th Gen Intel Core i9 processor and a Nvidia RTX 4070 GPU into an elegant svelte chassis. And despite being a 16-inch system, the 4.5-pound notebook is the thinnest gaming laptop in Lenovo’s lineup, making for a pretty portable system. And for the gamers who don’t want a notebook that screams “I’m a gamer,” you can simply turn off the backlighting and you’ll have an elegant laptop that will fit in anywhere. And when it is time to get some work done, those RGB-lit keys are comfortable enough for you to get hours of work done.

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But if you are going to be spending hours on the Legion, make sure that you’re always near an outlet, as the gaming laptop doesn’t have the best battery life. You’ll also want to invest in a gaming headset to round out the audio and drown out the fans. But for the price and everything that comes with it, the Lenovo Legion 7i 16 (9th Gen) is a great machine for gaming and work.

Lenovo Legion 7i 16 (9th Gen)

Editor’s choice

Great for work and play