When it comes to gaming laptops, Lenovo has earned a great deal of recognition and chiefly due to its Legion line of laptops. Revenge of the Lenovo Legion 9i gaming laptop last year. Noteworthy, even with such a high price, Lenovo tries to be the best in every parameter, at least on the theoretical level.
Lenovo outdoes itself with Intel and NVIDIA mobile chips, innovations such as a carbon fiber lid, a mini-LED display with great brightness, and a liquid cooling system developed jointly with Cooler Master.
Is this the ultimate gaming laptop, the one that you can get if money is no object? Let’s find out.
Design and Build
On the design aspect, the Lenovo Legion 9i has a lid design that is unique to this Legion series of laptops. This is made from multi-layer forged carbon fiber and is lighter than conventional aluminum yet stronger. Still, there is some give, but it is not much of a concern. The forged carbon gives each unit a camo-style design on it. The finish of the lid is soft which is helpful in preventing the accumulation of fingerprints.
The magnesium-aluminum blend used in the bottom chassis is black. It has RGB LED strips located at the bottom chassis of the laptop, at the Legion logo on the lid, and the keyboard, which is programmable through key combinations or Vantage software.
In general, the finish is quite luxurious and it is not an overly huge laptop despite being a 16-inch model. Weighing 2. It shall not weigh more than 5 kg and not have a thickness of more than 0. 75 inches, Legion 9i comes with an Intel HX processor, RTX 4090 GPU, and an efficient cooling mechanism.
For cooling, Lenovo has shifted the keyboard to the bottom and given a large vent at the back which gives it a look of a soundbar. The trackpad is slightly smaller but not as much as the width which is sufficient. The power button which is placed at the top of the air vent holds the fingerprint scanner for Windows Hello sign-in and an LED light for the performance status.
The device features three USB Type-C ports: There are two Thunderbolt 4 ports located at the rear with DisplayPort 1. 4 and 140W of Power Delivery and a USB-C 3. There is one 2 Gen 1 port located on the right side of the device. The back features a 2. An Ethernet port with a transfer rate of 5Gbps, USB 3.
There is a 2 Gen 1 Type-A port, and an HDMI 2. There is one USB 2. 0 port and an AC adapter port. The right side has a camera switch and another USB 3 port. On the right, there is only one 2 Gen 1 Type-A port, and on the left – a 3. It also has a 5mm combo jack and SD card reader. Lenovo has made a good decision by incorporating a full-sized SD card reader.
The bottom part has screws on the bottom cover, total eight screws for removal of the cover to access the internal parts. Internally, besides the battery, there are three cooling fans, two M.
2 slots for storage, and a slot for the Wi-Fi card. Still, the memory slots are located on the opposite side of the motherboard, so one has to deal with extra screws and rather fragile cables to get to them, which makes for a more complex RAM upgrade.
Display
Lenovo stands out with the mini-LED backlit display. The screen size is 16 inches with a resolution of 3200 x 2000 pixels and a maximum brightness of 1200 nits in HDR. The screen has HDR1000 support and covers 100% of the Adobe RGB and DCI-P3 color gamut. It is ideal for content consumption and good for content developers who require color accuracy. Comparatively, it doesn’t reach the levels of pitch-black that OLED does, but it does get quite dim with very little light seepage or halos.
For gamers there is support for Nvidia G-Sync and the display has a refresh rate of 165Hz. For the Legion 9i, it is possible to set adaptive refresh rates that, on battery, drop to 60Hz and go up to 165Hz when plugged in. Performance in gaming benchmarks is good in titles such as Apex Legends and Valorant.
Keyboard and Trackpad
The Lenovo Legion 9i has an unconventional keyboard placement which though not bad can be a bit confusing at first for a high-end gaming laptop. The TrueStrike keyboard provides a 1.
With a 5mm key travel distance and fully customizable RGB lighting. Key typing is smooth, and the keys have a nice feel to them with a good tactile response. The laptop has ten additional switches and eight sleek keycaps for the customization of the keyboard.
The touchpad has more width than it has height which may be a bit of a disadvantage. It sometimes has problems with left clicking because of the design of the mouse. Nevertheless, the majority of customers will probably employ a mouse for gaming or work.
While it can’t quite hit the pitch-black blacks of OLED, it does get relatively dim with very little light seepage or bleeding.
It also has an exceptional display which is G-Sync compatible and has a high refresh rate of 165Hz for gamers. What is interesting, the Legion 9i also supports adaptive refresh rates, and at battery, those are set to 60Hz and when plugged in – 165Hz. Gaming-wise the performance is good across titles like Apex Legends and Valorant.
This is perhaps its keyboard positioning that may need some adjustment, but other than that, the Lenovo Legion 9i has what it takes to be a great gaming laptop. The TrueStrike keyboard provides a 1.
It has a 5mm key travel distance and customizable RGB lighting. Keyboard input is quite a pleasant experience, the keys are sensitive to touch. Besides, the laptop contains ten more switches and eight high-quality keycaps to choose from.
The trackpad is wider than it is long, which can be somewhat of a negative. This is because its design makes it sometimes receive left clicks when it is not supposed to. Nevertheless, the majority of users will probably employ a mouse for gaming or working.
Performance
The Lenovo Legion 9i comes with Intel’s 13th Generation Core i9-13980HX processor which is one of the best mobile processors that one can find. To exemplify, the first one has 24 cores: 8 P-cores, and 16 E-cores, as well as the maximum boost clock speed of up to 5. At 6GHz it is on par with the highest-performing desktop processors.
The GPU of the laptop is an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 mobile GPU with a maximum TGP of 175W and there are two 1TB PCIe Gen 4 SSDs with RAID 0 configuration and the RAM includes 32GB of DDR5 SODIMM memory with a frequency of 6400MHz in dual-channel.
There is also a 2024 14th-gen Intel variant with the Core i9-14900HX which has similar core and thread configurations as the reviewed unit but with a 200 MHz higher clock, up to 64 GB of DDR5 5600 MHz RAM, and choices of RTX 4080 or 4090.
Regarding the raw CPU performance, the Core i9-13980HX is a beast, and that makes the Legion 9i a potential desktop replacement. The performance numbers are very good and the PCMark 10 test returned a score of over 9,600 points and the extended test gave a score of over 12,500 the highest recorded so far on a gaming laptop.
It is also an excellent device for graphics-intensive tasks due to the specific liquid-cooling thermal management system. Nonetheless, with the weight of the load, the position of the keyboard ensures that warmth only builds up after long hours of gaming.
The RAID 0 configuration of the two M. 2 SSDs provides a total of 2TB in storage space and top read and write bandwidth. The performance in games is exceptional, where games like CyberPunk 2077, and Red Dead Redemption 2 can easily touch 60FPS and even go up to 100FPS with the right settings. Games like Valorant are fast-paced shooter games that offer frame rates of more than 400 FPS while games like Apex Legends offer 200 FPS. This can cause a CPU bottleneck and for gaming 1600p and 1800p are recommended.
Battery Life
The Lenovo Legion 9i carries a 99. 9Whr battery, the maximum allowed by the airlines for flights. However, the battery life is rather short. The battery test reveals that the laptop has a 2 hour and 3 minutes battery life in a video loop test at 80% brightness. Silencing the device, decreasing the refresh rate to 60 Hz, and lowering the brightness to 25% prolong the usage time to more than four hours.
The 330W GaN power brick is supplied with this laptop and it supports fast charging giving the laptop a boost of 70% charge in just 30 minutes. Lenovo also provides a smaller 140W USB Type-C charger, however, the provided review unit did not come with it.
Verdict
Lenovo Legion 9i (2023) is a great gaming laptop for a narrow target group considering the price of Rs 4,49,990. It is possible to assemble a high-end desktop for this amount, but the Legion 9i allows you to get the power of a desktop in a laptop. It even outclasses some of the bigger competition such as the MSI Titan GT77 HX while being more compact in size.
Lots of RGB lighting, a good keyboard, and a vibrant, clear screen – the Lenovo Legion 9i is quite the machine. However, it has a sub-par battery life, poor quality speakers, and a short trackpad as its rather disappointing cons. The 14th-gen Intel Core i9-14900HX variant, starting at Rs 3,79,505, with the options for the RTX 4080 could be a better pick.
Editor’s rating: 8. 5 / 10
Pros:
- Extremely powerful
- Sharp mini-LED display
- Comfortable keyboard
- Less bulky than the rivals
Cons:
- Below-average battery life
- Short trackpad
- Expensive