Lenovo Legion Professional 7i 16 Gen 10 assessment: The brand new king of gaming laptops

Lenovo’s Legion laptop computer household has been setting a excessive bar for gaming laptops over the previous couple of years. Whereas the Legion 9 collection could also be prime canine in that household, the Legion Professional 7 collection tends to mark a steadiness of class-leading efficiency, construct high quality, and worth. The Lenovo Legion Professional 7i 16 Gen 10 continues that legacy properly, providing excessive CPU and GPU efficiency all in a strong chassis with a superb show. 

With a beginning worth of $2,849 and a bump as much as $3,599 to get the RTX 5080-equipped system examined right here, the Lenovo Legion Professional 7i 16 Gen 10 is solidly within the high-end gaming laptop computer class. However from our first benchmark to the final, it wastes no time cementing itself as probably the greatest gaming laptops you will get proper now. 

Lenovo Legion Professional 7i 16 Gen 10: Specs and options

• Mannequin quantity: ‎82WQ002SUS
• CPU: Intel Core Extremely 9 275HX
• Reminiscence: 32GB DDR5X-6400 CSODIMM
• Graphics/GPU: Nvidia RTX 5080 (175-watt TGP)
• Show: 16-inch 2560×1600 240Hz OLED, Anti-glare
• Storage: 2X 1TB PCIe Gen4 SSD
• Webcam: 5MP
• Connectivity: 1x Thunderbolt 4, 1x USB-C 10Gbps (with DP 2.1 and 140W PD enter), 1x USB-A 10Gbps, 2x USB-A 5Gbps, HDMI 2.1, 2.5GbE, 1x 3.5mm combo audio
• Networking: WiFi 7, Bluetooth 5.4
• Biometrics: n/a
• Battery capability: 99 watt-hours
• Dimensions: 14.35 x 10.9 x 1.05 inches
• Weight: 5.84 kilos
• MSRP: $3,599 as-tested ($2,849 base)

On the time of writing, the Lenovo Legion Professional 7i 16 Gen 10 is offered in only a few largely comparable configurations. The one examined right here prices $3,599 and is constructed across the RTX 5080. It’s the solely configuration listed on Lenovo’s web site, however B&H additionally has configurations that swap within the RTX 5070 Ti for $2,849 or the RTX 5090 for $3,999. Lenovo typically begins off a few of its laptop computer fashions with only a few configurations however expands on them in a while, so don’t be stunned if extra choices trickle in in a while. For now, all of those configurations embody the identical 32GB of DDR5 reminiscence on two CSODIMM sticks, the identical pair of 1TB PCIe 4.0×4 SSDs, the identical OLED show, and the Intel Core Extremely 9 275HX. 

Lenovo Legion Professional 7i 16 Gen 10: Design and construct high quality

IDG / Mark Knapp

The Lenovo Legion Professional 7i 16 Gen 10 is a hulking machine, very similar to its predecessors. It packs quite a bit inside and goals to let it run at excessive wattages, so the scale and weight make sense. Lenovo didn’t push a lot past the required bounds although, with the display that includes slim bezels and the rear of the laptop computer protruding simply an inch behind the show hinge to accommodate the beefier cooling required for this type of utility. Unsurprisingly, the laptop computer finally ends up over an inch thick. 

The Lenovo Legion Professional 7i 16 Gen 10 is blacked out with a matte black aluminum body spanning the keyboard deck, show lid, and underside of the laptop computer. This metallic construct has some minor flex to it however altogether feels fairly sturdy. 

Regardless of being a gaming laptop computer, the Lenovo Legion Professional 7i 16 Gen 10 provides a tame look. There’s no needlessly aggressive embossing or angularity to many of the chassis. It has per-key RGB keyboard lighting and a skinny gentle bar on the entrance fringe of the deck, however past this lighting (which is simple to show off), the one actual trace to the Lenovo Legion Professional 7i 16 Gen 10’s gaming nature is the fighter-jet-like exhaust on the rear of the system, which homes a large radiator that spans the whole rear edge. 

There are three consumption followers tucked behind the underside grille — two massive ones on both facet and a smaller one barely offset from the middle that appears meant for the reminiscence modules. They pull air in from the underside and despatched it out of the aforementioned radiator. 

 Whereas a few of Lenovo’s prior gaming laptops located further ports alongside the again fringe of the system, the dedication to warmth dissipation within the rear meant Lenovo needed to shift all of its I/O to the facet of the laptop computer. 

Lenovo Legion Professional 7i 16 Gen 10: Keyboard, trackpad

IDG / Mark Knapp

The Lenovo Legion Professional 7i 16 Gen 10 provides a strong keyboard. The keys are flippantly contoured, serving to me maintain my fingertips centered on them. They’re additionally very nicely stabilized for a laptop computer keyboard, serving to maintain the stroke even and avoiding rolling off the sting. They’re additionally not mushy and supply 1.6mm journey. Regardless of these high quality features of the keyboard, the deck is lengthy and might make it a bit uncomfortable to sort on except the ergonomics of the desk/desk are good. I used to be in a position to stand up to 116 phrases per minute with 97 p.c accuracy in Monkeytype, however this was a hair slower and extra error-prone than I’d prefer to see, and it required eradicating my watch to handle.

The remainder of the keyboard is sort of good as nicely. The backlighting is shiny and completely illuminates the important thing legends. Lenovo consists of full-size arrow keys barely offset from the remainder of the keyboard, making them straightforward to make use of and really feel out — nice for fast navigation. There’s additionally a big quantity pad, and whereas the keys are barely narrower than the remainder of the keyboard, they nonetheless enable for handy contact typing.

The trackpad is a barely sore level within the inputs. It’s a nice trackpad, providing easy swiping and a satisfying tactile click on when depressed. However it’s slightly small for a system this massive, and it’s to date to the left that I discover I’m nearly always right-clicking. This will not be a priority in case you’re left-handed, however righties will doubtless discover it a slight hassle reaching to date over to make use of the trackpad. 

Lenovo Legion Professional 7i 16 Gen 10: Show, audio

IDG / Mark Knapp

The Lenovo Legion Professional 7i 16 Gen 10 consists of a superb show. It’s splendidly sharp because of its 2560×1600 panel, and avid gamers will get quite a bit out of its 240Hz refresh price. Higher nonetheless, it’s an OLED panel that successfully eliminates ghosting, which may be fairly a bit worse on laptop computer IPS shows than desktop ones in my expertise. That mixes with infinite distinction, a daring peak brightness of 509.8 nits, one hundred pc protection of the DCI-P3 coloration area, and coloration accuracy with a most dE of 1.47 — ok for skilled makes use of. 

Lenovo says the show is anti-glare, and whereas it’s actually no mirror, it’s not matte both. I can clearly see my reflection in it once I’m in shiny environments. It may possibly get shiny sufficient to assist subdue some reflections, however that can draw extra energy and nonetheless go away reflections seen in darker areas of the display. 

The Lenovo Legion Professional 7i 16 Gen 10 boasts a set of 4 audio system. Two are located above the keyboard on an elevated shelf by the show hinge, and two are on the underside of the laptop computer. These pump out a ton of quantity with crisp mids and a pleasant little bit of bass. Should you’re making an attempt to sport or watch films on the laptop computer, you received’t instantly be working for headphones or exterior audio system right here. They’re fairly glorious for laptop computer audio system.

Lenovo Legion Professional 7i 16 Gen 10: Webcam, microphone, biometrics

You’ll get a great-looking webcam on the Lenovo Legion Professional 7i 16 Gen 10. It provides 5MP decision stills and might document at 1440p/30FPS. Even with out excellent lighting, it’s surprisingly low on noise, and it does a formidable job exposing the image with out blowing out highlights. Its extensive area of view may even assist if you wish to document your self and a pal side-by-side. It comes paired with a strong microphone system as nicely. Even in a big room, my voice sounded clear and full to the mics, avoiding room echo. 

Sadly, you received’t get any handy biometric login capabilities on the Lenovo Legion Professional 7i 16 Gen 10. There’s no fingerprint reader or facial recognition. 

Lenovo Legion Professional 7i 16 Gen 10: Connectivity

IDG / Mark Knapp

The Lenovo Legion Professional 7i 16 Gen 10 has first rate wired connectivity for a laptop computer of its dimension. It has USB-A ports on both facet, a 3.5mm jack and a pair of.5GbE port on the suitable facet, and two USB-C ports and an HDMI 2.1 port on the left facet. Solely a type of USB-C ports is Thunderbolt 4, however the different at the least helps DisplayPort 2.1 and 140W PD enter. That USB PD enter really lets the Lenovo Legion Professional 7i 16 Gen 10 recharge over USB-C when it’s set in Hybrid Mode (the GPU would drain an excessive amount of energy in any other case), offering some bonus flexibility in case you don’t wish to carry the 400W charger in every single place you go. An SD card reader would have been a great addition given the system’s productiveness and artistic utility chops. 

Wi-fi connectivity is a powerful level, with the system supporting Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4. In testing, it had no points on the wi-fi entrance and supplied loads of bandwidth when downloading video games on my Wi-Fi 6 community. 

Lenovo Legion Professional 7i 16 Gen 10: Efficiency

The Lenovo Legion Professional 7i 16 Gen 10 is equipped for main efficiency, and it’s no shock to see it zoom by way of our benchmarks with aplomb. It’s one of many first few gaming laptops powered by an RTX 50-series GPU that we’ve examined, so it presents a great alternative to not solely see the potential of the chips in cellular platforms but additionally see what enhancements have come over the prior technology, if any. 

Lenovo tends to make well-rounded configurations with its Legion collection, and the Lenovo Legion Professional 7i 16 Gen 10 isn’t any exception. Within the holistic PCMark 10 benchmark, we see robust general efficiency. By combining a quick CPU, GPU, reminiscence, and storage, it performs impressively in each take a look at that PCMark 10 throws at it, main the pack right here. That stated, it’s solely a minor uptick over the sooner Legion 9i Gen 9. Impressively, it beat the MSI Raider 18 HX A2XW — a much bigger, heavier laptop computer that must have benefitted from further cooling to run quicker however confirmed a specific weak point in workplace productiveness duties.

The Lenovo Legion Professional 7i 16 Gen 10 will get a high-end CPU, so it’s no shock to see it ripping away at encoding duties. It pulls off our 4K video encode in slightly below seven minutes — a formidable tempo that pulls forward of even the Core i9-14900HX in a few of its rivals. It didn’t fairly sustain with the MSI Raider 18 HX’s Core Extremely 9 285HX, which has the identical core configuration however advantages from barely quicker clock speeds. That stated, Lenovo didn’t let the MSI’s high-end CPU all the time take the lead.

In Cinebench R20 and R23, it really led the MSI Raider 18 HX in single- and multi-core efficiency, although MSI takes again the efficiency lead in Cinebench R24, which might profit from further cooling because of its longer run time. Whereas the Lenovo Legion Professional 7i 16 Gen 10 and MSI commerce blows with slim margins, providing excessive CPU efficiency, they merely blow the remainder of the pack out of the water right here with double-digit efficiency benefits. 

The Lenovo Legion Professional 7i 16 Gen 10’s CPU is matched nicely with its GPU. In 3DMark’s artificial gaming benchmark Port Royal, the Lenovo Legion Professional 7i 16 Gen 10 provides the quickest efficiency we’ve seen from a laptop computer. It not solely clears the MSI Raider 18 HX with its personal RTX 5080 but additionally beats the RTX 4090 within the Legion 9i and Gigabyte Aorus 17X. 

Whereas artificial benchmarks are a helpful information for gaming efficiency, it all the time helps to see precise video games run on a GPU, so we put every gaming laptop computer by way of a battery of demanding sport benchmarks. Unsurprisingly, the Lenovo Legion Professional 7i 16 Gen 10 retains up its lead. Regardless of its age, Metro Exodus stays a demanding sport at its Excessive graphics setting due to its heavy use of ray-traced results. Nonetheless, the Lenovo Legion Professional 7i 16 Gen 10 is ready to run it at almost 100 fps on common, main the entire different programs right here and but once more providing a few of the quickest laptop computer efficiency we’ve seen on this take a look at.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider additionally proves a slightly demanding sport however isn’t fairly as exhausting on the GPU and due to this fact lets the CPU assist push efficiency even additional. Right here, the highly effective mixture of the Lenovo Legion Professional 7i 16 Gen 10’s Intel Core Extremely 9 275HX and RTX 5080 achieves a formidable common of 238 frames per second, almost topping our charts.

The Lenovo Legion Professional 7i 16 Gen 10 is even able to working Cyberpunk 2077 at native 1080p with Extremely settings with out ray tracing or DLSS at 151 fps. That drops to simply 41 fps with the totally path-traced RT Overdrive mode, however once more, that’s earlier than tapping into DLSS for any efficiency enhancements. 

The Lenovo Legion Professional 7i 16 Gen 10 will default to the efficiency energy profile when plugged in, serving to make sure you get probably the most out of it. However that’s to not say that is its peak. Lenovo’s Legion House software program provides customizable efficiency settings that would see it eke out even larger speeds. 

All this efficiency does include some price: the followers kick up when the system goes into excessive gear. It’s not too shrill, but it surely’s pretty loud, and there’s nonetheless a excessive pitched ingredient to it that can put on on you after lengthy. Additionally, the system depends on a large 400W energy brick.

Lenovo Legion Professional 7i 16 Gen 10: Battery life

To assist preserve battery, Lenovo has set the Legion Professional 7i 16 Gen 10 to go from Home windows’ Efficiency mode when plugged in all the way down to its Balanced mode when it’s working on battery. Not having to manually make this modification can assist make sure you don’t discover out the laptop computer is needlessly churning by way of battery energy solely after it has wasted a great chunk of cost. And also you’ll wish to preserve as a lot as you’ll be able to. That stated, laptops have been bettering battery life in leaps and bounds, with some Home windows machines scratching 24 hours.

Whereas gaming laptops have made enhancements, they’re nonetheless missing on this space. With the show set between 250 and 260 nits and the system on airplane mode, the Lenovo Legion Professional 7i 16 Gen 10 managed a bit beneath six hours of runtime in our native video playback take a look at. 

Keep in mind, video playback can supply some favorable outcomes the place the battery is anxious, particularly when an OLED show will get to indicate letterboxes (black pixels don’t use energy, in any case). In precise use, the battery life is shorter. Even with the dGPU disabled and efficiency set to balanced profiles in Home windows and Lenovo’s LegionSpace, the system lasts nearer to three hours in regular use, shopping the online and watching the occasional video. On the intense facet, the 400W charger can juice the Lenovo Legion Professional 7i 16 Gen 10 again up shortly.

Lenovo Legion Professional 7i 16 Gen 10: Conclusion

The Lenovo Legion Professional 7i 16 Gen 10 is an extreme-performance laptop computer. Its mixture of potent CPU and GPU readies it for intense gaming and heavy computing workloads alike. That comes with some further bulk, weight, and noisy cooling, however the Lenovo Legion Professional 7i 16 Gen 10 remains to be comparatively robust subsequent to competing laptops. Lenovo has match all of that energy into a terrific body, providing an above-average keyboard, a superb show, and a wholesome choice of ports for many makes use of. 

With all its packing, it’s not shocking to see the Lenovo Legion Professional 7i 16 Gen 10 prices a tidy sum. However at $3,499, it’s nonetheless a good worth. It’s cheaper than the prior-generation Legion 9i — a higher-tier system — and but it outperforms that system in most respects. It’s additionally fairly a bit cheaper than the $4,499 MSI Raider 18 HX A2XW, which it squares off towards, buying and selling blows and touchdown fairly just a few victories over. The Lenovo Legion Professional 7i 16 Gen 10 units the stage properly for high-end gaming laptops working on the newest GPUs.