by Lenovo has almost made me a hypocrite. Since this latest generation of gaming laptops first landed on Nvidia RTX 40-series graphics chips I’ve been saying that only a fool would buy a notebook with an RTX 4090 in it. And yet, here I am, nursing the Lenovo Legion 9i with that very GPU inside, wishing I had the kind of disposable income that would make four notebooks close to attainable.
Fortunately, you don’t need the RTX 4090 version of this gorgeous machine to get the best bits of this Lenovo lappy; there is a relatively more affordable model with an RTX 4080 that will provide almost the same level of gaming performance. And that’s what’s really bothering this poor nerd.
I’ve become a big fan of Lenovo gaming laptops since I first got my hands on the RTX 4080-toting Legion 7i Pro. That’s a smart machine: well made, restrained, affordable, and delivering excellent performance for the money, especially since it’s been heavily discounted over the past six months.
And it kinda came out of nowhere. Legion laptops weren’t really on my radar until this generation, and they’ve quickly become the machines I recommend to anyone willing to listen. But still, if it’s a question of money-no matter, I’ve always leaned towards the premium feel of the Razer Blade in either the 14- or 16-inch trim.
Legion Specifications 9i
CPU: Driver Intel Core i9 13980HX
GPU: Driver for NVIDIA rTX 4090
Memory: 32GB DDR5-5600
Storage: 2TB NVMe SSD
Screen size: Mini-LED 16-inch
Resolution: 3200 x 2000 free,
Refresh rate: 165 Hz
Peak luminance: 1200 nits
Battery: 99.9 Ur
Dimensions: 18.99 – 22.7 x 357.7 x 277.7mm
Weight: 2.5kg
Price: $3,693 | £3,950
But Legion 9i may have changed my mind about that. If I just want the best laptop I can theoretically buy, without the fiscal constraints of my own reality, this is where my bank balance is being spent. Why? Well, it’s almost the whole package, but really it’s the screen and chassis design that suits me.
The build quality is the first thing that jumps out, even apart from the flashy carbon fiber composite on the cover this thing feels SOLI D. There’s nothing noticeable about the chassis, and it all feels great engineering and strong, and honestly using her pleasure full time. And that composite top layer is also highly tactile, and as individual as your own fingerprint.
Also quite touching are the white ceramic key caps that come secretly in the box. They may be a little slippery, but they look great as your WSAD toes. And the keyboard is actually classic Lenovo fare, in that it is the best around. The full-size board is great to type on, from the ergonomic shape and size of the keycaps to its travel depth, and the full numpad will always appeal to some users.
You alt-code people know what I’m talking about.
It’s also surprisingly thin for something that can withstand the RTX 4090 laptop silicon. And that’s largely thanks to its cooling design, although less can be argued about what Lenovo is ambitiously calling “integrated liquid cooling”. Let’s be honest, it is a little more steam room – there is no radiator and almost without a pump.
What Lenovo has done is to create a small loop around the GPU in the laptop, with the heat pipe spreading liquid on top of the VRAM through its tiny pump It’s small, quiet… and I don’t really know what the point is if I’m honest. As I said, there is no radiator, so it is not really cooling the liquid down much as it travels the short distance around the hot graphics memory chip and back.
But it’s the rest of the design that delivers the extra cooling needed to run this relatively slim high-end machine at its highest speeds – it’s the fastest I’ve seen on any machine running an RTX 4090. The key to this is the cooling route the twin fans can take, drawing air in from the bottom and expelling it directly from the top and sides of the chassis.
That’s why the keyboard has been moved down, so there’s room for the ventilated area just below the screen. This changed the standard ergonomics of typing on a laptop significantly, but I quickly got used to the changed layout and have been using my usual excellent Lenovo keyboard for all the office work I’ve done recently. That change has also affected the trackpad, however, which is only a small result. And, when you are trying to operate it on the 3200 x 2000 resolution screen, it can be a bit of a pain. It was not the most responsive pad either, and I have not spent a few frustrating minutes scrabbling on the smooth surface wondering if it is just my callused fingers to blame.
But I’ll forgive almost anything in terms of crimes against trackpads when the display panel is as good as this. The mini LED screen is nothing short of stunning. It’s surprisingly bright, and like the other top mini-LED laptop panels I’ve checked out, it doesn’t have any of the backlight issues I’ve regularly seen in full-size mini-LED gaming monitors.
Due to its DisplayHDR 1000 rating, and the fact that it can reach peak luminance levels of 1,200cd / m², this thing is great for HDR content. The colors really pop, and there’s depth and contrast in darker scenes – it’s punchy as everyone goes out and I’m really here for it.
I can also happily leave HDR enabled within Windows without feeling like I’m sacrificing the color depth of standard SDR content. That’s been a feature of modern laptop screens – such as the Nebula panels in the likes of the Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 and the Acer Predator Helios 16 – but it’s taken to the extreme here.
That high resolution is a sharp thing, though. A crisp 16:10 display on the desktop is always welcome, and I’ve been happy to use it as my main work machine for the past few weeks (heat issues at PCG Towers have resulted in hot desks away from my desktop PC) . But when it comes to gaming, even with the most powerful mobile GPU you can buy, those extra pixels come entirely at the expense of processing.
You’re looking at a drop of about a third in terms of average frame rate going from 1600p to the screen’s native resolution, and when you’re talking about a 16-inch panel, it’s really hard to tell the actual difference in fidelity. parsing. All things being equal, I would like to take this same panel with a 2560 x 1600 display.
And that’s really just me trying to pick faults, because again, at that 16-inch scale, you’re not losing much in terms of fidelity either when you’re packing in some upscaling to your game settings with either FSR or DLSS – as long as. you’re not going for the first-generation versions of either—or simply running games at a lower resolution.
But if there was one real flaw worth mentioning it’s the battery life, or the apparent lack of it. Now, I’m used to gaming battery life being completely worthless in modern high-end laptops, but this takes things to an obscene level. At just 40 minutes of gaming runtime it’s completely irrelevant from a plug socket. More than any other modern laptop, this is a gaming desktop replacement that only has an uninterruptible power supply.
I think it’s because you get two different chargers in the package: one big 330W one, and another smaller 140W Type-C charger for when you want to take it out and about. That 140W mini-brick isn’t going to deliver you enough charge to plug in the game though, it’s more about keeping it topped up.
Battery annoyances aside, the only system that would give me pause to wholeheartedly recommend the Legion 9i is the excellent Asus ROG Strix Scar 17 X3D, and that’s only because of the cache-rich Ryzen 9 mobile CPU at his heart. The equivalent RTX 4090 version is slightly more expensive than the Lenovo here, but if you’re after the best processing and the best overall gaming performance, then the Scar 17 X3D is the most powerful laptop around today.
It is not as desirable.
I know that’s a rather woolly, subjective reduction, but as a whole package the Legion 9i has a lot more going for it. It’s a smarter design where the Scar 17 is just a very classically aggressive Asus ‘gamer’ aesthetic, meaning the Legion is nowhere near a chunky device. With the Lenovo laptop’s brushed carbon finish you won’t describe it as slim, but I’d still be more than happy to slide that open in meetings than the ROG machine.
It has also been received to screen. The 1440p display in the Asus laptop is fine, but one of my biggest issues with the Scar 17 is that its 17-inch panel isn’t one of Asus’ gorgeous Nebula designs in its smaller systems. The Legion 9i’s glorious mini-LED screen is superior in every way.
And while the Scar 17 packs the highest overall gaming performance, when you’re running at either 1440p or 1600p the performance difference is very small indeed.
Which brings me back to this inevitable conclusion: the Legion is 9i the today’s money-for-money gaming laptop. It looks good, it performs well, and that display is amazing. I’d want the RTX 4080 version myself – even if I had the money to drop on the top option – but for me this well-designed and well-built machine is still Lenovo’s finest hour.
