Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 10 review

Lenovo’s flagship gaming laptop is a strong contender, offering tip-top performance and an exceptional OLED screen. An aluminum design, customizable RGB lighting, and a sharp webcam further elevate its appeal. That said, we’d like to see some biometric capability and less intrusive software.

Pros

• Solid overall performance

• Outstanding OLED screen

• Aluminum design

• Customizable RGB lighting

• Sharp webcam

Cons

• Expensive

• No biometric features

• So-so battery life

• Annoying software ads

Dropping thousands of dollars on one of the best gaming laptops might make you pause – and it should. But Lenovo goes a long way to be worthy of that money with its Legion Pro 7i Gen 10 ($3,204 as tested). This 16-inch beast packs an Intel Core Ultra 9 HX processor and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 graphics card, all topped off with a stunning OLED display. Add excellent build quality and eye-catching RGB lighting, and it has serious appeal. Naturally, no laptop is perfect, and there are a few drawbacks to weigh before
forking over your next mortgage payment.

The lighting is divided into four zones – the front and rear edges, the keyboard, and the Legion lettering on the lid – and is all customizable through the Legion Space app. The front zone is comprised of 10 LEDs, the rear ups the ante with 18, and every key on the keyboard can be individually tweaked.

In the app, you can highlight specific LEDs within each zone to create custom sub-zones, then apply different lighting effects – spiral rainbow, rainbow wave, color change, color pulse, wave, smooth, raining, and solid – while adjusting their speed and direction. Brightness is the only setting that applies across all zones. I could have spent hours fine-tuning my setup and creating profiles for every situation.
Build quality is a real strength for this laptop. When many competitors opt for plastic on some of the chassis, Lenovo uses all aluminum, and it feels top-notch, especially when most gaming laptops use some plastic. The chassis is solid with no flex and the lid is impressively sturdy, showing only minimal give despite its size.
Measuring 14.33 x 10.86 x 1.04 inches and weighing 6 pounds, the Legion has a slightly larger footprint than the Asus ROG Strix Scar 16 (13.94 x 10.55 x 0.90 inches, 6.28 pounds) and the Gigabyte Aorus Master 16 (14.06 x 10.0 x 1.18 inches, 5.51 pounds). It’s particularly bulkier than the Razer Blade 16 (13.98 x 9.86 x 0.69 inches, 4.72 pounds).

The Legion offers a solid array of ports, including a Thunderbolt 4, a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C, three USB Type-A ports (one Gen 2, two Gen 1), a 3.5 mm audio jack, an HDMI 2.1 output, and a 2.5 Gbps Ethernet jack. On the wireless side, it supports Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4. While it covers the essentials, the absence of Thunderbolt 5 is noticeable, especially since some competing flagship gaming laptops have started to include it.

Gaming and Graphics on the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 10

Our Legion review unit features an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX processor, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 GPU (175 W maximum graphics power), and 32GB of memory.

Playing Crysis Remastered at 2560 x 1600 with everything set to Very High or “Can it run Crysis?” settings, I saw framerates in the mid-90s in jungles and 100 to 125 frames per second in open scenes. The game was smooth and stutter-free.

We’re stacking the Legion up against three 16-inch gaming laptops: the Asus ROG Strix Scar 16 (Core Ultra 9 275HX, RTX 5080, 175 W, $3,299 as tested), the Gigabyte Aorus Master 16 (Core Ultra 9 275HX, RTX 5080 175 W, $3,099 as tested), and the Razer Blade 16 (AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, RTX 5090 160 W, $4,499.99 as tested). While the Razer commands a higher price with its RTX 5090, its GPU is actually rated for lower power than the RTX 5080s in the other models and Razer unusually pairs it with a 28 W CPU.

Image 1 of 6

Gamin