It turns out that the Legion 7 lives up to expectations for the most part. The couple of minor complaints I had with the Legion 5 Pro are certainly resolved with this model. But there are a couple more quirks that come up, which I wasn’t expecting. The last hardware item to cover is the SSD, which also happens to be the only difference between models. This model has a Western Digital 1TB SSD which is PCIe gen 3 instead of the gen 4 Samsung drives on the Intel version. This is because the Ryzen laptops do not support PCIe Gen 4 SSDs. Gen Intel® Core™ i9-12900HX Processor 2.3 GHz (30M Cache, up to 5.0 GHz, 16 cores: 8 P-cores and 8 E-cores) I could easily make out the song’s vocals, high notes and even bass throughout my whole listening experience, without any hint of tinniness and with virtually no lost information.

The overall feel of the laptop just oozes quality to me. I already liked the Legion 5 Pro for it’s solid build quality and this just feels even better. It’s a little heavier than I’m used to but still pretty easy to carry and the weight distribution is good.

There’s also no keyboard flex on this unit, which is attributed to the metal chassis. This is another thing I didn’t care for with the Legion 5 Pro, that is fixed in the Legion 7i. Hopefully, this is a temporary solution and someone gets their drivers worked out. It’s probably an issue with Intel and Nvidia since the Ryzen models don’t seem to struggle with Advanced Optimus as bad. In fact, besides actual internal temps of the components, the noise levels and external temps are almost exactly the same for day-to-day tasks, so I’ve included a thermal reading from the Intel model while running games on Performance, since this AMD variant is pretty much the same. As far as the fan noise goes, we’re looking at 48 dB at head-level on the Performance mode, 42 dB on Balance mode (without Legion Ai Engine), and sub 35 dB on Quiet mode, all with demanding activities. With lighter use, you’ll hardly hear the fans on Balance or Quiet – they never idle, but keep almost silent at levels that are barely noticeable even in a perfectly quiet room. I also haven’t noticed any coil whining or electronic noises on this unit. This laptop is going to feel cooler when running games on Balance mode, though, with quieter fans as well.

On the GPU side, this 3080Ti 175W configuration is one of the fastest performance/gaming laptops on the market, about on par with the similarly powered Scar 17 SE and marginally faster than the 165W 3080Ti in the Zephyrus Duo. At the same time, we’re looking here at dGPU scores up to 10% higher in 3Dmark or Uniengine than on the 2021 Legion 7 3080 150W models, either the Intel or AMD variants, but less with real-life use.Follow this link for updated configurations and prices in your region at the time you’re reading this article.

The Ryzen model also has 32GB of DDR4 3200Mhz RAM, with two 16GB DIMMS. They are Samsung on this model but are still 1Rx8, meaning they are the slower-latency single ranked kind.I did a number of synthetic benchmarks on this laptop. For my first run, I set Lenovo Vantage to Performance mode:

It’s a 16” 2560×1600 px resolution panel, with a unique 16:10 aspect ratio. What makes this really special is it replaces a 15.6” panel without increasing the overall size of the laptop – the bottom bezel just gets smaller.In this case, the Intel model seems to run better across the board, with both the CPU and the GPU being way more aggressively capped on the AMD model. Perhaps too aggressively limited. With Hybrid mode enabled, the laptop uses regular Optimus, which supports FreeSync. But in this mode the graphics are passed through the iGPU on their way to the laptop’s main display, so your performance will be slightly lower in some loads and games. Hardware and performance You can also customize your own build, mixing and matching select specs from the other configurations. Bottom Line