Lenovo’s latest line-up of Legion gaming laptops features a thin chassis, the latest 13th generation H-series processors, NVIDIA RTX 40 series GPUs, and more. We got an opportunity to test-run the Lenovo Legion Slim 7i gaming laptop, and here are our thoughts about it.
Design
The latest Legion Slim 7i is the thinnest and lightest gaming laptop that Lenovo has released to date. The laptop is only 19.9mm thick and weighs 1.99kg. The laptop features a stealthy-looking chassis that is made of premium CNC aluminum body, and also comes with some degree of drop protection. The trims feature a brushed metal surface. The laptop also comes in other color options, such as Storm Grey or Glacier White.
The laptop also comes with a large and brilliant 16-inch PureSight IPS display with a 16:10 aspect ratio. Lenovo offers the laptop in three different screen configurations. This includes 2560 x 1600 as the screen resolution with a 240Hz refresh rate, another 2560 x 1600 IPS display with a 165Hz refresh rate, and a 3200 x 2000 resolution display with 165Hz refresh rate as the highest tier configuration. The color temperatures on the screen appear to be on the cooler side for whites.
The laptop also features a Full HD webcam that can be useful for YouTube and Twitch live streamers. Instead of a physical webcam shutter, Lenovo used an e-shutter that disconnects power when the e-shutter switch is enabled. This switch is located on the right side of the laptop.
I like the diamond-cut sides of the Legion Slim 7i, along with the air exhausts on either side. On the left side, there are two USB-C ports, one that serves as the Thunderbolt 4 port, and the other is a USB 3.2 Gen2 port with support for Display-Port 1.4 connectivity and 140W Power Delivery. There is also an audio combo jack on the left side. While the right side has no ports, there is a 4-in-1 SD Card Reader and the e-shutter switch that we mentioned before.
The display can rotate up to 180 degrees. The speaker grills of the laptop are located in between the keyboard area, and feature dual Harman speakers with Nahimic Audio. The circular power button is located above the middle portion of the keyboard and has its own LED lighting system.
You get a full-sized Legion TrueStrike keyboard that is pleasant to type on and features the smiley-shaped keycaps that are used on many other Lenovo laptops. Lenovo mentions that the keyboard offers a 1.5mm key travel and a Per-Key RGB Legion Spectrum lighting system. The trackpad is also fairly large in size and has a smooth surface. The palm rest portion is made of high-abrasion aluminum stamping.
The rear side also features connectivity ports that include three USB Type-A 3.2 Gen2 ports, one HDMI 2.1 port, and the power connector. I like the part where Lenovo used LED-backed icons to identify each of the rear-facing ports. There are two air exhaust vents on the rear side for better heat dissipation.
The cooling system of the laptop features Lenovo’s Legion ColdFront 5.0 system, which pulls air from the bottom panel and from above the keyboard, and pushes air out on the sides and rear side. The cooling system also uses redesigned 3D fan blades for quieter airflow, and the air intakes of the laptop on the bottom panel are fairly large in size.
Performance
Along with the fact that the Legion Slim 7i is the thinnest and lightest gaming laptop Lenovo has made at the time of writing, the laptop doesn’t fall short in terms of performance. The laptop is powered by the Intel 13th generation Core i9-13900H, a 14-core processor that features six performance cores, eight efficiency cores, and twenty threads. The maximum Turbo speed is 5.4 GHz. There is also a massive 32GB of DDR5 memory onboard for all your multitasking needs.
The laptop also comes with Windows 11 Home OS and is preinstalled on a 1TB SKHynix HFS001TEJ9X115N PCIe4 SSD. The Legion Slim 7i also performs well for gaming, rocking the mid-high tier NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 laptop GPU with 8GB GDDR6 memory. Users will be able to tweak the performance with the preinstalled Legion Edge application. You can overclock the GPU for maximum gaming performance, choose the thermal performance mode, monitor system parameters, check for firmware updates, make gaming customizations, and more.
We ran some synthetic benchmarks such as CrystalDiskMark for SSD speeds, CineBench 2024 for CPU/GPU performance, and 3DMark FireStrike/TimeSpy/SpeedWay tests for GPU performance. We also tested Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Metro Exodus Enhanced with ray-tracing and DLSS modes. We ran these benchmarks using the performance mode. Check out the numbers below.
Other features include Wi-Fi 7 (802.11be), and Bluetooth 5.1 connectivity. Lenovo mentions that the laptop has the largest battery of its class, housing a 99.99 Watt-hour battery.
Verdict
The Lenovo Legion Slim 7i is one of the best gaming laptops that I have tried, and it impresses in terms of style and performance. The stealthy-looking chassis is made of premium CNC aluminum body, featuring a thickness of 19.9mm, and weighs only 1.99kg. The 16-inch IPS panel produces brilliant visuals and the screen resolution options are 2560 x 1600 or 3200 x 2000. The refresh rate options are either 165 Hz or 240 Hz. The Legion ColdFront 5.0 system handles the cooling functionality, along with its vents on the sides, rear side, and bottom panel of the laptop.
There are multiple connectivity ports on the sides and rear side, and this includes three USB Type-A 3.2 Gen2 ports, one HDMI 2.1, a Thunderbolt 4 port, and a USB-C 3.2 Gen2 port with DP support. The laptop houses the 14-core Intel Core i9-13900H processor, along with 32GB of DDR5 memory, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 laptop GPU, 1TB PCIe 4 SSD, and more. The laptop also comes with a large 99.99 Watt-hour battery.
