Lenovo Legion 7i review (Gen 6 16ITH6 model – Core i9, RTX 3080)

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Specs Sheet
Design and exterior
Keyboard and trackpad
Screen
Hardware and performance
Noise, heat and speakers
Battery life
Price and availability
Final thoughts
Comments

By Derek SullivanLenovo Legion 7i, last updated on June 29, 2023

Lenovo Legion 7i

Summary: I’m very pleased with this 2021 Lenovo Legion 7i. The Legion 5 Pro already checked all my boxes, but this is a significant improvement from even that, which makes it worth the little extra for matching configurations. The performance is among the best you can get on any laptop right now, and I like the keyboard on this series, the all-metal build and the fact the screen goes all the way back. Add in the 16” QHD+ screen, and it leaves very little else to complain about. All except for the battery life, that is, especially on this Intel-based model.

Our score: 4.5 / 5
Price when reviewed: from $1799

THE GOOD

superior build quality
nice keyboard layout with included Numpad, good clickpad
fast, bright screen with QHD+ resolution (only 100% sRGB, though)
CPU and GPU outperforms much of the current competition
replaceable 2x SSD and RAM modules
competent power/fan profiles and thermals
webcam kill switch is a nice addition

THE BAD

no card-reader or biometrics
stuttering in some games on Advanced Optimus
mediocre battery life
iCue software makes battery life abysmal
gets expensive, and is unavailable for purchase in many regions

Table of Contents

Specs sheet as reviewed– Lenovo Legion 7i 2021
Design and first look
Keyboard and trackpad
Screen
Hardware and performance
- Lenovo Legion 7 – benchmarks and performance
- Gaming on the Lenovo Legion 7
Noise, Heat, Connectivity, speakers, and others
Battery life
Price and availability
Final thoughts on the 2021 Lenovo Legion 7i

Having enjoyed using the Legion 5 Pro a couple of months ago, but ultimately deciding on returning it, I was especially interested in getting the Lenovo Legion 7. I figured it would improve on something I already liked, being that is Lenovo’s premium model. But the Legion 5 Pro was already great, so I could only wonder if there was much room for improvement.

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.

Still though, given the choice between the two, I’d say it’s definitely debatable, depending on your preferences and your budget. So let’s dive in and I’ll tell you how I felt after my first week testing this 2021 Lenovo Legion 7i.

Update: BTW, if interested, I’ve also documented my later experience with the AMD Ryzen version of the Legion 7 in this other review.

Update2: 2022 updates of the Lenovo Legion 7 series are available now, in both Intel and AMD variants. Our full review of the 2022 Legion 7i series is available here.

Specs sheet as reviewed– Lenovo Legion 7i 2021

	2021 Lenovo Legion 7i 16ITH6
Screen	16 inch, 2560 x 1600 px, IPS equivalent, 165 Hz, matte, 3ms
Processor	11^th Gen Intel i9-11980HK, 8C 16T (2.6Ghz with 5.0Ghz boost), 24MB Cache
Video	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080with 16GB GDDR6 VRAM 115-165W with Advanced Optimus with Gsync
Memory	32 GB DDR4-3200 (2x16GB DIMMS)
Storage	2x 1TB(2TB total) M.2 PCIe 4.0
Connectivity	Intel AX201 Wi-Fi 6 with Bluetooth 5.2, Realtek Gigabit LAN
Ports	2x USB-C Thunderbolt 4(left and rear), 1x USB-C 3.2(right), 3x USB-A 3.2, ethernet, HDMI 2.1
Battery	80Whr, 300 W charger
Size	360 mm or 14.17” (w) x 260 mm or 10.23” (d) x 20.1-23.5 mm or .79-.92” (h)
Weight	2.5 kg (5.5 lbs) + 1.14 kg (2.5 lbs) power brick and cables, US version
Extras	Per key RGB keyboard, HD webcam with kill switch, stereo speakers, headphone/mic combo

My configuration is the newer Legion 7i version based on Intel Tiger Lake hardware. Lenovo offers the series in a multitude of variants, as well as an AMD Ryzen 5000 series with the Legion 7 16ACH6 sub-family. The Legion 7 and 7i are identical, except for the CPU configurations and the various differences in performance, power draw, and thermals that come as a result.

Update: You should check out this guide that compares how the Intel Core i9-11980HK and AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX platforms fare against each other.

Update: If interested, here are our thoughts on the updated 2023 Lenovo Legion Pro 7i (Intel) and Legion Pro 7 (AMD) models. And here’s my detailed review of the 2023 Lenovo Legion Pro 7i series.

Design and first look

If you’re familiar with the previous generation of the Legion 7, this one looks to be very similar. Since this is my first time using this model though, I’m going to go into depth with it.

Nearly the entire construction is made of metal, which differs from the Legion 5 Pro, where the palmrest area was made of plastic on that one. The only plastic portions of the laptop are on the exhaust vents and the bezel. But even those parts look very premium and have tight tolerances on the interfaces with the metal. This metal is an aluminum-magnesium alloy, by the way.

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.

This isn’t a typical thin laptop though. It is thinner than the Legion 5 Pro, being .92″. But the overall weight of the machine is about a pound higher than your typical thin and light gaming laptop of this size. So keep that in mind, if you are debating between this and other thinner models out there.

I paid particular attention to any creaks in the chassis and couldn’t detect any. Even with the laptop open and holding it by the corner palm rest, the unit felt rigid and there wasn’t any flex. I think my only criticism in the handling is some of the corners felt a little sharp, but this is a minor complaint. The underside, for example, has some sharp edges where the metal meets the LED strip. I only feel it when I rub my fingers there – it’s not an issue while holding and normal use.

The design and aesthetics are something I can really appreciate on this model. The all-metal design is really slick looking, but the color choice makes it even better. Grey is that underrated color that nobody seems to use that much and I don’t really understand why. It’s just dark enough to not be too flashy, and just light enough to not be a fingerprint magnet. Every laptop should have this as a color option, in my opinion. Any future laptop of mine will be this color if I can help it.

Let’s get into the details of the design now. The lid is just perfect to me. It’s smooth and plain with a nice-looking Legion logo in the corner. This could easily pass for professional use, provided you turn off the RGB.

Speaking of the RGB, there’s a small amount of it in the logo inside the O, but it’s actually well done in my opinion. I actually kind of like it, and this is coming from someone who usually criticizes any lighting on the lid. But in the office, you can easily just turn it off by pressing Fn-L and you’d never even know it was a light.

I’ll cover the keyboard RGB later, but there’s also a skirt RGB strip that wraps around the underside from vent to vent. And there are also even some more lights inside the side and back exhaust vents. I’m not as much a fan of the exhaust vents as I am the skirt strip in the front, but I really do like the RGB on this laptop a lot. It really looks slick seeing a faint lighting underneath.

The lid opens with a single finger and the lip is very pronounced, making it easy to find. On that lip is the tiniest Legion logo, which is a nice unnecessary touch. Also, this lid goes back nearly 180°, which is probably one of the key features that led me to choose this over the Legion 5 Pro.

The hinge is very sturdy and holds the screen in place very well, no matter what position. The lid itself has a good amount of thickness to it, so there’s not a lot of screen flex to worry about either.

The big improvement in this year’s model is the addition of the 16” 16:10 screen. So not only do you get some really tiny bezels on the top, left, and right, but you also get a short bottom bezel as well. It’s not as small as the others, but it’s less than half the size of your typical 15” laptop.

The bezel is plastic but small and well made, so it blends in nicely. There’s a tiny Legion logo centered below the screen, which blends in well. Above the screen is a small 720p webcam. This isn’t Windows Hello enabled, unfortunately.

Moving downward, there’s a full-size keyboard and a glass trackpad which I’ll get into more detail within a bit. Above the keyboard are a bunch of tiny air holes for ventilation and a small power button. This button has an always-on LED, which glows blue, white, or red depending on the power profile. I happen to really like this feature but some may argue that they would want a way to turn that LED off. It didn’t distract me at all. What’s kind of a bummer is this button doesn’t have a fingerprint reader like the Legion 7 Slim does.

There’s quite a bit of stickers and branding on this model. The Lenovo tag is on the lower right palm rest. There’s also an “audio by Harman” on the lower left of the keyboard. Finally, there are three stickers for the hotkeys, GPU and CPU, but at least these are removable.

There’s another removable Windows sticker on the bottom too. But the rest of the underside of the laptop is pretty nice. It’s the same metal finish as the rest of the laptop but there are thousands of tiny holes for the ventilation and speakers. The feet are pretty decent but I preferred the ones on the Legion 5 Pro which were a little grippier in my opinion.

I also would have preferred the speaker holes to be on the chamfer and not the bottom like they are. The way the holes are now, your legs are very likely to come into contact with them and muffle the sound. I’ve seen them use the chamfer on their other Legion models, so I’m not sure why this is different.

The IO selection is one of the highlights to Lenovo’s design in my opinion. On the left, you have a single USB-C which supports Thunderbolt 4 and DisplayPort. There’s also a headphone/microphone combo jack. To the rear of the machine is a large exhaust vent.

The right-hand side has another USB-C port, but this one is not Thunderbolt enabled. I actually would have preferred a type-A port here, but maybe that’s just me. Neither of these type-C ports on the side support charging, so I don’t see the reason to have one on both sides.

Next to that port is another large exhaust manifold and on the other side is a small switch. This is actually a kill switch for the webcam, which I think is an excellent idea. It’s much better than a privacy cover, is it completely removes power from the webcam.

The bulk of the IO is on the back of the laptop. Between some more large exhaust manifolds, you have Lenovo’s proprietary power port, which is reversible and pretty rugged. There’s also Ethernet, HDMI, another USB-C, and three USB-A ports. The USB-C supports Thunderbolt 4 and also PD 3.0 charging. One of the USB-A ports also supports charging (out) while the power is off, making it a good candidate for my USB cord when my mouse battery gets low.

The best part about these ports in the back is they are out of the way. But sometimes it’s a struggle to find where the right ports are without turning it completely around to take a peek. But with this model, that’s not the case at all.

The labels for the ports are actually lit up, making it super easy to know what is where. What a great feature to have – especially in a dark room! All I have to do is drop my lid a little and I can plug whatever I want in at a quick glance, without much effort. The only light that isn’t on is the power port, but only because it lights up after you plug it in. It also changes color if you’re charging. And of course, if you don’t like these lights, you can turn them off with Fn-U.

There’s very little not to like with what Lenovo is giving us with this Legion 7 model. It’s clearly their premium design and it feels like you’re really getting your money’s worth. Minus the speakers being downward-facing, I don’t think there’s much else I’d want to change. I would have liked an SD card reader though, which is something else the Legion 7 Slim has and this model doesn’t.

Keyboard and trackpad

The keyboard on this model is very similar to those on the other Legion models I’ve reviewed recently. The layout is full with a Numpad on the right-hand side. But rather than squishing all the keys together, Lenovo opted to just make the Numpad keys smaller and leave the main keyboard alone. Good call.

The layout is pretty ideal too. All of the keys are in logical places and there’s a nice array of multimedia keys in the function row. The arrow keys are also well placed and separated from the bottom row, to not interfere with the layout.

Typing on this keyboard is a pretty good experience. I found the actuation force to be spot on what I would expect. The key travel is short so this is really important to the typing experience, in my opinion. It didn’t take me long at all to adjust typing on this. And while gaming, I was sure when I was depressing the keys – they didn’t feel mushy at all.

In fact, this pretty much addresses the minor complaints I had with the Legion 5 Pro. But I still preferred the concave keycaps that the 5 Pro offered over the flat top ones on this 7. The 5 Pro keyboard was also a lot quieter to type on.

Not that I would call this keyboard loud… but the spacebar key makes significantly more noise than the other keys, which kind of got on my nerves once I started to notice it. I can still live with it though.

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.

The RGB on this keyboard is a huge improvement from all the base Legion models. For this model, you get per-key RGB, controllable through iCue. This is Corsair’s software and it’s built for desktops, but you can still use it to control all the key lighting effects the same way.

There’s a huge flaw in this software though, and that is with the battery drain it causes. As I said, the software was built for desktops, so the programmers probably didn’t have battery efficiency in mind. I’ll dig more into this in the Battery section below, but iCue added a 20-40 watt constant drain on my unit. Disabling the iCue service or uninstalling the software solves the problem.

But without the software, you’re stuck with the default profiles baked into the firmware. And those are only controllable by hitting Fn-Spacebar. The blue one is pretty slick looking, but I didn’t care for the other ones that much.

Update: Check out Elrondolio’s comment below on a way to have custom RGB(static colors only) and still opt out of having iCue drain the battery. I’ve been using his method for a few days with great success. In short, I keep the bat file on my desktop and run it as needed(usually every startup so I don’t forget).

There is a bit of light bleed when you look at the keyboard from some of the lower angles. Certain keys are better than others, so it’s a little uneven. You likely won’t notice this under normal usage though. I was able to take a picture at a particular angle, where you can see the uneven bleed I’m talking about.

One of the cool things about the backlighting is when you press the Fn key. All the hotkeys stay illuminated, so you know which ones actually do something. Good feature. If they added another hotkey to disable/enable the iCue service at will, it would probably make up for how annoying it is to have it off while on battery.

The trackpad is also pretty decent on this model. It’s glass, so it feels very good on the fingers. It tracks very well and all touch gestures were registered accurately. It has a slight texture to it though, so I still prefer the trackpad on the Razer Blade over this one.

My only legitimate gripe with this trackpad is it’s a little too wide for this full keyboard layout. It is slightly to the left, so my left palm tends to accidentally brush the corner of the pad, moving the mouse pointer sometimes.

I also had this issue with the Legion 5 Pro, which I was able to fix with a registry entry. To copy what I did, use Regedit and navigate to \HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\PrecisionTouchPad. Add a 32-bit DWORD called “SuperCurtainLeft” and set the decimal value to 1000. After a reboot, my issue vanished.

Other than that, the trackpad is fine. It’s among the better trackpads that I’ve seen on gaming laptops and many who plan on using this laptop for serious work will probably be pleased with it. Note that it has integrated buttons on the corners too, which also felt good to me.

Screen

The screen on this laptop is the exact same as the Legion 5 Pro, so my opinion on it hasn’t changed at all. To sum it up, it’s just great!

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.

I took some measurements on my X-rite i1 Display Pro sensor and here’s what I got:

Panel Hardware ID: BOE NE160QDM-NY1
Coverage: 97% sRGB, 68.8% AdobeRGB, 70.8% DCI-P3;
Measured gamma: 2.2;
Max brightness in the middle of the screen: 530cd/m2 on power;
Contrast at max brightness: 1293:1
Native white point: 7040K;
Black on max brightness: .41cd/m2.

The display is IPS, so the viewing angles are great. The overall brightness and contrast ratio are above average too. I’m also happy to report that my unit has no backlight bleed.

The only thing missing really is maybe a wider color gamut. After seeing so many 100% DCI-P3 screens, I find that I really prefer them. This panel is only 100% sRGB though. Still, that’s not necessarily a bad thing unless you need to do some serious color-sensitive work.

Interestingly enough, the Asus Zephyrus M16 does have a 16” DCI-P3 panel, but that panel doesn’t have the 500+nits of brightness that this one does. Given the choice, I think I would still prefer this one.

The panel has a 165Hz refresh rate, which is plenty fast enough for every game I used. It also supports Gsync. For fast-paced games, you’ll also want to enable Overdrive in the Vantage software, which enables a 3ms response time.

For battery concerns, the laptop uses Advanced Optimus to switch back and forth between the iGPU and dGPU MUX switch without having to reboot. So when it’s using the discrete graphics, GSYNC is available and you aren’t paying a penalty by having the graphics routed through the iGPU.

Advanced Optimus worked fine for the most part. But my unit suffered some stuttering on some games, such as Battlefield V. Andrei also noticed this on the Asus S17 he recently reviewed. The fix was the same – switching to discrete graphics only resolves the issue. It’s easy enough to do, but it’s annoying to have this issue.

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.

One thing I couldn’t get to work right was the Fn-R hotkey. Supposedly this switches your refresh rate, but for me it does nothing. Perhaps Advanced Optimus is the problem? Anyways, assuming it switches to 60Hz, this would be a nice feature to have in order to improve battery life.

Hardware and performance

I have the top-spec model of the Lenovo Legion 7i. This includes Intel’s best available CPU, the Core i9-11980HK, which is an octa-core processor capable of putting out up to 5.0Ghz per core. It’s extremely powerful, but also uses a ton of wattage.

Also included in this model is an Nvidia RTX 3080 GPU, with 16GB of VRAM. With the QHD+ screen, I’m glad they put in the extra VRAM. I actually had a couple of games go above the standard 8GB. What’s also nice about this GPU is they set the upper power limit to 165W with Dyn Boost – something few other laptops have.

Needless to say, the CPU/GPU pairing is beyond expectations. I was originally going for the RTX 3070 model, but it kept getting delayed (I think out to November!), so I chose this one on a whim. I’m not disappointed, as you’ll soon see.

Also included is 32GB of DDR4 3200Mhz RAM. These are two 16GB sticks and are user-upgradeable if you desired. They are 1Rx8 modules, meaning they are single ranked. And if you’ve been doing your homework, you might be aware of a RAM fiasco going on with manufacturers offering cheap RAM. I did some testing below to test the impact.

The last major hardware item to cover is the SSDs. There are two of them on this model, 1TB each. They are also in RAID 0 for a boost in performance. But is it worth it? I’m going to lean towards no…

Point is, these drives are already ridiculously fast. The Samsung PM9A1 is no slouch by itself, being PCIe 4.0, so putting it in RAID adds little performance benefit and doubles the risk of losing your data if one drive crashes. I took some CrystalDisk benchmarks, which are so similar to the single drive performance benchmarks I measured on the Razer Blade 15(it had the same SSD).

Lenovo Legion 7 – benchmarks and performance

Now let’s see some benchmarks.

The Legion 7i is preinstalled with Lenovo Vantage. The software is used for a number of different things, but one of the uses is to adjust the CPU/GPU settings.

The three available modes are Performance, Balanced and Quiet. You can also switch between these modes with Fn-Q. The power button even has a different color that tells you what mode you’re in. Here’s a table that shows what each mode does:

Quiet		Balanced		Performance		Battery
TDP PL1/PL2	TGP	TDP PL1/PL2	TGP	TDP PL1/PL2	TGP	TDP PL1/PL2	TGP
25/45W	115W	70/92W	115W	90/135W	150-165W	25/45W	30-40W

For starters, let’s look at how the CPU handles demanding sustained loads in the Cinebench R15 loop test. It actually delivers and stabilizes on those exact PL1 settings above on each of the profiles.

Plus, this being an Intel processor, you can also undervolt the CPU. I was able to achieve a stable -70mV undervolt on my machine, using Intel XTU. I did a Cinebench test and got more stable results over the course of the 15 runs, and higher frequencies at the sustained 90W power limit. Temps landed around the same as without the undervolt. You could also do this for power conservation as well, but the effects are minimal.

And here’s how this Core i9-1198oHK configuration compares against other 8C/16T options on the market, both Intel and AMD. Excellent performance once undervolted, but very similar to the regular i9-11900H at same power. And the Legion also runs louder than the competition in this test.

We also ran the 3DMark CPU profile test, where the Intel i9-11980HK beat any of the other CPUs we’ve tested so far.

We also ran our combined CPU+GPU stress tests on this notebook. 3DMark stress runs the same test for 20 times in a loop and looks for performance variation and degradation over time, and this unit passed it fine, which suggests there are no significant performance losses that might be caused by thermal throttling on this laptop.

I did a number of synthetic benchmarks on this laptop. For my first run, I set Lenovo Vantage to Performance mode:

3DMark 13 – Fire Strike: 23795 (Graphics – 31049, Physics – 26120);
3DMark 13 – Time Spy: 11677 (Graphics – 11820, CPU – 10930);
3DMark 13 –CPU profile: max – 8209 16 – 8213, 8 – 5587, 4 – 3729, 2 – 1979, 1 -1004
3DMark 13 – Port Royal (RTX) Graphics: 7446;
Uniengine Superposition – 1080p Extreme: 7919;
Uniengine Superposition – 1080p Medium: 22356;
GeekBench 5: Single-Core: 1667, Multi-core: 9836;
CineBench R15: OpenGL 191.09 fps, CPU 2317 cb, CPU Single Core 246 cb;
CineBench R23: CPU 13859 pts, CPU Single Core 1625 pts;

Excellent scores, but at the expense of loud fans in the 50-52 dB.

These are the results with Vantage set to Balanced:

3DMark 13 – Fire Strike: 22649 (Graphics – 28462, Physics – 26776);
3DMark 13 – Time Spy: 10592 (Graphics – 10615, CPU – 10469);
3DMark 13 –CPU profile: max – 7093, 16 – 7134, 8 – 5980, 4 – 3772, 2 – 1988, 1 -1017;
3DMark 13 – Port Royal (RTX) Graphics: 6758;
Uniengine Superposition – 1080p Extreme: 7053;
Uniengine Superposition – 1080p Medium: 20805;
GeekBench 5: Single-Core: 1674, Multi-core: 9419;
CineBench R15: OpenGL 194.28 fps, CPU 2057 cb, CPU Single Core 245 cb;
CineBench R23: CPU 12418 pts, CPU Single Core 1623 pts;

This Balanced profile is much quieter at 42-43 dB across the various tests, and with the GPU being limited at 115W, I was expecting lower scores in the GPU tests. In reality, we’re looking at a roughly 10-12% drop in 3DMark and Uniengine, which is not bad.

Even so, I’d rather Lenovo would push a higher TDP of around 130-140W for this mode, paired with fans around 44-45 dB, if possible. That would make more sense to me on a Balanced profile. As it is, this Balanced mode is very close to the Quiet mode in terms of GPU performance and even fan noise.

And these are the results with Vantage set to Quiet mode:

3DMark 13 – Fire Strike: 19418 (Graphics – 27797, Physics – 18408);
3DMark 13 – Time Spy: 10094 (Graphics – 10794, CPU – 7384);
3DMark 13 –CPU profile: max – 4788, 16 – 4377, 8 – 3627, 4 – 2546, 2 – 1606, 1 -967;
3DMark 13 – Port Royal (RTX) Graphics: 6728;
Uniengine Superposition – 1080p Extreme: 6882;
Uniengine Superposition – 1080p Medium: 19085;
GeekBench 5: Single-Core: 1556, Multi-core: 6952;
CineBench R15: OpenGL 134.96 fps, CPU 1281 cb, CPU Single Core 223 cb;
CineBench R23: CPU 7531pts, CPU Single Core 1534 pts;

This mode is impressive as well, with fan noise of up to 40 dB. The GPU scores are within 80% of what the platform delivers on Performance, but the CPU is significantly limited by the aggressive TDP cap of just 25W, and that’s shown in the scores.

If you venture into the BIOS, you can set an OC for the GPU only. I set the OC to +100Mhz and then retook some benchmarks in the Performance mode:

3DMark 13 – Fire Strike: 25882 (Graphics – 32222, Physics – 25706);
3DMark 13 – Time Spy: 12601 (Graphics – 12825, CPU – 11468);
3DMark 13 –CPU profile: max – 8034 16 – 8023, 8 – 6168, 4 – 3760, 2 – 2001, 1 -1017
3DMark 13 – Port Royal (RTX) Graphics: 7874;
Uniengine Superposition – 1080p Extreme: 8007;
Uniengine Superposition – 1080p Medium: 22569;

I see no reason not to have this OC in place. Lenovo supports it and it doesn’t significantly add too much thermal load. On top of that, the results are noticeable. For the remainder of my testing, this OC was left on.

Finally, here’s how things change when I swapped out the RAM for my 32GB RAM kit:

3DMark 13 – Fire Strike: 25350 (Graphics – 30928, Physics – 26496);
3DMark 13 – Time Spy: 12524 (Graphics – 12869, CPU – 10875);
3DMark 13 –CPU profile: max – 8019 16 – 8033, 8 – 6196, 4 – 3741, 2 – 2001, 1 -1018
3DMark 13 – Port Royal (RTX) Graphics: 7914;
Uniengine Superposition – 1080p Extreme: 7907;
Uniengine Superposition – 1080p Medium : 22383;
GeekBench 5: Single-Core: 1643, Multi-core: 9404;
CineBench R15: OpenGL 237.60 fps, CPU 2276 cb, CPU Single Core 243 cb;
CineBench R23: CPU 13780 pts, CPU Single Core 1622 pts;

While the RAM that comes preinstalled on the Legion 7 appears to be the cheaper kind, like I saw in the Legion 5 Pro, I didn’t see as much of a performance difference like I did with the 8GB modules. This could be because it’s 16GB modules, or perhaps it’s because Intel is less reliant on RAM than AMD. Regardless, the default RAM is just fine to me.

Gaming on the Lenovo Legion 7

Now let’s talk about the gaming benchmarks. I did three sets of benchmarks this time: Performance mode, Quiet mode, and with the swapped-out RAM kit. Here’s what I got:

	QHD+ Performance w/ OC	QHD+ Quiet w/ OC	QHD+ Performance w/ OC and upgraded RAM
Battlefield V (DX 12, Ultra Preset, Ray-Tracing OFF)	123 fps avg, 115fps low	110 fps avg, 101 fps low	119 fps avg, 109 fps low
Battlefield V (DX 12, Ultra Preset, Ray-Tracing ON)	54 fps avg, 49fps low	47 fps avg, 43fps low	58 fps avg, 54 fps low
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (DX 11, Ultra Preset, Hairworks On)	89 fps avg, 83fps low	75 fps avg, 71fps low	88 fps avg, 82 fps low
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (DX 11, Ultra Preset, Hairworks Off)	103 fps avg, 90fps low	90 fps avg, 85fps low	103 fps avg, 94 fps low
Horizon Zero Dawn (Ultra)	95 fps avg, 88fps low	82 fps avg, 77fps low	95 fps avg, 87 fps low
Cyberpunk (Ultra, Ray Tracing On, DLSS Auto)	58 fps avg, 55 fps low	52 fps avg, 49 fps low	58 fps avg, 54 fps low
Cyberpunk(Ultra, Ray Tracing On, DLSS off)	31 fps avg, 28 fps low	27 fps avg, 25fps low	31 fps avg, 28 fps low
Cyberpunk (Ultra, Ray Tracing Off, DLSS off)	57 fps avg, 52 fps low	49 fps avg, 45 fps low	58 fps avg, 51 fps low
Valheim (Max Settings)	79 fps avg, 74 fps low	73 fps avg, 65 fps low	86 fps avg, 79 fps low

As stated before, not a lot of difference from swapping out the RAM. As soon as I saw these results, I just replaced the stock RAM back into the machine. Not to say that other RAM won’t potentially show improvements because my RAM kit is 4-5 years old after all. But I just didn’t see an improvement as much as I did with the Legion 5 Pro based on the AMD Ryzen hardware.

The rest of these gaming benchmarks are remarkable though. The 165W TGP certainly gives this machine a performance boost over many of the other RTX 3080 models out there. Compared to the Razer Blade 15 I just tested, there’s a 10-15% performance boost, and that’s not even considering that this model has 11% more pixels to drive on the screen. Here’s a separate article comparing a few RTX 3080 laptops at different powers.

The Quiet mode benchmarks were also VERY respectable, where the GPU is set at 115W, close or even better than what many modern laptops offer on their top-performance profiles. Almost every game performed higher than 60fps and there was very low fan noise. I would probably set myself in this mode very frequently.

Noise, Heat, Connectivity, speakers, and others

This 2021 Lenovo Legion 7 uses a vapor chamber cooling system to keep the internals cool. I was a little skeptical at first, especially after seeing the reviews from last year. But after some use, I’m sold – this is a good system.

Keep in mind though, the iCue software for RGB is stupidly inefficient, so I just opted to keep it off completely for the remainder of my testing. It actually made the temperatures better…

There are two large fans that are always on, but operate at very low speeds when the laptop is idle. Normal temps while idling are in the high 30s and low 40s C. Fan noise is limited to roughly 28dB.

With light tasks, the CPU only gets into the mid-40s and the fans stay the same. Heavier tasks, though, will trigger the fans. And it makes a big difference what power mode you are on.

In Performance mode, the CPU spikes are larger because you’re putting up to 135W into it. So even short bursts of power can spike temps enough to cycle the fans. It’s gradual at least, so it’s not like you’re dealing with annoying oscillations in the fans or anything. It’s just worth noting that the Balanced mode is probably ideal for those that want less disruption from their fans while doing productivity work.

In Balanced mode and doing normal tasks and some heavy internet use, I saw CPU temps rise into the 50s and 60s, depending on the action. The fans hovered at around 35dB, which isn’t that bad.

In Quiet mode and on battery, the fans were effectively at idle speeds the entire time. Even with a Cinebench benchmark running, you’re only looking at 35W TDP, which doesn’t generate enough heat to be too much for idle fan speeds. That’s good news for those planning on using this in quiet places a lot.

Gaming is where the thermals really kick in though. I did some testing in all three modes to test the average temperatures of both the CPU and GPU. I also measured the fan noise at my head level. I used the same scene with Horizon Zero Dawn for all three modes, but did an extended session for the performance mode, so I could record the chassis temperatures as well.

To make things easier, I put my results into a table this time. But I also took screenshots of HWinfo in all three modes. Take a look:

Mode	Performance	Balanced	Quiet
CPU temps	82C avg with 90C spike	81C avg with 94C spike	70C avg with 85C spike
GPU temps	78C avg	75C avg	74C avg
Avg fan noise after stabilized temps	52 dB	42dB	40dB
Game performance	95 fps avg, 88 fps low	85 fps avg, 80 fps low	82 fps avg, 77 fps low

Seeing the difference in fan noise in each mode was really eye-opening to me. Of course, this only applies to games that aren’t heavily reliant on CPU performance. But for many games, the appeal to play on the Balanced or even Quiet mode is real.

Onto the external temps. I measured the surface temps while watching a show on Netflix and multitasking while on battery, and another shot while playing Witcher 3 for an extended session. Here is what I captured:

For normal use, the underside stays pretty cool. Note that this test was in battery mode where the CPU is limited to 45W. If you plug in, it will heat up further depending on what power mode you are in. I chose to show you the best-case scenario for this review, assuming that if it really mattered to you, you’ll swap power modes accordingly.

For gaming, the palmrest stays at low enough temperatures to prevent your palms from sweating. The WASD and arrows keys are also reasonable. The underside gets really hot, though, but that’s pretty much the case with any laptop with this kind of hardware in it. Use a lapdesk.

The Wifi module is the Intel AX201 Wifi 6 adapter. I’ve tested this in many other laptops lately and this one is just as good. I took a speed test at roughly 25ft from my router and got 480Mbps – about average for me. I didn’t experience any abnormalities in my usage and the Bluetooth worked well. It’s Bluetooth 5.2 by the way.

There are two downward-facing speakers on this model. The only gripe I have with them is the cutouts are in a spot that might get covered while using this on your lap. On other Legion models, the cutouts were on the chamfer of the bottom corner, making that more difficult.

The sound is pretty good though, for a gaming laptop. After some tweaking with the Equalizer in Nahimic, I was able to achieve good sound, with good highs and adequate mids. The bass was also decent and I could detect frequencies as low as 100Hz.

When looking at the internals, I noticed that the speakers are pretty large, which explains why the bass was decent. The problem is, there’s no dedicated subwoofer though. So you have to pick your poison here – you can’t just turn everything up in the EQ without having the sounds distort.

I was able to pick a decent curve though that appealed to me. With the volume turned all the way up, I was able to reach an amplitude of 75dB. I prefer above 80dB, but this laptop just can’t get that loud. But the quality of the sound was much better than what I hear from say, the Razer Blade, so that counts for something.

You have to be careful with the bass. Turned all the way up, I felt some vibration throughout the palmrest. I thought it was ok for the most part but I can see how that would be annoying.

To summarize: good speakers. Not perfect, but better than I was expecting from a gaming laptop.

The webcam is basically a standard 720p shooter. It’s pretty good as far as image quality goes. In good lighting, it’s good enough for teleconference use in a professional environment. But even the low light correction is decent.

It’s not Windows Hello enabled though. I was wondering if it was possible on this model because it includes Tobii head tracking. But that’s not the case. The head tracking is nowhere near as accurate as the eye-tracking software that uses an IR blaster. It’s a cool gimmick though.

One of the nicest features of the camera is the switch on the right side of the laptop. It’s a kill switch for the webcam, which completely removes all the power from it. It’s a better solution than a privacy shutter in my opinion because it tells you in software whether or not the camera is actually on.

Battery life

My unit has an 80Whr battery installed. This is normally fine for any laptop, but I struggled to get some decent battery life with this one. There are a couple of reasons leading to this but one, unfortunately, isn’t fixable.

First is the iCue software. If you use it to customize your keyboard settings, it launches some nasty services that kill your battery life. The only way to stop this is to manually stop the services or uninstall iCue. It’s super annoying so I just uninstalled it.

The second thing drawing a lot of battery life is the CPU. But even in low power use, the CPU is still allowed to draw 25-35W if needed. So even doing simple tasks, the CPU is going to use what it needs.

There’s no good way to fix this except to maybe use Throttlestop and limit the IccMax while on battery, which would limit the TDP. If I get any good settings, I’ll be sure to post them here.

For now, though, I just took a series of battery life tests with the brightness at 50%, which is about 120 nits. Here were my results:

9.9 W (~8 h 5 min of use)– idle, Best Battery Mode, screen at 0%, Wi-Fi ON, backlighting off;
43.1 W (~1 h 51 min of use)– idle, Best Battery Mode, screen at 0%, Wi-Fi ON, backlighting off, iCue on;
19.4 W (~4 h 7 min of use)– text editing in Word with light internet use, Better Battery Mode, screen at 50%, Wi-Fi ON;
19.8 W (~4 h 2 min of use)– 1440p 60Hz Youtube fullscreen in Chrome, Better Battery Mode, screen at 50%, Wi-Fi ON;
18.1 W (~4 h 25 min of use)– 1080p Netflix fullscreen video in Chrome, Better Battery Mode, screen at 50%, Wi-Fi ON;
32.6 W (~2 h 27 min of use)– heavy browsing in Chrome, Better Performance Mode, screen at 50%, Wi-Fi ON;
69.9 W (~1 h 9 min of use)– Gaming – Wither 3, Maximum Performance Mode, 60fps cap, screen at 70%, Wi-Fi ON.

As you can clearly see, iCue is a huge battery hog. And heavy use is going to kill your battery in just a couple of hours, even if you disable iCue. Keep a charger on you if you plan to be out and about.

The power brick is 300W and is the exact same as what I saw with the Legion 5 Pro. It’s really big, but I guess it could be worse, considering the GPU and CPU power requirements.

But you also get USB-C charging on this unit. So if you have a portable GaN charger, you can just attach it to the port on the back of the laptop. You can’t game on this charger, but it’s a more portable solution to keep your unit charged.

Even though this laptop is made of metal, I didn’t detect any micro-vibrations while plugged in with an ungrounded GaN charger. I’ve seen this with every metal laptop up until now, so I found that interesting.

Price and availability

There are currently no listings on Amazon for the Legion 7 or the Legion 7i, but here’s a link that should find them when they pop up (at the time you’re reading the article).

In the meantime, the only way to purchase this laptop is on Lenovo’s website. The trouble is you might be waiting a while for custom builds. I had a Legion 7 with an RTX 3070 on order for nearly two months and the order date got pushed back to November until I canceled it. Once the Legion 7i I have on hand was in stock, I jumped right on it.

But even at the time of this review, the Legion 7 and Legion 7i aren’t even available to customize an order. Perhaps because of the pandemic? I’m not sure why but I’ll try to keep this section up to date when I find out more.

The model I have retails at $3329, but Lenovo always seems to have sales going on. I ended up getting mine for $2996 and it just came out. The RTX 3060 starts at $1799 but it’s out of stock, so I can’t quote the upgrade options for right now.

The AMD version of this laptop is the Legion 7 Gen 6. It’s virtually identical in every way, but has slower SSDs, no Thunderbolt, but possibly better battery life. The prices seem equal to the Legion 7i. For reference, I had an RTX 3070 model on preorder for about $2100 before I canceled it.

Final thoughts on the 2021 Lenovo Legion 7i

Needless to say, I’m very pleased with this 2021 Lenovo Legion 7i. The Legion 5 Pro already checked all my boxes, but this is a significant improvement from even that, which makes it worth the little extra. Well, it’s not really a “little extra” because I have the 3080 version here, but if you compare the 3070 config prices of both models, I think it’s worth the extra $200 for this 7.

Key is, I like the all-metal build and the fact the screen goes all the way back. The keyboard is also much more to my liking with firmer feedback and especially the nicer-looking RGB, even if that’s somewhat limited with me deleting the iCUE software. But that’s ok with me because I happen to usually pick blue and it just so happens to be a default color on this model. Lucky me.

Add in the 16” QHD+ screen, which I absolutely love, and the stellar performance of the hardware, and it leaves very little else to complain about. All except for the battery life that is.

And that’s just it. It might be a deal-breaker for some that are looking for a machine with higher battery life. If that’s the case, perhaps the Legion 5 Pro is the better choice for you. Maybe even the Legion 7 AMD models would be better, ~~but I haven’t tested that model~~.

Update: I’ve also documented my later experience with the AMD Ryzen version of the Legion 7 in this other review. Check it out!

For me though, I’m sticking with this one. I prefer having the Intel model for Thunderbolt support and the faster SSDs. I can deal with the battery life because I’m typically close to a plug and always have a compact USB-C charger in my backpack.

So if it’s not obvious yet, I’m definitely keeping this model. This will be my laptop for the next several years and I’m excited to see how well it holds up over the next several months. Perhaps I’ll write an update article after 6 months.

Update: We’ve put up together a comparison of the Lenovo Legion 7 against two other popular RTX 3080 laptops that we’ve reviewed here on the site, the Asus ROG Zephyrus S17 and the ROG Scar 17.

Update: If interested in a more portable alternative with mid-tier specs and a good price, you should also check out our review of the Lenovo Legion Slim 7 series.

In the meantime, feel free to post any questions you may have in the comments section. I’m happy to answer and can test anything I might have missed.

Disclaimer: Our content is reader-supported. If you buy through some of the links on our site, we may earn a commission. Terms.

Review by: Derek Sullivan
Derek Sullivan - Review Editor. In addition to being a tech enthusiast, I have a career as a Biomedical Engineer. I enjoy taking things apart, figuring out how they work, and finding ways to make them better. My other hobbies include spending time with my family, "Do it yourself" projects such as home automation, and running.

99 Comments

Necter

August 10, 2021 at 6:10 pm

Perhaps I missed it but I don't see any mention of the mux switch. The one in the Legion Vantage. Turn off Hybrid mode and reboot. Did you test that?

Reply
- Derek Sullivan
  
  August 10, 2021 at 7:12 pm
  
  Yes, hybrid mode in Vantage on this model is merely just turning on advanced Optimus. If you turn off hybrid mode, it forces the dGPU to always be on. Even in hybrid mode, you can still select between GPUs in the Nvidia menu.
  
  Reply
Miracle Man

August 10, 2021 at 6:20 pm

I just bought one myself and am super happy with it! There really isn't much more you can ask for performance and feature wise with some minor exceptions, but those weren't a deal-breaker for me either.

For the battery, how about trying to do:
– Keyboard backlight OFF
– Brightness 50%
– Quiet Mode
– Hybrid ON (Then go to Nvidia Control -> Manage Display -> Set to "Integrated Graphics")
– Power Savings in the Battery Settings
– 60Hz refresh rate

I was able to get around 6-7hrs with that. It's a bit of a requirement but helps that have it when you're in a pinch lol.

Reply
- Derek Sullivan
  
  August 10, 2021 at 7:14 pm
  
  Did you see any extra benefit to setting it to integrated graphics? It should do that automatically.
  
  I've tried 60hz and that helps a lot. I just hate suggesting it because it's a pain in the butt to switch. Curious if Fn-R works for you because that's supposed to change the refresh rate.
  
  Reply
  - Miracle Man
    
    August 12, 2021 at 5:43 am
    
    I believe it still switches to dGPU even in Hybrid Mode ON thanks to Advanced Optimus. Setting “Optimus” under Manage Display in the Nvidia Control Panel just forces every application to run on the Integrated Graphics.
    
    Also, Fn+R doesn’t work for me either. It might just be a software bug or the need of a BIOS update.
  - Evan
    
    November 2, 2021 at 4:49 am
    
    Any idea why this setting in the Intel Graphics Control Panel on my Legion 7i is now locked at 165p? I am now required to go through the Nvidia Control Panel to change the refresh rate. On top of that, the ability to select the graphics like Miracle Man referenced above has disappeared entirely from the Nvidia Control Panel.
    
    It worked as outlined above for the first few days of ownership but has since changed.
  - Derek Sullivan
    
    November 2, 2021 at 11:50 am
    
    I've seen that limitation on another Intel laptop before. Manufacturer claimed that the Intel chip couldn't handle it which I found harder to believe. Have you tried adding a custom resolution to there list?
  - Evan
    
    November 3, 2021 at 5:38 am
    
    I actually figured it out and it was pretty silly. I wasn't paying attention to whether I was in dGPU or Hybrid. In Hybrid, the settings are changed through the Intel Command Center. In dGPU mode (which I was in), some of the settings are apparently forced through the Nvidia Control panel since the computer is fully bypassing the integrated graphics.
  - Narayanan Venugopal
    
    November 19, 2021 at 9:06 pm
    
    https://pcsupport.lenovo.com/in/en/products/laptops-and-netbooks/legion-series/legion-7-16ithg6/downloads/driver-list/component?name=Mouse,%20Pen%20and%20Keyboard
    
    If im not wrong this software is the one to be installed for the shortcuts… found it on reddit.
- patrick lanard
  
  August 15, 2021 at 11:43 am
  
  How do you switch the refresh rate to 60 Hz?
  
  Reply
  - Derek Sullivan
    
    August 15, 2021 at 6:01 pm
    
    You have to do it manually through Intel graphics control center. Fn-R is supposed to do it but it's not working for anyone yet.
  - Swapnil Shakya
    
    December 27, 2021 at 8:35 am
    
    Can somebody help me with this?
    
    I'm planning to by a legion but I'm not sure about advanced optimus.
    
    Does 7i has both mux or advance optimus? Can a laptop has both?
    
    And which one should I buy legion 7 or legion 7i?
  - Andrei Girbea
    
    December 27, 2021 at 12:15 pm
    
    there's a regular MUX without Advanced Optimus on both
Khaki

August 10, 2021 at 7:35 pm

I recently cancelled my Ryzen 7 / 3070 build after the delivery dates pushed out until December 22nd, and managed to order an 11800H / 3080 instead.

Thanks to your thorough review, I feel really good about that decision! Really appreciate the level of detail regarding wattage, thermals, and fan noise dbs.

Reply
Serge

August 10, 2021 at 9:22 pm

Fantastic review, im so thankful you guys are here to guide us through bunch of those choises ! Hope you can review slim version soon.

Reply
Matt

August 13, 2021 at 4:03 am

Can you turn off all of the extra side lighting but still keep the keyboard backlit? Also is ThrottleStop worth using or does this laptop do a good job at doing those things with the Legion software? I used your TS guide with my X1e Gen 2 and it helped a ton.

Your reviews are always my go to.

Reply
- Derek Sullivan
  
  August 13, 2021 at 4:15 am
  
  You can, but it requires using the battery hog iCue software in order to customize it.
  
  Without iCue and under the default system lighting there is only one "normal" lit option which is blue, but it has the blue bar underneath lit as well. There is a secret to turning it off but it involves switching to battery power first. If you hit Fn-Q to go into quiet mode it turns the lights off completely. Hitting fN-Q again restores the keyboard lighting(still blue) but leaves the light bar off. You can replace the power connection and the settings will stick even after putting the laptop through a sleep cycle.
  
  I decided not to use Throttlestop. I didn't find it necessary yet. I'll probably fool with it in a few weeks when I have time to tweak it properly. The only thing I plan on using it for is to tune an ultra low TDP for use on battery power when I need to maximize it.
  
  Reply
  - Elrondolio
    
    September 6, 2021 at 11:27 am
    
    You can safely install iCUE, run it to create and activate your prefered RGB setup with static colors (for keyboard or any other area) then make sure the customized profile you want is the first in the iCUE profile list as that'll be the one that gets activated upon iCUE startup. From there you can create a batch file like below, create a shortcut for it, customize that shortcut with a shortcut key combo from its Properties (such as setting it to CTRL-ALT-K, etc) then place that shortcut in your Start Menu's Programs folder.
    
    From then on, all you have to do is hit the keyboard combo anywhere in Windows and it'll auto-kill the iCUE process and its services while leaving the loaded RGB profile in tact (until reboot). Here's an example for an icue_kill.bat file one might use:
    
    @ECHO OFF
    
    REM Terminate the iCUE software process if running
    taskkill /IM "iCUE.EXE" /F
    
    REM Stop the three Corsair services if running (the first process requires admin mode to stop, the other two do not)
    net stop "Corsair Gaming Audio Configuration Service" /y
    net stop "Corsair LLA Service" /y
    net stop "Corsair Service" /y
    
    Point is: you can still have iCUE installed to take advantage of all the RGB goodness on your laptop (static colouring, that is, animated coloring freezes when iCUE is stopped) but still use a simple keyboard kepress to stop it from eating all of your battery runtime. When you want it back, just run it again… rinse, repeat.
    
    May not be elegant, but its the best we can do until Corsair gets off their buts after all these years and fixes this hog (or, even better, Lenovo integrates RGB lighting controls directly in Vantage).
    
    Best to you all.
  - Derek Sullivan
    
    September 6, 2021 at 4:02 pm
    
    Nice, that worked great! Thanks for pointing that out.
John Dolly

August 14, 2021 at 9:59 pm

Is it possible to disconnect the rgb bar if one never wants to use it

Reply
- Derek Sullivan
  
  August 14, 2021 at 11:05 pm
  
  See here: https://www.reddit.com/r/GamingLaptops/comments/i43s4e/how_to_disconnect_legion_7i_lighting/?utm_source=amp&utm_medium=&utm_content=post_body
  
  Should still apply to this year's model
  
  Reply
  - Matt
    
    August 15, 2021 at 9:28 pm
    
    Thank you!
txhousa

August 27, 2021 at 6:21 pm

Is it really all metal ? Did you try to disassemble internal parts to see the laptop's frame structure ?
Thanks.

Reply
- Derek Sullivan
  
  August 27, 2021 at 6:38 pm
  
  Feels like it to me. To which part are you concerned isn't metal?
  
  Reply
Alvin

August 28, 2021 at 3:49 am

I have legion 7i with i9 11980HK model.
And i cannot undervolt it using xtu or throttlestop as the option is disable.

Can u help me list your steps to do undervolt?
Thanks in advance ^^

Reply
- Derek Sullivan
  
  August 28, 2021 at 4:27 am
  
  It works for me with both. By disabled do you mean the offset voltage is greyed out?
  
  Reply
  - Alvin
    
    August 28, 2021 at 9:41 am
    
    Yap, it's grey out.
    
    I read in internet that i need to open advanced bios and tick something.
    But i cannot go to advanced bios (either by q to p method or fn+r)
  - Derek Sullivan
    
    August 29, 2021 at 4:02 am
    
    I've checked discord and nobody has figured out how to unlock advanced bios yet. I must be lucky that mine is unlocked. I still haven't updated the bios and now I probably won't
- Christian Laguna
  
  August 31, 2021 at 1:03 am
  
  Hi there
  
  Try the below link, let us know if it worked for you.
  
  https://youtu.be/ecn_sKNeiKc
  
  Reply
  - Derek Sullivan
    
    August 31, 2021 at 1:41 am
    
    That's last year's model. It doesn't work with this bios.
- Andrew W
  
  September 2, 2021 at 11:30 pm
  
  Mine works fine (i7 model). Open Lenovo Vantage and make sure you are in Performance mode.
  
  Reply
Mr. Belvedere

September 3, 2021 at 7:52 pm

The L7 deal is really good right now making it the same price, if not cheaper than an equivalent speced L5P. I'm very happy with the L5P that I have though and there really isn't anything I need the L7 for other than the better speakers. Still sounds like they aren't amazing speakers, just better than the L5P's. My my main concern about switching is that I really like the L5P keyboard with the 1.5mm travel and concave keys. Sounds like I'd lose both on the L7 for shallower travel, flat keys. Do you like the keyboard now or still miss the L5 keyboard?

Reply
- Derek Sullivan
  
  September 3, 2021 at 7:57 pm
  
  I've adjusted pretty well to this keyboard. I do miss the concave keys for sure but the former feedback makes up for it. Not that it really matters, but the RGB is a little better on the L7. The only thing I kind of miss about the L5P keys is the black color. I'm not a fan of having no contrast.
  
  Reply
  - Mr. Belvedere
    
    September 3, 2021 at 8:44 pm
    
    Thanks. Figure it is easy to get used to anything. I have used a Razer before and after while my fingers get more tired with the flat keyboard than the with the legion 5 I have also used. I'm going on the L5P being more like the L5 wheras the L7 may be more like the Razer. None of the aesthetic make a huge difference to me. Still with today's deals the L7 actually comes in at a cheaper price than I paid for a L5P with the same options. Still in the return window and it is still a hard decision. Which is crazy because the 2 systems will perform 100% the same and have the same display.
    
    Is the travel on the keys a bit shorter on the L7 vs L5P?
  - Derek Sullivan
    
    September 3, 2021 at 9:39 pm
    
    I just measured it now and it's 1.2mm of key travel, nearly identical to my Razer Blade 15. The main difference is in the feedback. For both keyboards, it takes 55g to depress the key. But on the L7, the springs are a little different ant lift a little more naturally. The Razer Blade keys spring back when the force is dropped to 30g, while the L7 keys lift back at 15g. Hard to explain, but the key doesn't fight back as much on the L7, making it feel like it's easier to depress the key and to tell if it's depressed.
    
    I don't take these measurements anymore(I used to do this for every laptop but it's a tedious test and offers little reward). I would describe the L5P keyboard to be a little "mushier" though mainly because the lift back force is probably somewhere smaller than 15g. It wasn't bad – I've certainly had worse. But the keystroke depth makes up for it for sure.
    
    Tough call because I was ok with both Lenovo keyboards. But I type much better on the L7 than I did on the Razer Blade 15 and I've had that laptop for nearly 2 years now. for the RB15, I would occasionally miss keystrokes, which I attribute to the feedback force being too high and not getting a "full" keystroke in.
  - Mr. Belvedere
    
    September 3, 2021 at 10:22 pm
    
    Couldn't reply to the comment to the comment. Great info. Wouldn't even know how to begin measuring key travel. One other question. Have you tried the L7 slim? Best buy has it on display. I'm thinking the L7 and L7 slim have the same keyboard. Closest I'll come to testing our an L7. I liked it. Did noticed the flat keys, less travel and more snap/spring back
  - Derek Sullivan
    
    September 3, 2021 at 10:34 pm
    
    I haven't tried it but I might be in the area this weekend. If I am, I'll give it a try and will let you know.
  - Mr. Belvedere
    
    September 4, 2021 at 12:20 am
    
    Cool, let me know what you think. I tried it out and a Legion 5 at my local BB. They didn't have a L5P, but I think the L5 is similar. Different feeling keyboards. I can't really say which was better.
Maria

September 4, 2021 at 8:08 pm

I want this laptop but this is out of my budget, could you suggest me from where i can buy this laptop in use?

Reply
- Derek Sullivan
  
  September 4, 2021 at 8:27 pm
  
  Keep an eye on deal sites like Slickdeals. If you put an alert in, it'll email you if a deal pops up. Lenovo.com just had a 3080 Ryzen version on sale for roughly $2400 a few days back. I'm sure the 3070 version has also had sales. Good luck
  
  Reply
Colin

September 4, 2021 at 9:42 pm

Thanks a lot for the review, really good stuff!

I just got a Legion 5 Pro because I got a really good deal and I really like it so far! I was also looking at the Legion 7, but that was not available for a long time and I felt the difference was not so big between the two.

I also have the BOE NE160QDM-NY1 display panel and it is really bright and the colors look good!
I was a bit sensitive with PWM in the past, in another laptop review I read that the panel does not have any PWM – did you by any chance check that? I don't really have proper measurment tools (or knowledge) to see if the display uses PWM .
Would appreciate your reply and thanks again for the review!

Reply
- Derek Sullivan
  
  September 4, 2021 at 9:46 pm
  
  I don't have the equipment to check for it unfortunately. Notebookcheck says they didn't detect any though, so I would trust in that.
  
  Reply
Rob

September 9, 2021 at 8:39 am

I don't understand why you won't show the blender benchmarks for legion series unlike the reviews of Asus laptops where you show them.

Reply
- Andrei Girbea
  
  September 9, 2021 at 9:26 am
  
  As much as we're trying to keep our testing consistent between us, I run a couple more benchmarks than Derek does in his reviews. Hence, no Blender or Specviewperf here.
  
  Reply
  - apw100
    
    September 11, 2021 at 6:04 pm
    
    I have run Blender benchmarks on my Legion 7i (i7, 32GB, 3080 16GB model) but only for OptiX rendering. The GPU in this thing is extremely impressive with only the 3090 and 3080ti consistently beating it. Let me know if you want me to run a particular benchmark for you.
Sid

September 10, 2021 at 6:29 pm

A few questions. Trying to configure this laptop to be an all rounder/applicable for versatile use. A little bit of everything done well. Advice much appreciated!

1. Will i9 11980 HK be overkill for this laptop? Does i7CPU provide a better balance of performance and lower batter power consumption?

2. Given RAM issues, should I just go for the stock 16GB that comes installed from Lenovo and upgrade the RAM to 32GB with a dual rank RAM on my own?

3. Is RTX 3080 GPU that much better than RTX 3070 for the additional $700 cost?

Reply
- Derek Sullivan
  
  September 10, 2021 at 6:38 pm
  
  1. Yes, the CPU is overkill. The i7 is probably fine, although I don't know if the power profiles are the same. I really liked the quiet profile on this model since it still was playable for all games.
  Power consumption is probably negligible though.
  
  2. The 32gb kit is fine with me on this model. I've tested the AMD model too and swapping out the RAM made no difference on performance. If you go the 16gb route, you'll have to upgrade but the 32gb models are fine as is.
  
  3. Absolutely not. It's only good because it's so higher powered and a lighter pill to swallow than the 3070/80 difference on other models. But $700 different, no way. But also consider that the top tiered model has an extre ssd, more ram and a "better" CPU. So that plays into the cost difference too. Another option is the AMD model, which went on sale for just over $2400 a week ago. Given that choice, I would say the 3080 model is the way to go. The AMD model has a couple cons to it though which I'm still working on an article for. Given the choice, I'd pick AMD though, especially if you can find it significantly cheaper
  
  Reply
  - Sid
    
    September 11, 2021 at 6:05 am
    
    Thanks Derek. Does the 3080 (160 Watts) GPU get bottlenecked by the i7 11800H CPU or is this pairing ok for the Legion 7i?
    
    I will also be keen to understand your perspective on the difference between the AMD configuration and the Intel. Did you say you will be publishing a review of the Legion 7(16") AMD soon?
  - Derek Sullivan
    
    September 11, 2021 at 12:41 pm
    
    No chance that is bottlenecked by any of the CPU options on these models. The CPU power is pretty overkill for most games.
    
    I should have an article up within a week or so. I've got all the data, I just need to write it. Been super busy this week.
- apw100
  
  September 11, 2021 at 6:25 pm
  
  1) I'd say so. The i7 version is easily undervolted/overclocked to give better than i9 performance. See Tally Ho Tech's videos on YouTube for more info.
  
  2) The RAM isn't that bad, it's more of an issue with AMD CPUs.
  
  3) I probably wouldn't go for the 3080 16GB model if I was only gaming but I primarily use it for GPU rendering (Blender, etc) so it's worth it for me.
  
  Reply
Mitia

September 17, 2021 at 9:11 pm

Thank you very much for the review. Based on that I just have purchased a Legion 7 16ITHg6. It arrived with empty battery. After charging, the laptop turned on. Now I notice that the Laptop discharges 10-20% battery over night in a shut down state. Do you notice such bahaviour or might it be faulty?

Cheers,
Mitia

Reply
- Derek Sullivan
  
  September 19, 2021 at 1:29 am
  
  That's not normal at all. The battery shouldn't be discharging more than 1% a day while it's off. Battery being dead on arrival like that is a red flag something is wrong hardware wise. It could be firmware too but I haven't heard of anyone else having this problem. You could check their Discord server to see if anyone else has that issue, but if it were me I'd just RMA it.
  
  Reply
Eric H.

September 19, 2021 at 1:01 am

Excellent review! Can you offer some advice on finding a suitable car charger or otherwise more portable solution using the USB C port? And will it extend battery life while in use, whether regular or intensive, or is it mainly for charging while not in use?

I've ordered a 7i with i7/3070/32gb/1tb. I'm currently a light gamer interested in dabbling in video/photo editing and 3D design, and wanted a basically future-proof laptop (5+ years). In light of this, what's your opinion of these specs?

Thanks for the great review!

Reply
- Derek Sullivan
  
  September 19, 2021 at 1:26 am
  
  I actually have one coming in on Monday. If it works, I'll report back. My older PD car chargers and my PD power bank don't work with this USB port – only my newer GaN charger. Perhaps older PD protocols aren't supported?
  
  Good specs on that model. 3080 is overkill and over priced. I think the 3060 is probably fine for almost anyone who doesn't do heavy gaming. A 3070 will be futureproof for the 5 years you are intending to use the machine though. Same with the CPU. Good luck with your new purchase!
  
  Reply
  - Eric H.
    
    September 19, 2021 at 1:56 am
    
    Thanks! Looking forward to hearing more about the USB C charger you have on order, assuming it works.
    
    What really sold me on this laptop (in addition to the great specs and appearance, etc.) was the new 16" 16:10 screen. Been trying out a 5i Pro with the same screen, and it's as good as everyone says.
    
    A little disappointed with lack of USB A on either side, but maybe a non-issue if/when USB C fingerprint readers become more common. Happen to know of any good Windows Hello ones with USB C?
    
    Thanks again for the quick response!
  - Derek Sullivan
    
    September 19, 2021 at 2:06 am
    
    Yeah, I was kind of bummed they didn't have the USB-A port on the right hand side like the 5 Pro. I really don't need 3 USB-C, especially since the right one doesn't support Thunderbolt or charging…
    
    Never used an external fingerprint reader, sorry. I've adapted to just using the pin on this model. You can set up the laptop to boot when you open the lid, and by the time you get it open, you can type your pin in right away. Takes 2 seconds and no need to touch the power button.
- Derek Sullivan
  
  September 21, 2021 at 1:06 am
  
  USB-C car charger I got on Amazon didn't work with the laptop. Only my phone. :(
  
  I got the Raycono 45W one. Works great for my phone though.
  
  Reply
  - Eric H.
    
    September 21, 2021 at 4:29 am
    
    Thanks for the info. I'm thinking of getting a Jackery 1000 or 1500, and keeping it in the car for use in a pinch.
    
    Heck, get the solar panels that go with it, and you could game or edit video just about anywhere!
  - Elrondolio
    
    September 21, 2021 at 5:30 am
    
    You'll want a cable that has an E-marker chip in it to successfully support up to the 100W (20V at 5A) that these Legions support. I use the following cables successfully with my PD charger on my Legion 7 AMD as they do up to 100W while also supporting Gen 2 transfer speeds (10Gbps) and video (4K@60 at minimum):
    
    Fasgear 90-Degree Type C 10Gbps speed 4K@60Hz Video Output 100W 5A Power Delivery
    amazon.com/gp/product/B08FXZLHJ9
    
    TDBT USB-C to USB-C & Thunderbolt 3 Universal Cable, 100W Power Delivery, DisplayPort DP 1.4, 4K/5K/6K/8K 60Hz Monitor Cord, 10Gbps Data Transfer
    amazon.com/gp/product/B08C28GSKH
    
    There are other cables as well, of course, but make sure whatever you pick has an E-marker chip.
    
    For reference, here's the GaN 100W PD charger I use, it's very versatile:
    
    Hyphen-X 100W 4-Port GaN Fast Wall Charger
    amazon.com/Charger-Hyphen-X-Charging-Laptops-Compatible/dp/B08X42DRMR
    
    Thanks so much, Derek, for your excellent review.
  - Eric H.
    
    November 17, 2021 at 3:46 am
    
    Derek, a quick note regarding USB-C charging. I purchased the Hyphen-X charger and a Fasgear cable with E-marker chip as suggested by Elrondolio below, and happy to report that it charges my 7i with 3070 great, however only while in sleep mode or turned off.
    
    But I also tried this on a much less expensive 7i with 3050 graphics, and it was able to charge the battery while using the laptop. The convenience of being able to charge via USB-C while in use seems like an important selling point for the 3050 version, assuming one can get by with more of an entry-level GPU (by today's standards).
  - Eric H.
    
    November 17, 2021 at 3:55 am
    
    Apologies, the laptop with 3050 graphics that was able to charge via USB-C while in use was the Legion 5i Pro and not a 7i (I don't believe Lenovo even makes a 7i with 3050 graphics, but I could be wrong).
Yoong

October 4, 2021 at 7:17 pm

Hi.

Could you please answer a few questions? I’m not good with computers.

I bought a Lenovo Legion 7i 16” (2021) with Core i7-11800H. It is expected to ship on 11 October.

Custom order…

RAM: 32GB (16+16) DDR4 3200 SoDIMM

Storage
Slot 1: 2TB SSD M.2 2280 G4 TLC
Slot 2: (Greyed out on the website)

1. Do I need to replace the stock RAM? I’m not sure if it’s single or dual rank.

2. I accidentally ordered 1x2TB instead of 2x1TB.

Which do you think it’s better…

(a) sell the stock Storage in first slot and put in total 3TB (Slot 1: 1TB for OS)(Slot 2: 2TB for everything else)?
(b) leave the stock Storage as it is and put in 2TB in the second slot.
(c) something you could suggest?

Thank you for your time.

Reply
- Andrei Girbea
  
  October 6, 2021 at 11:56 am
  
  1. Stock RAM is most likely SR, but should be fine
  2. whatever works for you. you could also just keep the drive that comes default if 2GB is enough storage space for you
  
  Reply
Guilherme Veronez

October 16, 2021 at 6:36 am

Legion 7i: Are both SSD slots PCI GEN 4? Thanks

Reply
- Derek Sullivan
  
  October 16, 2021 at 11:19 am
  
  Yes
  
  Reply
Michael E Elia

October 29, 2021 at 10:30 pm

Hi I have the RTX 3060 Intel version of the 7i on order. I plan to use this with my Quest 2 link cable.

I have two questions;
1) Does this configuration come with a "MUX" switch (ability to turn off hybrid mode)?
2) Does one of the USB-C ports (or USB-A for that matter) allow access directly to the dedicated graphics?
Much appreciated!

Reply
- Derek Sullivan
  
  October 30, 2021 at 12:29 am
  
  Hi Michael,
  
  I never had that model but I'm going to go with "probably". I know other manufacturers tend to disable the MUX on their 3060 models but my Legion 5 with a 1050Ti even has a MUX switch. I'm guessing they leave it alone with all the Legion 7 models. And if that's the case, the USB-C must be routed to the dGPU otherwise they wouldn't be able to be used for external displays at all when the iGPU is disabled.
  
  Reply
  - Michael E Elia
    
    October 30, 2021 at 5:07 am
    
    Thanks Derek, I appreciate it. I'll make sure I post back here with results once this unit arrives.
  - Michael E Elia
    
    October 30, 2021 at 5:34 am
    
    Quick (and promising update) Finally found the spec sheet on the 3060 version from Lenovo and it clearly states that the 3060 version supports Advanced Optimus, which I "believe" is that switch I'm looking for. Sorry, I'm new to this (first gaming laptop).
    psref.lenovo.com/Product/Lenovo_Legion_7_16ITHg6?tab=spec
- Andrei Girbea
  
  November 1, 2021 at 10:09 am
  
  I can also confirm there's a MUX on all the Legion models and configurations, and the USB-C DP hooks into the dGPU
  
  Reply
Derek Sullivan

November 5, 2021 at 7:00 pm

I'm not familiar with what software you use for that but I don't see why not. It's basically the best laptop CPU you can buy paired with the best laptop GPU.

Reply
Won

November 9, 2021 at 4:37 pm

Hi Derek Sullivan,
I read your writing well.
Thank you so much.
And tomorrow, I'll receive Legion 7 with intel i9 11980hk and RTX3080.
Is it must need to undervolting?

Reply
- Derek Sullivan
  
  November 9, 2021 at 5:29 pm
  
  I don't think it's a must. The cooling system works fine without it. It's pretty easy to do with Intel XTU though and you get that added CPU stability for prolonged tasks. If all you're doing is gaming, there's probably little need to do it if you don't want to.
  
  Reply
  - Friedrich
    
    November 19, 2022 at 11:25 pm
    
    Hey Derek,
    is it possible to share a small step by step instructions of your stable – 70 MV undervolting via Xtu? I'm New in this topic and pretty confused of All the possibilities in this App. So what did you really change? Many thanks in advance.
Narayanan Venugopal

November 19, 2021 at 9:16 pm

I'm really interested in the R7/RTX3070/16GB RAM/1TB SSD model of the 7i and I'm getting a pretty good deal ($1850) with the extended warranty and accidental damage coverage for 2yrs added. But I'm a little anxious about the battery life, I'll be using this laptop for uni when on battery, and I'll be doing a lot of ML work as well, is the battery life manageable for that? I'd like to avoid lugging the 300W charger if I need to carry a charger. Because the current deal that I'm getting is only on the 7i (the AMD is out of stock) is it worth it? I dont think I'd mind the extra steps to get that battery life as well.

Also, if I use a GaN charger with these laptops, will they only charge the laptop if its on sleep or idle??

(note: not considering zephyrus because I've had a pretty bad experience with that lot before, the 5 pro was attractive but I like the understated looks and all metal body design of the legion 7/7i.)

Reply
- Derek Sullivan
  
  November 19, 2021 at 11:02 pm
  
  Can't really comment on the battery life with those programs because I don't use them. But assuming it's not good enough, you can at least use a GaN charger while on the go. I never take my 300w brick anywhere but the GaN charger is always in my bag if needed. It's worked out fine for me so far. The only thing you miss out on with the GaN charger is it pretends like you're still on battery so the TDP and TGP are limited. But it's no different from operating on battery anyways so it doesn't really change much.
  
  Reply
  - Narayanan Venugopal
    
    November 20, 2021 at 9:40 am
    
    Yeah the power on battery is more than enough for programming most of the time, but does the GaN charger actually charge the laptop when you are just browsing, or doing any word document work?
  - Derek Sullivan
    
    November 20, 2021 at 1:34 pm
    
    It does for me
  - Eric H.
    
    November 29, 2021 at 6:47 am
    
    Yes, I can also confirm now that the GaN charger DOES charge the laptop while in use, just obviously slower than the 300-watt power brick. In a previous post here, I said that it would only charge the Legion 5i Pro while in use, but I was mistaken. What made me think that was the power/charging LED above the rectangular power port would flash (indicating slower charging; what I had thought meant no charging) on either a 3060 and 3070 Legion 7i laptop, but on a Legion 5i Pro with 3050 graphics the charging LED stayed on (no flash).
    
    Still not clear exactly why that's the case or what it might mean, but the essential takeaway here is that the 100-watt GaN charger charges all of these while in normal use (meaning not while gaming or other intensive work). Would assume that it would also slow down the rate of discharge during heavier use, but can't say that definitively.
Roland

November 27, 2021 at 8:33 am

Considering where this 7i benchmarks for gaming at 1600p native resolution, I wonder how using an external 1440p monitor would affect frame rates and thermals in comparison. I am inclined to think frame rates would increase, but if lower resolution moves processing to the CPU and the vapor cooling is engineered to dissipate heat more for the GPU than CPU then a hotter CPU could potentially thermally throttle the GPU?

Reply
- Andrei Girbea
  
  November 27, 2021 at 10:57 am
  
  I'll pitch in. Temperatures should be similar and the gain in framerates rather minimal, around 5% or so. But, if you close the lid and put the laptop in a vertical stand, I'd expect the temperatures to improve.
  
  You could check out this article on the L5P, where we tested both 1600p and external 1440p, and included temperature/perf logs for both cases: https://www.ultrabookreview.com/51617-lenovo-legion-5-pro-review-rtx3060/#a5
  
  Reply
Andrew C

November 30, 2021 at 3:10 pm

Fantastic review and I am on the verge of ordering one of these! I notice that the max RAM is listed as being 32 GB, which seems a bit low given the processor and HM570 chipset (the Gigabyte Aero 17 YD, for example, has the same chipset and processor and supports 64 GB). My work laptop is a basic Lenovo ideapad 310 with 24 GB of RAM working fine when the max is listed as 16 GB. I don't suppose you have tested your laptop with 64 GB of RAM, have you? I plan on using it for gaming, but also for video editing and some CAD work, so the extra RAM would make a big difference.

Reply
- Andrei Girbea
  
  November 30, 2021 at 11:28 pm
  
  64 GB should work. Just make sure to read some reviews and Reddit posts for the exact memory that others have installed, to avoid any compatibility surprises.
  
  Reply
  - Andrew Clifford
    
    December 1, 2021 at 12:17 am
    
    Thank you! I found the Reddit posts after I posted my question (should have googled first!!), so I went ahead and ordered. Now for 3 impatient weeks!!!
Tom

January 4, 2022 at 4:37 pm

How to stretch gaming picture vertically to get rid of black bars up and down? Some games don't suport 16:10 proportions. I'm ok with vertically stretched (deformed) objects.

Reply
- Derek Sullivan
  
  January 4, 2022 at 6:35 pm
  
  You could just set the in game resolution to a 16:9. Most of the time it stretches it automatically
  
  Reply
Thijs

January 20, 2022 at 9:15 pm

Hi Derek, Super review!

Question: do you know if I would be able to connect 3 external monitors (each 2560×1440) to the legion 7, and have the laptop lid closed while using those 3 monitors? (for a work at home setup). Any suggestions as to what dock or converter cables would be needed? (I would be aiming for the intel I7 model with RTX3080).

Thanks!

Reply
- Derek Sullivan
  
  January 23, 2022 at 3:22 am
  
  The laptop is fine to use with the lid closed. You might have to lid the lid to wake it though – I never messed with the wake from USB option and the power button is on the inside. It only requires a slight lift though and you can close if right back when it boots. As for three monitors, I have never tested this. I know there are enough outputs and theoretically they should work fine. But you'd have to rely on using both the left and rear USB-C as thunderbolt connections. These all should support QHD fine but their ability to go above 60hz is unknown to me. Thunderbolt 4 "should" be compatible though.
  
  Reply
  - Thijs
    
    January 29, 2022 at 5:50 pm
    
    Thanks for the feedback!
Csebák Richárd

February 16, 2022 at 1:51 pm

when will be this configuration available with rtx 4080?thanks a lot.

Reply
- Andrei Girbea
  
  February 16, 2022 at 3:06 pm
  
  that chip is not coming anytime soon.
  
  Reply
Thomas

February 16, 2022 at 7:34 pm

Thank you very much for this review. I'm upgrading from my 6 year old MSI GTX980M laptop. i'll buy the Legion 7i but I have 2 questions that I hope you will answer.

1. Can I play Cyberpunk, Elden Ring, Starfield, Tales of Arise, Elder Scrolls Online on max settings in native resolution?

2. How will FPS be in the above games if I connect an external (27 inch, 2K) monitor to the laptop?

3. Will this laptop burn down if I play 4-6 hours on it daily for years or is it designed to handle that?

Have a good day.

Reply
- Andrei Girbea
  
  February 16, 2022 at 9:28 pm
  
  We haven't tested those games. This is a well-cooled laptop and it should age well
  
  Reply
bonsi

May 11, 2022 at 4:30 pm

Thanks for posting such an informative article. It’s to the point and chock-full of content. I feel like I went from noob to expert in a few minutes!

Reply
cam

May 15, 2022 at 6:09 am

64 GB should work. Just make sure to read some reviews and Reddit posts for the exact memory that others have installed, to avoid any compatibility surprises. thanks for sharing this article.

Reply
cam

May 17, 2022 at 6:07 pm

I can also confirm there's a MUX on all the Legion models and configurations, and the USB-C DP hooks into the dGPU. thanks for sharing this article.

Reply
Kyle

June 30, 2022 at 11:05 pm

Hi there going to buy my first gaming laptop due to working away a lot and setting up the xbox every time isn’t cutting it for me. Trying to learn and do some research before diving in head first and I like this one I think. I have found another laptop for a Similar price but with newer i9 processor and 3080ti but it’s a 17” median erazor x30. Struggling to find reviews for them in English there’s a few in German but no use. I’m wondering if it may have trouble staying cool as it seems to be a cheaper built Lenovo effectively. Any help would be much appreciated cheers

Reply
- Andrei Girbea
  
  July 1, 2022 at 8:47 am
  
  I've no experience with that chassis, but you can use Google Translate on those German articles.
  
  That's a barebone design and it could also be sold in other markets as XPG, Vapor, XOTIC, or Eluktronics. perhaps you can try and figure out the equivalents from those brands, and find some reviews that should help.
  
  Reply
Olivia

December 6, 2024 at 4:37 pm

I can also confirm that all Legion models and configurations have a MUX, and the USB-C DP connects to the dGPU. Thanks for sharing this article!

Reply

Lenovo Legion 7i review (Gen 6 16ITH6 model – Core i9, RTX 3080)

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