Specifications
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX, 8 cores, 3.3 – 4.6 GHz
- RAM: 32 GB DDR4, 3200 MHz
- Storage device: 1TB M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD (up to 2TB maximum)
- Video card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Notebook 16GB GDDR6 VRAM
- Display: 16″ IPS, 2560 x 1600 (16:10) @ 165Hz, 500 nits, HDR support
- Dimensions (H × W × D): 23.5 x 356 x 260 mm
- The weight: 2.5 kg
Equipment and design
Like all of the brand’s premium laptops, the Legion 7 comes packaged in an optional black box. In addition to the laptop itself in a black case made of thin soft fabric, it contained a branded envelope with a promotional card and a couple of stickers, as well as a short booklet with basic key combinations for controlling performance, backlighting and other functions.
A huge 300W power supply is housed in a separate compartment in the main outer box. The Legion 5 Pro from one of our previous reviews was equipped with the same. Not the most portable solution, but absolutely justified in terms of performance – no fading, frame rate drops and other “joys” of insufficient power.
The design is a classic Legion one, which we have written about more than once in our reviews of other brand laptops. Strict forms, slightly chopped lines, a small “heel” with a large block of ports behind the cover with a screen, the Legion inscription with backlight in the letter O on the cover. The case is aluminum, stylish “storm grey”. The screen bezels are thin, in the upper part there is a small influx with a camera.
Screen and sound
The screen is also familiar from the Legion 5 Pro, a gorgeous 16-inch IPS display with a 16:10 aspect ratio, 165Hz refresh rate, and 500 nits of brightness. It again pleases with excellent color reproduction, the complete absence of color distortion at any viewing angle, good response time (5 ms between black and white, 3 ms between shades of gray), as well as support for G-Sync, FreeSync (for the second built-in Radeon graphics card) and HDR .
High-quality acoustics from Harman are responsible for the sound – 2 speakers with a power of 2 W, which sometimes even hint at good bass. For control, you can use special software from Nahimic, which allows you to optimize the sound in various modes of use (games, movies, music) and even set up virtual surround sound.
Keyboard, connections, autonomy
The keyboard has traditionally been and remains one of the Legions’ strongest points. Naturally, the flagship model cannot be an exception – and we are once again delighted with the excellent TrueStrike membrane with precise key actuation, large arrows, complete prevention of phantom clicks, a full-fledged numeric keypad and convenient FnLock, which brings real pleasure when typing – and every time you press it in general.
Above the keyboard is a round power button with an LED performance mode indicator – blue for quiet, white for optimal, and red for maximum. Under the keyboard is a left-shifted touchpad without physical buttons with excellent sensitivity and support for gesture control.
There is also a backlight that can be customized. By default, several RGB modes are supported and a pleasant bluish monochrome color, to which an LED strip along the lower front of the case and ventilation grilles have been added. The available modes are switched by the Fn + Space key combination, for additional customization, you can install the iCUE application from Corsair, collaborating with Lenovo.
One of the nice features of the laptop – a large number of connections. Legion 7 is devoid of thoughtless “striving for the future”, and USB-C does not replace, but complements the classic full-sized ports, for which peripherals still prevail. As a result, the laptop received three USB-A 3.1 Gen 2 and three USB-C, one of which is combined with DisplayPort.
In addition to USB, the laptop is equipped with an HDMI output, an RJ45 port for wired internet, and a 3.5mm headphone/microphone combo jack. Almost all ports are located on the back, on the side panels there are only an audio jack and one USB-C on each side. Wireless connections support WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.1.
A 720p webcam is enough for video calls, but for streaming it’s still better to use a separate one. There is no physical shutter – instead, to protect privacy, you can use a special switch located on the right panel next to one of the USB-C ports.
The official website claims absolutely fantastic autonomy – more than 7 hours. With all due respect to Lenovo, this is a very optimistic value based on laboratory data. If you do at least something on a laptop, the charge is enough for a maximum of a couple of hours – in half an hour of video chat in Telegram and an hour of video streaming on KinoPoisk, I have only 12 percent of the full charge left. There is no need to talk about serious games without being connected to the mains – a powerful video card cannot provide sufficient performance without adequate power, it is not for nothing that the laptop is equipped with a 300 W power supply.
Gaming Performance
When it comes to performance, the Legion 7 rushes right off the bat – you just need to remember to connect the laptop to the network and turn on the performance mode with the “red light”. In the synthetic Time Spy from 3DMark, the result exceeded 12 thousand points – only the stationary T7, also Legion, showed above.
Even the mobile version of the RTX 3080 graphics card with 16 GB of VRAM, which is more than enough for loading textures, provides a stable playable frame rate in the most demanding games at maximum settings with ray tracing in the display’s native 2.5K resolution.
Control at these settings shows a result just above 30 frames per second. But it is enough to enable DLSS, and we will confidently exceed 60 FPS. Another option is to switch to aspect ratio-adapted FullHD (1200p) resolution. Visually, the differences in image quality will be almost imperceptible due to the small screen size, and the frame rate will also be above 60 per second.
Cyberpunk 2077 uses DLSS automatically, but it’s much more noticeable in terms of drop in image quality. But even here, at 2.5K resolution, the game showed 50-55 FPS on “impressive” settings with full ray tracing without visible signs of upscaling in the form of “soapy” textures. In FullHD, the result was 60-70 frames per second, also without any problems with the image.
Halo Infinite, 2.5K
Halo Infinite Full HD
Halo Infinite does not support tracing, which is why it was the only game that managed to fully exploit the potential of the screen in terms of refresh rates – after all, in competitive shooters this is the most important thing. Stable 70+ frames per second in 2.5K resolution and 120-130 in FullHD is just fine for a laptop.
It is worth noting the excellent work of the cooling system – the maximum heating of the video card was 83 degrees, and after quite a long time under load. Basically, the temperature was kept in the range from 70 to 80 degrees. And all this – with a noticeable, but quite acceptable noise level, much closer to the sounds of rain than to a plane taking off.
Verdict
The flagship Legion 7 continues to hold the brand’s highest standard of performance and quality – in fact, it can be called the pinnacle of everything Lenovo has done in the gaming laptop space. A beautiful screen, heavy-duty hardware by laptop standards that allows you to play the most demanding games “on ultra”, a great keyboard, a number of ports that are not inferior to some desktops – this laptop will appeal to even the most sophisticated gamers.
A couple of years ago, the current Legion 7 would have seemed fantastic, but Lenovo has spoiled us so much that you start to take it for granted. Unfortunately, the disadvantages have not gone away – a huge power supply, limited autonomy and an astronomical price. But we don’t buy gaming laptops for endless battery life, do we?
