I’ve never been a fan of gaming PCs, but this laptop changed my perspective for the better

ZDNET Highlights

• The Legion Pro 7i (2025) is a top-tier gaming laptop that’s on sale right now for $2,450.
• It runs the latest gaming games effortlessly, offers premium power, and has a 16-inch OLED display that commands your attention.
• In addition to the high price, all the hardware runs hot, consumes power, and has large, bulky power supplies.

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Lenovo Legion Pro 7i The Legion is the latest gaming laptop in the series. It’s accessible at 16 inches and puts all its stat points into the quality of the display and hardware.

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The result is a sophisticated laptop with dramatic (but fully customizable) RGB lighting, a sleek form factor, and a stacked set of hardware. It starts with 32GB of RAM (upgradeable up to 96GB), 2TB of storage, a 24-core Intel Core Ultra 9 processor, and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 GPU.

All this, combined with the 16-inch 500nit, 240Hz refresh OLED display, makes for not only a competitive gaming machine, but also a capable workstation for pro creatives, animators, and designers.

A design with impressive presence

The Legion Pro 7i is certainly heavy, but for a gaming laptop, it’s actually on the sleek side. This puts it kind of in the middle of the road: it’s a little big to be something you’ll want to move around with regularly, but it’s certainly not limited to a desk.

Unfortunately, the matte black finish is a fingerprint magnet, like many of Lenovo’s other laptops (ahem – ThinkPads), which bothers me if you like it, which will force you to keep a cloth on hand. However, all of this is mitigated by the keyboard lighting, which can be adjusted per key to be as subtle or loud as you wish.

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The gamer aesthetic is in full effect here, with a dramatic single strip of light on the front of the clamshell that reflects off the surface and looks absolutely amazing. The diamond-shaped fan exhaust on the back is highlighted, and the “Legion” logo pulsates with the rest of the effects.

The full-sized keyboard feels premium and well-made rather than being standard, with prominent arrow keys, a reasonably sized number pad (and a subtle branding on one letter key in particular). The keystroke feels good, and the trackpad – aligned on the space bar – is adequate and functional.

The power button in the top center of the keyboard serves as a visual indicator of your performance profile: cool is blue, balanced is white, and performance is red. (It’s called Silent Mode because of the fan and because muting the laptop automatically disables the lighting effects.)

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All of these elements are individually customizable in the Legion app and can be turned off completely if you need to save battery power or keep a low profile in the office or coffee shop.

That being said, this isn’t exactly the type of laptop you’ll want to bring to the small bistro table at your neighborhood coffee shop. It’s big, it’s heavy (5.67 pounds), and it’s power-thirsty. Even if you have access to a nearby outlet, the 400W power brick is so massive that it’s essentially equivalent to the weight of another laptop.

It’s chunky, yes, but it’s also powerful – delivering 70% battery power in just 30 minutes, which is a surprisingly fast amount for a huge 99.9Wh battery. The charger connects via a proprietary port on the left side of the laptop (not the back), which some people will find more convenient, but it’s a bit of a bummer if you’re using the laptop as a desktop and are accustomed to having your connections on the back.

In terms of other I/O, the laptop has two Thunderbolt 4 ports, an HDMI and USB-A on the left, two more USB-As, a headphone jack, and a 2.5GB Ethernet jack. If you don’t want to plug the laptop directly into your modem, it also supports Wi-Fi 7 for faster connectivity.

all about scenery

The display of the Legion Pro 7i is one of its best features. It’s bright and vivid and absolutely pops at 500 nits and a 240Hz refresh rate. It features 100% sRGB color gamut, 93% Adobe RGB, and 100% P3 and rotates with deep, inky blacks and rich neons.

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The 16-inch display is non-touch and has WQXGA resolution at a 16:10 aspect ratio. It is powered by the GeForce RTX 5080 GPU and offers a diverse set of usage possibilities for gamers, creatives, animators, and designers. Just note that this is a particularly bright display, and it will reflect light sources depending on its position, especially when it comes to how dark the blacks get.

Display: Start boss fight

I don’t want to mince words here. This thing is a beast. The Legion Pro 7i is designed to tear apart the most demanding titles out there at the moment, and the hardware on board makes it well equipped to do so. The Nvidia GeForce 5080 GPU paired with a 24-core Intel Core Ultra 9 results in responsive, fast performance in “Cyberpunk 2077” and “Baldur’s Gate 3,” with no lag in older titles.

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That being said, all this powerful hardware does get hot. The temperature can easily reach 100 degrees Celsius during intense gaming sessions, which is too hot for continuous use. In Performance mode, the fans can run at maximum power, which reduces temperatures significantly, but you’ll still have to hear them cranking.

The cooling system is efficient, expelling hot air out the back and channeling a minimal amount of heat through the front to the keyboard. However, the fan does take some getting used to, as it remains on even during normal daily tasks like multitasking and web browsing.

However, with its well-designed keyboard, gorgeous display, and great performance, playing games on the Legion Pro 7i is a joy. This experience extends to audio, as its speakers are above average for laptops. Two are facing up and two are facing down, resulting in a sound that’s a bit more enjoyable and fuller than the shallow sound profile of most laptops.

In terms of benchmarking, the Legion Pro 7i proves that it can keep up with impressive numbers, especially in multi-core performance.

gaming laptop warnings

Like any laptop with this amount of hardware, the 99Wh battery is extremely variable. This is not a thin and light CoPilot+ PC with a battery that drains quickly if not turned on. In fact, it drains surprisingly quickly just sitting around, which is something to keep in mind if you turn it off for a day or two and expect it to be ready to turn on again.

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The performance mode you activate will greatly impact how long your battery will last, as well as what you’re doing. For example, I took this laptop to the office and unplugged it to work in Balanced Mode, but found that the laptop could not work on weekdays. Around six hours it reached 1%, and that’s after normal tasks that aren’t particularly demanding.

If you’re talking about gaming, you’ll get about 1.5 hours of game time unplugged, which actually isn’t that bad for a gaming laptop of this caliber. What all this means is that the Legion Pro 7i performs as expected given the hardware on board and the OLED display. Although it’s possible to carry it around, you’ll be forced to keep the charging brick with you as its thirst for power is real.

ZDNET’s shopping advice

Lenovo Legion Pro 7i In more refined, 16-inch form it feels like an 18-inch gaming laptop. I like the display, the luxurious but still attractive build, and the hardware that offers what you want in a gaming laptop: performance.

Finally, Lenovo used a thoughtful design here to compensate for the device’s weaknesses. It runs hot but has a very effective cooling system. It’s incredibly power-hungry, but it charges faster than you might expect.

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The elephant in the room is the skyrocketing starting price $2,600 For 32GB configurations, going up to $3,200 If you want the top-of-the-line GeForce RTX 5090 GPU. I would definitely recommend this laptop to gamers who are looking for a powerful, out-of-the-box gaming laptop that hits all the right notes, as long as it’s within your budget. The Legion Pro 7i is a sophisticated, powerful machine that dares you to run your favorite games at maximum settings and will ultimately leave you feeling worn out.