Lenovo almost made me a hypocrite. Ever since this latest generation of gaming laptops with the Nvidia RTX 40 series graphics chips first landed, I’ve been saying that only a fool would buy a notebook with an RTX 4090 in it. And yet here I am, pining for the Lenovo Legion 9i with just that GPU in it, wishing I had the kind of disposable income that would make a nearly four-thousand-dollar notebook feasible.
Fortunately, you don’t need the RTX 4090 version of this beautiful machine to get the most out of this Lenovo lappy; there’s a fairly more affordable model with an RTX 4080 that will likely deliver almost the same level of gaming performance. And that’s really what this poor nerd’s heart really longs for.
I’ve become a big fan of Lenovo’s gaming laptops since I first got my hands on the Legion 7i Pro with RTX 4080. That’s a smart machine: well-made, understated, affordable and delivers excellent performance for the money, especially since it’s been quite heavily discounted over the past six months.
And it kind of came out of nowhere. Legion laptops weren’t really on my radar until this generation, and they’ve quickly become the machines I recommend to anyone who will listen. Still, if it’s a money-not-object question, I’ve always leaned on the premium feel of the Razer Blade in 14- or 16-inch form factor.
Legion 9i Specifications
CPU: Intel Core i9 13980HX
GPU: Nvidia RTX4090
Memory: 32GB DDR5-5600
Storage: 2TB NVMe SSD
Screen size: 16-inch mini LED
Solution: 3200×2000
Refresh rate: 165Hz
Peak luminance: 1200 nits
Battery: 99.9 Wh
Dimensions: 18.99 – 22.7 x 357.7 x 277.7 mm
Weight: 2.5kg
Price: $3,693 | £3,950
But the Legion 9i may have changed your mind. If I just want the best laptop I can theoretically buy, without the fiscal constraints of my own reality, then this is what my bank balance is spent on. Why? Well, it’s almost the complete package, although really it’s the screen and chassis design that makes the difference for me.
The build quality is actually the first thing you notice, even aside from the flashy carbon fiber composite on the lid this thing feels SOLI D. There’s no noticeable change to the chassis, and it all feels excellently designed and robust, and honestly a pleasure to use full-time. And that composite top layer is also wonderfully tactile, and as individual as your own fingerprints.
What is also quite tangible is the set of white ceramic key caps that are hidden in the box. They may be a little slippery, but they sure do look cool as your WSAD toppers. And the actual keyboard is classic Lenovo fare, in that it’s the best around. The full-size board is great for typing, from the ergonomic shape and size of the keycaps to its depth, and the full-size numeric keypad will always appeal to a particular user.
You alt-code people know what I’m talking about.
It’s also impressively slim for something that can house RTX 4090 laptop silicon. And that’s largely thanks to the cooling design, although arguably less so to what Lenovo ambitiously calls ‘integrated liquid cooling’. Let’s be honest: it’s a slightly larger vapor chamber; there is no radiator in it almost no pump.
What Lenovo has done is create a small loop around the GPU in the laptop, with the heat pipe circulating fluid on top of the VRAM through a small pump. It’s small, quiet… and I don’t really know what the point is if I’m honest. Like I said, there’s no radiator, so it doesn’t really cool the fluid much as it travels the short distance around the hot graphics memory chips and back.
But it’s the rest of the design that provides the extra cooling needed to keep this relatively sleek high-end machine running at top speed – this is the fastest I’ve ever seen a machine run with the RTX 4090. The key to this is the pass-through cooling the dual fans can step in, drawing in air from the bottom and expelling it straight out the top and sides of the chassis.
That’s why the keyboard has been shifted downwards, making room for the ventilated area directly below the screen. This has significantly changed the basic ergonomics of typing on a laptop, but I’ve quickly gotten used to the changed layout and have been comfortably tapping on the usually excellent Lenovo keyboard for all my recent office work. However, that shift has also had an impact on the trackpad, resulting in a fairly minor affair. Which, if you’re trying to work it on the 3200 x 2000 resolution screen, can be a bit tricky. It’s not the most responsive pad either, and I didn’t spend a few frustrating moments scribbling on the smooth surface wondering if it was just my calloused fingers that were to blame.
But I’ll forgive almost anything in the way of crimes against trackpads when the display panel is as good as this. The mini LED screen is nothing short of stunning. It’s super bright and, like the other high-end mini-LED laptop panels I’ve tried, has none of the backlight issues I’ve regularly seen with full-size mini-LED gaming monitors.
Considering its DisplayHDR 1000 rating and the fact that it can reach peak luminance levels of 1,200 cd/m², this thing is beautiful when it comes to HDR content. The colors really pop, and there is depth and contrast in dark scenes. It’s all tough and I’m very much in favor of it.
I can also happily leave HDR enabled in Windows without feeling like I’m sacrificing the color depth of standard SDR content. This is a characteristic of modern laptop screens, such as the Nebula panels in the Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 and the Acer Predator Helios 16, but is taken to the extreme here.
However, that high resolution is a bit double-edged. A bright 16:10 screen is always welcome on the desktop, and I’ve been happily using it as my main work machine for the past few weeks (boiler problems at PCG Towers have resulted in hot-desking away from my desktop PC). But for gaming, even with the most powerful mobile GPU you can buy, those extra pixels absolutely come at a cost in processing.
You’re looking at a drop of around a third in terms of average frame rate going from 1600p to the screen’s native resolution, and when you’re talking about a 16-inch panel the actual difference in fidelity is incredibly difficult to analyze. If all things mini-LED were equal, I would have happily taken the exact same panel as a 2560 x 1600 screen.
And that’s really just my attempt to pick up on errors, because again, on that 16-inch scale you don’t really lose much in terms of fidelity, even by packing in some upscaling to your game settings with FSR or DLSS – as long as you don’t go for the first gen versions of either, or you just run games at a lower resolution.
But if there’s one real flaw that deserves serious mention, it’s the battery life, or glaring lack thereof. Now I’m used to gaming battery life being pretty much worthless in modern high-end laptops, but this takes things to a ridiculous level. With a playing time of only 40 minutes, it becomes completely irrelevant if there is no power socket available. More than any other modern laptop, this is a replacement for a gaming desktop with nothing but an uninterruptible power supply.
I think this is why you get two different chargers in the package: a big 330W boi and another smaller 140W Type-C charger if you want to take it with you. However, that 140W mini brick doesn’t provide enough charge for gaming when plugged in, so it’s more about topping it up.
Battery annoyances aside, the only system that would make me hesitate to heartily recommend the Legion 9i is the excellent Asus ROG Strix Scar 17 X3D, and only because of that excellent cache-rich Ryzen 9 mobile CPU at its heart. The equivalent RTX 4090 version is a little more expensive than the Lenovo one here, but if you’re looking for the best processing and the best gaming performance then the Scar 17 X3D is the most powerful laptop available right now.
It’s just not that desirable.
I know, that’s a rather woolly, completely subjective reduction, but as a complete package the Legion 9i has a lot more to offer. It’s a smarter design where the Scar 17 is just a very classically aggressive Asus ‘gamer’ aesthetic, meaning the Legion isn’t nearly as chunky a device. With the crushed carbon finish of the Lenovo laptop you’d never describe it as subtle, but I’d still be happier popping that open during meetings than the ROG machine.
It also has That screen. The 1440p display in the Asus laptop is fine, but one of my biggest gripes with the Scar 17 is the fact that the 17-inch panel isn’t one of the beautiful Nebula designs that Asus has in its smaller systems. The Legion 9i’s glorious mini-LED screen is superior in every way.
And while the Scar 17 delivers the highest overall gaming performance, the performance difference is very small indeed when running at 1440p or 1600p.
Which all brings me back to this inescapable conclusion: the Legion 9i is the money-no-object-of-desire gaming laptop today. It looks good, it performs well and the screen is stunning. I’d want the RTX 4080 version myself even if I had the money to go for the more expensive option, but for me this well-designed and well-built machine is still Lenovo’s finest hour.