Full Review! Lenovo Legion 7i | Nvidia 2080 Super Max Q and Intel Core i9-10980H

Dec 9, 2020

Alright friends as promised here is the RTX 2080 Super Max Q Equipped Lenovo Legion 7. I this is the top spec that you can buy it’s 3200 dollars. MSRP, although it’s on sale right now for about 2600 dollars and it’s a It’s a beast. It’s based in many ways, it’s a lovely laptop. I really like it. It’s hard to recommend considering the price tag. But that’s to be expected when you start to climb. 

The tier of any manufacturers laptop line. 

I will point out that if you like what you see in this review if the laptops design language and the overall sort of the direction Lenovo put this whole thing together and if all that speaks to you then go get the 2016 model. The RTX 2060 model. I think that’s the better model to get just considering the price or performance comparison. 

And also we’re giving one away in January, so if you’re a member of our insiders program, which just $5 a month. You get discounted a bunch of stores to get a Green Man gaming gold membership and you can enter. 

To win the RTX 2060 version. This laptop big. Thank you to Lenovo for making that possible. Let’s dive in and talk about input output. 

So 2 USB C ports and headphone Jack on the left hand side on the right you get a full size. USB, a now. Both sides have the ventilation as well that lights. It does not light up. But it looks really cool. Nonetheless, on the back is where most of the Magic is happening, you get a full size HDMI 2. 

USB, a ports an Ethernet Jack and the power there’s a yeah, we’ll get into the next thing I was going to say. I’ll save it till the end quirks. There’s a quirk here. If you can’t tell but there’s a quick OK. The vents in the back to light up by the way. 

So specs core I 9 from Intel 10th Gen and the RTX 2080 Super Max. Q that I mentioned before +32 gigabytes of ram gigabytes gigabytes of ramp put all of that together and of course have the 3200 dollar price point. 

But you also have a machine that guzzles power without the Corsair IQ system that came pre installed in this laptop. I was getting about 2 and a half hours of battery life at best, with it. It does climate to more like 3 and a half hours of battery life with you know, some tradeoffs brightnesses almost all the way down the speakers are off. 

And I’m using? 

No lighting on the keyboard and I’m using the Stage 2 out of 4 on the windows battery power, setting so it’s like better battery. I think it was 3 and a half hours, so battery life is not what this laptop is for you want to run your AC adapter. But if you also just want to plug it into your wall 24/7. Then you should install Corsair IQ. If no that makes sense that I refer to a previous video that I made? 

Where I talk about the Corsair IQ affectively it drains power is what it is? 

The other thing that it does is it helps you tune the keyboard. So you can do a whole bunch of different lighting options. With that key but with the keyboard at IQ system so you could have it set to a static color spiral reaction. A whole bunch of different things or you can uninstall it like I have and then built into the hardware are some additional settings holding down function and pressing spacebar. 

Will show you different lighting effects and you can’t customize. These they’re just there. There are there in the hardware stack but you still get cool lighting it won’t? 

Again, you can’t customize any of this any further, the blue color is what you get which means that all the other lighting such as the ground effects as I call them right the under lighting there. We go that in the fans. All of that are going to be blue and there’s nothing you can do about it. 

So if you really want that install Corsair. IQ deal with the battery life. The way it is, but then you get to unlock all this really cool lighting that it has to offer is another piece of lighting. I forgot to mention and that’s right here. 

On the Lenovo Legion logo that why which comes from the Y series laptops of yesteryear. Those also that thing also lights up for you, OK about the keyboard. I love it. I think it’s a fantastic keyboard. It is right now. My very favorite keyboard on any gaming laptop hands down the Acer Predator Triton 300, which is my value King of 2020. 

You probably saw that review from about a week ago that has a very good keyboard. But it’s not as good as this, I think this mush. 

Is perfect it’s a good sound? It’s not too loud? It feels good. I can fly on this keyboard plus you get the included number pad which is really important for me because I spend more time. Working then I do gaming. I have been using this every single day for at least an hour, sometimes working through an entire day just, on this machine. When I can tolerate it depends on my work load for the day. 

But most of my time spent again is working not gaming. And when I’m working. I’m doing things like Excel and office and outlook course, having Microsoft Edge running with tabs galore. 

And it doesn’t skip a beat the core. I 9 in here +32 gigs of ram this thing is a performer for business stuff doesn’t really look like a business laptop, so if you’re worried about that. 

Sorry. But you know, maybe for the foreseeable future going to be doing szum calls anyway. So who cares you know cares, but anyway, you should have pride in what you do I mean. This is my background on when I’m on business calls right now. I’ve got my Zelda everywhere and. 

It’s up to you. 

Some people have confidence in that stuff, some people don’t took me awhile to get used to flexing my gaming. 

Habits. 

OK so next thing is cooling so Lenovo has all this marketing jargon about their cooling. Bottom line is this will peak at about 54 DB before it kind of clocks itself down. I didn’t really experience. That too much is sort of hit 54 at the Max and stayed there with that translates to in real world? 

Turn your volume up to about 22:24 out of 100 in windows before you start to hear your games over the fan. 

That’s only when they’re really cranking and to me, they didn’t crank too much. Too often most of my time. While I did test a variety of games. Most of my time. Gaming was with Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and I feel like Valhalla got about 7075 frames per second most of the time and it was the fans were roaring so I constantly have my volume up. 

But what you can do is you can you can adjust the cooling settings by holding down function and pressing Q Lenovo cultists the queue control 3.0 when you do that you’ll know. 

Is the power button change colors from white to blue to red and depending on the mode you either have no fans. Yeah, fans, turning on when they’re necessary and then fans going bananas, which is the read mode and don’t use that just keep it on auto that’s my recommendation OK gaming performance. So I spent some time with a handful of game starting with the Witcher 3 about. 

95 frames per second in the Witcher 3, which translates to about a 25% improvement over the Witcher 3 on. 

RTX 2060 equipped version of this laptop the 7. I some games. I don’t want to show footage of because I’m terrible at them, Fortnite, about 191, 20 counter strike 140. Assassin’s Creed. I mentioned 70 to 77. Jedi fallen order, which is a great game, but 95 to 100 an card was about 1:15. 

Frames per second and I shouldn’t be showing video that but you gotta you gotta know that I actually played that one. I’m just terrible at it so gaming performances. 

Be good, but it’s not gonna blow you away so for a thousand dollars more over a 2060 in Lenovo line. It’s kind of hard to say go out and buy it. Maybe if you’re really rich. I guess and you just want to have the greatest out there. That’s a good way to go, but you got to really be in love with Lenovo’s design language, which I am I think it’s fantastic, which is a good time to talk about some of the things I didn’t love. 

About this laptop. 

So we have to start with the hinge now. Everyone is complaining about the hinge I should have it a few people have I mean enough that it reached my channel? Which is small people were commenting. 

About the hinge I haven’t had any issues with the hinge the one thing I can tell you is that it doesn’t survive. The geeks worldwide hinge test so you get this thing to about 4 inches and you’re OK. But once you get to add a 3 inch opening you lose it just drops right off now. Of course, with standard settings. This is going to go into sleep mode, something I’ve noticed it’s really hard to translate. 

In under the screen here is the hinges a bit soft, so if I put this in my backpack right. It’s going to be up right like this OK. 

Now watch as I lean so hard to pick up as I lean forward. The display starts to open up see that gap right there starts to open up now, what I’ve notice is sometimes my laptop will turn on in the backpack and I think that’s because the backpack is you know it’s going on my shoulder. 

Where I’m setting it down somewhere and then all of a sudden that? 

It is not upright anymore. It’s tilted and so now the weight of the display or the looseness of the hinge perhaps is causing the laptop to open up and then turn back on even though it’s a slight opening and just overall, this hinges a bit weak. I think it could have benefited from having some magnets along the side. I don’t think just tightening the hinge is going to be enough, but 

In any way you cut it because of the loose hinge experience on this machine. 

II do think that might be part of what people are complaining about in general and it might be the reason my laptop is turning on while it’s in the backpack, which is course not, good for the machine ’cause it to get really warm. There’s fail safes right. The system will turn off presumably if it reaches a temperature. It’s uncomfortable, but anyhow for now, not cool, not a fan of that, but I can live with it and I really think that the pros outweigh the cons in this machine, which is why spending way more time about the pros. 

In the cons, but anyway, you slice it if you can’t live with the hinge in this condition. 

This isn’t what you want to get but if you like the design language. Overall, then of course, you want to go after that 2060 as I mentioned there’s a couple other things that I want to call out that I think are really, really cool and then one more thing that bugs me so on the lip the word. Legion is printed on the aluminum and then there’s a bit of a lip to this here, so you can you know exactly where you’re grabbing? 

Of course, it survives the one hand open test OK. But In addition to that. It says Legion right there, which is such a cool touch. I really like that, it’s a quality thing. 

And then on the hinge this is gonna be hard to pull in as well. On the hinge either side. There’s Lenovo Y logo so that’s another nice little fancy. It’s not embossed or anything, it’s just I don’t know how they did it, but anyway, it’s just right there. I think it’s a really cool. Look and I did that OK. The last thing that sort of bug me. This is gonna be hard to pick up on camera. I’ll probably grab some B roll but. 

Basically on the back of the laptop. I mentioned is where all the ports are so of the 5 ports right HDMI to USB’s Ethernet and power. 

Power is the one that doesn’t light up right now, it’s picking up on camera. These are all lit up right so there’s power. There’s a light and the light is showing the logos for everything but the power power should be lit up. I mean, there is an icon there. It’s just not lit up. I don’t know why it’s that way. Maybe the Bolt placement. I don’t know, but I really wish that Lenovo Would. 

Make the power one light up, too, because I sometimes need to see that in the dark. 

And you showing all the other ones so will not show that one. 

OK that’s everything so I love this laptop. I think it’s very, very good and I don’t want to take anything away. But I also wanted to give you a very comprehensive and in depth look at the machine, particularly considering the feedback that I got from the last video on this which was more of an impressions and tour. I just got in a few days later. I did a video on it. 

That’s a pattern that I’m doing now. I’m taking like this, 9 I&I’ve got this, 15 inch Lenovo Yoga here. I think it’s a 9 something I don’t know I take these and I unbox them and then I do. The video hey. Tell me what you want to know and then I shoot the longer video like this one. So if you have additional feedback on this laptop. Let me know ’cause I’m going to, I’m going to. 

This One South if you have additional questions whether it’s about the life of the hinge or certain games that you want. Benchmark just let me know I will do my best to capture all of that in my next video about it. Until then become an insider and enter to win this laptop with the RTX 2060 unit that will run from January 1st to the 31st this month. We’re giving away Lenovo Chromebook duet. 

Again thanks to Lenovo for that, so you can Sign up today it’s a great Christmas present, and there, you go. Then you can enter to win all these laptops that we give away all the time we’ve given away like. 

5 Grand in laptop since August is pretty amazing alright. Thanks a lot for watching and I appreciate all of your feedback catch on the next one by. 

 

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