OK, let’s talk about the Lenovo Legion seven. I more in depth than before now. My last full review of the seven. I was not this spec, it was a lower model and it was a good value. I feel good device something I can easily recommend to people. This particular model is not one that I necessarily going to be recommending left and right because it is $3000.00 and it is loaded to the brink with.
The highest, most powerful components in the mobile gaming laptop space. So we’ll go through those specs. We’ll talk about the overall build qual.
Lianhua today in the life looks like so let’s start with specs number one. This display 15.6 inch is 1080p HD are ready. the CPU is an Intel Core I-9 and the GPU is an NVIDIA RTX 2080 Super Max Q and then finally 32 gigs of RAM. So this is definitely loaded and ready to kick some butt.
So I oh, very impressive on the left side you have two USB C ports and a headphone Jack on the right side. A single USB A.
Now also on the sides are cooling vents, right? So you have exhaust on the sides. Those do light up the USB A on the right side also lights up on the back. That’s where the majority of the IO can be found. HDMI, USB, a Ethernet, another USB, a Anna proprietary power plug. There’s also a Kensington lock.
Now the thing about the IO is that since in the majority is in the back, it actually makes it easier for cable management and this might be a repeat of things we’ve heard before, but since not a lot of laptop manufacturers actually do this, it’s still somewhat of a novelty, at least in my opinion. So I want to call that out. I love that Lenovo does that. There’s some little touches.
That Lenovo is baked into this design that I think otherwise goes unappreciated.
So first of all, in the Legion brand, there’s this particular icon that they use over the letter O in Legion, and it’s a why I don’t know where the what the history of the why is. It might be that the previous models, before they had Legion were the Y series. He had the idea pad Y 720 and the Y 920.
That 920 is a beast, by the way. 10 pounds.
Unbelievable great great machine but 10 pounds so anyhow so with this one though Lenovo is kind of baked that icon in different places and the logo itself. So first of all on the hinge right at the ends of each hinge, each side of the hinge, there’s the Y logo, right? On that circle. It’s a nice little touch. I love that they did that.
And then also on the lip of the lid, right where you would put your fingers so you can open up the display. The Legion brand, like the Legion name, is just printed right there, and you can feel it. You can see it. I think it’s a really nice but subtle touch. So now in addition to all those little touches, they also did some really smart design choices. I think putting ports in the back is 1.
Bringing the display closer to the user is also, I think, a nice touch and then the lighting. So the lighting here is not bashful in any way.
You have of course the keyboard lights up. We’ll get to that in a moment, but also there’s lighting around the base. The majority of the base of the laptop. There’s lighting on the vents on the sides, the back, the USB port, there’s lights everywhere, even the Legion. Why I mentioned lights up and glows. There’s also a really cool subtle lighting touch that Lenovo baked into this.
I I what I should do is time it to see how long it lasts but.
Along the back where those ports are.
There’s there’s icons or logos for each of those ports, like the HDMI brand, the USB brand icon there on the top. So when you’re leaning over your laptop to plug those things in, eventually you’ll probably memorize where they are, like muscle memory, but you don’t have to lean all the way over or spin the laptop around to find those ports because they’re labeled.
Field path remember the orientation of course, but hey, you got a 5050 shot, so you’ll figure it out pretty quickly, so I think that’s a nice touch. And what I meant by lighting.
Staying on is that when the laptop is in sleep, it still shows, so it’s a nice little subtle light and you might be wondering about battery life with all these lights and all this power, and that’s a very legitimate question to have. So here’s been my experience thus far. I start my morning around 6:00 AM with my coffee and I’m rocking and rolling, doing some work and.
My morning work routine is primarily email and the Microsoft Office suite and web browsing the battery drains.
Very quickly. I mean, it’s crazy. So within I don’t know an hour my battery will drop 3040%.
That’s substantial. I did a little bit of research and of course the lighting for the keyboard is going to take up a lot of battery power, but it’s not just the fact that there is lighting. The Corsair IQ application, according to some users, is a particular drain on the battery, so I uninstalled it and I did see an immediate.
Performance boost in terms.
Battery, so I’d say it slowed things down by a solid 30%. So instead of dropping 40% in an hour of shopping, more like you know 30% in an hour. Well, that’s definitely a big improvement, but I don’t feel like it’s enough to disable or no longer use that IQ software, so I’ve reinstalled it and I’m looking for another solution to the battery drain.
Because it does seem a little bit strange that this particular model would drain so quickly. You know that GPU should be turned off. It should be using the Intel GPU when I’m just in.
Windows and I. I usually had the brightness down to about 50 or 75% and the keyboard turned off in the morning during that routine. So and hey, it’s a gaming laptop, right? So I’m going to have it plugged in when I’m gaming anyhow, so maybe I shouldn’t baby the battery too much, but if you do want to baby the battery, there is the Lenovo Vantage software that comes preinstalled.
And with that software you can tune several different settings and one of the most important ones in my opinion is the battery. So you can either do rap.
It’s charging, which is very cool, or in addition to that you can have a hybrid mode that protects your battery so it protects it from being over abused, and it doesn’t allow it to charge past 60%. Lenovo is not alone in doing this. Other manufacturers have done it, notably Asus. But hey, it’s there. It’s available to you if you want to use it, and if not you can treat it like any other laptop.
Now, historically when I’ve used Beast mode laptops like this, such as that old 920 I mentioned with a full.
Size 1070 in it I usually just had it plugged in all the time, even my Razer Blade 15. I’ve had it for two years. It’s mostly been plugged in all the time overnight during the day when I’m not home. When I’m using it just plugged in and I’m not a battery expert, but the battery life is still good on that blade, so I’m not too worried about abusing the battery here and just keeping it plugged in keeping IQ installed.
And really taking advantage of what IQ has to offer. So before I stray too far from lighting and talk more about the keyboard and stuff, let’s kind of subtly dip into that.
So you’ll notice this rainbow spiral that’s happening on the keyboard. There’s an, then you probably can’t see it too well, but there’s a spiral happening with everything that can possibly light up on this device. It’s a little bit unfortunate, but without Corsair IQ you can’t in any way adjust the lighting other than dimming it or turning it off. To me, that’s a problem.
I don’t love the spiral, I’m a static color person and if it turns out that hey I changed my tune, I want to just have that extra.
10% or 50% of battery life, so I’m going to kill Corsair IQ. I’d like to at least change this to a static color, but there’s no way to do it that I found. Maybe there is a version of Lenovo Vantage that I could find that will let me do it, but as of now I can’t find any controls for it. Also, even with IQ installed, which it’s installed right now, you can see I’m not logged into the machine.
It’s still in spiral mode, so when you’re logged out I don’t even logged out. I’m just locked out, right? ’cause I have to type in my password even when I’m not in Windows.
Corsair IQ is just not doing anything right, so not functioning. So all of my settings go away and it reverts back to this. Now that might sound like not a big deal, but when you spend $3000 on a laptop, you want that. So as you can see, I’ve logged into my machine and now Boom Corsair IQ has restarted and.
I back to my single color pattern that I wanted from the very beginning, so.
That’s a bit of a miss $3000. A lot of money to spend, and I’m not going to run out and tell you how to, you know, manage your own money, do it your way right. But if I’m spending $3000 on a laptop, the specs makes sense to me, but some of these other things don’t. Right like the Corsair IQ not really being fully integrated into the laptop.
But also there’s no windows. Hello, I love that Lenovo included a sync shutter to cover the camera when it’s not in use.
But please, Windows hello should be a no brainer. I mean there are $700.00 Microsoft laptops they use. Hello, there are inexpensive Lenovo laptops that use Windows. Hello, even my tablet, my Android tablet has a a form of window. As you know facial recognition, so that’s a bit of a miss and I’m disappointed in that.
And I do have a feeling that once my final review comes out, there’s going to be a few of those moments. I’m like for $3000. It should have done this or it should have done that.
And that’s probably the way that any $3000 product you know computer product review is going to go anyway, so it’s not really a diss on Lenovo, it’s just there is a point of diminishing returns, and it probably starts at around $2000 and that’s anecdotal. I’ve reviewed a lot of laptops I’ve bought a lot of laptops, but I haven’t done enough research to really claim that. That’s when the point of diminishing returns kicks in.
Also, it is somewhat relative to the person and their use cases. Some people need very expensive machines for the type of work that they do. If you’re a gamer.
So if you’re like me, I play games maybe 30 minutes to an hour a day.
That’s it, I used to play a whole lot more, but now I’ve got a family and I I work a lot so I don’t really have time for it and most of my gaming time honestly is spent reviewing a laptop or reviewing a game. We do that too here at geeks worldwide. So anyhow, I guess all of that is to say.
The performance you’re going to get from this may not rock your world. Here’s here’s what I have so far to tell you, Witcher 3 using NVIDIA GeForce Experience recommends Settings, which is basically everything on high and 1080P. I’m getting somewhere between 95 and 105 frames per second, and with Assassin’s Creed, Valhalla is closer to 70.
The big difference, though, between those two is that with Valhalla, the fans are, you know they’re loud, and I’m getting somewhere around 51 decibels. In terms of sound and then with Witcher 3, it’s closer to 4948. Sometimes it will ramp up, which is a little bit all over the place in terms of the frames. I mean not all over the place within that range, like 92105, but.
The Valhalla is pretty can.
Listen around 6570 frames per second, but the fans are really going bananas, so it’s not too loud. I mean, it’s a gaming laptop. It’s going to be loud, it’s not allowed. My Razer Blade 15 is. It is 2 years old, but maybe you might think for $3000. I wish I get better performance or for $3000. I wish it were quieter so there’s still some tuning and tweaking that I have to do. I’m still getting used to some of the.
Tweaking capabilities alone of advantage as it relates to this laptop, so again, not final review, not final data, but I’ll leave you with this.
This is actually a really fun laptop to use the keyboard I think is really very comfortable. It mostly on the landing like the Predator by like that in a keyboard. I think design is unique and awesome, and if you are Lenovo and you’re the biggest manufacturer of laptops in the world, you’re probably going to make a spec like this regardless of how big the market is. For something like this.
So I’m not in any way dissing Lenovo for making it. I’m really glad that I have it. I think it’s it’s really fun to use, but the thing I’ll leave you with is more like.
Request if there are particular games that you want reviewed. Let me know. There have been comments on previous videos related to these laptops. These meaning, like you know, higher end gaming laptops. Someone requested Jedi fallen order. I will get you some specs, some details on that. Also doom eternal. I’ll do you right here about Witcher 3 and Assassin’s Creed.
Include those in the final review. If there are other games or synthetic benchmarks that you want done and reported on, let me know even if it’s just for fun, right? You don’t actually plan to buy the laptop, but you just.
Curious, let me know as long as it’s something I can afford to do, I’ll do it and I’d be happy to interact with you guys on that, either in the comments or on Discord server. OK, that was a long video without pausing, so I’m going to go drink some water and I look forward to your comments on this one. Hopefully you found it helpful and I’ll aim to do a final review.
Early in December, so we have a few weeks to have this dialogue and yeah, hope you found it helpful, thanks.