It's been a long time since I've tested a
Lenovo laptop, and I have no idea how this happened, given that they were still number
1 in the world for PCs last year, with a market share of almost 25%! So today I decided to rectify this situation,
and bring to the spotlight a Legion Pro 7, 2023 edition. So without further ado, allow me to introduce
Lenovo's latest flagship, a laptop equipped with the latest and most powerful components
in the world. And more than that, it supposedly comes not
with one, but two artificial intelligence chips... is this a smart gaming laptop?! What on earth could that mean? Well, let's find out! One of the main reasons why major integrators
like Lenovo, Dell, HP or Asus launch a new generation of laptops almost every year, is
probably also the fact that component manufacturers like AMD, Intel and NVIDIA keep rolling out
new stuff. So the eighth generation of Lenovo Legion
Pro 7 takes advantage of all the best they have to offer at this time, and the configuration
that came to us for testing, not surprisingly, is the coolest one: Intel Core i9-13900HX,
RTX 4090 Laptop and 32GB DDR5 RAM. But these are just the basics, so I want to
dive deeper into the features of this model and see how it fares from top to bottom. I don't have much to say about the processor;
you already know it, it's a beast with 24 cores and 32 threads, and in Turbo Boost it
reaches 5.4GHz. Laptop processors have come to compete in
specifications and even performance with desktop ones and here, I really don't think there
are any bad choices... especially from a certain price point upwards. The story repeats with the graphics card. It's not a desktop model, obviously, but it
is an RTX 4090 Laptop with a 175W TGP, which is the most powerful version that is actually
150W, and those 25W belong to what NVIDIA calls Dynamic Boost. With such a platform, Lenovo could not go
wrong, and all they had to do was to choose some balanced components for the rest. So we come to the RAM: 32GB DDR5 at a speed
of 5,600 MT/s in dual-channel configuration - meaning both memory slots are occupied,
which means a future upgrade will require replacing the modules, not filling empty slots. But I prefer this anytime over a single module,
which is usually in poor condition. At least this way, you know you have a capable
DDR5 RAM kit, in laptop format, which you can sell if needed to finance the purchase
of a 64GB kit. We're not doing badly on the storage side
either. In maxed-out configuration, Lenovo Legion
Pro 7 comes with up to 2TB of storage, in the form of two 1TB SSDs. The configuration at hand comes with a single
such SSD, but upon quick inspection we discover that no compromises were made on this front
either. We have an OEM distribution of Samsung 980
Pro, so the performance is similar. This 1TB version uses the PCIe 4.0 interface
and can reach up to 7,000MB/s read and 5,100MB/s write speeds. This is not bad at all, and beyond this point
I don't think you need to go - especially on a laptop, where cooling is always a headache,
so a PCIe 5.0 SSD could only make things worse when it rises towards 90 degrees. And this is the basic configuration of the
new Lenovo Legion Pro 7 flagship, in its eighth coming to Earth. The manufacturer did not compromise, and from
this perspective, we can compare this model with the bigger and better ones from manufacturers
like Republic of Gamers - you know, those Strix SCARs that cost four thousand euros. And even that's not far off, but about the
price and how much it's "worth", we'll discuss further down. And now let's talk about picture and sound,
and at this point I think you already know how much I dislike small screens. Even on the 16-inch Macbook Pro that I work
on every day, I often have a second monitor connected so I can spread out comfortably. But I can't help but appreciate the direction
that gaming laptop manufacturers and others have taken. The new models mostly come with taller screens,
with a 16:10 aspect ratio. This means it steals a bit from the old bottom
bezel to increase workspace. It's not as if you gain much, but on laptop
screens with limited space, any plus is welcome. The Lenovo Legion Pro 7 has a 16/10 IPS screen
with a 16" diagonal. Thanks to the extra height, instead of 1440p,
the resolution is 2560 x 1600. The refresh rate of the panel is 240Hz, and
for a laptop screen, it's incredibly bright at 500 nits. They say it also knows HDR, even if we're
talking about the HDR400 standard, but I can no longer be satisfied with that after seeing
how HDR should look and work on televisions every day. But let's say it's a nice addition for that
handful of people who care about it. But even this screen doesn't seem out of the
ordinary, once you spend a few hours in games and general use, like work or... porn? You'll realize that everything is extremely
smooth and the image looks very good. It doesn't boast Pantone certifications and
other such fancy names, but it doesn't need them - I for one liked it and I'm convinced
you'll agree with me once you lay your eyes on it. In gaming, it performed very well, images
moving extremely fluidly even in titles that didn't reach 240 FPS. This is due to the support for NVIDIA G-Sync
and anything over 60 frames per second moves super smoothly, and what climbs over a hundred
will feel even better. Plus, with such a configuration, games like
Valorant, CSGO, LOL and other eSports titles like these will run without problems at over
240 frames with native resolution. The sound is rich and decently powerful, so
at maximum volume you won't have too much distortion, but you won't bother your neighbours
too much either. However, I was able to find some oddities
in the sound, such as a strange fluctuation in volume - sometimes it sounds louder, sometimes
it sounds quieter, and this was true on multiple tracks. Is it from the driver? I have no idea. However, it might be a defect of our review
sample, as I have seen Lenovo before, but not something like this. The speakers are from Harman, they are called
Super Linear and they have 2W each. With an RMS of 4W, it's not something wow,
but for a YouTube, a game or a background music while working, they do their job. And the job gets better when you switch to
headphones, as the Lenovo Legion Pro 7 comes with SteelSeries Nahimic technology. With its help, the sound is specially adapted
for gaming - it might not be interesting for another type of user, but I noticed some changes
in the sound stage. The footsteps are heard more heavily, the
gunshots from CSGO sound powerful and are easy to identify in space, and the background
sounds and other auditory nonsense are almost completely eliminated. The Lenovo Legion Pro 7 also scores well on
the connectivity area, and this is especially due to the design, so I decided to include
them together in this review. They can go one without the other, but together
they make this laptop a darn machine. Many manufacturers have given up on it, but
Lenovo decided to keep a "tail" on this laptop, even if it looks more old school for two big
and broad reasons: 1. not to stumble over peripherals on the sides
and 2 not to evacuate heat towards the screen, something I've said over and over again that
annoys me the most. This tail extends even behind the display,
and has several roles. First, it offers more space for the cooling
system, so the radiators that will take care of evacuating heat from the chassis are found
in the corners on the top left and right. Between them, there is a space that houses
most of the connectivity, and we have as follows: Ethernet RJ-45, USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 (with DisplayPort
1.4 and power delivery up to 140W), HDMI 2.1, 2x USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 and power supply. It's true though, they kept some things on
the sides. On the left, we have two ports: a USB 3.2
Gen 1 Type-A and a Thunderbolt, and on the right, we have a combo jack for headphones
and microphone, a physical switch that deactivates the camera and another USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-A. The Lenovo Legion Pro 7 comes standard with
wireless connectivity, so we have Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.1. I said I wouldn't do it because I'm not too
interested, but look how this laptop forces me to talk about the camera. More precisely, about the inclusion of Tobii
Horizon technology. It's a special webcam that detects your head
movements to determine which direction you're looking. This started as a gimmick that we find from
time to time in the menu of some games, I think I last saw it in Assassin's Creed. Over time, however, it has become an interesting
tool for an entirely different reason: security. So now it serves as an auto-dimming sensor
when you're not in front of the laptop, tracks and optimizes the time the screen is active,
only displays notifications with the user's face, and of course, serves for facial unlocking. Another thing I noticed as soon as I got my
hands on the laptop is the keyboard. I'll say it short and from the start: I don't
like it. It's soft, mushy, presses weirdly and doesn't
feel very good. But let's also note the PRO things, like the
box I found in the laptop package. This hides a tool inside that allows you to
change the keys, along with four keys and some switches. In addition, each key is individually lit,
and Legion Spectrum allows you to modify the RGB however you want, with effects and all. The touchpad is decent, not too big, not too
small. I would have liked to see a slightly larger
surface, but on the other hand, I don't see the point on a gaming laptop where most users
will use a mouse or controller. And all these, the keyboard, the pad, the
camera, and all the other features I've talked about so far, are embraced by an entirely
new chassis or rather, from new materials. Lenovo Legion Pro 7 has an environment-friendly
case, the kind that cares about the environment. So we have 50% recycled aluminum in the composition
of the laptop's underside cover, and the upper part of the case is made up of 30 percent
post-consumer recycled plastic - meaning once upon a time, your new gaming laptop was a
food container, a Coca Cola bottle, or a Logan bar picked up from the ocean. The case is solid, seems durable and I like
the finish, even though it seems predisposed to collect dirt. It doesn't flex in places where it shouldn't,
and I didn't find any area that falls short of expectations: the joints are ok, everything
is well finished, it doesn't rattle... it's like a grandma used it to look at recipes. Despite all this, it feels a bit "cheap" to
the touch, even though it's very solid, it doesn't instantly inspire me with its several
thousand euro price tag. Now, let's get to the performance. I did the same thing with the laptop, I set
it to Performance profile and started testing. And it's as I expected: flawless! The main "culprit" is the hardware configuration. But in addition to brute power, the Legion
Pro 7 also comes with some tricks that I don't remember seeing implemented so elegantly on
any laptop. It's equipped with two AI chips that learn
your usage routine. Over time, the laptop will understand how
and what you use it for and will know how to better optimize the hardware resources
at its disposal. Do you work in Excel daily with music playing
on Spotify? The graphics card will remain idle, while
the processor will switch to a low consumption mode, suitable for running these applications. When you open a game, the processor and graphics
card come back from vacation, flex their muscles and run the latest appearances at maximum
settings. Let's start with the first additional chip,
LA1, and its main feature called Q Control. But what does it do? It lets you overclock like crazy, almost like
on a PC, through a Custom Mode. In total, you have four profiles: Custom,
Extreme, Performance, and Balance. They are ordered in descending order, and
it's quite evident from the names, what each one does. Then we move on to the second chip, where
the true AI characteristics are. It's called LA2-Q and it's the part about
learning I was telling you about. As you use the laptop normally, the algorithm
learns which applications you run most often and monitors resource consumption, so it will
know what to allocate per application when you use it. According to Lenovo, performance is improved
by up to 15 percent. In more serious applications, like 3D Mark,
the performance uplift is smaller, but those 8 extra percent come for free. Who am I to complain? We're still at the beginning with these kinds
of technologies and we have to be patient. Sure, on the other hand, an AI that tracks
your movements on PC... I don't know how some more paranoid people
will react to such an offer. But until these technologies grow let's take
a look at the actual results of a laptop equipped with the "humble" 13900HX and RTX 4090. To give you an idea of what Lenovo's flagship
can do, I'll first present the results from synthetic tests, starting with Cinebench R23,
where the Intel Core i9-13900HX shone with a single core result of 1942 points and no
less than 24328 points in the test that uses all 24 cores. The processor in this Lenovo Legion Pro 7
is about as powerful as a mid-range desktop processor with K at the end, like i5 13600K,
a processor that scores very well on PC, and that's something! Then we move to 3D Mark, where I chose three
tests. The current configuration scored 3816 points
in Speed Way, while a desktop configuration with RTX 4060 Ti and Ryzen 9 7950X scored
3207. In Time Spy Extreme, the laptop scored 7743
points, while the same desktop RTX 4060 Ti scored 6287 - a 23% difference in favor of
the video card in the Lenovo Legion Pro 7. And we're left with the Ray Tracing test from
3D Mark, namely Port Royal, where again, the RTX 4090 Laptop takes the lead with a result
of 9628 points versus the 8108 scored by the desktop card. This places the laptop somewhere between the
4060 Ti and 4070 desktop versions, mind you. Let's see how these synthetic performances
translate into gaming, and I tried Cyberpunk 2077 and the old CSGO. We have one of the hottest AAA games of the
moment, alongside one of the most popular multiplayer titles on Steam. And we start with CD Projekt's game, and at
the native resolution of 2560 x 1600 and the preset on Ultra, without DLSS or FSR, I got
an average of 63 frames per second without any stuttering. So the laptop RTX 4090 has some difficulties
at this resolution - there's no question of Ray Tracing. That's unless we activate DLSS. But since we have a latest-generation card,
this means we can also use DLSS 2 and 3. So I switched to the Ray-Tracing Ultra graphic
preset and first activated DLSS 2 on the Balanced setting. The average dropped to 60 frames per second,
but again, without stuttering, without problems. Once I switched to DLSS 3, I understood why
NVIDIA insists so much on this. With the Balanced setting and Frame Generation
activated, the FPS average went up to 90. Visually, I didn't notice anything wrong,
but there were some strange moments presumably due to Frame Generation, which currently isn't
perfect, but still does a very good job. And finally, I left CSGO, as people always
ask how it runs on every laptop. With this one, with settings on High and native
resolution, I saw an average of 520 FPS in a competitive match on Inferno and a few benchmarks
from the Workshop. That is, it satisfies without any difficulty
the specifications of the panel, constantly running at over 240 FPS. If you put it to 900p stretch like the smart
guys, you don't even need an FPS counter. And with so much performance, you almost forget
that you have a laptop in front of you. Well, or you could forget if it didn't compete
with the air conditioner when the cooling system kicks in. And even though it annoyed me at first, once
I watched the temperatures, I shut up and suddenly forgot that it was whirring at me. Under heavy load, the processor reached a
maximum temperature of 97 C. This is a normal temperature and even better,
it is two degrees below the throttle point, so the Core i9-13900HX was able to reach the
Boost frequency of 5.4GHz without any problem, and stayed there for a while. But the video card's situation is more interesting. So we're dealing with an RTX 4090 Laptop of
175W, that is 150W standard + 25W for Dynamic Boost. "After playing, I surfed the net, watched
4K jungle videos on YouTube, and checked out some news sites. The maximum temperature recorded by the video
card was 66.8 C on the core. The Memory Junction temperature, which is
usually more critical, did not exceed 84 C, while the Hot Spot of the card rose to 72.8
C. And for your information, the card kept its promise and managed to reach a frequency
of 2.490MHz. These temperatures are very good for a laptop,
which means we have serious cooling: the fans have 0.1mm thick blades and manage to exhaust
a lot of air. They are just as good on the intake, and as
long as you keep the laptop on a flat surface, like a desk, you won't have any problems. It's clear they did everything possible to
keep the temperatures in check, they used liquid metal instead of thermal paste for
the heat transfer between the processor and the cooler. And to make it even more beautiful, this model
has a vapor chamber cooling system on both the processor and the video card. Only top models, with a video card no less
than RTX 4080, get this treatment. If you choose a model with RTX 4070, those
will have a vapor chamber only on the processor. Although I've tested a lot of laptops in the
first half of this year, this is one of the few that really impressed me. Legion Pro 7 combines a powerful and very
balanced hardware platform with a good screen, a simple but solid construction, and a pretty
smart design. It has plenty of ports for various accessories,
it's very powerful and uses the hardware at its maximum capacity. And on top of all this, it comes with that
layer of artificial intelligence. Sure, at this moment, the AI trick is more
for bragging rights. But let's see what these things look like
in a year or two. What else do we have left? Oh, the price. On the manufacturer's website, a Legion Pro
7 like the one I tested today is around $3,300. I know it's a lot, as much as a really powerful
desktop, but if you really want a laptop, then this model is in pole position. I wouldn't overlook it if I was looking for
a high-end gaming laptop. Now let me know in the comments what you think. How do you see this AI gimmick on laptops,
does it have a future or is it just another gimmick? What do you think about the configuration
and the price? This was the Lenovo Legion Pro 7 2023, that
was today's video, and while you're here, subscribe to Techniqualities. Until next time, happy gaming!
