Lenovo Legion Pro 7i 13900HX/4080: Function Over Form?

let's go in on YouTube it's Brax Tech again and today I have two Legion devices that I will be doing a comparison with I have the 2022 model here on the right which is running at 12900 HX and an RTX 3080 TI and I have the 2023 model on the left here which is running Intel's 13th gen 3900 HX which is the third highest bin available behind the 13950 and 13980 HX and it's running nvidia's RTX 4080 12 gig which is allowed to run up to a maximum tgp of 175 Watts after Dynamic boost this game configured with 32 gigs of ddr5 5600 megahertz RAM and that's running at jedek 46 CL I believe one terabyte 980 Pro OEM drive it's like a PM 991 or something like that and a 240 hertz QHD 500 nit display it's IPS still running the same resolution just a little bit brighter and a little bit faster same sort of color coverage and everything like that compared to last year's just a bit quicker in terms of refresh rate and response time this one this year is currently retailing for 27.49 as configured at Lenovo as well as B H Photo compared to last year's model which I believe was 3400 from b h and without coupons it was like 4 000 from Lenovo directly which it obviously could be had cheaper but without any coupons those were their respective msrps thank you all right getting right into it let's talk about some of the physical changes that Lenovo has made between these two chassis so the 2022 model definitely has a more premium look when comparing the two the edges are like polished aluminum and they're chamfered the rear exhaust vents are definitely a little bit more polished and premium looking the keyboard deck is aluminum still the trackpad is glass and there's a fingerprint sensor in the power button this year the rear vents are now plastic unfortunately and they have uh I guess that you can consider it more polarizing design probably more gamery less elegant the top and bottom panels are still aluminum but from what I can tell this part the Palm rest and keyboard deck right now plastic though they're very sturdy and they did remove the fingerprint sensor from the power button all pretty unfortunate changes but when you look at it from far away or at a high level they look very very similar and I'm actually a little bit more partial to the darker color on the 2023 model going into ports so the main differences are going to be the removal of some type c for the inclusion of some type A ports so on the 2022 model on the left hand side there was two Thunderbolt 4S on the right hand side there was one Thunderbolt four or excuse me just type c and then the rear actually remains unchanged compared to the two models the 2023 model has the same rear i o I believe the RJ45 Jack was actually downgraded from Two and a Half gig to one gig so that really only matters if you're running fiber at your house but the left hand side sacrifices one Thunderbolts for a type a port and then the right hand side also sacrifices a type c port for one type a port otherwise the i o remains largely unchanged all right so comparing the keyboards and palm rests and trackpad so the 2022 model is has the single color for the entire chassis including the keys themselves it's this Onyx gray color I think they call it the trackpad is glass compared to the 2023 model which I will miss the key travel leaves a little bit to be desired I will say I do prefer the keyboard that's found on the 2023 model it's basically a revised better per key RGB version of the Legion 5 Pro from 2021 and 2022. it is quite nice actually I do enjoy typing on it uh here's a little sound profile for it super loud not super clicky but um it is tactile feels good to type on I really don't have any major complaints for either of them though I do prefer this one the trackpad this year is mylar I will potentially attempt to swap these because they do have the same dimensions according to their like product pages but that'll come at a later date depending on if I decide to keep this unit or not I may go up to a 40 90 model if I do find a good deal on one but other than that they are pretty similar in terms of layouts I can get up to speed pretty comfortably on both of them and I really don't have any major complaints for either of them other than the travel distance on this 1822 model along we have both of the bottom panels popped off for both laptops again right hand side is 2022. left hand side is 2023. so the layout is very similar if not identical outside of a few I would say thoughtful changes both of them are running 99 watt hour batteries that has not changed that is still the legal limit that you can fly with both of them have Gen 4 speed nvme slots here and here the RAM sticks there's two dim slots on both of them in the same spot except 2023 supports 5600 megahertz jet X spec the 2022 model runs at 4 800 megahertz stock the main difference is in cooling so I will bring this up close for you guys to see so the 2022 model as you can see here is running a three-point mount for the CPU now that is not super impactful when they're running PTM 7950 which is that popular phase change material that now Nvidia is using on their Founders cards however the 2023 model is now running Factory applied liquid metal so as you can see there is a warning sticker here that warns you to say please be careful when you disassemble this and customers should not disassemble it the CPU Mount is now running a four point mounting system at Each corner now this is extremely important for even core deltas and to make sure that you don't overheat or have hot spots on your die basically so those two changes are extremely meaningful and extremely impactful for CPU only loads which I'll get into in a little bit and the only other major difference in the cooling solution that I can tell is the fan blade design it looks like they squeezed in some extra blades there that aren't full blades for a lack of a better term it's supposed to probably increase static pressure to get air through the bottom chamber bottom panel a little bit better but other than that those are the main changes I don't see anything other than that that's significant um and plus I'm a big fan of the internal design on both of these I think there's not a ton of wasted space they're pretty easy to access and overall I think it's a great design from both models I think the vapor chamber change on the 2023 one is absolutely huge it's incredible I love it and I'll talk to talk to you guys about that in a little bit here all right so moving on to Performance and benchmarks the pro 7i is absolutely terrifying when it comes to Performance this thing is so fast in relationship to the prior gen I know there's some regressions in terms of design and materials used to build it and some features that are missing but this thing is incredibly fast so starting from top to bottom we have Heaven superposition run at the 4K optimized preset there was roughly a 25 increase in score cinebench which is a AVX CPU workload a 10 minute run and reminder all of these benchmarks will run with a plus 150 core and plus 500 memory uh GPU overclock as well as a negative 75 millivolt core under Volts for both CPUs there is a 39 uplift in a 10 minute run of cinebench R23 now that is absolutely absurd to see any laptop scoring over 30 000 in R23 let alone 33 000 and that is a huge generational uplift almost 40 percent gen over gen for Intel there and the cooling solution also has a lot to do with that which I'll talk about later moving on we have Port Royal which is showing almost a 44 uplift in Ray tracing performance going from roughly 8 500 on the 3080 TI to over 12 000 on the 4080 times 5 which is the combined score of CPU and GPU showed a 34 uplift across uh CPU and GPU scores combined and lastly for fire strike extreme we see a roughly 30 increase and again this is combined CPU and GPU scores which fire strike is largely rasterized so we can obviously see it's less of an uplift versus something like Port Royal and moving forward also we have two game benchmarks one being Modern Warfare two running at 1440p the extreme preset we saw a 28 increase in frame rate there and then for shadow of the Tomb Raider running at 1440p as well at the highest preset without Ray tracing we're seeing a whopping 43.6 uplift in performance now I don't have more games than that I just have this Benchmark Suite in these two which I think are a great representation of both CPU and GPU demands this thing is insane I ca I still cannot get over how fast it is given its price point and it's also very competitive compared to some of the Alternatives such as the G18 from Asus and I think really the rest of the 4080 laptops are well over 3000 at this point so very impressive from Lenovo all right so moving on to dual load stress test I ran Ada 64 and artificially limited both the CPU and GPU to 75 watts and 150 watts respectively which I think should be pretty encompassing of most normal gaming loads not stress tests I ran them both at Max fans both of which settled in at around the mid 50s uh decibels and I measured it about roughly eight inches away from the laptop so it should be pretty representative of what it would sound like and you can compare it to like notebook check or any other you know YouTuber that does sound profiles both of them are not nearly the loudest compared to some offerings from like Acer or MSI such as like the Titan that thing can go well above 60 decibels which is insanely loud um the other thing I wanted to preface is that I equipped the 7i Gen 7 with liquid metal to put it on equal footing to the Gen 8 model I did this to get closer to an Apples to Apples comparison between the two machines obviously PTM is a great thermal interface material but liquid metal especially on Intel based CPUs tends to do that much better usually 8 to 12C so I figured for the purposes of this comparison I should make them as close as possible to compare apples to apples of the vapor chamber differences in the size differences so right off the bat it's very clear that the Gen 8 model has an advantage in CPU temperatures roughly seven degrees cooler while maintaining a very similar sound profile at the same power draw however on the GPU side it does run a bit warmer about six degrees warmer and I think this is largely contributed to the fact that the 4080 like Ada Lovelace die itself is quite a bit smaller so power density is higher um pulling the same amount of power but being in a smaller footprint means it's harder to get that heat out of that silicon so that's my hypothesis because there really isn't any major differences in the cold plate where the vapor chamber designed for the GPU side in particular another thing that I wanted to call out specifically that's nude for the Gen 8 model that is significantly better over its predecessor is its even core Deltas so in the Gen 7 2022 model more often than not half of your cores would be cresting 95 96 97 degrees in thermal throttling while the other half of your cores would be in the low to mid 80s which is really frustrating for somebody that's trying to eke out every ounce of performance as they can because half of their cores would be throttling all over their course core clocks the Gen 8 model because of its new four-point mounting solution does an excellent job of keeping those cores much more tight in terms of core deltas outside of course one and two for my unit in particular all of them are within two to three C of each other which is a significant improvement over the predecessor which had very very wide Deltas of 15 to 20 degrees Celsius running similar loads such as cinebench or other CPU heavy stress tests all right so some closing thoughts on this device I know there were some compromises versus its predecessor there's no glass track pad yes there's no fingerprint reader yes but you know what this thing screams in performance it is significantly faster than its predecessor and it's significantly cheaper than its predecessor the target audience for this are not the people that want every single feature that's possible to be on a laptop right Windows hello Toby eye tracking haptic keys that are pressure sensitive people that are buying this laptop or buying it because it's a reasonable price and it's very very performant and it looks pretty good doing it right the only way you could tell this is a gaming laptop really is by its rear Vents and the RGB but if you didn't want it to look like that and you want it to look like more of a normal machine you can set your own keyboard profile nice white backlight no crazy RGB turn off the you know the front light bar and this thing looks pretty damn good and it Blends in with any other laptop from Lenovo in my opinion I love it I think the price point that they targeted for this to compete with the G18 from Asus and the M16 from Alienware they did a great job to make sure that their budget is in check and they elicited the proper audience for this I think they left out the features that not a lot of people will care about when buying a performance-centric machine and I think I can live with those differences especially for the price I paid so I give it a very solid 10 out of 10 for Lenovo awesome job and I look forward to seeing you guys on the next one

Channel: braxtech

Views: 28,993

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Id: QNLV9lagXBw

Length: 14min 30sec (870 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 08 2023