The Legion 9i makes all Laptops look Pathetic

so pictured this core I9 3980hx CPU RTX 4090 GPU running at 175 Watts 64 gigabytes of memory a mini LED display all packed inside a chassis that's less than an inch thin folks this is the brand new Lenovo Legion 9i this is legion's Flagship gaming laptop superseding the legion 7i series and it doesn't come cheap the base back starts at 3 800 us with the 4080. this spec in particular will set you back four thousand five hundred dollars you might be wondering why why does this even exist well simply put they need to compete with the likes of Razer Asus and Alienware that are trying to push high performance into the thinnest possible chassis and well this is what we get but there's more to the 9i than you think Legion is trying to think outside of the box to deliver something unique that can turn Some Heads This is the world's first gaming laptop with an integrated liquid cooling system so they teamed up with Cooler Master to design a teeny tiny water pump to cool the GPU so when temperatures reach 84c the system engages the water pump to push additional 10 watts and of course runs components cooler and vice versa when you're performing casual tasks you also get a set of replaceable ceramic keycaps basically this is legion's Ultimate laptop that showcases the best of the best tech a lot of it even the 7 Series don't get access to that's pretty darn impressive but how does that translate to real life we'll talk about that a little bit later in the video but first a quick word from today's video sponsor be ready to be captivated by a fusion of vivid colors deeper blacks and a wicked fast 240Hz refresh rate with corsair's xenian flex gaming monitor featuring the world's first bendable Ola display in a stunning 45 inch wqhd ultrawide aspect ratio immerse yourself in gaming and other productive tasks you get all the extra goodies for ultimate speed and position within a game get quick access to a few USB ports at the front and plenty of other display connectivity options at the back and all this Tech is backed with their Advanced burning protection and a three year warranty if you're looking to flex your gaming setup look no further than Corsair senior on Flex learn more down below first I want to go over this brand new design ID so the top lid consists of Aviation grade carbon fiber materials which are hand applied to the panel so it's a one-of-a-kind look that would be unique to you this also contributes to the overall weight of the chassis since the rest of the frame is made out of 90 recycled magnesium alloy so they're trying to contribute towards the sustainability aspect which I do appreciate this whole thing weighs close to five and a half pounds or two and a half kilos which is pretty similar to the blade 16. it also maintains a similar Zen height coming at 0.89 inches but the interesting thing here is that you're not sacrificing on build quality the whole chassis is put together really well with a robust hinge that barely exhibits any wobble and the lid doesn't Flex as much with every Legion laptop you can expect this extension at the back that houses all the ports and thankfully the 99 doesn't compromise here in fact they did finally bring back the i o lighting which I'm sure is going to come in clutch when you have a bunch of different cables plugged in at the back speaking of which you get RJ45 HDMI 2.1 a couple of Thunderbolt 4 ports USB 3.2 gen1 type A and Power in and towards the left you get a headphone jack with a full-size SD card reader that unfortunately isn't uhs2 compliant this is a huge missed opportunity for Legion switching over to the right there is a type A and type c Port along with a kill switch for the webcam now I do appreciate the placement of this type a port since it allows me to conveniently plug in my mouse without having to bump into it every time while I'm gaming it's the little attention to details that matter but I'm still trying to wrap my head around why these type A ports are capped at 5gbps second versus 10 gigabits per second I mean for the price that Legions asking for it is unacceptable in my opinion visually you're greeted with some tasteful RGB elements throughout the perimeter of the chassis like this RGB strip at the back right above the i o That's diffused evenly it is subtle and you can see that it extends towards the front as well although I did notice that the brightness levels between both those zones were slightly different the Legion logo features RGB as well and you can customize the effects through Vantage but I have had my fair share of issues with that software which I'll get to in a bit now the interior space is where you'll notice a huge shift from the rest of legion's lineup they've moved the entire full-size keyboard towards the middle in order to accommodate their Advanced cooling system to keep temperatures under control because running a 4090 at 175 Watts isn't an easy task that two in a laptop that's super thin but are you sacrificing on the typing experience well first off the keys themselves are one of if not the best that you can find for a laptop it's miles better than the Razer Blade 16 and rog's offerings I also prefer the font style compared to what RG has there's plenty of travel great feedback and it just feels robust when you just start bottoming out heck it's better than my MacBook Pro I just said it the placement of this keyboard didn't really affect my comfort level as I was completely fine writing out emails and scripting it doesn't affect my gameplay as well the real issue is when you start using the trackpad now while the surface is glass and it's easy to navigate with you just feel cramped when you're moving Windows around the desktop plus there's no room to comfortably place your palms when you shift from using the keyboard to the trackpad I did find some workarounds like using my right thumb to be my main pointer instead of my index finger and then if I needed to scroll or perform tasks that require left or right clicks I bring in my index finger and I just take advantage of gestures like the top gestures I know it's super unconventional at first but I guess you'll get used to it over time plus none of this would even matter if you end up plugging an extra Mouse when you start gaming there's also a lot of fine tuning that needs to be done with the drivers because sometimes the clicks just don't register it just needs work now I want to quickly talk about the extra set of keycaps and scissor switches included with the 9i I think this is a brilliant feature in case you end up rage quitting and smashing the keyboard until it gives up plus it gives you an extra layer of customizability so first off they come in this handy dandy case with a removal tool and instruction set replacement keycaps is pretty straightforward remember you can only replace the typewriter keys so simply use the tool to pry open the keycap and swap it out with the new one and that that's pretty much it replacing the switch was also pretty straightforward Lenovo does have a tutorial video that guided me throughout the process and I've gotta same the keycaps feel different I mean it's smoother and slippery as well as they have this metallic clicky sound every time I register the key it's different but you know if you don't like it you can go back to the regular keys the RGB lighting does not shine through the surface I mean it would be cool if Legion starts selling custom keycaps for these laptops then again it poses an interesting question will we start seeing those DIY Enthusiast level keyboard features like sound dampening materials and lubed switches trickle down into laptop keyboards I would love to hear from you guys now the RGB Lighting on the 9app was a bit finicky as I mentioned earlier so the lighting is gorgeous but customization is where you'll end up scratching your head Legion has six different profiles built in and if you want to change the effect to static it just didn't really work on my sample I don't know why maybe it is just a software optimization issue again this is a pre-production sample so maybe that could be it but yeah that was really frustrating I should also mention that the fingerprint reader is integrated with the power button and it features a ring light so it switches the color based on which performance mode you're in now quick word on the power bricks and yes you do end up getting two separate power adapters the first one is this 330 watt Gan charger and it's actually pretty compact I'm surprised at how small it is compared to legion's previous offerings so this is what you can use to sort of like plug this in and get the full performance mode but let's say you're taking this thing to class and you just want to juice up the battery for you know note-taking and stuff like that then Legion also includes a really handy 140 watt adapter with a USB type-c connection so that is very thoughtful I want to see more laptop manufacturers incorporate this it's really cool all right so we're jumping into a quick webcam test for the 9i and as you can see the quality looks pretty good uh Legion is using a 1080p sensor and the detail is really good the microphone sounds a decent as well it picks my vocals no problem quick one on speakers they're pretty they're decent I wouldn't say it's the best out there they are so bottom facing but they have a lot of outputs so it'll get the job done for you know YouTube and just casual stuff but I'm pretty sure most people are going to end up using headphones anyways the 6 inch display features a stunning 3.2k mini LED panel that naturally comes in the 16x10 aspect ratio and it's 165 Hertz so it pretty much check marks everything that you can ask for in a gaming laptop it covers 100 srgb 88 Adobe RGB and 98 P3 so it's pretty much in line with the blade 16 it so if you want to get any creative work done the same we'll do the job no problem I still had a great time gaming on this display it's it's awesome uh you're still in for a treat now when we get underneath the hood things start to look slightly different from a standard gaming laptop so the soda memory is unfortunately located on the other side of the PCB so that's not accessible however the ssds are located right over here and as you can see there is an extra m.2 slot for expansion the drive speeds are as expected wicked fast I got over six gigabytes per second on read and a little over 5gs with right in terms of that memory configuration well legion's only offering two skus so the 4080 with 32 gigs and I think the 4090 with 64 gigabytes I don't think you would need to upgrade past 64 gigabytes for a gaming laptop so I think that is it kind of does make sense and again given the complexity of the engineering that went behind this design um it's it's fine now if you take a look at that cooling system you can clearly see how the fans are designed to ensure proper intake and exhaust we've seen something similar with the Alienware Laptops but those have significant thermal limits so what do temperatures and clock speeds look like on the 9i well to give you a bit of context I'm going to compare this to the Razer Blade 16 with the exact same specs because they're also priced similarly as well and wow it's pretty incredible to see how that teeny tiny water pump can make a difference with temperatures and clock speeds for the RTX 49e laptop GPU despite it running at an insane 171 watts in its highest performance mode there's this day and night difference in noise levels plus when we analyze the balance setting and sound settings the 9i draws less power while maintaining significantly higher clock speeds that plus lower temperature levels and quieter Acoustics is a massive win for the engineering team at Legion seriously you guys deserve a massive Round of Applause for Designing this system the CPU also gets some love as well keep note that there isn't a huge difference between the 3980 HX on the 9i versus the 3950hx on the blade 16 other than a slightly higher boost bump and the highest performance mode the 9i and the blade 16 were pretty much neck to neck however balanced in silent mode is where you'll see a clock speed bump since Legion is pumping a little bit more power into the chip the drawback is that it does run a bit louder than the blade 16. but you know what the performance Improvement you get with real world applications specifically with bounce mode is a day and night difference you see I usually run my laptops in this mode since it's way quieter and practical so the time difference alone in 3D render apps is a great bonus for the 9i I mean sure when you run both laptops at its high setting they level out but I think the 9i just gets the edge here and if you're wondering about video editing performance well um they both perform about the same in terms of gaming performance well to be honest you're really not getting that much performance improvements compared to the blade 16. I'm jumping right into 1440p right away since it's most likely the resolution than most people would game at since the GPU is well capable of that the 9i does take a slight Edge in some games by a few frames per second but guys it is really not that noticeable to the naked eye at 4K it's pretty much the same story but keep in mind that to get this level of performance with much lower noise levels compared to the blade is pretty awesome again this is an engineering sample so a lot of games do still need some optimization so it's something to be aware of so that's the story with the Lenovo Legion 9i I think this is a phenomenal gaming laptop there is just so much work that went into creating the super slim chassis there's a lot of cool features like this really unique carbon fiber top lid it's again very unique it's pretty much kind of like a personal touch I guess if you put it that way and of course you're getting a super lightweight design with Incredible performance I mean the fact that it can run that 490 at really cool temperatures is pretty insane it's also pretty quiet too when you're gaming compared to something like blade 16. again this is the stuff that you would expect from a laptop that's maybe I don't know double the size in terms of thickness like the gt77 or the scar 17 for instance right the fact that you're getting that in a somewhat portable laptop is pretty insane I think this is for those Pro Elite Gamers who just won the Best of the Best in a portable form factor so yeah um good stuff Legion let us know what you guys think about it in the comments I'm Eber with Hardware connects thanks so much for watching and I will talk to you guys in the next one spin responsibly

Channel: Hardware Canucks

Views: 650,922

Keywords: lenovo legion 9i, lenovo legion 9i review, lenovo legion 9i unboxing, lenovo legion 9i comparison, best gaming laptop 2023, legion 9i 2023, legion 9i reveiw, hardware canucks, hardwarecanucks, legion 9i gaming, legion 9i sale

Id: GpyLbu5ozxw

Length: 13min 57sec (837 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 21 2023