Lenovo Legion 9i review: High-end HDR gaming goodness

The Lenovo Legion 9i is a gaming laptop that goes above and beyond. A top-of-the-line CPU and GPU are table stakes for a high-end gaming laptop. Beyond that, this 16-inch gaming laptop uses liquid cooling to deliver high performance with surprisingly cool surfaces. And, while many gaming laptops skimp when it comes to the display, Lenovo included a mini-LED display with an incredibly high 1200 nits of maximum brightness, enabling HDR gaming on the go.

It’s a great package, and it’s even more impressive in a laptop that weighs just 5.51 pounds. But, as with all high-end gaming laptops, this impressive hardware doesn’t come cheap.

Further reading: Best gaming laptops 2024: What to look for and highest-rated models

The Lenovo Legion 9i (Gen 9) is a high-end gaming laptop with a high-end Intel Core i9-14900HX CPU. It was the fastest mobile CPU we ever tested back in January, and it’s part of Intel’s 14th-generation “Raptor Lake refresh.”

Our machine had a top-of-the-line Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 GPU, but you can also get this machine with an RTX 4080. Our review unit also included 32GB of RAM, although Lenovo also offers this machine with up to 64GB of RAM. Finally, no expenses were spared with the storage: Lenovo included two 1 TB solid-state drives set up in a RAID 0 configuration. That results in a total of 2 TB of usable storage with faster storage speeds than you’d get with a single 2 TB drive.

It is worth noting that this machine doesn’t have a neural processing unit — much less one that meets Microsoft’s Copilot+ PC requirements — so it won’t get the future AI features Microsoft is releasing for Windows. It also doesn’t have Wi-Fi 7 support. There’s no way around it: Those would be nice future-proof features to have when you’re spending over $4,000 on a laptop. However, this machine does have a Copilot key on the keyboard.

While the specced-out system Lenovo loaned us retails for $4059, Lenovo’s starting price for this machine is $3,499. Upgrading to an RTX 4090 accounts for $430 of that cost difference, so you can save some money if you’re happy with an RTX 4080.

• Model number: Lenovo Legion 9 16IRX9
• CPU: Intel Core i9-14900HX
• Memory: 32GB DDR5 RAM
• Graphics/GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090
• Display: 16-inch 3200×2000 mini-LED display with HDR, 1,200 nits of brightness, and 165Hz refresh rate
• Storage: Two 1 TB PCIe Gen 4 SSDs set up in a RAID 0 configuration for 2 TB of storage
• Webcam: 1080p webcam
• Connectivity: 2x USB Type-C (Thunderbolt 4), 1x USB Type-C (USB-C 3.2 Gen 1), 2x USB Type-A (USB-A 3.2 Gen 1), 1x HDMI 2.1, 1x combo headphone jack, 1x SD card reader, 1x DC power in, 1x Ethernet (RJ45)
• Networking: Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.1
• Biometrics: Fingerprint reader
• Battery capacity: 99.9 Watt-hour battery
• Dimensions: 0.75 x 14.08 x 10.93 inches
• Weight: 5.51 pounds
• MSRP: $4,059 as tested

Overall, the Lenovo Legion 9i is a high-performance gaming PC with an unusually good display — one with an incredible amount of brightness that can deliver a high-quality HDR gaming experience.

Lenovo Legion 9i: Design and build quality

The Lenovo Legion 9i is a very well-designed 16-inch gaming laptop. At 5.51 pounds and 0.75 inches thick, it’s on the light and thin side for a gaming laptop with such high-end internals.

The “Carbon Black” design, mostly made of magnesium, looks great — especially with all the RGB lighting. This machine has RGB lighting on the keyboard, the light bar below the palm rest, and the light bar at the back of the laptop. The “carbon pattern” design on the is a distinct design choice. It looks great in person — and the “Legion” logo on the lid cycles between different RGB colors while the machine is on, too.

This laptop has integrated liquid cooling, and the cooling system works very well. The keyboard stays fairly cool to the touch. There aren’t strong fans blowing hot air out of the side onto your mouse hand. This machine does blow a good amount of air out of the back of the laptop, but I was shocked by just how cool that blowing air often was while gaming.

For a gaming laptop, this machine runs surprisingly cool and quiet. Yes, it generates heat, and you’ll hear the fans blow. But this machine doesn’t have the extremely loud fans and uncomfortably hot elements that you’ll find on many gaming laptops.

The build quality also feels great. The palm rest is nicely smooth and rubbery to the touch. The hinge opens easily with one hand and doesn’t wobble.

Lenovo also includes some thoughtful extras here. There’s a switchable keycap kit if you’d like to customize the keyboard further. Plus, Lenovo includes two chargers with this machine. You’ve got the larger one — a nice 330W charging brick — for maximum performance at your desk. Then, you’ve got a smaller, more portable USB-C charger to power this laptop on the go when maximum gaming performance isn’t your priority. It’s a great way to make this machine more portable.

Lenovo Legion 9i: Keyboard and trackpad

The Lenovo Legion 9i includes a full-size keyboard that has a full number pad at the right. On a 16-inch laptop like this one where there’s space, I love having that number pad. However, some people do prefer to avoid the number pad and have the rest of the keyboard expand to fill the space. Which you prefer is up to you.

The chiclet-style keyboard feels excellent to type on. The key travel is 1.5mm, which could be deeper, but I didn’t have a problem with it — and this laptop is also thinner than many of those beefy gaming laptops. It’s not as snappy as a mechanical keyboard, but it isn’t mushy, and I had no problem typing at a fast speed on it.

The keyboard has beautiful per-key RGB lighting. The included software makes good use of this out of the box, with animations that cycle between various colors over the keyboard. Also, if you hold the Fn key, most of the backlighting turns off and only the function row keys are lit up. It’s an excellent backlighting setup.

While the trackpad is incredibly responsive and smooth to use, it’s on the small side — especially for a laptop of this size. In fact, the keyboard is a little on the small side, too, as the laptop has a large area reserved for cooling above the keyboard. You can get laptops with more spacious keyboards and trackpads, but there are advantages to this configuration. The keyboard stays incredibly cool for a gaming laptop during extended play sessions, which is partially thanks to that keyboard being pushed lower down than it would be on many laptops. The palm rest gets a little warm, but it’s not bad at all.

Lenovo Legion 9i: Display and speakers

The Lenovo Legion 9i’s 16-inch display is incredible. I’ve reviewed many gaming laptops — even high-end ones — that skimp on the display, especially on the brightness. The Lenovo Legion 9i’s 3200×2000 display delivers up to 1200 nits of brightness, and that results in an excellent HDR experience in games like Cyberpunk 2077. The 165 Hz refresh rate is also nice and speedy.

That brightness really is worth highlighting. I’ve reviewed a lot of gaming laptops with 400 nits of peak brightness, which means they can’t deliver HDR in games. This laptop can.

The mini-LED display looks great in games, and I was incredibly pleased with it. It’s not all things to all people: Some people will want the more vivid colors of an OLED display — although you’ll likely get less brightness with an OLED display than a mini-LED display. Others will want an even higher refresh rate — while the 165Hz refresh rate on this machine is good, some gaming laptops have displays with a 240Hz refresh rate. Some people may even want a touch screen — there’s no touch screen here! But it’s an awesome display.

The Lenovo Legion 9i also has an unusually good built-in speaker setup for a laptop — as it should for the price! The sound is good and loud, the bass is very reasonable — although it’s not so booming that it shakes the chassis of the laptop, as the speakers do on some other high-end gaming laptops I’ve reviewed. But they’re very good for built-in speakers.

Lenovo Legion 9i: Webcam, microphone, biometrics

The Lenovo Legion 9i includes a 1080p webcam. The image quality looks fine, which means this webcam looks great for a gaming laptop. While gaming laptops often include cheaper webcams with worse picture quality, this webcam keeps pace with many productivity laptops.

The microphone also sounds fairly clear, doing a good job of picking up my voice. Neither the webcam or microphone feels as top-of-the-line as most of the other hardware in this machine, but this is perfectly adequate for online meetings and video calls and competitive with many productivity-focused laptops.

There’s also a physical “e-shutter switch” to disable the webcam on the right side of the laptop. That’s a great privacy feature to have.

The Lenovo Legion 9i includes a fingerprint reader for Windows Hello, which lets you unlock your PC with your fingerprint. It’s integrated into the circular power button above the keyboard. The fingerprint reader works well, although I do wish Lenovo had also included an IR camera so you could unlock this PC with facial recognition.

Lenovo Legion 9i: Connectivity

The Lenovo Legion 9i has a healthy selection of ports positioned in smart places. On the left side, you’ll find a combo audio jack and a full-size SD card reader.

On the right side, you’ll find a USB Type-C port and a USB Type-A port — these are both USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports.

Most of the ports are on the back. There, you’ll find a DC power in port, another USB Type-A port (USB 3.2 Gen 1), two USB Type-C ports (Thunderbolt 4 / USB4), HDMI 2.1 out, and an Ethernet (RJ45) port.

Realistically, all the ports you’ll want are here. Most of them are also well-positioned at the back of the laptop where they’ll stay out of your way, with ports like the headphone jack, a few USB ports, and the SD card reader on the sides where they’re close at hand.

Wireless connectivity options are slightly disappointing, which is expected. Lenovo has included Killer Wi-Fi 6E hardware with Bluetooth 5.1 support here. Intel’s Raptor Lake refresh is getting a little long in the tooth — most of Intel’s attention is going towards more power-efficient laptop CPUs like Lunar Lake now — but it would be nice to see Wi-Fi 7 support on a high-end gaming laptop at this point. Most people don’t have Wi-Fi 7 networks yet, but gamers who buy this kind of high-end hardware might well be early adopters.

Lenovo Legion 9i: Performance

The Lenovo Legion 9i delivered excellent gaming performance. I played Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty cranked up to maximum settings with ray tracing enabled. It was very playable, and it also looked beautiful — especially thanks to the screen’s high brightness and excellent HDR support.

Of course, we ran the Lenovo Legion 9i through our standard benchmarks to get a more detailed picture of the machine’s performance. With the liquid cooling Lenovo is talking up, I’d expect to see some great numbers.

First, we run PCMark 10 to get an idea of overall system performance. This benchmark is designed to benchmark overall PC performance, but the CPU is a much bigger factor than the GPU here.

With an overall PCMark 10 score of 8719, the Legion 9i comes in faster than the average gaming laptop. That’s an awesome result.

Next, we run Cinebench R20. This is a heavily multithreaded benchmark that focuses on overall CPU performance. It’s a quick benchmark, so cooling under extended workloads isn’t a factor. But, since it’s heavily multithreaded, CPUs with more cores have a huge advantage.

The multi-threaded score of 12078 blows most other PCs out of the water. This benchmark demonstrates this machine’s impressive CPU horsepower.

We also run an encode with Handbrake. This is another heavily multithreaded benchmark, but it runs over an extended period. This demands the laptop’s cooling kick in, and many laptops will throttle and slow down under load.

The Legion 9i completed the encode process in an average of 581 seconds. That’s under 10 minutes, and it’s another very impressive result. This benchmark shows that this system’s cooling works very well over extended CPU-heavy workloads.

Next, we run graphical benchmarks. This is a gaming laptop, so graphical benchmarks are extremely important. First, we run 3Dmark Time Spy, a graphical benchmark that focuses on GPU performance.

The Legion 9i delivered an impressive Time Spy score of 20,428. While that’s an excellent result, it’s worth noting that this machine is no longer outpacing the Alienware m18 R2, as it did in the CPU benchmarks above. In fact, that Alienware machine beat the Lenovo on this benchmark.

After that, we run the benchmarks built into some games. First, we use the built-in benchmark in Shadow of the Tomb Raider to test all the gaming laptops we review. It’s an older game, but it’s a great way to compare graphical performance across different PCs.

The Lenovo Legion 9i came in at 220 frames per second with our standard Shadow of the Tomb Raider benchmark settings. Once again, it’s back on top of even the Alienware m18 R2 machine. I would assume that, as a game and not a dedicated 3D benchmark, Shadow of the Tomb Raider uses more CPU resources than the 3Dmark Time Spy benchmark.

Finally, we run the built-in benchmark in Metro Exodus. This is a more demanding game, and we set the benchmark to 1080p resolution at the Extreme detail setting.

The Lenovo Legion 9i scored 95 frames per second in this demanding benchmark. That’s a great result. While it’s actually two frames per second slower than the competing Alienware m18 R2 machine, this is well within the margin of error. For many games, GPU performance is the biggest factor, so those incredibly CPU performance numbers won’t always make a big difference in games.

Overall, the Lenovo Legion 9i delivers incredible performance. It’s especially impressive when it comes to raw CPU performance, but the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 delivers top-of-the-line graphical performance as well. While the Alienware m18 R2 did beat it on a few benchmarks, the Lenovo Legion 9i beat that machine.

That’s more impressive than it sounds: That Alienware m18 R2 is an 18-inch laptop that weighs 9.32 pounds. This Lenovo Legion 9i is a 16-inch gaming laptop that weighs 5.51 — and it often outclasses that machine on performance!

Lenovo Legion 9i: Battery life

The Lenovo Legion 9i contains a massive 99.9 Watt-hour battery. The maximum battery size the U.S. Transportation Security Administration allows on an airplane Is 100 Watt-hours, so Lenovo has gone right up to the line here. Of course, gaming laptops aren’t known for their long battery life.

To benchmark the battery life, we play a 4K copy of Tears of Steel on repeat in the Movies & TV app on Windows 11 with airplane mode enabled until the laptop suspends itself. We set the screen to 250 nits of brightness for our battery benchmarks. This is a best-case scenario for any laptop since local video playback is so efficient, and real battery life in day-to-day use is always going to be less than this.

The Lenovo Legion 9i lasted an average of 281 minutes, or just over five and a half hours. And that’s in an ideal scenario — you’re going to get less than that as you use applications. That battery life is on the low side, even for a gaming laptop. You can use this laptop away from an outlet for a few hours — but that’s it.

Obviously, battery life isn’t usually a big concern with laptops like this one. And Lenovo does bundle that extra, more portable charger with this machine, so you don’t need to bring your big charging brick on the go. But, if battery life is a huge concern to you, you may want to look for a different gaming laptop.

Lenovo Legion 9i: Conclusion

Overall, the Lenovo Legion 9i is a high-performance gaming PC with an unusually good display — one with an incredible amount of brightness that can deliver a high-quality HDR gaming experience. It’s surprisingly light and compact while remaining cool to the touch.

The display is a real standout feature. I often find myself noting that even many high-end gaming laptops have fairly dim displays — ones that are too dim to deliver HDR in games. The Lenovo Legion 9i delivers HDR gaming while many other gaming laptops don’t. And it’s got a great package of high-end hardware with excellent cooling.

The main downside is the high price. You can have a great PC gaming experience without spending anywhere near this much money. But this is a gaming laptop that spares no expense to deliver high-end hardware. If you want to spend that much money on a gaming laptop, you won’t be disappointed.

Author: Chris Hoffman, Contributor