Today we review an updated Lenovo Legion 7 laptop with AMD Ryzen 7, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080, 32GB of RAM and a 165 Hz display with a resolution of 2560×1600 pixels. The laptop more than covers all the needs of the average user, and also meets all the requirements for professional work with graphics and gaming. But let’s take a closer look at what the manufacturer is asking for, so far only indicative, $ 3300 for the minimum configuration.
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Equipment
The laptop comes with an impressive 300W charger. Charging is very bulky and heavy, with the expectation of stationary use, but you have to pay for high power.
Design and ergonomics
The laptop looks very expensive and soundly. When you take it out of the box, you immediately realize that they worked very hard on it, paying attention to even the little things that are imperceptible at first glance. Assembled Lenovo Legion 7 as an exemplary windows laptop – no backlash, squeaks or protruding parts.
A powerful and weighty laptop, thick and heavy enough, but not so much as to be completely unbearable for periodic carrying, but still not everyone wants to carry it with them every day. All body parts are made of high quality aluminium.
The lid of the laptop is decorated with a neat insert with the brand logo, as well as a large Legion inscription with an LED that duplicates the color palette of the keyboard backlight.
There is also a backlight on the bottom of the case, which looks very nice and is not as distracting from working with the device as the multi-colored RGB keys, so most of the time I left only it and the calm blue keyboard mode working.
Ports
In my opinion, the location of the ports at the back is what all manufacturers should have come to for a long time. A couple of ports on the sides are enough for frequently connected devices, while peripherals, hard drives and monitors connect seamlessly to the user, freeing up useful space on the table.
Yes, and it’s just aesthetically pleasing – it’s much easier to organize competent cable management when the wires do not get tangled in the working area and simply go beyond the edge of the table, which you cannot see behind the open display lid.
Total on the left are:
- USB Type-C (USB 3.2 Gen 2, DisplayPort™ 1.4)
- Combined audio 3.5 mm jack
On right:
- USB Type-C 3.2 Gen1
- Webcam button
And behind is the main set of inputs and outputs:
- 3xUSB-A 3.2 Gen1
- USB Type-C USB 3.2 Gen 2 with DisplayPort 1.4 and Power Delivery charging support
- HDMI 2.1
- RJ45 Ethernet
- Charger socket
Display
On board, the novelty has a 16″ QHD IPS display with 2560 × 1600 pixels, with an aspect ratio of 16:10, support for 165 Hz and 3 milliseconds of response. Peak brightness 500 nits.
The display is bright, high-quality and very saturated – the picture is contrasting and as detailed as possible. During games, you don’t pay attention to it so much, but photo processing and watching movies make you regret that you are still sitting on FullHD. The anti-reflective matte finish works well even in sunlight.
The increased hertz and responsiveness are most noticeable in shooters, but even in relatively quiet games like God of War, you notice the difference. On the system side, the smoothness of the Lenovo Legion 7’s display is best accentuated by Windows 11; it is still laggy and crooked, but the animations are performed at a qualitatively different level, which pleases the eye both when scrolling pages and simply when navigating in the system.
Support for 100% sRGB is also claimed; the results of the colorimetric tests are as follows:
Keyboard and touchpad
A keyboard with a pleasant short travel and, which is excellent in itself, with a full-fledged NumPad block, which for some reason has recently been deprived even of very large 16-inch models.
There are several options for ready-made lighting, including both “gamer colors of the rainbow” and a more calm blue, without unnecessary animations. 3 brightness levels are quite comfortable to use. Of the nice features – by pressing the Fn key on the keyboard, the buttons that can interact with it are highlighted. In the photo, some lighting options:
But still, the main feature of the Lenovo Legion 7 keyboard is not in the backlight and not even in the NumPad block. The keyboard arrows are slightly lower than the rest of the keys, so they didn’t have to be reduced or given extra space for them – they are a normal size and impossible to miss, which simply and elegantly solves the eternal problem of arrows.
The touchpad is slightly shifted to the left, which is not the most convenient option, but you have to pay such a price for convenient arrows. In general, this is not a problem if you, like the author, are used to turning it off when you connect a mouse. The touchpad is responsive and tactilely pleasing, so it is comfortable to use in all scenarios that do not require increased accuracy and speed.
Sound and camera
For audio playback, 2 speakers of 2 W each from Harman with Nahimic Audio technology are responsible. The laptop’s speakers are powerful and high-quality enough to be used in any scenario – you can not only watch YouTube on them, but also listen to music or sound the game normally. Of course, they don’t reach the level of the MacBook Pro 14”, but as for a Windows machine, it’s very good.
By the way, when playing music, the keyboard switches to the frequency display mode, highlighting their level on the keyboard and activating the lower backlight to the beat of the music, or just a visual effect, without the likeness of an equalizer. It looks cool, albeit a little too childish, but no one bothers you to turn it off as unnecessary.
The 720p camera is at a good level for laptops, but you should not expect any transcendental quality from it. On the right side of the case there is a physical switch responsible for the operation of the camera, which, of course, is not as reliable as a shutter covering the lens, but still very “secure”.
Specifications
Lenovo Legion 7 review configuration has the following specs: AMD Ryzen 7 5800H, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 GPU 16GB GDDR6, 32GB RAM and 1TB M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD internal storage.
The weight of the laptop is 2.5 kg, which is not that much for a gaming device. The dimensions are as follows: 20.1-23.5 mm x 356 mm x 261.04 mm.
Performance and software
Lenovo Legion 7 does not pay any attention to ordinary tasks at all, so working on the device is a real pleasure. This is an extremely versatile machine that can more than cover all user requests, while remaining quite compact and aesthetic. Simultaneous processing of photos in Lightroom, working with documents, listening to music through Spotify and 100 tabs in Chrome did not even give a hint of slowdown. Judging by the synthetic tests and the results of the gaming sessions, the laptop will do an excellent job of processing video and working with 3D graphics.
The following utilities are available from the preinstalled software:
- Lenovo Vantage
- Corsair® iCue RGB App
- Pantone X-Rite Color Management System
- Nahimic audio technology
- Tobii Horizon
During any non-resourceful tasks, such as photo processing, surfing and watching videos through Google Chrome and typing, the laptop does not make noise or heat up at all; the noise of the coolers can be heard only when you get very close to the device. This indicates a well-designed cooling system and that the case is well-designed – it is much wider than ordinary office laptops, as it should be for a device with a powerful video card on board.
Synthetic results are as follows:
- Geekbench 5 – 8155 multi-threaded and 1456 single-threaded
- Cinebench R23 -12960 in multi-thread and 1431 in single-thread
Games
God of War
The first to go into battle was a fresh PC port of God of War, which wound up on this config without any problems. The quality of the graphics is in no way inferior to the version I have already passed with the PS4. The powerful filling of Lenovo Legion 7 provides a stable 60 FPS at maximum graphics settings, with rare drawdowns up to 50-55 in dynamic scenes with a large number of opponents.
Cyberpunk 2077
Cyberpunk 2077 at maximum settings is played very cheerfully and even with ray tracing enabled, it gives out 50-60 FPS, with a drawdown of up to 45 in dynamic scenes. The picture is juicy and colorful, since the QHD resolution allows you to enjoy all the capabilities of the video card even on a 16 ”display – I just rode around the city for 10 minutes, looking at reflections and lighting, which already says a lot. The laptop coolers worked at maximum speed, but as in the case of God of War, there were no drawdowns even after 6 hours of play.
Doom Eternal
Not too heavy in terms of picture quality, Doom Eternal, especially after Cyberpunk, but extremely demanding on the display response, played perfectly at the highest settings. The average FPS did not drop below 110-130 even in dynamic scenes, so coupled with a frequency of 165 Hz and a 3 millisecond response, the gameplay leaves only positive impressions. Maximum drawdown in FPS up to 92 frames on some scenes.
In the game menus, the indicator consistently showed 164-165 FPS. The heating of the laptop is noticeable, but within the normal range, so you won’t get burned on the metal case and it’s comfortable to use.
autonomy
The manufacturer’s website claims 8 hours of operation “in a spherical vacuum”, which of course has nothing to do with reality. In real world use, with the display at 80% brightness and the keyboard backlight turned on, the laptop lasted only 1 hour and 48 minutes, which is acceptable for an RTX 3080 machine, but 8 hours is out of the question.
But the laptop was charged from 0% to 100% in just 47 minutes, which is already closer to the performance of a device of this level; Still, 300-watt charging makes itself felt.
By the way, the laptop supports charging via USB-C, which the same Asus Vivobook Pro 14X OLED on AMD processors cannot boast of. Maximum performance is only achieved from a native 300W power supply, but nevertheless, in my opinion, the USB-C charging option is mandatory in 2022.
Cost and competitors
The estimated retail price of a laptop in the minimum configuration with AMD Ryzen 7, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060, 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage (in the AMD7 review laptop, RTX 3080, 32GB and 1TB) is expected to be around UAH 95,000. In isolation from today’s realities of the market, the laptop is very expensive. But in a closer comparison with competitors, and we will compare it with a review unit, especially considering the RTX 3080, powered by a 300W adapter, processor and display is a very competitive device.
Of the closest competitors with NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 on board and plus or minus similar hardware, there is ACER Predator Triton 500 for 109,999 UAH on Intel and with 32GB of RAM.
Also on Intel i7 there is MSI Raider GE66-11UH for 99,999 UAH already with a FullHD 15.6 ”display, but with a frequency of 360 Hz. Or MSI Leopard GP66-11UH with 144 Hz, but already on average for 74 thousand UAH.
On the GeForce RTX 3070, there is a good option in the face of the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G15 for 76 thousand UAH. The display is FullHD, but the processor will be AMD Ryzen 9 5900HS.
Also in the area 95 thousand UAH. can be considered apart from games, but to work with graphics on 16-inch, Apple MacBook Pro 16 ” on M1 Pro, 16GB of RAM and 1TB storage, plus a branded “Makov” display with a resolution of 3456×2234 pixels.
There are plenty to choose from, but even against the background of competitors, Lenovo Legion 7 is in a winning position, especially in the configuration with the GeForce RTX 3080 and if the price tag does not fly to the skies. And if you take into account all the characteristics of iron, then this is perhaps one of the best solutions today.
