The Crème de la Crème of Gaming Laptops

Serious gamers want serious performance from a gaming laptop, and for the most part, the 16-inch Lenovo Legion 9i (2023) serves up gaming on a silver platter. With a top-tier NVIDIA GPU and an HX-rated Intel Core i9 processor, the Legion 9i offers speed, accuracy, a gorgeous chassis, and a 3.2K display for all the eye candy you could want.

When Lenovo announced the Legion 9i 16-inch Gen 8, the company hyped its fully self-contained liquid cooling system. That cooling system is the reason each Legion 9i has a lesser weight while retaining a 230W TDP, but it’s also responsible for the unique carbon chip pattern on the A-cover. As swoony-worthy as the Legion 9i’s design is, what truly matters is its performance. And let me tell you, right after reviewing the Legion Slim 5 14 Gen 8—an excellent mid-range option—the Legion 9i took my gaming experience to the next level.

Not quite a slim gaming laptop or as bulky as other designs, the Legion 9i (2023) sits somewhere in the middle, offering the user a lighter-weight option that delivers high-powered gaming and computing. But despite all the good, the Legion 9i still has some less-than-perfect points, such as a lackluster speaker system for the price point and, at times, a too-dim display, which could keep some buyers at bay.

Lenovo Legion 9i (2023)

$3180.59 $3799.99 Save $619.4

The latest Legion 9i hits gaming out of the park with an integrated liquid cooling system, per-key RGB, an Intel Core i9 processor, and a premium NVIDIA GeForce RTX GPU.

Operating System

Windows 11 Home (upgradeable to Pro)

CPU

13th Generation Intel Core i9-13980HX (E-cores up to 4.00 GHz P-cores up to 5.60 GHz)

GPU

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Laptop GPU 16GB GDDR6 (or GeForce RTX 4080)

RAM

32GB DDR5-5600MHz- SODIMM Overclock (2 x 16GB)

Storage

2TB SSD M.2 2280 PCIe Gen4 TLC (or 1TB)

Display (Size, Resolution)

16in 3.2k (3200 x 2000), 16:10 aspect ratio, 165Hz refresh rate

Speakers

2 x 2W Harman Super Linear Speaker System (Smart Amp with Nahimic Audio)

Colors

Carbon Black

Ports

Left Side: 1 x Headphone / mic combo jack, 1 x full size SD card reader; Right Side: 1 x USB-C 3.2 Gen 1, 1 x USB-A 3.2 Gen 1; Rear: 1 x DC-in. 1 x USB-A 3.2 Gen 1, 2 x Thunderbolt 4 (DisplayPort 1.4, power delivery 3.0 140W), 1 x HDMI 2.1, 1 x Ethernet (RJ45)

Dimensions

0.75-0.89in x 14.08in x 10.93in (18.99-22.7mm x 357.7mm x 277.7mm)

Brand

Lenovo

Model

83AG

Adaptor and Battery

99.99Whr integrated battery (Super Rapid Charge capable, up to 70% in 30 minutes),

Keyboard

Full-size chiclet keyboard with 1.5mm travel, switchable key caps, per-key RGB, and 100% anti-ghosting

Display type

mini-LED

Audio

High Definition Audio, Realtek ALC3306 codec

Webcam

FHD 1080P webcam with e-privacy shutter

Connectivity

Wi-Fi 6E (or up to MediaTek Wi-Fi 7) Starting at Bluetooth 5.1

Box contents

1 x Legion 9i Gen 8 (16in Intel), 1 x user manual, 1 x 330W GaN adapter, 1 x 140W USB-C adapter, 1 x switchable keycaps kit (8 keycaps)

Starting Price

$3,180.59

Pros

• 32GB Memory and up to 2TB of storage
• 3.2K Mini LED display offers excellent graphics
• Gameplay is ultra smooth and immersive
• Per key customizable RGB enhances gorgeous design
• Two charger options

Cons

• Display can feel too dim playing certain games
• The speakers are sub-par for gaming

The Lenovo Legion 9i (2023)’s Design: Solid and Stylish

The Legion 9i (16-inch, Gen 8) is a looker with a capital “L.” The top lid features a unique carbon chip design and two logos. The first is the larger “LEGION” logo with LED lighting. The “LEGION” logo lights up to match whatever RGB pattern is in use and flashes white when the laptop is closed and asleep. The laptop’s body also has LED strip lighting on the sides that communicate with the current RGB setting.

With the lid open, the integrated webcam is in the top bezel alongside an LED indicator light to let you know the webcam is on. On either side of the camera are the dual-array microphones. The body of the laptop features a large vent underneath the power button. Below this is the full-size RGB keyboard complete with a num-pad. Underneath the keyboard is the touchpad, which is on the smaller side, measuring 2.28 by 4.72 inches. On the bottom, near the corners, are the two down-firing 2W speakers, while more of the large cooling system takes up half of the bottom’s surface.

Side and Rear Ports

With a lot of real estate, Lenovo included every port a gamer needs. The headphone and microphone jack and SD card reader are on the left, while the right side houses a USB-A port and a USB-C port. Each side of the laptop also has vents for its cooling system.

At the back, there’s a DC-in for charging, a USB-A port, two Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports (charge-capable), an HDMI port, and an ethernet port for speedier gaming via wired connection.

The Inputs: Keyboard and Touchpad

A keyboard’s travel time is important to gamers but it can get incredibly personal. That’s why a lot of gamers also invest in gaming keyboards, despite having a gaming laptop with a nice enough keyboard. For me, the 1.5mm key travel on the Legion 9i’s keyboard felt satisfyingly springy without being too loose, something I appreciated when typing for work or entering gaming commands.

As for the keyboard’s RGB backlighting, I customized all five profile slots in the Lenovo Vantage app via Lenovo Spectrum. It’s possible to customize each key, as well as each LED strip on the body, which provides endless customization options, and there are 13 preset patterns to pick from. I cycled through profiles easily whenever I wanted a lighting change by holding Fn and tapping the space bar.

If you don’t admire the installed keycaps, they’re swappable, and Lenovo includes a set of eight to get you started. The keys come off pretty easily with a keycap tool, but pressing them in requires a bit more elbow grease.

The touchpad was ultra-sensitive for me in most cases and responded well to touch gestures admire two-finger scrolling and one-finger tapping. It felt a bit small compared to other touchpads, but I didn’t find the squatty height problematic. I did, however, notice that on occasion the touchpad didn’t react to light taps. This only happened twice. Luckily, the click points of the touchpad were very responsive and served me well when I needed precise actions, and in most instances, tapping the touchpad worked perfectly.

Display and Graphics: Fantastic 3.2K With So-So Brightness Levels

With a 3.2K 16-inch screen, the Lenovo Legion 9i provided me with beautiful imagery, no matter what I was viewing. The resolution brought details that might otherwise fade into the background to life, such as individual strands of fur on a fox or a shiny surface on a mushroom. Streaming shows admire “The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City” or “Supernatural,” I noticed a vivid color contrast and a nice balance of saturation and darker blacks and shadows thanks to the mini-LED. It’s notable that the Legion 9i has both Dolby Vision uphold (allowing for better contrast and color on Dolby Vision encoded media) and NVIDIA G-SYNC uphold (which syncs the speed of the refresh rate of the monitor with the refresh rate speed of the GPU).

While gaming, however, I sometimes felt that the screen didn’t seem bright enough, even though I had it at 100% brightness. The mini-LED display reaches up to 1,200 nits, but in particular lighting scenarios, such as rooms with a lot of natural light, I had a harder time enjoying the media to the fullest. This seemed to be the case mainly with games that had a dimmer, more shadowy design than bright graphics.

That said, gaming provided some beautiful, crystal-clear animations complete with high-setting graphics options, including full ray-tracing, DLSS 3‘s features admire Super Resolution and Frame Generation, high texture quality, and more. Remarkable examples of ray-tracing came through when I played games admire “Cyberpunk 2077,” which has plenty of shadowy spaces, neon lights, and sunlight reflected on surfaces admire water and metal.

Performance: Do Anything With Speed

The overall performance of the Legion 9i was stellar. On most days, I breezed through using an email app, Microsoft Word, Spotify, Google Docs, Photoshop, and multiple browser tabs without a blip.

Overall, in two weeks spent with the Legion 9i, I was impressed with how well it kept up with my needs—and a lot of it is thanks to the Intel Core i9-13980HX CPU, which has a whopping 24 cores and 32 threads. Eight of the cores are P-Cores, which also contribute to how well this device can handle heavy-duty jobs. If you don’t know the difference between P-Cores and E-Cores, a quick way to recollect is that P-Cores are for heavy processing, while E-Cores are for standard background processes, so having those eight P-Cores gives the processor a significant boost.

At most, I had some browser-related performance issues due to slow Wi-Fi when I had 25 tabs open, plus GeForce Now and Photoshop. But slowness from this device was extremely rare.

As for the AI-tuned, triple-fan cooling system—Lenovo says it has 6,333 individual intake vents!—I noticed a general warmth on the keyboard that was admire a nice bath on most occasions. Whenever I was gaming or plugged in and with the GPU overclock switched on, the vent system above the keyboard did get quite hot, but not uncomfortably so. As I expected, the fans could also get very noisy when they kick up, so I would propose investing in a gaming headset to skip some of the background noise.

Gaming on the Lenovo Legion 9i: Butter-Smooth Gaming

“A Plague Tale: Requiem”

When I say butter-smooth, I mean most instances I spent gaming on the Legion 9i Gen 8 were so seamless that I got lost in hours of screen time, thanks to the combination of CPU, GPU, and 165Hz refresh rate (with 3ms response time). I whizzed through a couple of hours of “Cyberpunk 2077” without noticing the clock.

Playing the notoriously resource-heavy game “A Plague Tale: Requiem” was also a pleasure. On multiple playthroughs, “Plague Tale” ran so smoothly, that I forgot the game had given me trouble on other gaming laptops in the past. When I did notice some latency, it was usually due to my internet speed, and a quick adjustment of graphics settings and closing some browser tabs smoothed out the kinks.

The Legion 9i can pretty much handle any game, from racing games to shooters to open-world romps, with or without an ethernet cable. I played everything from the above-mentioned games to “Warhammer 40,000: Darktide” to “Life is Strange: True Colors.” Still, I’d still propose using a wired connection, as I did on occasion if you want the utmost accuracy for competitive games admire “Apex Legends” or stealth-based games admire “Plague Tale.”

Audio and Video: The Webcam, Speakers, and Microphones

The webcam on the Lenovo Legion 9i Gen 8 isn’t above average, but it does the job with FHD capture. I had zero issues using the camera for my scheduled Zoom meetings. While the camera performs best in well-lit rooms and natural light, using the webcam in dim lighting was markedly better than some other webcams I’ve experienced.

On one hand, the sound system puts out some nice volume and delivers some immersive sound for streaming a TV show or listening to music, but it doesn’t quite hit the mark you’d expect for this price point. Overall, the balance is nice for a song without having to fiddle with the Nahimic app, admire when I streamed Dinah Washington’s “That September in the Rain.” But genres, such as instrumental-heavy rock, needed a bit of help because either the bass or treble was out of balance and all I could hear was crunching squashed guitars. Luckily, you can tweak the Nahimic app’s settings, which can make quite a difference. Sadly, for gaming, this speaker system does its best, but there’s still that immersive quality missing. A quad-speaker system would make all the difference here, but since it’s a dual-speaker system without any up-firing speakers, I found the sound lacking while gaming, especially when the fans kicked up.

The dual microphone array does an excellent job of capturing the color of your voice without picking up a lot of noise if your room is fairly quiet. I used it for several video chats and experienced zero issues with others hearing me. In a noisy setting, the Legion 9i didn’t use noise cancelation, but I found that my voice still came through clearly and sounded front-and-center, though a slight echo ensued.

Battery and Charging: Equal Drain and Gain

I didn’t have expectations that the battery life on the Legion 9i would be long-lasting because of the power usage it takes to run. On average, when I used the Legion 9i with 80 to 100% brightness, it drained at a rate of 1.05% per minute, which is a 63% drain per hour. While gaming with the same settings, the drain occurred at double the rate—2.24% per minute, or 67.2% per half hour.

Luckily the drain speed was countered by the charge speed—the drained battery was quickly replenished each time, though I usually charged up about twice a day or more.

One of the most convenient parts about charging the Legion 9i was that I had two options. The first charger is a monster 330W affair (with a DC-in connector), while the second one is a more portable 140W charger (with a USB-C plug). At home, I opted for the larger charger for a quicker charge, but I also tested the 140W charger and brought it with me when I was on a weekend trip.

Using the 330W charger, the Legion 9i charged 1.86% per minute, an average of 100% recharge in just 54 minutes. Comparatively, the 140W charger provided an average charging speed of 1.22% per minute or about 73% in one hour.

Should You Buy the Lenovo Legion 9i (2023)?

Despite its small weaknesses, the Lenovo Legion 9i (2023) is one of the top gaming laptops available right now. It’s a solid contender for a desktop replacement, as well as a premium gaming laptop that’ll help you defeat all the bosses and battle it out with your online friends. It’s important to note that my configuration was not the base configuration of the Legion 9i.

If you want a slimmer gaming laptop, though, the Lenovo Legion Slim 7i Gen 8 is among one of the best gaming laptops for someone who wants power in a smaller package and budget. The Razer Blade 18 is also a nice option if the Legion 9i is cost-prohibitive, but still want something with gusto.

For those who want to harness the power of a top-tier NVIDIA GPU and Intel CPU, along with 3.2K graphics and per-key RGB, the Lenovo Legion 9i (16-in, Gen 8) is available today starting at $3,180.59.

Lenovo Legion 9i (2023)

$3180.59 $3799.99 Save $619.4

The latest Legion 9i hits gaming out of the park with an integrated liquid cooling system, per-key RGB, an Intel Core i9 processor, and a premium NVIDIA GeForce RTX GPU.

Pros

• 32GB Memory and up to 2TB of storage
• 3.2K Mini LED display offers excellent graphics
• Gameplay is ultra smooth and immersive
• Per key customizable RGB enhances gorgeous design
• Two charger options

Cons

• Display can sometimes feel too dim playing certain games
• The speakers are so-so