Lenovo unveils the most mobile and powerful 16-inch Legion 7 gaming laptops with Gen 7 upgrades

Lenovo announced today its flagship 16-inch Legion 7 and Legion 7 Slim gaming laptops have been refreshed for a seventh generation. Lenovo claims that the Legion 7 and 7i “are now the world’s most powerful 16-inch gaming laptops.” In the same vein, the Legion 7 and 7i Slim laptops are Legion’s “thinnest and lightest gaming laptops yet.” Let’s take a look first at the Legion 7 and Legion 7i, which have long been considered some of the best gaming laptops around.

A familiar design makes a return here for the Legion 7 and 7i. It’s a sleek look thanks to the aluminum and magnesium unibody design, with the majority of ports contained in a rear edge dashboard. The port hub has been cleaned up a bit to make room for the sizable exhaust vents, and the laptop’s hinge system has also seen an upgrade. The laptops are absolutely dripping in RGB — exhaust vents, keyboard, and logos included — that can all be easily synced up with onboard software.

The Legion laptops are as thin as 0.76 inches (19.4mm) and start at about 5.5 pounds (2.5kg), which is a feat considering the amount of performance hardware inside. You can get up to a NVIDIA RTX 3080 Ti Laptop GPU with a 175W TGP or an AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT GPU with 12GB of VRAM, and there’s DDR5 memory and PCIe 4.0 storage. This hardware is all led by either Intel’s 12th Gen Core H-series chips or AMD’s Ryzen 6000 mobile CPUs. Lenovo’s Legion AI Engine 2.0 returns to balance thermal power from the CPU and GPU, and fan blades are now thinner than ever to improve air flow.

Here’s a closer look at the full specs available with each laptop. Note the enormous 99.99Wh battery available in either laptop; it’s the largest currently available in a 16-inch laptop. It can be charged via the 300W (or optional 230W on AMD’s side) AC adapter, or it can handle up to 135W of charging via the USB-C port.

The Legion TrueStrike keyboard has also seen some improvements. The keys are now slightly cupped with a 0.2mm dip, with overall 1.5mm key travel. You get per-key RGB lighting here, as well as 100% anti-ghosting. The WASD keys now have a force sensor that sort of emulates a joystick — the harder you press, the faster your character will move. These keys also have swappable keycaps.

Each laptop comes with two high-end 16-inch display options. They all have a 2560×1600 (QHD+) resolution and a tall 16:10 aspect ratio for a modern look. These screens are all stacked, with Dolby Vision, 165Hz or 240Hz refresh rate, 100% sRGB color, 3ms response times, VESA DisplayHDR 400, 500 nits brightness, TÜV Rheinland certification, and either NVIDIA G-Sync or AMD FreeSync Premium. There seems to also be a version with up to 1,250 nits brightness and 100% DCI-P3 color, though it’s not currently listed on the specifications sheet.

Above the display is a 1080p (FHD) webcam that should make streaming much easier. Tobii Horizon and Tobii Aware are onboard to add immersion and to add some security. The Legion 7i 16 (Gen 7) with Intel hardware is expected to launch May 2022 with a starting price of about $2,449. The Legion 7 16 (Gen 7) with AMD hardware is expected to launch June 2022 with a starting price of about $2,059.

Lenovo Legion Slim 7 16 and Legion Slim 7i 16 (Gen 7)

Lenovo’s “Slim” version of its 16-inch flagship Legion 7 laptops have also been refreshed for a seventh generation. This is the lightest and thinnest 16-inch gaming laptop in the Legion brand, and it comes in two colors: Storm Grey or Onyx Grey. It uses a unibody aluminum and magnesium design, weighing in at about 4.5 pounds (2kg) to start and measuring just 0.67 inches (16.9mm) thin. These laptops are made to be as portable as possible while still delivering a high-end gaming experience.

Lenovo packs in up to a NVIDIA RTX 3070 Laptop GPU with a 100W TGP, or up to an AMD Radeon RX 6800S if you go with a Ryzen CPU. Like the non-Slim Legion, here you get DDR5-4800MHz RAM and up to a 2TB M.2 PCIe 4.0 SSD. Note that 8GB of RAM comes soldered, with an additional SODIMM slot for upgrades. It’s all powered by either a 99.99Wh or 71Wh battery with up to a 230W AC slim adapter. You can also charge at up to 135W with a USB-C adapter. Here’s a look at the specs you can expect in these laptops.

Thermals have been buffed to help handle the heat in a small space. The cooling system has grown by 29%, with thinner fan blades on faster fans, and an extra heat pipe dedicated to the GPU’s VRAM. New vents below the keyboard help with air intake, and Legion’s AI Engine is onboard to help balance thermals. Despite the thin size, the Slim 7/i’s keyboard has 1.3mm key travel with optional per-key RGB lighting.

There are multiple display options here, ranging from FHD+ to QHD+ resolutions. All have a taller 16:10 aspect ratio and a minimum 165Hz refresh rate and 100% sRGB color reproduction. The higher-end models include up to a 240Hz refresh rate, 3ms response time, 500 nits brightness, VESA DisplayHDR 400, Dolby Vision, TÜV Rheinland certification, and either NVIDIA G-Sync or AMD FreeSync. If you opt for the Intel model, a Mini-LED display option also becomes available. It has a QHD+ resolution, 100% DCI-P3 and AdobeRGB color, 1,250 nits brightness, and VESA DisplayHDR 1,000.

Above the display is either a 720p or 1080p webcam with e-shutter for added privacy. The Intel-based Legion Slim 7i 16 (Gen 7) is expected to launch May 2022 with a starting price around $1,589. The AMD-based Legion Slim 7 16 (Gen 7) is expected to launch June 2022 with a starting price of about $1,519. Have a look at our roundup of the best Lenovo laptops to see how they compare.

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