Back in November, Lenovo gave me the opportunity of a sneak peek at its new non-Pro Legion 9i and 7i gaming laptops. And yes, this was in tandem with the early media preview of the Legion Go. Fast forward to Innovate 24, and these machines are now ready to hit the market in full force.
Unlike the current Legion Pro models that is synonymous with the Lenovo sub-brand, the new 9i and 7i bear new tidings, at least from an engineering standpoint. Those engineering improvements, by the way, primarily reside in their internals.
I’ll get right into it: both the Legion 9i and 7i are fitted with Lenovo’s new Coldfront Hyperchamber cooling technology but one is slightly different from the other. With the 9i, the laptop still sports vents at either side of its base but instead of exhausting air out of them, they, along with the intake vents at the bottom, now suck cold air in and expel cold air out the back.
The Legion 7i, with the same Coldfront Hyperchamber technology, applies a similar cooling methodology, the one major difference between it and the 9i being it doesn’t have side vents. Instead, all of its cooling is conducted through the bottom of its base. Then, for good measure, the feet on both laptops are designed to block off any hot air expunged out the back from ever being sucked back in. That, is unless you’ve got them facing a wall at close proximity with no windows or outlets for the air to circulate. In which case, you’re going to feel that same air getting recycled.
Then there is the chassis design for both the Legion 9i and 7i. Compared to the new Yoga 9i series that uses the Comfort Edge design, these ones are sharper and more aggressively. Both befitting and understandably so: as gaming laptops, these are aimed towards consumers looking for a desktop replacement, with slightly emphasis on the portability factor. That is, at least with the 9i.
There’s a reason I say this too: the new 14th Gen Intel Core i9-14900HX inside. Both the Legion 9i and 7i are fitted with it and if we’re being honest, it is far from being the most power efficient chip in the blue chipmaker’s arsenal. That prestige currently belongs to its new Meteor Lake family. But enough about that.
The other specifications prove further that these machines aren’t slouches too. The Legion 9i can be fitted with up to 64GB DDR5 RAM, up to 2TB of PCIe 4.0 storage, and of course, an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 as a top-tier option. The 7i, on the other hand, can rock up to 32GB DDR5 RAM, and up to an RTX 4070 but that, in my opinion, is plenty given its “slimmer” form factor over the former.
As for the displays of the Legion 9i and 7i, again, my pictures do not do them justice, especially with the former. Its Mini LED panel is practically on par with ASUS’ own ROG Nebula HDR displays – bright, eye-popping, with inky blacks and flashbang-level whites. The panel of the 7i isn’t a Mini LED but is still as vibrant and as an extra added bonus, they both have the option of being shipped out with the unique 16:10 3.2K resolution.
As of this publication, Lenovo Malaysia has already released the starting SRPs for both the Legion 9i and 7i on its official product page. The 9i starts at RM14,879, while the 7i starts at RM8,289 but do note that these prices appear to be discounted. As always, we’ll need to do an in-depth review on both units, in order to see what they are really like to live with.
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