If you want the most impractical-yet-almost-too-practical gaming laptop of the past few years, I think I found it. Lenovo is announcing the Legion 9i at IFA 2023, and let me be the first to say: this thing is sick.
Priced at $4,399, I don’t think a lot of tech sites will be rushing out to tell you this is the laptop everyone should get. However, it’s definitely one of the coolest that we’ve seen in a while. It’s Lenovo’s first Legion laptop with a 16-inch display, and it looks just plain awesome. The frame around the display and base of the laptop is made of aluminum and surrounded by RGB lights, while a full-size keyboard and numpad grace the deck. There’s also a sizable trackpad and reverse notch above that big display.
Look on the back of the lid, however, and you’ll spot something new: carbon fiber. Lenovo used real carbon chips to form the lids of each Legion 9i, with a unique pattern on every single unit. Why the switch to carbon? To reduce the weight from the laptop’s premier feature: the Coldfront integrated liquid-cooling system.
That’s right, Lenovo has packed in a humongous liquid cooling system into the Legion 9i. The system is physically placed over the GPU VRAM to keep heat in check while playing heavy games, and once the system detects the GPU has hit 84 degrees Celsius, the liquid cooling kicks in. Lenovo says the system, which was co-engineered with Cooler Master, allows the Legion 9i to output a maximum of 230W TDP without overheating, which is quite impressive.
There’s also some AI at play to help keep the Legion 9i cool. Lenovo includes a triple-fan air-cooling system with 6,333 individual intake vents, allowing airflow to travel easier throughout the system and keep it cool when gaming or working through heavy tasks like 4K video editing.
This laptop probably won’t get very hot under a majority of workloads, but you’ll have to be okay with lugging around an absolute unit: this thing weighs 5.64 pounds, so if you plan to travel with it in your backpack or carry-on, you might want to get a workout in beforehand.
Obviously, the Legion 9i is a beast. The 16-inch display is a PureSight 3.2K mini-LED panel with a 16:10 aspect ratio, up to 1,200 nits of peak brightness, Dolby Vision support, and a 165Hz variable refresh rate. Under the hood, you’ll find Intel’s 13th-generation Core i9-13980HX processor, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 graphics with 16GB of GDDR6 VRAM, up to 64GB of 5600MHz dual-channel DDR5 overclocked RAM, and up to 2TB of PCIe 4.0 NVMe storage.
To help keep performance in check, Lenovo includes its new LA-2 AI processor which powers Smart FPS. The feature intelligently tracks frames per second during gameplay and adjusts the power the CPU and GPU need to keep everything nice and smooth. The AI chip is also responsible for Spectrum RGB which can sync the lights with the content you’re interacting with.
The 99.99WHr battery (a.k.a. the largest battery you can legally carry on a plane) can be charged via the new 330W Slim Adapter (which is crazy fast) or over the 140W USB-C power adapter, both of which Lenovo includes in the box.
You’ll also find Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.3, Windows 11, and a 1080p webcam on the Legion 9i. You can also take advantage of a three-month free trial of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate to kick of fyour gaming journey.
I got to briefly try out the Legion 9i during a briefing in New York, and… yeah, this thing is a killer. Not only does it look awesome, it’s blazing-fast and never broke a sweat in the limited testing I performed. Obviously, I’m gonna have to get my hands on a review unit to decide whether it’s actually worth the $4,399 asking price, which also means I’m gonna need someone to teach me how to play a game that’s particularly graphics-heavy. (If you have recommendations, please comment below.)
This insane laptop is launching in October, according to Lenovo. I’m not sure how high the $4,399 price is gonna get for the top-tier models, but you can bet it’ll skyrocket once you start configuring it with more RAM and storage.
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