The Legion 9i set a world record. It’s the first 16-inch gaming laptop with a self-contained liquid-cooling system.
“What the hell is a self-contained liquid-cooling system?” you may wonder. It likely sounds like mumbo jumbo to you, but it’s a big deal.
Heat — above all — is the biggest thorn in the butt for engineers working with beastly internals. For example, Razer’s gaming laptops are praised for being thin and light, but they also have a reputation for running hot. Why? Because slim laptops and powerful CPUs and GPUs, which tend to be energy-guzzling nightmares, simply do not mix.
Laptop companies are always scratching their heads over how to rectify this cooling conundrum. One way to combat heat is to plug in an external liquid cooler — just like the one CyberPower offers for its Tracer VII Series laptops.
“Pfft! Hold my beer,” Lenovo must’ve said behind the scenes. “We can put a built-in liquid cooling system inside the laptop.” And that, dear reader, is how the self-contained liquid-cooling system came to be.
Read on to find out whether this has made a difference in my gaming experience.
Lenovo Legion 9i price and specs
The Lenovo Legion 9i I have in hand has the following specs:
- Intel Core i9-13980HX CPU
- Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 GPU
- 32GB of RAM
- 2TB of SSD storage
- Windows 11 Home
- A 16.3-inch mini-LED display with a 165Hz refresh rate
As of this writing, if you were to snag this particular configuration, it’d cost you $4,014 on Lenovo’s website.
If that’s too much for you, you can grab the cheapest configuration, with a $3,420 price tag, which replaces the storage and graphics with a 1TB SSD and the Nvidia RTX 4080 GPU, respectively.
What I like about the Lenovo Legion 9i
I let out an audible gasp when I took the Lenovo Legion 9i out of the box, and you likely will, too.
The design is an interesting mix of low-key and conspicuous
The striking aesthetic of the lid — Lenovo calls it a “carbon-forged top cover” — is reminiscent of the familiar army-fatigue design. But instead of a different range of greenish hues, the Legion 9i is wrapped in subtle dark-gray tones. Contrasting with the lid’s low-key vibe is a loud-and-proud “Legion” logo that flashes a range of colors that match the RGB lighting on the keyboard. (I’ll talk more about this later.)
This party-starting RGB design can also be found along the front and back edges of the laptop, where there are lighting strips that scream, “I’m a gaming laptop!”
If you’re a bit of a party pooper (I, too, am not always in the mood for distracting flashing lights), and having a disco-ball laptop doesn't appeal to you, you can shut off the RGB lighting in the pre-installed Lenovo Vantage app.
I also dig the fact that I can’t see a single fingerprint on the chassis. If, like me, you have OCD tendencies, this is a win!
Comfortable keyboard, but I can’t say the same about the touchpad
Lenovo typically knocks it out of the park with its keyboards, and the Legion 9i is no different. No, it’s not the best keyboard I’ve ever tested. I prefer keys to be springier after hitting the actuation point, but the Legion 9i still has sufficient tactile feedback to launch my fingers from one key to another.
On my daily driver laptop, the 14-inch MacBook Pro, I hit 82 words per minute with an accuracy rate of 95% on the LiveChat typing speed test.
On the Legion 9i, I hit 81 wpm with an accuracy rate of 97%, which means I got accustomed to the keyboard quite quickly — it's almost as familiar to me as my MacBook.
By the way, as mentioned, the keyboard has per-key RGB lighting that you can customize in the Vantage app. There are six presets that allow you to transform your keyboard into a range of different lighting profiles, from a rainbow jamboree to a static color of your choice. You can also choose different effects, including an animation that makes it seem like a rainbow of colors are twirling around your keyboard, kind of like the roulette-style spinner on the Wheel of Fortune.
On top of that, you can program the RGB lighting to dance along with your laptop’s music (i.e., Audio Bounce lighting mode). For example, if you’re playing a game with a staccato soundtrack, the lighting will follow its jerky rhythm, similar to a music visualizer.
However, my excitement fades when it comes to the touchpad — more on that later.
The speakers sound phenomenal
I fired up the Hot Hits USA playlist on Spotify, which played Doja Cat’s “Paint the Town Red.” The sassy and confident vocals sounded full, balanced, and smooth — as if the sound was glazed with honey — on the Legion 9i’s dual stereo speakers.
You can tweak the sound via the Nahimic app via the five presets: Music, Movie, Communication, Gaming, and Smart (a profile that dynamically tunes your audio). There’s also a Surround Sound mode that is supposed to make music sound more immersive, but I didn’t notice any significant difference.
The revolutionary cooling solution is actually cool
On the Legion 9i, you’ll see a massive grille that invades an abnormally large section on the deck. No, these aren’t speakers — it’s a system that features 6,000 holes that intake cool air. You’ll also find vents on the back (below the hinge), bottom, and sides that exhaust hot air.
Inside the laptop, in addition to three fans and your standard array of heat pipes, you’ll find the star of the show: the integrated water cooler. When the laptop hits 84 degrees Celsius (or 183 degrees Fahrenheit), the self-contained water-cooling system “activates” and pumps water through a liquid-cooling loop that sits on top of the VRAM (which is known for getting pretty damn hot).
I don’t have a surface-temperature thermometer at my disposal to compare the Legion 9i’s thermals to other gaming laptops in my possession, but I played Cyberpunk 2077 for 30 minutes, and the chassis remained relatively cool — in places where it matters at least.
For example, the palm rest area, one of the places where your hands may hang around if you’re using a wireless controller, didn’t get warm at all. The numpad area stayed cool, too. However, regarding the keyboard itself, the closer you get to the function keys, the warmer it gets. It’s toasty, but it’s still mild enough that your fingers remain unscathed.
It also runs silently, which is a plus. Some gaming laptops sound like planes taking off when they’re pushed to their limits; the Legion 9i is library-quiet.
Just steer clear of the aforementioned massive grille and the vents on the side. These places are definitely hot.
The display is gorgeous
The Lenovo Legion 9i is packed with a mini-LED display, which is typically more energy-efficient than a traditional LCD panel. On top of that, it delivers better color accuracy as well as deeper blacks and brighter whites.
From the colorful graffiti decorating a dingy nightclub to the rich colors emanating from a man’s urban-futuristic outfit, Cyberpunk 2077 looked like a visual treat with the Lenovo Legion 9i’s 3,200 x 2,000-pixel, 16:10, 165Hz refresh-rate display.
So many ports!
The Legion 9i has an incredible variety of ports. On the left, you’ll find an SD card reader, and on the right, there’s a USB Type-A port.
However, most of the ports are placed on the back of chassis, where you’ll discover the following I/O options: an Ethernet port, another USB Type-A port, two Thunderbolt 4 ports, and a HDMI 2.1 port
What’s “eh” about the Lenovo Legion 9i?
If you’re going to drop more than $4,000 — good grief, that's a lot of money — on a gaming rig, you have to ask yourself whether you’re getting the best gaming laptop that money can buy.
The Legion 9i is expensive AF
Lenovo has a competitor to watch out for: the ASUS ROG Strix Scar 16. As you’ll see in the Geekbench and 3DMark section, it’s a threat to the Legion 9i. However, the Legion 9i’s selling point is that it has a “self-contained cooling system” — the world’s first on a 16-inch laptop, mind you.
We don’t have a surface-temperature thermometer to determine whether the ROG Strix Scar 16 has better cooling than the Legion 9i, but it’s several hundred dollars cheaper than our review unit with the same specs. This is worth mulling over before you splurge on the Legion 9i.
What I dislike about the Lenovo Legion 9i
The Legion 9i’s deck has a strange placement of its keyboard and touchpad, but there is a method to Lenovo’s madness. There is a giant vent area on the deck, which maximizes the cooling performance on the Legion 9i, and it’s meant to work in tandem with the self-contained liquid cooling system.
However, this throws off the ergonomics of the Lenovo Legion 9i.
The touchpad gets on my nerves
Sorry, Lenovo, but I hate the touchpad on the Lenovo Legion 9i.
A massive vent area, which highlights the power button in the center like it's a solo singer on a concert stage, takes up one third of the deck. This causes a terrible snowball effect, shunting the keyboard to a lower position on the deck than I’m used to, and it minimizes the touchpad, too.
The touchpad is small, and on top of that, it feels a bit askew; Lenovo placed it more left on the keyboard than usual. This is because the Hong Kong–based company squeezed in a numpad on the keyboard, which prompted engineers to shift the touchpad a little bit too far to the left.
As a result, I find myself accidentally initiating right clicks. This is because, on any other laptop, my fingers naturally fall on the left-click region. However, because of the oddly placed Legion 9i touchpad, my fingers naturally sit on the right-click side. On top of that, there's not a lot of space for resting your palms. Oof!
Lenovo Legion 9i Geekbench and 3DMark scores
As one would expect from a beastly laptop with an Intel Core i9-13980HX CPU and GeForce RTX 4090 graphics, the Legion 9i produced killer numbers on our performance benchmarks. But there is some stiff competition out there.
On Geekbench 6, which tests processor performance, the Legion 9i climbed to an incredible 17,711. This beats competitors like the ASUS ROG Strix Scar 16, which has the same exact specs as our Legion 9i review unit, but underperforms with a score of 16,953 (according to the Gaming Performance YouTube channel).
However, on 3DMark’s Time Spy benchmark, which tests gaming PCs’ graphical prowess, the Legion 9i scored 16,763. According to Gaming Performance, the ROG Strix Scar 16 delivered a better score of 21,270 with the same GPU (RTX 4090).
How well does Cyberpunk 2077 run on it?
Cyberpunk 2077 is one of the most graphics-intensive games on the market, and it will figuratively set your laptop on fire if you don’t have capable internals to handle it. Fortunately, the Legion 9i is packed with a bleeding-edge CPU and GPU — an Intel Core i9-13980HX processor and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 graphics.
This processor and graphics card are the best you can get in the laptop space, so let’s see how Cyberpunk 2077 runs on them. We ran the game’s built-in benchmark on the “High” preset, but we dropped the resolution to 1080p (for testing consistency). The Legion 9i climbed to an average of 140 frames per second, showcasing the 4090’s raw graphics performance.
We ran the Cyberpunk 2077 benchmark once more, this time with Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) toggled on. For the uninitiated, DLSS is designed to double frame rates by rendering the game at a lower resolution. But it compensates for that loss by using AI upscaling. With DLSS on (in Balance mode), we got a whopping 253 frames per second.
On less-capable gaming laptops, wandering through Cyberpunk 2077’s Lizzie’s Bar — a place that requires the rendering of rich and complex textures, colors, lighting, etc. — is a stuttering nightmare. However, on the Legion 9i, the game ran smooth as silk. I was impressed!
Lenovo Legion 9i battery life
We ran the PCMark 10 gaming battery life test on the Legion 9i. It lasted for 41 minutes on a single charge. That’s less than an hour. Gross!
Battery life is typically pretty poor on gaming laptops, but 41 minutes is tragic. On the plus side, the Legion 9i is meant to be stationed on a desk. Yes, it’s a laptop, but it’s not portable. It weighs nearly six pounds, so just park this bad boy near an outlet, and as long as you stay plugged in, you’ll be good to go.
Lenovo Legion 9i webcam
Like most laptops on the market, the Legion 9i’s 1080p webcam isn’t that great. The colors look slightly off on the viewfinder, making my complexion look dull. The picture lacks definition and clarity, and there’s too much noise for my taste.
Final thoughts
Anecdotally, yes, the self-contained liquid cooler system works in that the deck remained cool while I played Cyberpunk 2077 – and it stayed quiet, too.
However, I feel that the Legion 9i's price tag, which climbs over $4,000, is a little too high. You can get the ASUS ROG Strix Scar 16, which is packed with the same specs as our review unit, for several hundred dollars less ($3,340). I'm not convinced the integrated cooling system is worth an extra $664.
Prime Big Deals Day is behind us, but Black Friday is on the horizon. If you can afford to wait a few weeks, see if Lenovo slashes the Legion 9i to a sub-$3,000 price tag. If not, snag the ROG Strix Scar 16 instead.
