- Let's go on a journey of discovery, my friends.
Let's see what's in
(hand knocking)
the mystery box.
So of course, I wanna give a shout out
to our friends at Lenovo Legion and Intel
for sponsoring this video
and sending out this very large, mysterious box.
We have
the laptop!
2023 is a uniquely great time to buy a gaming laptop.
The stars have aligned, my friends,
because what we've seen here is an upgrade
that rarely happens at the same time.
Traditionally, if you're buying a gaming laptop,
you're gonna see a new model come out,
and it's gonna have a new CPU,
or a new screen, or a new GPU.
But very rarely do all
of those things happen at the same time.
And that is exactly what we have here
with the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i,
not only the brand new 13th Gen Intel Core processors
but also the brand new Nvidia RTX 40 series graphics.
When you consider the CPU performance of this system
and you consider the fact that you can go all the way up
to an RTX 4090, you've got a ton of performance
and a package which you can thankfully assume
won't be immediately out of date
when something new comes out in three months.
You go, "Ah, I should have waited!"
You don't have to wait.
Now, this is part of the Legion Pro series
which includes not only this Pro 7i
that I have to take a look at
but also the Legion Pro 5i,
which is very much meant to give you
that high performance just on a slightly lower budget.
So let's start by talking about these new Intel processors.
So the system I have behind me has
an Intel Core i9 13900 HX
with a whopping 24 CPU cores.
Thanks to things like Intel's Thread Director means
of course, with that many cores, you're going
to have some excellent multitasking performance.
But on top of that, you also have a ton
of performance for gaming.
So with tech such as Intel's Thread Director
which essentially allows Windows
to accurately schedule programs and services based
on what kind of cores you've got, right?
So you've got those efficiency cores
which are going to help you with battery life,
they're gonna be much more energy efficient,
but we need the absolute maximum performance.
Thread Director will then say, "Oh, hey,
"let's schedule this onto the big cores,"
which is certainly gonna have a hit
to like your battery life, for example.
But if you're gaming or you're doing super intense tasks
you want every bit of performance you can get.
And as you'll see in the gaming demo here
in a minute, the amount of performance you're getting out
of the laptop which actually fits in your bag
has been tremendously improved.
Not that long ago, we were using Quad Core laptops
and GPUs that were like, I don't know
half as powerful as their desktop counterparts.
Now, with some of the stuff that specifically
the Lenovo have done with this Legion Pro 7i,
you get so much more performance
to the point where you could arguably say
this could replace your desktop.
Part of the reason that you do get
so much extra performance are
through features such as Lenovo's AI Engine+.
Now, the way this works is really interesting.
Not only is it leveraging software
which is what the older version of this did,
but it also has the dedicated LA1 chip built in.
Now you may hear the words AI and think,
"Oh, my laptop needs AI, too, got it," but it actually is
a little bit more clever than you might expect.
So there are two aspects of this,
one of which is understanding
what the laptop is doing right now.
So traditionally, you've got yourself a CPU
and you've got yourself a GPU.
Each of these have their own dedicated power budgets,
so maybe 45 watts for your CPU
and 125 watts for your GPU, at least in the past.
Now, that was fine, that was great, but the thing is
a lotta times, you actually didn't need the max
on either at the same time, right?
So say I maybe have the cooling for 200 watts
but my GPU's taking it all up
and my CPU's just sitting around doing nothing
for specific games.
Well, in those scenarios, you are
actually leaving performance on the table
while still having your system running really hot
and really loud, et cetera, et cetera.
Now with the Lenovo AI Engine+ what you're getting here is
something which is constantly trying to learn the games
that you're playing and adjusting your settings
completely independent of anything you're seeing, right?
So it's not actually like changing the settings of the game
it's changing the actual power budgets
of your individual chips.
This is really cool because to you as a user
you don't have to do anything.
It is constantly running in the background.
And while it does not work for all games
this smart engine that is built inside
has a ton of potential.
Now all the 13th gen Intel CPUs
and the RTX 40 series graphics have a lot of performance,
they also do need a lot of cooling
which is part of the reason why Lenovo brought
out their ColdFront 5.0 tech.
There's a few things involved here
including an optional vapor chamber, as well
as super thin fan blade that are
up to or down to 0.1 millimeters.
Wait, how thin is a piece of paper?
- [Kinsey] So a regular coffee paper ranges
from .05 to .1 millimeters.
- So there you go.
These fan blades are as thin as paper
except that they have a whole lot of them
and they're not gonna be as floppy as paper.
Actually, that's kind of interesting to think about.
Sorry, I was just getting a wild tangent here.
The thing is, having good cooling is incredibly important.
And again, we're pushing 175 watts on the TDP
on this laptop, while also still preserving the rear ports.
So last year I made a video discussing
why I personally think that gaming laptops
have gotten good enough to replace desktops
for a lot of people.
And the big reason for that is
just how portable this performance is.
What you're getting here is not only it comes
with a slimmer charger, so it's gallium,
but also on top of that, you've got
an absolutely massive battery inside,
99.99 watt hours, AKA, the largest legal battery
you could possibly take with you onto an airplane.
In addition to the brick that it comes with as is,
you also can take advantage of USB-C charging.
In fact, you can go all the way up to 140 watts.
Good luck finding a 140 watt USB-C charger,
but it will take that or obviously it'll take like, 100 watt
or 65 watt charger for more regular use.
And you also have yourself the AI light sync
which, as you can see behind me, will mirror your display
if you'd like, which is definitely my favorite mode.
Look, my keyboard matches my screen.
You've also got the TrueStrike keyboard
which not only has 1.5 millimeters of key travel
but it also does have the full
per R key RGB, per key RGP.
Per key RGB,
per key, (beep)
But that also will pair with the RGB that is all built all
around the rest of the system
which means that it actually can look pretty nifty
if you want to tinker.
Look, that's a whole lot of spec talk.
Why don't we actually play some games
and see what the latest and greatest really can do.
Starting out, we have Microsoft Flight Simulator.
Oh, this is the, oh, oh, we're just doing it now.
Oh, I didn't realize I was already taxied out.
Okay, well, let's see if a 747 can take off at John Wayne.
We're flying.
So the Tobii Horizon tech
which is built into this laptop, essentially means
that for certain supported games such as Flight Simulator
I don't have to actually use my controls to look round.
I can look right, I can look left, up, down.
It's a really cool bit of tech.
- [Kinsey] Try tilting your head.
- What the, oh, I didn't realize it did tilt.
- [Kinsey] It's got yaw, pitch, and roll.
- Pitch and yaw.
The fact that you're getting this level of graphics
in a laptop is really impressive.
Does anyone think they're gonna make it to the airport?
I don't think I'm gonna make it to the airport.
- [Matt] I'm not even convinced you're flying
in the right direction.
- Oh, god, oh, god.
Wait, wait, wait.
Okay, we're just gonna make an aggressive turn here.
We're just gonna shave off a few minutes.
We're running a little bit late here.
Oh, okay, but that was not what I meant to do.
- [Joanna] Hey, uh, I think you crashed.
- Uh-oh!
Moving on.
Next up, we have Forza Horizon 5, which is actually included
with the three months of free Xbox Game Pass,
which comes with the Legion.
So performance is one thing
but the screen quality is an entirely other area
that laptops have come a long way the last couple of years.
This has a 2560 by 1600 display
which can run up to 240 hertz
which especially with the 4080 inside is important
because you really wanna be able to take advantage
of all of the performance that your laptop is capable of.
Now, we do have a display here
and I'm gonna play on that in just a second.
But honestly, if you're pushing anywhere close
to 240 frames per second in games, it's very difficult
to really find the need for an external display.
Unlike a lot of older gaming laptops
where the displays were just kind of okay,
this is terrific, this is incredibly good.
All right, let's go, let's go, let's go.
Oh, I'm not gonna make it.
I'm not gonna make it.
Ah.
Okay, I'm not gonna go through the whole song
and dance about why you don't need a desktop.
If you really want a desktop, by all means go for it.
Obviously, there are still advantages there.
But when you consider just what you're able to get
out of a fully portable laptop
it makes me really second guess things.
It really does.
Look, this is so impressive.
Next up, we've got "Halo Infinite".
And for this, I'm actually gonna be using the display.
So this is the Lenovo Legion Y27-QF-30.
And what I'm getting here is a 27-inch 1440p display
that can run all the way up to 250 hertz.
Normally, you would need
a very powerful gaming computer to do this.
However, I'm actually getting pretty solid
frame rates directly on the laptop.
You've also got an HDMI 2.1 port built into the laptop
which does mean a big difference if you're going
to be playing at higher frame rates, higher resolutions.
You don't really have to worry about it too much.
And wow, I am...
These bots are really bad.
If I'm killing you, you know
that you're not very good at this.
This is such a rare moment where you have the new tech
across the board between CPUs, GPUs, the hardware.
This Legion has so much going for it
that I would highly recommend you to check it out
at the link in the description.
And of course, huge thank you to both Lenovo Legion
as well as Intel for sponsoring this video.
I'm going to go beat the bots again,
so I feel better about my gaming prowess.
Because as we all know it's one thing
to have great hardware, it's another thing
to actually be good at gaming.
I have half of those things.