- It's time to come clean, very clean.
I have given up on desktops.
Now, that's not to say that I won't continue to build
them for videos.
But when Lenovo hit me up,
asking to do a sponsored video on this,
their Legion 7i Gaming Laptop,
I thought it was the perfect opportunity.
Let me be real.
The dream for me has always been the portable setup.
Now, don't get me wrong,
there are lots of great examples
of why a desktop can make sense.
It has a larger chassis,
you can fill it up with...
M.2 SSDs.
To me, desktop computers
have become almost more narrowly focused.
Like think about a lot of the things
that you connect to your gaming computer.
Almost everything now can be connected via USB,
or especially with something like Thunderbolt.
Whereas a laptop, which yeah,
sure doesn't have a massive chassis that you can load up
with all kinds of crazy components.
But guess what?
Pretty much has everything either included
or easily plug-in-able.
That's not a word, but I'm gonna roll with it.
I understand that there might be some trepidation
if you don't want to live the all-laptop life,
but just give me a moment of your time.
Let me describe to you some of the reasons why
I personally think that the time for a single laptop
to rule your entire life is actually totally,
totally practical now.
One area that I think is a very legitimate concern
is performance.
Now when Lenovo sent over the Legion 7i,
this thing is absolutely loaded.
We've got not only a 12th gen Intel Core i9 processor,
we've also got RTX 3080 Ti graphics, 32 gigs of RAM,
one terabyte SSD.
I mean, all the specs that you could ever hoped for.
But I think what's interesting about it
is just how close these specs are
to a full on desktop computer.
Let me put things in context.
When I first started building desktop PCs,
well of course, that's a fun thing to do.
I did it because of necessity.
I used to use laptops when I first started the channel.
But quickly, I realized that,
especially when it came to editing HD video
and trying to play games,
that laptops just simply couldn't cut it.
Fast forward to today
and the gulf between a laptop and a desktop
is far, far smaller than it used to be.
It's easy to forget that there used
to be mobile versions of all the kind of chipsets
and whatnot that went into a laptop
that were absolutely inferior to what you could get
in a desktop and usually way, way more expensive.
That's not to say the gaming laptop
back in the day were bad.
They were just compromised, right?
And of course,
anytime you want to have a mobile computing device,
whether it's something handheld, whether it's a laptop,
whether it's goes all the way up to desktop,
you do need to make some trade-offs.
Not too long ago, you were spending maybe double
to get a high-end gaming laptop
that would give you, what, half, maybe 60 or 70%
of the performance of an equivalent desktop.
Of course, as that compromise,
there were some good points to it.
You know, you had a portable device
and it was a little bit thinner.
But the issue was laptops just used
to have terrible battery life.
Generally, not very good screens.
They were loud. They were hot.
Like it was clear that you had to make a huge trade-off
to get that portability.
Most of those trade-offs have essentially vanished now.
So again, take a look at this Lenovo Legion 7i.
Not only do you have essentially the same core count
as its desktop counterpart,
you also have a boost clock of up to five gigahertz
on that CPU.
But you, on the GPU side, have enough performance
to push some seriously impressive frame rates in games.
Now, of course, this laptop is outfitted
with a very high-end screen
which you can take advantage of that.
But the thing is, back in the day,
you were lucky to get 30 FPS in your gaming laptop.
You were lucky to have a battery
that would last you more than an hour.
Now we could just take that kind of stuff for granted
because the entire ecosystem has caught up.
Which, for me, has made a massive difference
because I want to use one device everywhere.
I want to be able to take it with me to work,
plug it into my Thunderbolt dock at the office,
use it with my display, connect it to the network,
take it into the server room.
And then when I'm done, bring it home
and then I can game or do work, whatever on my home setup.
And believe me when I say,
even just a couple years ago,
there was not a gaming laptop
that could do all of that well.
Sure, it might have decent battery life,
but the performance is not gonna be there.
Or you might have great performance,
and it's gonna last you absolutely no time at all.
And I think that's where things have evolved,
almost more than anything else,
is really removing so many of those compromises
that, in the past, really did keep me
from being able to completely rely on a laptop every day.
Now, when it actually comes to gaming on the Legion 7i,
there are a few things that jump out to me.
Now performance is one. I'm playing Forza Horizon 5.
But I think the thing that almost is more surprising
to me is just how good this screen is.
Now you can look at the specs,
and the specs have pretty much everything
you could ever ask for out of a gaming laptop.
So it's a 16-inch panel, 16:10.
It's a 1600p display,
and you also have like 500 nits of brightness.
And importantly, 165Hz refresh rate.
A lot of great specs. It looks great.
But the thing that almost surprises me most
is just how visually good it looks,
but considering that it's a matte display.
And something else that's amusing to me,
specifically when it comes to looking at this laptop,
is the size and the practicality.
Now, oftentimes,
gaming laptops have had a little bit of a show-off-y look.
And especially when comes to the feel, right?
So you'll have red accents everywhere.
You'll have a super, super thick design .
And a lot of times, you actually have major downsides
when it comes to actually trying to use it a regular basis.
And when you consider that this device
has basically these same level of performance
that is in the most high-end gaming laptop
that you could get your hands on
and yet, is portable.
It is thin enough and, importantly,
actually has battery life.
So this one has a 99.99-watt hour battery.
AKA the largest legal battery you could put in a laptop
and still get on a plane.
Which means that while you'll have some time for gaming,
you'll also have enough battery life
to actually last for regular use.
I have been so frustrated so often
about the compromises you get when you throw the word
"gaming" in with a laptop.
Because on one side,
you've got gaming laptops like this
which have gotten basically all your check boxes, right?
You've got some battery life, you've got performance,
screen, all that kind of stuff.
Something I appreciate about this device
is the fact that it is relatively understated
for a gaming laptop.
Now you're looking at right now in full RGB party mode.
So you've got not only the logo,
but you've actually got like the underglow,
the per key RGB backlighting on the keyboard.
And that's all great, but you know what's also easy to do?
Turn it off or set it to white,
and you can easily walk into a meeting
and no one will look twice at your laptop
which you can easily use for gaming,
but also use it for being a professional device.
Because let's not forget all of these features
that make this a good gaming device
equally make it a good creative tool.
You got pretty much everything that you could need
to get work done and to have fun.
Not that you should ever do those at the same time.
I would never condone playing at work.
Part of how Lenovo were able to pack this level
of gaming hardware in a chassis like this
is their Coldfront 4.0 tech.
They gave me a brief talking about, you know,
the the fans and the vapor chamber and stuff
but I'm more of a visual learner.
They're not gonna mind if I crack this open, right?
Just for informational purposes.
Why don't we take a look inside?
See what the Coldfront tech is all about.
Shout out to Lenovo for choosing to use a bunch
of very easy Phillip screws to open up a laptop.
(clears throat) Oh wow, look. I've got it open now.
How convenient?
Inside we've got...woo!
Wait, there's dual M.2 slots?
Basically, this entire, everything from here,
over here, over here,
this is all just looks to be one vapor chamber.
When we unboxed the laptop,
there's this little add-on.
And when you open it up,
it seems to be an actual replacement for the keycaps.
Man, I literally didn't look at this
'cause I wanted to look at it on camera.
"Supplied ceramic keycaps can be used for swapping keycaps
with the same shape and size."
It comes with the scissor switches,
but I don't actually need those unless they break.
I'm not gonna lie.
I've never seen anything like this on a laptop before.
So I'm gonna try to loosen it here.
I wanna be careful. I don't wanna break anything.
But it's nice that I do have the extras.
Come on, come on.
There we go.
Hey, I got it out and I didn't snap anything.
Right, right, right, right?
Yay, I did it!
Three more to go!
Wow, so easy when you follow the instructions
and don't read the wrong part.
Okay, well that's easy. I can do that again.
So this is using a TrueStrike keyboard,
which has a bunch of other advantages.
But specifically with the actual keycaps,
they're kinda like plastic, you know.
As pretty much all key caps are.
But these ceramic ones are actually a little bit slippery.
Which is a good thing, right?
'Cause they actually feel like distinctly different
if you're not looking.
You know, I'm just here gaming.
You can definitely feel them,
but it's in a way that's not annoying.
Obviously, it's still flush.
You can still close the screen. Everything.
This is a nice thing to include.
I'm gonna be so much better at gaming now.
So I may or may not have convinced you
that laptops are worth getting rid of your desktop over.
But regardless of whether you're looking at this,
the Legion 7i which, of course, I'll have a link
in the description for,
or a smaller, lighter weight laptop
that might be a little more affordable.
It doesn't really matter because, in my opinion,
laptops have come so far that it really is worth a thought,
depending on your use case,
on whether or not you need a desktop.
But regardless, definitely be sure to let me know
what your thoughts are in the comments below.
And of course, big thank you to Lenovo
for sponsoring this video.
You can check out the Legion 7i
and their whole range of Legion gaming laptops available
at the link in the description.
Boy oh boy, I'm gonna be spending a lot of time
in the comments for this one.
(gentle music)