Legion Pro 7i Gen 10 Laptop - Average Jenn Tech Reviews
Have you ever been researching a new piece of technology, only to be confused by all the tech jargon in the reviews? Have you ever wanted to buy a new laptop or phone, but wanted to know how it would fit into your daily life? Do you ever feel like most tech reviews are written for other techies and not the average Joe? Insert Average Jenn Tech reviews, a regular person writing slightly above-average reviews that fit in with your above-average lifestyle.
For today’s average people’s consumption: the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 10 laptop.
Review Model Specs
Display 16″ WQXGA (2560 x 1600), OLED 240Hz
CPU Intel® Core™ Ultra 9 275HX Processor
Memory 32GB DDR5
Graphics NVIDIA® Geforce RTX™ 5080 Laptop 16GB
Storage 1 TB SSD M.2
Ports HDMI, 3xUSB-A, 2xUSB-C, Audio Jack,
Battery 4 Cell Rechargeable Li-ion 99.9wh
Weight ~2.5kgs
Look, I’m gonna start this review by saying that the display on this machine is so good that it made me realise my monitor was a piece of garbage and that I needed to upgrade. After playing games on this crisp OLED 240Hz screen, I couldn’t go back to my old monitor. I just couldn’t. So let this set the tone for the rest of the review (but we’re coming back to this because I am not done gushing about this screen yet).
The look of this laptop is unmistakably Lenovo; the clean lines, the understated RGB and their iconic power key are all design features I’ve come to expect from a Lenovo machine. Like older models in their Pro line, the Pro 7i really blurs the line visually between gaming machine and regular laptop. It doesn’t have the kind of bells and whistles you can see from space, but there’s enough going on that it doesn’t look like something a corporation would give you to slap out spreadsheets on.
Day to Day Use
If I’m spending top dollar on a gaming laptop, I wanna know three things:
- Does it look cool?
- Can I use it in my daily life for all the other stuff I need to do?
- Does it play games like an absolute beast?
The Lenovo Pro 7i Gen 10 answered a firm and resounding YES to all three of these questions.
One of my favourite things about the Lenovo Pro machines is that they include a numpad in their keyboard layout. This sounds stupid, but if a laptop is going to pass my “daily life” test, it needs a numpad. The keyboard itself is nothing to type home about (see what I did there? Hilarious, I know), but it’s comfortable to use for long periods, and my long nails didn’t give me any grief with the flatform design.
Video/Audio Calls & Sound
I tested the audio performance on gaming sound and audio calls, and all came back with big green ticks.
When gaming, I really enjoy having my volume up loud to truly get immersed in what I’m playing (and not just because years of going to concerts have left me hard of hearing). When testing the audio on the laptop, I didn’t use a headset and instead opted to blast the sound throughout my lounge room – and I was pleasantly surprised by how loud it got without any distortion of sound. My husband, who could hear my audio from the other end of the house, was slightly less pleased, but even he had to admit that the audio quality was excellent.
Audio calls are clear, and voices carry over the speakers really well; even my most soft-spoken of friends were able to be heard clearly.
However, there is one catch to the speakers being good – and it’s that the mic then picks up that sound and feeds it back to everybody.
During a gaming session with some mates, I used the dedicated mic and speakers instead of a headset. And whilst I could hear everybody really well, they heard everything echoed because of the way the mic picked up all the sound. Obviously, this can be solved by just wearing a headset, but sometimes you just wanna blast the sound for all to hear.
Video-wise, everything looks good on this screen. Everything. Trust me when I say you’ve never looked so crisp, so clear, so detailed, as when you use this webcam and are displayed on this screen. Your eyes don’t even work as well as this screen does. You’re gonna wanna rip out your eyeballs and shove two OLED 240Hz displays in your sockets instead.
Battery Life
Historically, with the Lenovo laptops I’ve reviewed, battery life has not been amazing – but the Lenovo Pro 7i Gen 10 boasts a way better battery life than the older ones. Unlike the 5i Pro, which gave me only a measly 90 minutes of unplugged gaming, I was able to get close to three hours on this machine, and that’s unplugged, full brightness, full audio, full graphics. For video streaming, I stretched this even further to close to five hours, and for general day-to-day use, I got almost a full work day out of it.
The Chocolate Test
When I reviewed the 5i Pro, I suffered a tragic loss: the melting of my Crunchie bar. This was a really sad day for me, because I really wanted that Crunchie bar. But since then, I have decided to run the chocolate test on all future laptop reviews, so that nobody else suffers such a huge loss. With the new cooling technology present in the Pro 7i, I found not only did the keyboard get much less hot, but resting the laptop on my legs didn’t make me feel like I was cooking. And most importantly, when I placed a chocolate bar behind it (for science purposes, I used a denser, Marvellous Creations bar), it did not melt.
Gaming
Obviously, one of the most important things in a gaming laptop is “how well does it play games?” Well, the short answer to this one is: really frickin well. But the long answer is still… really well, just with more words. I tested this laptop across a range of different games and couldn’t really push it into ‘stress test’ territory. FPS stayed above 100 consistently, and CPU usage never got above 45-50%, depending on the game. Testing a machine boasting a 5080, I’d expect nothing less, but it was great to see my expectations get not only met, but blown away.
Three of the games I used to test different features were:
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33:
- If you thought I was gonna miss an opportunity to talk about this game one more time you were WRONG
- This game looks so stunning on the gorgeous screen of the Lenovo Pro 7i Gen 10 that I could have cried. And I did, because it was Clair Obscur, but also because this game looks more gorgeous than it did even on my big TV when I reviewed it last year.
- The fast-paced battles in this game were relayed beautifully with no frame tearing, no stuttering, and no input lag. It was a JOY to play
- I didn’t think Verso could get more handsome but then I saw him on this display and oh boy.
- Clair Obscur is one of the most gorgeous games I have ever played, both visually and aurally, and this machine really did justice to how beautiful this game really is.
Palia:
- This cozy MMO features bright and vibrant colours that I really wanted to see on the BEYOND GORGEOUS display, and my gosh, I’ve never seen this game look prettier
- Being an MMO, Palia can also have moments where you’ll have heaps of people on screen. And sometimes all those people will be trying to catch a BUNCH of bugs, or hunt a TONNE of animals – which means your system has to load in all these things at once. The Lenovo Pro 7i did this beautifully, without ever dipping below 100fps.
- Palia also includes outfits that have animations built right into them – think stars falling, sparkles twinkling, fairies swirling around you constantly; and this was another thing the laptop was able to handle without any issue at all, even when my screen was filled to bursting with a bunch of different animated effects.
Inzoi:
- Inzoi is going to become one of my new standard testing games due to its incredibly high recommended spec ratings. Not only does this life simulation game render an entire open world, but it does it all with ultra-realistic graphics, shadows and ray tracing.
- The game did have an engine update earlier this year that improved stability, and it ran even better on this machine than when I tested it on the 5i last year.
- Textures were clear, fps was constant, I experienced no stuttering, no tearing, no lag. My RAM and CPU usage were higher on this game than some of the others, but Inzoi is probably the most graphically intensive after Clair Obscur, and it was nothing this laptop couldn’t handle.
Closing Thoughts
Lenovo has once again knocked it out of the park with the Pro 7i Gen 10 laptop. They consistently bring out great hardware, and whenever I get my hands on one of their machines, I’m reminded why they set such a high standard in the gaming space.
This laptop looks great and is a dream to use, in gaming and in daily life. Whether you’re a cozy gamer or one who likes something more action-packed, this machine is going to deliver exactly what you need with polish and style. My one gripe is that some parts of the laptop (the screen, the screen, the SCREEN) are so good they made me wanna go and drop thousands on a new screen for myself because it wrecked all other displays for me.
Lenovo has always made good laptops, but the Pro 7i Gen 10 is a great laptop. It’s clear that they’ve recognised the shortfalls of some of their older machines and really brought their A-game to the table with this one. Battery life? Way better. Cooling? Improved. Gaming? Phenomenal – as always. Screen? Oh my freaking GOD. The Pro 7i Gen 10 is another win in a long list of achievements Lenovo has had lately in the hardware space.
