Lenovo's next Legion laptop lineup is looking to pair up high performance and lower temperatures. Shown off at the company's Innovate showcase in Thailand this week, the revamped roster consists of four waves of devices.
The first of these is made up of the new Lenovo Legion 7i and Legion 5i. Both are aimed at those who need both performance and a bigger screen on the go. The former of the two can be kitted out with either a display with 3.2K resolution and 100% DCI-P3 colour or a WQXGA screen with a faster 240Hz refresh rate. The Legion 5i only comes in the latter variety.
Under the hood, the Legion 7i is armed with your choice of either an Intel Core i9-14900HX or i7-14700H processor, up to 32GB of DDR5 RAM, up to 1TB of SSD storage and up to an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 laptop GPU. The Legion 5i shares many of these specs, but is available in a wider range of i5 and i7 processors.
Next up, you've got the Lenovo Legion 9i for those who want to have a portable PlayStation that's just as good for content creation.
The Legion 9i runs on an Intel Core i9-14900HX processor, up to 64GB of DDR5 RAM, up to 2TB of SSD storage and up to an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 GPU. It's also got the liquid cooling introduced in last year's Legion lineup plus a 16-inch screen with 3.2K resolution and a Mini LED backlight.
Then, there's the Legion Pro 7i and Legion Pro 5i for those want all the gaming-specific bells & whistles. We came away impressed with last year's Legion Pro 5i and this year's incarnation ups the ante with the latest in Intel and Nvidia hardware and Lenovo PureSight displays.
The Legion Pro 7i is powered by the same Intel Core i9-14900HX processor found in the Legion 9i, up to 2TB of SSD storage, up to 32GB of DDR5 RAM and up to an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090. Basically, it's the one to get if you want just short of the best performance Lenovo can offer.
Naturally, the Legion Pro 5i sits step below that. It's available in a range of Intel CPU configurations with up to 32GB of DDR5 RAM, up to 2TB of SSD storage and up to an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 GPU.
Last but not least, you've got the Legion LOQ 5IRX9, Lenovo LOQ 15IAX9I, Lenovo LOQ 15IAX9, and Lenovo LOQ 15AHP9 for those who want decent performance and a thrifty price tag.
If you want the short version here, it's that Lenovo are looking to offer to give those in the market for a new gaming laptop something to consider at all the usual price points. That said, while only the most high-end Legion laptops like the Legion 9i feature an integrated liquid cooling system, this year's Legion 7i, Legion 5i and budget-friendly LOQ laptops boast something unique in the form of Lenovo's new Coldfront Hyper thermal tech.
This isn't the only thing separating this year's Legion laptops from their predecessors but it is by far the most interesting detail. Incorporating a central hyperbaric chamber, the feature promises to achieve more optimal heat exchange by keeping hot and cold air apart. The end result here is that the processors found in these machines can eke out an extra 25W of power while operating at a lower temperature and reducing fan noise relative to their 2023 counterparts.
Speaking of those processors, one of the other interesting wrinkles here is that Lenovo's new Legion devices all feature 14th-generation Intel chipsets rather than the chipmaker's new Intel Core Ultra CPUs. Since this means that don't have a dedicated NPU, Lenovo has included its own LA AI Core chips instead. While this piece of silicon isn't as smart as something like ChatGPT, it still promises to improve your gaming experience through AI-guided performance tweaks.
Exact Australian pricing and availability for Lenovo's new Legion laptops is to be confirmed.
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