When buying a premium gaming laptop, you need to be hyper-critical. You don’t want to spend thousands of dollars on mediocre hardware or to be left wanting for anything. The Lenovo Legion 9i Gen 10 (starts at $4,539.99; $5,104.99 as tested) appears to live up to those expectations at first glance. Its Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 GPU exhibits incredible performance on a vibrant 18-inch 4K 240Hz display with a dual-mode option for 1200p at 440Hz. Lenovo wraps the laptop in an interesting carbon-fiber design, and the whole package achieves long battery life among 18-inchers.

However, under the microscope, its flaws start to show. The laptop's fans are intrusively loud, and the touchpad’s shallow clicker makes navigating a challenge. Despite its size and price, the Legion 9i lacks room for a mechanical keyboard, and Lenovo doesn't serve up a mini-LED display option—features found in competing big-screen gaming laptops like the MSI Raider 18 HX AI, our Editors' Choice award winner. For all this money, you should get all the trim options, but some are surprisingly absent in Lenovo’s flagship gaming laptop. Look to the aforementioned MSI for a more complete package, and the Razer Blade 18 for something even thinner and higher-powered for the price.

Configurations: Contact Your Loan Officer Today!

Get ready to empty your savings account for this one. While Lenovo provides ostensible "sale" prices that frequently fluctuate, the Legion 9i Gen 10 is still a costly customer. My tested configuration, $5,104.99 MSRP but discounted to around $4,530 at times during my review, includes an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX processor, a GeForce RTX 5080 (16GB) graphics chip, 64GB of 5,200MHz DDR5 RAM split between two SODIMMs, a 2TB PCI Express Gen 5 solid-state drive, and an 18-inch WQUXGA (3,840-by-2,400-pixel) 240Hz IPS display. This screen can switch to a WUXGA (1200p) resolution to refresh at up to 440Hz.

The laptop's base configuration starts at $4,539.99 MSRP (on sale for $3,789.99 as I wrote this) for half as much memory and storage, but the same GPU option. The Legion 9i has just one CPU option in this 10th-generation model, noted above. The 275HX has 24 cores, shared across eight performance cores and 16 efficient cores, and it can run at up to 5.4GHz.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

If you’re already prepared to spend this much money, hey, you may as well swing for the fences. Ignoring the extra software options, like Windows 11 Pro and Microsoft 365, the top-most Legion 9i model costs $6,254.99 MSRP (or $5,015.25 on sale). That configuration jumps up to a top-end RTX 5090 GPU and adds a second 2TB SSD.

Design: Finally, Something Different

Lenovo made an effort to give this laptop a distinctive look: a black aluminum lid layered with forged carbon, a bit like gray camouflage. It’s not as colorful as I’d like, but it beats the dreary collection of homogeneous laptops I'm used to.

However, while the Legion doesn't look like a lifeless brick, it sure feels like a brick. Weighing a hefty 7.72 pounds and measuring 1.1 inches thick, this thing is difficult to carry around your office, campus, or home. I recommend parking it on a desk and letting it sit there. Being fair, the Legion 9i is actually semi-light versus some 18-inch competitors, such as the ponderous Alienware 18 Area-51 (9.56 pounds) and the MSI Raider 18 HX AI, at 7.94 pounds. (The Razer Blade 18 is still the lightest, at "just" 7.06 pounds.)

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

Under the lid, the keyboard's RGB lighting is bright and colorful, and the base cover even has a light bar under the deck that extends partway up the sides. I also like the shield shape of Lenovo’s keycaps, and their softer font moves away from the stereotypical edgy gamer aesthetic. The touchpad is large, and the bezels on the display are thin, with the webcam housing protruding upward to create a convenient lip for lifting the lid.

Display and Audio: Vibrant Sights and Sounds

If you're paying more than $4,000 for a gaming laptop, it should have an OLED display, but that's not in the cards for 18-inch laptops like the Legion 9i (at least not yet). If OLED matters to you, then I'd wait until it becomes available at this size. The Legion 9i doesn't give you an option for mini-LED, either. If you can live with an admittedly high-quality IPS panel, then the Legion 9i’s 18-inch 4K 240Hz display will treat you well. Again, you can toggle the screen to 1200p at 440Hz, but this requires entering the BIOS at startup and tweaking a setting.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

In real-world testing, I see bright, bold colors—from neon lights to blazing gunfights—as I run around Night City in Cyberpunk 2077. However, given the panel's limitations (in particular, its contrast and backlighting), it ends up displaying a white layer over dark scenes. You can mitigate that effect by turning the brightness down, but the contrast can't compete with OLED or mini-LED's per-pixel illumination.

Meanwhile, the audio is loud, thanks to the Legion 9i’s six-speaker system, and overall, the sound is decent. You won't catch any muddled instrument tracks, easily identifying individual sounds. Chatting with the locals of Night City, for instance, the dialogue sounds crisp. When listening to “Radio” from the soundtrack, the instruments are vibrant and distinct.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

However, the in-game chatter has an echo due to the artificial bass, and gunshots sound a bit distant as a result. Higher-pitched sound effects, like menu navigation, become too sharp at high volumes. You can tinker with the Nahimic audio app to find the best sound for you, but the speakers' quality still limits this.

Keyboard, Touchpad, and Webcam: Decent, If Not Delights

Big-screen gaming laptops with mechanical keyboards have spoiled me, so the Legion 9i's set of keys doesn’t compare—and, at more than $4,000, the product should spoil you.

Of course, the Legion 9i’s keyboard is reasonably comfortable. Lenovo ensured generous spacing between the keys, and typing feels natural and bouncy. However, the Legion 9i is an expensive 18-inch beast that's stuck between chunkier models (the Raider) and thinner options (the Blade); it lacks room for a mechanical keyboard and isn't that much more portable for it.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

The touchpad, meanwhile, has a smooth glass surface, and my fingers encounter little to no resistance during day-to-day tasks. However, the clicker is noticeably shallow and quiet, making it difficult to perform click-and-drag actions. Still, you’ll likely use a mouse much of the time, given this is a gaming monster, so the pad's quirks might not matter much to you.

The Legion 9i’s 1440p webcam decently reproduces the pink in one of my shirts and the blues in my curtains, albeit not as boldly as they appear in real life. You'll notice a light fuzziness in the image, but the camera still captures my freckles and the title of a book behind me. (To be fair, the font was large.) Overall, the camera serves well for chatting with friends and even for videoconferencing, but don’t expect it to be a high-quality, sharp cam for serious streaming.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

Ports: Connectors All Around a Big Chassis

The Legion 9i has ports everywhere. Starting on the back edge, Lenovo added a power jack and an HDMI 2.1 port for connecting an external display. 

Moving to the left side, you’ll find one 10Gbps USB-A port for legacy peripherals, two 80Gbps Thunderbolt 5 USB-C connections for faster devices, an Ethernet port for direct internet hookup, and a headphone jack.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

On the right, Lenovo included a 10Gbps USB-C port, two more 10Gbps USB-A ports, a full-size SD-card reader, and a webcam kill-switch button to quell privacy worries.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

Performance Testing: Rev That Engine!

The Lenovo Legion 9i Gen 10 is a machine ready for near-peak performance, from its high-end Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX processor and 16GB GeForce RTX 5080 GPU to its chunky 64GB of RAM and 2TB SSD. Sure, it has an RTX 5090 option, and I recommend configuring it that way, but this level of power is undeniable.

However, the competition is also pretty daunting. Leading our comparison set, the Editors' Choice award holder in the big-screen gaming category is the MSI Raider 18 HX AI ($3,999.99 as tested). Dropping to 16 inches, we've included our $3,299.99 Asus ROG Strix Scar 16 configuration, another Editors' Choice award winner. We've rounded out the 18-inch comparisons with the Alienware 18 Area-51 ($4,449.99 as tested) and our $5,199.99 Razer Blade 18 review loadout—both have top-end RTX 5090 GPUs.

Productivity and Content Creation Tests

Our primary overall benchmark, UL's PCMark 10, puts a system through its paces in productivity apps ranging from web browsing to word processing and spreadsheet work. Its Full System Drive subtest measures a PC's storage throughput.

Three more tests we rely on are processor-intensive: Maxon's Cinebench 2024 uses that company's Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene; Primate Labs' Geekbench 6.3 Pro simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning; and we see how long it takes the video transcoder HandBrake 1.8 to convert a 12-minute clip from 4K to 1080p resolution. Finally, workstation maker Puget Systems' PugetBench for Creators rates a PC's image-editing prowess through a variety of automated operations in the seminal photo editor Adobe Photoshop 25.

Lenovo's big-screen laptop kept pace with and even surpassed competitors on a few occasions, taking the top score in the PCMark productivity simulation (there, a dominant score) and Photoshop tests. The MSI Raider 18 HX AI came out on top in three of six benchmarks, thanks to its more powerful CPU. However, you likely won't notice that slight edge in most real-world use. In my anecdotal tests, while taking breaks from playing Cyberpunk 2077 to write, listen to music, and chat with friends, the game ran in the background without issue. I noticed little to no slowdown, even with a mountain of browser tabs open.

Graphics and Gaming Tests

We challenge all systems’ graphics with a quintet of animations or gaming simulations from UL's 3DMark test suite. The first pair, Wild Life (1440p) and Wild Life Extreme (4K), uses the Vulkan graphics API to measure GPU speeds. The second, Steel Nomad's regular and Light subtests, focuses on APIs more commonly used for game development to assess gaming geometry and particle effects. Last, we turn to 3DMark Solar Bay to measure ray tracing performance.

Our real-world gaming testing is based on the in-game benchmarks for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Cyberpunk 2077, and F1 2024. These three games—all benchmarked at the system’s full HD (1080p or 1200p native) resolution—represent competitive shooters, open-world games, and simulation games, respectively. If the screen supports a higher resolution, we rerun the tests at the QHD equivalent of 1440p or 1600p. Each game is run at two sets of graphics settings per resolution, for up to four runs total on each game.

We run the Call of Duty benchmark at the Minimum graphics preset—aimed at maximizing frame rates to test display refresh rates—and again at the Extreme preset. Our Cyberpunk 2077 test settings aim to push PCs to the limit, so we run it on the Ultra graphics preset and again on the all-out Ray Tracing Overdrive preset without DLSS or FSR. Finally, F1 2924 represents our DLSS effectiveness (or FSR on AMD systems) test, demonstrating a GPU’s aptitude when used with frame-boosting upscaling technologies (here, Nvidia's DLSS across the board).

Once again, the Legion 9i kept competitive with the crowd, even surpassing the RTX 5090-based Alienware Area-51 in Call of Duty. However, Nvidia's Optimus GPU-switching tool was a bit troublesome; with it activated, we noted poor frame rates during testing. (We recorded these proper results only once it was deactivated.) On Lenovo laptops, turning off the tool requires accessing the LegionSpace app, clicking the dGPU button, and then restarting the PC. This mode may save energy, but really, it's just a pain to deal with. After that, the games ran as expected. Note also that the Legion 9i's fans became significantly louder during these high-intensity benchmarks.

In anecdotal testing, the Legion 9i hit 174 frames per second (fps) in Cyberpunk 2077 at 4K resolution in Ray Tracing Overdrive with DLSS upscaling and frame generation activated. The GPU still can’t top out the display's refresh rate at peak settings, but that’s an impressive showing regardless. Switching to 1200p resolution at 440Hz gives you more breathing room. Running Cyberpunk 2077 at this resolution, with the same settings as the 4K test, produced 277fps. Not bad, considering this is one of the beastliest games out there.

Battery Life and Display Tests

We test each laptop and tablet's battery life by playing a locally stored 720p video file (the open-source Blender movie Tears of Steel) with display brightness set to 50% and audio volume set to 100%. We make sure the battery is fully charged before the test, with Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting turned off.

To gauge display performance, we use a Datacolor SpyderX Elite monitor calibration sensor and its Windows software to measure a laptop screen's color saturation—what percentage of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 color gamuts or palettes the display can show—and its 50% and peak brightness in nits (candelas per square meter).

No one, least of all me, expected the Legion 9i to last as long as it did on a single charge. Something as big and powerful as the Legion 9i usually doesn’t live long off the charger. However, the Legion 9i packs a 99.9-watt-hour battery, the largest a laptop can have as a carry-on item according to TSA rules. While I wouldn’t recommend carrying this thing around unplugged, mostly because it’s heavy, you can certainly squeeze by carrying out basic tasks with a result like this—albeit, not gaming.

Despite being a mere IPS panel, the Legion's screen delivered impressive, and even downright competitive, color coverage and brightness. It's well in line with mini-LED marvels like the MSI Raider, even surpassing them in some gamuts. However, nothing has come close to the Raider's lighthouse-like brightness in this category.