3 Lenovo Legion 9i Gen 8 review highlights that justify its ultra-high-end US$4,000+ pricetag

One of the highlights of the Legion 9i 16IRX8 is a thin chassis and understated, yet decidedly still gaming-themed, design.

In our review, we called the Lenovo Legion 9i Gen 8 16IRX8 the best Legion that money can buy, and that’s not just because of its US$4,399 price and built-in water cooling. The Legion 9i Gen 8 earns its praise with an astonishingly-bright mini-LED display with DCI-P3 support, and, of course, killer gaming performance.

Gaming laptops have been getting increasingly-impressive displays over the years, and the display on the Legion 9i is no exception. As we noted in our Legion 9i 16IRX8 review, its high-end display is bright, fast, and rather colour-accurate, making it a great display for gaming, despite its weird 3200×2000 resolution. The display is also G-Sync compatible and features a MUX switch with Nvidia Advanced Optimus.

We found that the 165 Hz mini-LED display was able to reach an astonishing 1,025-nit maximum brightness in HDR mode, while SDR mode dropped brightness down to 675 nits. Both SDR and HDR results are far above the ~500 nits usually seen on gaming laptops, and it’s certainly more than bright enough for use in brightly-lit environments. This high brightness makes it HDR1000 compatible, enhancing media and games that support the standard.

While colour accuracy wasn’t perfect, managing a ΔE value of 2.56 (where ≤2 is an ideal value for colour-sensitive work), the display delivered 99.9%, 97.2%, and 87% coverage of the sRGB, DCI-P3, and AdobeRGB colour spaces, respectively. While it isn’t the perfect workstation for creative work, it certainly strikes a phenomenal balance between colour accuracy, gamut coverage, and brightness. 

It’s reasonable to expect a US$4,000 laptop to have exceptional build quality, and the Lenovo Legion 9i delivers with the combination of a matte magnesium chassis and forged carbon-wrapped lid. The quality materials on the touchpoints make the laptop feel quality, while the unique visuals are sure to appeal to even those gamers who are after a more understated look.

Although the trackpad on the Legion 9i is rather small, its glass construction should deliver decent durability, and we found the clicks to be satisfying. The keyboard was also a strong point, delivering the satisfying tactile feedback while typing expected from Lenovo devices, even if it only has 1.5 mm of travel.

The full-sized keyboard and considered touchpoints of the Legion 9i 16IRX8 make for a comfortable, premium mobile gaming experience.

Last, but certainly not least, the Lenovo Legion 9i Gen 8 delivers stellar gaming performance, thanks to an Intel Core i9-13980HX and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090. While the CPU falls behind the AMD Ryzen 9 7945HX Legion 9i consistently delivers expected CPU and GPU performance, despite the 19.8-mm thick chassis. 

While chassis temperatures did get high maximum load scenarios — with some parts of the keyboard deck reaching up to 49.6 °C (121.28 °F) — the touchpad and majority of the keyboard remained cool enough that it shouldn’t be a concern.

The Legion 9i 16IRX8 is also water-cooled, but not in quite the way one might expect. Instead of water cooling the CPU or GPU, Lenovo decided to put a water-cooling system on the user-swappable DDR5-5600 RAM. While this doesn’t seem to have done much in our testing, it may well be that Lenovo included the unorthodox RAM cooling to maintain stable RAM frequencies and timings while protecting the memory from the CPU and GPU heat.

Lenovo is currently shipping the Legion 9i via its online store in the US, while European customers can grab the high-end gaming laptop via Lenovo’s local online store, like Lenovo DE.

While the thin Legion 9i chassis does warm up considerably under heavy load, Lenovo’s clever keyboard relocation means that much of that heat is away from your fingertips.

Julian van der Merwe – Magazine & Specialist News Writer – 429 articles published on Notebookcheck since 2022

My interest in tech started in high school, rooting and flashing my Motorola Defy, but I really fell down the rabbit hole when I realised I could overclock the i7 930 in my Gigabyte pre-built PC. This tinkering addiction eventually lead me to study product design in university. I think tech should improve the lives of the people using it, no matter the field. I like to read and write about laptops, smartphones, software and trends in technology.

Julian van der Merwe, 2023-10-30 (Update: 2023-10-30)

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