Lenovo Legion 9 16IRX9 (Legion 9i) review: How high-end is the RTX 4090 gamer?

[Redaktion]

"Forged carbon", "reinforced with 90 % recycled magnesium", plus an update to Intel's Gen14 CPUs including AI functions. This, together with the RTX 4090, is included in the 3,800-dollar luxury gamer. Our test will reveal whether the new processor really makes the Legion 9 better or whether you can save a bit by buying last year's model.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-Legion-9-16IRX9-Legion-9i-review-How-high-end-is-the-RTX-4090-gamer.852916.0.html

[Warum macht Lenovo nix]

Hello,

there are also countless threads about the problems with the Legion 9i. Lenovo has been completely silent for months. People, including myself, have reported buying or replacing new Legion 9i dozens of times.
The problems persist.
Actually, everyone has the stuttering problem, which ultimately leads to severe performance degradation.

Google "stutter-in-Performance-Mode-on-Legion-9i-RTX-4090" site:lenovo.com or reddit.com
One exmaple of that issue everyone has...

Super bad communication from Lenovo and blaming within the departments, even in premium support.

BUT the device had early versions that worked better and had much better scores. The problem is only a few months old.

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

[PeppaTurbo]

Unter Nr.7 ist mein Post, hab die Probleme seit Februar, immer noch nicht gelöst gekriegt

1) Disabling-raid-in-Legion-9i

2) Legion-9i-inaccessible-boot-device-error-after-setting-Hyper-V-in-windows-11

3) Disabling-raid-in-Legion-9i

4) Legion-9i-Crackling-audio-through-headset-only-in-Legion-Performance-Mode

5) Legion-9i-repair-came-back-worse-than-it-was-before

6) tutter-in-Performance-Mode-on-Legion-9i-RTX-4090

7) Lenovo-Legion-9-GEN-8-9-13980HX-14900HX-4090-VMD-Issues-High-DPC-Latency-Audio-Crackling(my post)

8) stutters_on_legion_9i(sure reddit isnt the best source, but still)

[PeppaTurbo]

einfach titels in Google eingeben und dann findet man die Post auf lenovo community forum

[Marcusss M]

I have the same problem as described. I have created a case at Lenovo to seek a solution, please help us by escalating the issue. In my case I spent more than 5 thousand dollars.

[David_95]

I just sent mine back because of the performance drops in games. Despite everything I tried I couldn't fix it and having seen this article and lots of reports on reddit, it's clearly a design defect that Lenovo are ignoring.

Unacceptable from the price and not what I expected when I chose Lenovo over the more typically "problematic" brands such as Asus or Razer.

[NikoB]

I wonder why they deleted my comment above, which was written on June 26 in the German and English forums? What have I written that cannot be published? Why did the moderator of this site resort to this censorship? How shameful and indecent this is on the part of the editors...
----------
A laptop priced at $5,000 has a shameful dramless SSD with a shameful size of 2TB, instead of at least 4?

The screen has a native resolution of 3.2k. Why didn't the author measure fps in native resolution, where the clarity of graphics and text is ideal? Is it because even the shameful mobile 4090 (losing 1.5 times to the desktop in fps) can no longer handle games in 2024?

When watching 4k/fhd video, there will not be perfect clarity due to the incompatibility of 3.2k with both resolutions at the pixel level.

The contrast of miniLED and the fact that it is not a pixel backlight, but a multi-zone backlight, excludes True HDR 600-1000 for obvious reasons. Then why is it needed with a small number of backlight zones, where artifacts at the zone boundaries are clearly visible? Why didn't the author measure the native contrast when multi-zone backlighting was turned off to eliminate artifacts at zone boundaries?

The specified frame rate is fake, because the response does not give more than 100Hz real refresh rate.

The laptop overheats under load because... Dimensions and weight are too small for such hardware.

I wonder how many people have wanted to buy this "miracle" from Lenovo since it went on sale at retail?

[Benji]

"How high-end is (it)?" Not high enough. I got suckered into getting this because Mini-Led was supposed to provide me with an amazing viewing experience, and because I got a 25% discount on the laptop. The screen sure was fantastic in video games or movies, until you tried to do some colour accurate work or put a dark theme on. The blooming is atrocious and abysmal. White text and the white mouse cursor all become grey on a black background, as if a yawning abyss swallows them. The "main attraction" is thus a complete bust; and if you can't work properly on your new top-spec £3000 machine, you should really reconsider your decisions.

The performance I got under load was decent, but who cares? When I tried using the laptop normally for a day, just watching youtube caused the fans to turn on noisily and the CPU temps to start climbing to 70+ degrees. That's got to be a joke of some sort. I can cope with the lowest fan setting on a laptop, where they're on but they're barely audible, but having your laptop push above 40 dB while you're just watching a video is not a good thing. If you have to undervolt and underclock your new top-spec £3000 machine, fiddle with fan curves and TDPs and wattages just to get it to behave like a normal laptop, you should really reconsider your decisions.

I have no idea how the reviewers got 4+ hours on battery. The final nail in the coffin for this waste of potential was that watching my youtube vids (20% screen brightness, ~30% volume, quiet mode with custom fans in Legion Toolkit) got me 1h 45min before the 15% battery warning. I forgot to turn the refresh rate down to 60, but I doubt that would have made a great difference; and if you have to turn down the refresh rate on your new top-spec £3000 machine, you should really reconsider your decisions.

What a waste of a cool aluminium chassis. The build quality is really nice, and though I hate "gamer" s*** on my laptops, the "forged carbon" is neat and comfortable to the touch. The ports are just terrible though, so even this one aspect that I kind of like isn't very good. Returned for a Legion Pro 7i... which I returned as well, because it refused to boot on the second day of use. I am not going to be touching Lenovo products again, at least for the foreseeable future.

[Benji]

Oh yeah, the audio jack was horrific on both the Legion 9 and the Legion Pro 7 that I tried. And I also forgot to mention that both came with the moronic "Copilot key" in place of right control, which is a key I find myself using often. I refuse to purchase a laptop that has a Copilot key, as I refuse to purchase a laptop with soldered RAM; this Copilot idiocy will most likely fall out of fashion in just a couple of years.

[Joseph Raymond Schill]

I loved the hell out of the design of 9i.  I purchased on sale at end of April and was initially impressed.  Got some games loaded on and didn't even try "Performance Mode" right away.  Finally was playing CP in Performance Mode and was getting a stutter about every 20 seconds or so.  Rebooted and loaded a less taxing game and again in Performance mode was getting a consistent stutter every 20 secs or so.  Worked with Lenovo tech support and they were useless.  After spending many hours on Lenovo 9i threads finally decided to send it back.  If Lenovo tech support would have acted like they were really trying to fix this issue I would have kept it.

Anyone out there know if the RTX4080 has the same problem as the 4090 in the 9i form factor?

[Dennis H. Miller]

October_2024
Mine is coming today - purchased before seeing this article/thread. Anyone know if there have been any improvements to the 9i (w/4090) since these problems were reported? Sure hope so.