Lenovo Legion Slim 7 16 gaming laptop in review: Convincing even with AMD Ryzen

[PlotinusRedux]

To disagree with almost all the comments here: I got one of these for my daughter a couple of weeks ago and liked it so much I got myself one with 32MB ram, both for under $1,300.

For my use purposes it is ideal: under 5lbs, nearly silent in silent mode while still able to play games with maybe a 10-20% FPS loss; an efficient processor plenty powerful enough for daily use and most games which stays cooler and uses less power than the intel versions (see other forums with jealous 7i version owners).

Unless Lenovo is lying, I have no way to test it, but the rear-most USB-C port is listed as USB4.

Yes, the 4060 is underpowered (I've only seen it go up to 85W) and isn't a 4080; it loses surprising little performance for those watts and the upshot is cool and quiet.  It will play most modern games in high mode @1440p without DLSS at > 60 fps; as time goes on it will require moving to medium, using DLSS (which is on most new games), maybe dropping to 1080p, etc.

But our use case is to be able to play games without a big concern for eye candy, still carry the thing easily, have it appropriate for work settings in both appearance and noise, a very bright (500 nits) screen for use outdoors, solid enough to take some banging around in bags, etc.  It will mostly be used for entertainment and work with the gaming part tertiary, so spending money on a 4080 would be silly (though obviously you'd want a 4080 would make sense for a true gaming laptop--I still use a desktop for that).

[NikoB]

I got one of these for my daughter a couple of weeks ago and liked it so much I got myself one with 32MB ram, both for under $1,300.

The nuance is that in most countries this option from the review costs more than $1,500 and therefore is not needed by anyone. Everything is worth exactly its money - any attempt to rip off money from the buyer for missing components and the impossibility of an upgrade automatically leads to the complete unpopularity of the series. This is clearly evident from the actual sales of Slim over 3 years.

Most buyers, having studied the model, ignore it for 3 years, immediately moving on to L5Pro.

In 2023, Lenovo is doing the most dirty thing possible - it does not provide any people who paid for 2 USB40 ports inside the SoC Zen4, or at best one in some models. If previously this required unsoldering an external controller, now this is not required, just like in Intel (but greedy Lenovo does not bring TB4 out and with Intel versions). Such bestiality is not welcomed by buyers.

So you and your daughter are just a rare exception (much like the rare part of buyers that is content with reduced performance for a high price in the same series as LG Gram). Smart and forward-thinking buyers expect 5-7 years of laptop use. 32GB will become a problem in 1.5-2.5 years for universal/work laptop, as it is now 16. And the main problem - 7840РHS is frankly low performance - the 7945HX is 2.5 times faster for the same money as part of the L5Pro (7945HX+4060 ~ 1300-1400$), which means people who bought a laptop with it and 64GB will be able to use the laptop for at least 7-10 years, if desired, with such a processor it will not lose its relevance, at least as a work laptop.

Lenovo will gradually lose market share - its peak success is behind it.

[jshippp]

This laptop may not be amazing but why do none of you in the comments seem to understand that some people do not want hulking giant 18" monsters or do not need a 7945HX (essentially a desktop processor crammed into a laptop and with the TDP and thermals to show for that or a 4090 or 64GB of RAM or any of this. The jet engine fan noise is also not an option if you people you work or live with will object to it (employers, landlords etc) Also these are luxury items but demanding people buy only the highest end hardware or there is no point makes you sound very out of touch. Either that or you never intend to buy one, you just yell at people for making the wrong purchase.  Some people want value or being lightweight and portability or good build quality and any of those things are a good thing to look for aside from pure power. Ideally a combination of them is best. Like yeah you can buy a Strix Scar 18 and its going to be powerful but the build quality is questionable and its battery life weight and size are awful. Yes these are for  gaming but they are still laptops and the benefits of laptop. Also for those of you that seem to yell at people considering an a 4060 or 4070, yes we know they are much less powerful than the 4080/90 but the price premium is also very steep and people cannot afford €3500/4000 on a laptop but can afford 2k but still want a well rounded laptop and not something with great performance but is built awful. 

I currently have a Clevo P650RE with a 6700HQ and 970M which yes is ancient and I need to upgrade it but I have not been able to until now and it is now at the point where the market is at the bad point with bad value but it is close to breaking so I will have to replace within the next year or two. I say this to mean that sometimes people need to replace a gaming laptop with what is best available for the price and something that is good at gaming (remember people don't *always* play the latest 2023 AAA games, and current indies or games two or three years old will be fine on a 4070) while also being a good all-round laptop with good battery life and decent battery life speakers keyboard trackpad and cooling rather than just pure power. With shenanigans from Nvidia and the manufacturers and to a lesser extent Intel and AMD some people have to settle for a 4070 because they need a laptop now for x price not when the market has improved and there is more power and efficiency with new CPUs and GPUs. See someone else's perspective for a change, people want gaming laptops as a general good laptop that you can also game on rather than something with raw power and literally nothing else

[Neenyah]

300-350€ less and this is pure perfection for CS2.

[NikoB]

The jet engine fan noise is also not an option if you people you work or live with will object to it (employers, landlords etc) Also these are luxury items but demanding people buy only the highest end hardware or there is no point makes you sound very out of touch.

Almost all "gaming" laptops weighing more than Slim are guaranteed to have less noise. You just don't understand it. This is physics, and reality cannot be circumvented. Your laptop will in all cases be noisier at the same load level.

People really want 18" and 4K screens at home and they generally don't care about the weight. They just don't have a choice - there are simply no such laptops on the market in a normal version in 2023. Not yet. It all comes down to one Asus model and one MSI model. Both have disadvantages and quite high prices, although people like me most often do not need a discrete video card or an entry-level 4050 is enough. But in 2023 they are simply not given an alternative, and the majority of consumers are also technically illiterate.


I haven't been interested in games in general for a long time. Only the comfort of working with a laptop, because... maximum screen size with the highest possible ppi (strictly no lower than 220-230 today - and this is only 4K panels, no options) in case you have to work on it and not on an external monitor, a comfortable full-fledged classic keyboard with full-size buttons in height and width, with a full numpad, and not poor cut-offs on a bunch of Chinese models and some Western manufacturers, many full-fledged ports (squeezing out everything possible from the SoC, for its price) located comfortably at the back, left and right. And great upgrade options.

For example, the same 7945HX has 28 pci-e 5.0 lines - NOTHING prevents sneaky and greedy laptop manufacturers from outputting 4xUSB40 to the outside with a 2x2 panel and even agreeing on a new standard for outputting x16 pci-e 4.0 to the outside in the form of a special port for external discrete video cards, which will give you the opportunity to play and use powerful 3D packages on powerful discrete chips, maximizing the capabilities of laptops without discrete chips or with weak built-in discrete chips.

But there is nothing of this today. And laptops that do not provide the ability to upgrade to 64GB in the future should simply be ignored if the buyer assumes that they will use the laptop for at least 5-7 years.

Slim simply does not meet a lot of criteria for a universal laptop, even for 3-5 years. But he turned out to be interesting specifically to you. But the majority of people are not interested in it, which is clearly visible from the models hanging in warehouses compared to other Legion lines that are more comfortable in terms of upgrade.

[where is the alternative]

Ok, you are looking for laptop and you want all rounded / portable machine mainly for work and occasional higher performance tasks while you are at home and abroad. And this is your only work/free time compuer.


CPU. AMD processor - great, more power efficient than Intel versions. Idle power draw in the test is wrong. Most probably some driver/BIOS issues etc. Mine uses ~12W with Outlook, Excel, PDF and some 15ea Chrome tabs in background. I would say power draw is similar to other tested 7840HSs all over the internet.

iGPU. Radeon 780m - amazing. On battery, just switch to iGPU only and it's more than enough. (GTA V on very high settings in 1920x1200, with 780m alone goes around 42FPS. Nice, right?)

RAM. 16GB soldered + free slot.
SSD. 2ea slots.
WI-FI. If you don't like something. it's swappable.

Screen. 2560x1600 with more than enough screen brightness (75-85% level used in most cases). Maybe 240hz is overkill, but well, you can easily switch to 60hz. In 2023 1080p for 16" 16:10 should not be the right choice. Maybe.

Keyboard. Fantastic. Nicer than on my previous laptop HP Elitebook. Numpad was mandatory to me (work related). Arrow keys are separated. Also considered this as an advantage. Hated it on HP.
RGB. No. Just white backlight. Why the heck you need RGB? Get LED strips from Aliexpress and decorate your living room as you wish.

Ports. All you can want. Maybe one USB-A could be ethernet, but then you can get adapter for 10EUR.
AFT USB-C connects to 780m integrated.
FWD USB-C as well as HDMI port connects directly to RTX 4060.

Battery. Mine in Lenovo Vantage and other hardware measurement apps as brand new shows around 101WH So, basically illegal in most of the airlines (99Wh limit). It couldn't be better. Perfect.

Speakers. Bottom faced. Logically they are not as good as upward faced. But I believe there was just not enough space where to implement them.

Weight. 2160 grams. So, it's just a bit heavier than some alternative lighter business 16" laptops which goes around 1.9kg. And you can swap to PD USB-C type charger to reduce weight of Lenovos's 230W brick if that's too much. Who wants to carry on 3,5kg "LAPTOP" with 1kg power supply?

Build quality and aesthetics. Very good. It's full aluminium from top to bottom and doesn't scream "GAMER".

Performance mode is a bit noisy. BUT. If you can sacrifice 10-15 FPS and play in QUIET mode, which is seriously very quiet and loss of performance is not that big. And I have a medical studies tested question here. How much Frames Per Second actually people eye can see?

So where is the alternative? Depends what is the usage of laptop. Apple? Look on the prices if you want slight hardware upgrade. No Numpad (my specific problem).
You want cheap feeling plastic chassis with "alien" head on top skin. Ok. That's what you want.
You can go to something with a bit lighter CPU (but still with 680m, 760m, 780m, and without dedicated graphics if that's an option). Maybe some Thinkpads, Ideapads, Elitebooks etc.?
But still, what would be the price for such laptop? Still around 1000 EUR in EU. Of course, if you are not looking into some cheap chinese crap with bad keyboard, screen and build quality in general.
And who wants a 18" 4K AT HOME? Just go and get desktop computer with big nice monitor and enjoy it.
No idea where you have same quality laptops with 64GB/4TB out from the box for 1500 EUR.

I got mine from Lenovo with 32GB RAM and 1TB storage for around 1450 EUR. And for my specific needs this unit was close to perfect.
Just my personal customer review.

[A]

How much Frames Per Second actually people eye can see?

It's subjective, try different Hz and see for yourself. My personal sweet spot is around 120-144Hz.

[Neenyah]

And I have a medical studies tested question here. How much Frames Per Second actually people eye can see?

Fps depends about title, not about human eye. For AAA games 60 is perfectly sufficient as people usually crank up graphics as that's one of the purposes of such games.

For racing sims and most esport titles, shooters especially like Counter Strike 2, you need as much fps as possible even on a 60 Hz screen (but 240 or 360 Hz is ideal) to reduce input latency so you often see people running absolute bottom everything (low or disabled) on a high end machines, because no one cares about graphics as those are fast-paced competitive games - example with one from the very best professional CS players and he runs i9 11900K + 3080 in this video (14900K + 4090 now): https://youtu.be/rJ9gFZbyjLo

Check also this very great informative video about higher fps difference and input latency: https://youtu.be/hjWSRTYV8e0

Edit: "...example with one for the very..." ➡ "...example with one from the very..."

[RobertJasiek]

I would be very surprised if the human eyes did not also play a role and were different from person to person!

[NikoB]

And who wants a 18" 4K AT HOME? Just go and get desktop computer with big nice monitor and enjoy it.

You are clearly new here and don't understand what you are writing about. You are too superficial and don't understand the nuances. But I have described all this many times in many local topics.

Today you cannot use the same chrome/edge without a 4k screen. I use FireFox with blurred anti-aliasing turned off (the same as in Chrome, from version 69, but fortunately, unlike Chrome, it can be disabled in one setting), but in some cases I have to open Chrome and then I have to damage my vision without screens with ppi>220 -230 because of the nasty muddy fonts both on laptops and on monitors, because you can only get 220 ppi with 4k screens on a laptop, and on a monitor it's generally impossible today except for rare 6-8k screens - and both from Dell and their engineers and the designers understand me very well. They talked about this to reporters. I've quoted them here before. You're just a newbie. This is just the tip of the iceberg of requirements for a normal laptop from an expert.

My new laptop will definitely not have a ppi of less than 220-230, which means that all screens with 2.5k will automatically disappear.

You can place the laptop by the bed or on it and surf lying/reclining and do some work on a powerful, silent machine, comfortably with a mouse, in desktop versions of sites (and not poor cut-down versions for smartphones and tablets) without spoiling your eyesight on a small screen, in a safe zone from radiation from wi-fi antennas (of course, most don't care about this, but then they are surprised about skin cancer, although their manufacturers warn that SAR is measured at 1.5-2cm from body tissue...). Is it also possible to easily move a PC weighing 12-15 kg (because I have a silent one, with huge radiators) + an 8k monitor (which are generally not on the market on a single cable yet - I've been waiting for them for 12 years)?

I'm just too lazy to write. I'll literally have to describe to a beginner a ton of nuances that he doesn't understand. And all this was previously described by me and proven by indisputable facts.

The system post is too long - it's easier for you to search for my comments, layer by layer, to understand my train of thoughts and why everything is disgustingly bad in laptops now (as well as in desktop monitors - I don't need 4k, because it doesn't solve the fundamental problem of sharp fonts in the same chrome, only solves 6k-8k, but they are still not on DP2.0+, but of course you don't know about that either)


I am happy for you and your daughter that you have found a good solution for yourself, but it is never universal, long-term, or effective. It just hit the mark for your purposes.

But the real popularity of slim lines clearly indicates people's disinterest in these lines. There are very few topics on them, little information and they sell extremely poorly, this is a fact. Most who are looking for a station wagon for home with long-term ownership goals are not interested in them with their limitations.

[SlimOwner]

Regarding the high idle watt usage. You need to install an older version of the nvidia driver (mid october 2023). It's a bug. Then, the idle watt usage is around 10watts. I have around 10 hours of battery life...

[NikoB]

Regarding the high idle watt usage. You need to install an older version of the nvidia driver (mid october 2023). It's a bug. Then, the idle watt usage is around 10watts. I have around 10 hours of battery life...

Well, what kind of "work" can there be in Idle mode, right? 100Wh/10 = 10 hours ideally. In real work, everything will be much worse, only if your job is not typing text in a word processor. Even banal consumption of information in real surfing will immediately lead to a 1.5-2 times reduction in battery life.

In a good way, in order for even moderately heavy regular surfing to work for at least 10 hours, the system consumption, in principle, should not exceed 10W. And this is impossible. And if you add something else running in the background, everything gets even worse.

Local tests for battery life can be safely divided by 1.5-2 times. This is proven by reviews on competing sites with the same models.
----
This is precisely the problem with modern laptops - they consume more and more at the slightest serious impulse load.

The goal should be the opposite (relative to the cheating that Intel did because of its hopelessness with their backward technical processes for the last 8 years and thanks to its almost monopoly position, it forced AMD to get involved in this race of consumption growth (sales 5: 1 in the x86 market in favor of Intel) and even Apple) - to reduce the overall consumption of laptops (and smartphones), while simultaneously increasing overall performance.

As a result, of the high-consuming devices in a laptop (smartphone), only 2 areas should remain (3 taking into account wireless communication over a longer distance) - image and sound output, because they depend on the physical sensitivity of the human organs of vision and hearing (in an ergonomic, safe zone, of course) - and these thresholds cannot be reduced in any way and, in general, there are physical restrictions much higher than for chips and circuits that serve them.

Now everything is bad at the level of key chips and circuits - they simply consume a lot and inefficiently, laptops have long left the comfortable power consumption zone for both cooling systems and battery cells. And progress (performance per 1W) is slowing down and slowing down.

There is either no progress in batteries, or it is deliberately not shown to the public - for example, for safety reasons.

Those. Now, in order to bring the same laptops to a normal state in terms of consumption within the capabilities of the current technology for the production of mass batteries, it is necessary to reduce the average operating consumption of laptops on the x86 platform by literally 3-4 times immediately, simultaneously. Which will immediately lead to a sharp decline in their overall performance, for obvious reasons.

Progress in recent years has not been due to a real rapid increase in performance per 1W, as before, but due to a "boost" (doping) in consumption beyond any reasonable limits for this class of devices.

Apple is the best here for obvious reasons - its chips have the best possible process technology on the planet from TSMC, today it is "3nm". And also a reasonable approach to limiting performance by boosting TDP. As a result, their laptops practically do not lose performance on battery compared to running on a power supply and at the same time have greater battery life - try to do the same trick with your Slim and quickly see how much performance it suffers on battery compared to running on a power supply.

[PlotinusRedux]

The 4060 can go up to 100W on balanced and performance modes, presumably through dynamic boost. I say that because I haven't seen the watts given in any specs or the review, and I posted earlier I hadn't seen it go above 85W--now in some games I have.

I don't think that makes a noticeable performance difference, and I generally play in silent mode that limits it to around 65W (compared to the max for 140W)--that's about 15% slower than balanced mode but *very* quite, the noise/performance trade off is worth it for me--it is very capable of decent gaming performance at low fan volume.

The ability to have decent gaming at low fan volume is very important to me and something the Slim 7 (AMD) excels at.  It is underpowering the 4060 in silent mode, but it's amazing low little performance you lose if quiet is really important to you.

In response to an earlier statement: "Almost all "gaming" laptops weighing more than Slim are guaranteed to have less noise. You just don't understand it. This is physics, and reality cannot be circumvented. Your laptop will in all cases be noisier at the same load level."

This statement would certainly be true for 2 laptops where the *only* difference was the size of the heatsinks and/or fans--but in practice there are many other differences that also affect fan noise--even identical laptops can can very greatly in terms of noise simply by one having a better thermal seal with the CPU and/or GPU. Across different laptops there are many variables--for the Slim 7 vs Slim 7i, for instance, the AMD version has a more efficient CPU than the Intel version; different fan shapes, bearings, etc, can produce more or less noise while moving the same amount of air; different heatpipes, just like better thermal seals to the chips, can move heat to the exchangers more or less quickly, etc.; air intakes and exhausts can be more or less obstructed and efficient apart from case size--again, all things being equal you have more room for larger intakes and exhaust on larger cases, but all things aren't equal, and well designed ventilation on a smaller case will beat less well designed ventilation on a larger case.

In the absence of being able to manually set fan curves, watts, etc., it also matters how the predefined silent, balanced, and performance settings are tuned--towards more watts and higher fan speeds or vice versa.

Then AMD Slim 7 has excellent ventilation and heat pipes.  It is also tuned in general towards lower fan speeds and lower wattages for the CPU and GPU--hence the max (that I've seen) 100W on the GPU vs the 140W the 4060 can use.

Even on performance the 4060 here is underpowered compared to competing laptops; and in the silent mode I use and love it's around 60-65W compared to the max of 140W.  Each of those steps lowers performance and lowers heat and noise.

If quiet is important to you, quiet mode really is quiet and is about 15-20% slower than performance mode; performance mode is around 10-15% slower than all out vacuum cleaner laptops running the 4060 at 140W with 155W dynamic.

The FPS difference isn't very noticeable--the sound difference is between barely noticeable and having to yell to be heard over.

If you're really going for performance rather than just "it's fine", you really shouldn't be looking at 4060 laptops anyway, or even 4070's really, but a vacuum cleaner loud 6 lb desktop replacement 4080.

[Slim7Owner]

Since I bought my NB (2023-October) there are 2 problems with it:

• waking from sleep w/o any user interaction
• the latest BIOS (M1CN36WW) crackling noise and more fan activities

Also at lot of other users reported these problems. Lenovo forum titles:

• Legion Slim 7 AMD Gen 8 waking from sleep
• Legion Slim 7 16APH8 crackles and spins fans more often after recent BIOS update.

Lenovo is (until now) not able to fix them, therefore I cannot recommend it to buy!

[NikoB]

waking from sleep w/o any user interaction

The latest OS from M$ have an insane device power management system - in the device manager, the tab for disabling waking up based on device activity (keyboard, mouse, etc.) has simply disappeared. All this happens for a simple reason - the deliberate cutting out of the best mode S3 (STR), for the sake of the new S5, where PCs/laptops do not turn off at all and represent an ideal device monitoring the owner (with cameras and microphones), like smartphones for a long time. And along with the switch from S3 to S5, the ability to disable devices in the new version of "sleep" from M$ and hardware manufacturers, who, in collusion with M$, also cut out S3(STR) from the firmware of their hardware, also disappeared.

When installing older versions of W10 before 2020, it all worked fine.

Just for fun, I installed W11 on old hardware with S3(STR) hardware support - the device power management tabs also disappeared, although W10 2019/LTSC/LTSB has everything.

Moreover, I know, because... owner of Lenovo laptops, that in some models they intentionally make a faulty BIOS, in which, for example, it is impossible to disable waking up on the keyboard and opening the screen cover, although all the settings are set to prohibit these actions in the system. They didn't even think about fixing this during the entire warranty period.

If such "little things" bother you, you need to carefully choose the hardware you buy. Then it's too late to lament - there will be no help from the manufacturer.