Thanks Josh for the review. I ended up buying this Lenovo Legion Slim 7i (Gen 8) for myself last month, been happy with it so far. Compared to my previous XPS 15 2018, the battery life on this is not great out of the box. It also doesn't like my 65W USB-C powerbank (65W USB-C wall charger works though). But very pleased about the 13th gen i7 & 4060 performance + really nice screen. I am using this to do software development + video/photo/audio editing. This video was part of my research, so thought I'd leave a note of thanks :)
Under Windows 11 battery saver mode and light daily office work use (Microsoft Office, Browsing and Email), the fan does not even spin. 100% silent, cool and super long lasting battery (14h+).
If anyone is considering the AMD advantage version, Best Buy current has a $300 sale on it for $1649 (it was off $200 until today, so that's extra $100 off)
Thanks for the review, this one was on my radar from the first day they announced it. But it was announced that there will be model with mini-LED screen and 99.9Wh battery. That is the one I would consider to buy (AMD). Good catch that the battery could be larger as I think it is on some models.
I just tested my Slim i7 3070 and have the following results on Performance mode with latest BIOS and Nvidia drivers installed. Firestrike: 22277; Time Spy 10212. So a little behind and a little ahead.
Awesome review as always, I would like to know more about the weight of those devices with and without the standard charger and other 65W lenovo adapter that you showed earlier. Also, Lenovo is mastering their design for laptops, those are stunning to see and I can't wait to see when the manufacturing side gets better at edges. Finally, Josh do you know anything about the future of ram expandability and double pcie nvme drives? Taking into account that newer generations and chasis designs for laptops as some chips can fulfill 1080p demmand for some users and markets fairly well without getting a lot heavier. Because I would sacrifice a couple hundreds of grams and/or slimness if and oly if I can get those two traits
This is an excellent laptop. I'm using it as my personal machine and will likely get another one at some point, if no other reason than because this keyboard is really incredible. It's in a league of its own. There is one issue that is annoying that should be mentioned though for the 1200p Intel model. I'm not sure how widespread this is, but when gaming in automatic graphics switching mode, especially in Fullscreen, the games lock to 48fps. Forcing GPU only mode fixes this. Using Borderless Fullscreen works in a few games but not all. Haven't found a workaround to just keep it in auto switch mode yet. This could be an issue with early models only. Unclear.
AMD model has only one SSD bay and no USB 4. Battery on is 99 wh in UK market, and that battery can be swapped into these ones. My guess on the smaller battery with the gap was to accommodate the 2nd SSD slot on the AMD model, but they didn't follow through. Redditors also report 32+8 GB works fine. The disclaimer on Lenovos website only states they've tested to 24GB, not that 40GB isn't supported. Razer did the same on the Blade 15 2020, but included it.
I have a legion 7 2021 and I really love it too. I'd say the best windows laptop if you don't have a MacBook. The surface should really be taking notes.
I prefer the Vivobook PRo 16X OLED, because of that 0.2ms reaction time on the OLED, and the 12900H + 3070Ti +32GB RAM combination. It is also pretty thin for the performance you get but the display is HDR600 instead of HDR400 on the Lenovo and the reaction time is miles better!! The display is extremely accurate and smooth! Also, after calibration the sound is excellent! Basically, Asus Vivobook took all of your recommendations and put them into their Vivobook Pro OLED line! Lenovo gives you decent display and sound, but Asus gives you top of the line OLED and sound stage. My biggest complaint with Lenovo laptops is always the sound quality. The displays are pretty good but 1250 contrast and not so perfect P3 coverage... Nothing beats Asus Vivobooks right now.
Great video! I use to do a lot of work on after effects (Mainly doing motion graphics) and I’m looking to pick up a new laptop to get back into that work! Im torn between the Yoga Slim 7 ProX (AMD) with 32gb ram (Can get for £1300) or the legion slim 7i with the RTX 3070 16gb ram (£1500). I would upgrade the slim 7i to 24gb of ram. Which machine would you recommend?
Great review! I bought a Lenovo IdeaPad 5 Pro with an AMD 6600HS CPU, an NVIDIA RTX 3050 4GB, 16 GB RAM and a 1 TB SSD. I'm not a gamer and thought this would be quite enough power for me. For a $800 black Friday price it was a good deal. I like it a lot, except for one HUGE annoyance: the damn fans rev up whenever the CPU gets close to 40 degrees C! That's ridiculous. Whether on performance/balanced/battery mode, it makes no difference whatsoever. And to make it worse, the BIOS is locked down so there is no way to custom control the fan behavior, and no fan control software I've tried can even SEE the fans to report their speeds, let alone create a custom fan curve! Is the BIOS of these Legion laptops similarly crippled? Can you create custom fan curves?
nah, the legion series are known to run cooler whilst being quiet. There is no fan control even in the legion 7. My 2022 Legion 5i pro has the last year's intel 12th gen 12900H processor with the RTX 3070, 8GBand 16 gigs of ram and 2TB ssd. Got it for like $1.6K . The bios offers no fan control but compared to other brands, legion has the second best bios and the inbuilt vantage software. The fan control is what puts it in 2nd. This thing's fans kick in only when I'm using it in balanced mode and with the advanced optimus set to discrete graphics. If I'm playing a game, the fan noise is relatively low compared to my friend's TUF F15. The temps hit 70-75C when playing a game and it stays in the low 30s and 40s and I haven't faced any issues with it whatsoever. Funny thing is, that the AMD variant of the my exact model which my cousin has runs hotter than the Intel variant, despite being known for providing a measly 1 to 1.5 hr battery time more than intel. In your case, you have an HS CPU, which is calibrated for high performance, regardless of whether you use it on battery or while plugged in the wall. If you were to gain control over the fans and reduce them, it's only gonna burn your entire cpu and gpu down. My advice is to get a cooling pad first. Something like that would do two good things, first being, it'll raise your laptop's underside vents, and the second being, it'll push more air into your system. That is if you've got a cool place in home or an air conditioner running in your room. Another thing you can do is to change the thermal paste of your cpu and gpu to a liquid metal one. Thermal Grizzly's liquid metal paste reduced temps to a good extent. Then, you can search on youtube for any software based optimizations that you can do cuz, there are always gonna be stuff running in the background that it shouldn't and your ram and cpu has to work more to keep them running, which you can be damn sure ain't gonna be useful for you. Like an example being microsoft teams, and the edge browser. Those two would always run in the background even after being close and I have to use the task manager to kill those two. I recall seeing a video where the dude showed how to reduce temps and improve performance on the ryzen 7 series, so there must also be a video for the ryzen 5 series. In general, these are the main options you can do as of now, or else you'll have to return the unit and get a new one.
So, Intel is better for max performance mode for plugged in and AMD is better for battery life and performance when not plugged in, so depends on use case. It’s great to have such choices. These lenovo slim7 laptops and ideapad 5 pro seem to be great and balanced devices, the only dealbreaker is the inclusion of numpad, which results in offcenter touchpad and keyboard
@@JustJoshTech You can get both of them with the 99Wh battery. It just depends on the country. I have the same s7i as you except I have a 3070 and a 99Wh battery and get about 10-11 hours of use.
I have the 2021 Legion 7 Slim with 5800h/3060 and absolutely love it, best computer I've owned. This comes after having it for owned it quite awhile too and dealing with very minor quirks. I prefer using this over my work laptop, a maxed out 16 inch Macbook Pro M1 Max.
I have the same Macbook Pro. What is it that you like about the Legion 7 slim compared to that machine? I'm thinking about purchasing the Legion so would like to understand your experience.
@@assistantdogconsult What I like more: keyboard feels better, gaming performance is superb, and overall "lapability" is much better. Even though the screen is merely 1920x1080 the matte display is comfortable to look at in most places compared to the glossy Macbook. Most of the time I have it plugged into a 4k and 1440p display anyway. It's not objectively better by any metric other than gaming which I hardly use it for, but to me it feels a lot more comfortable to use. There's absolutely no sharp edges, the plastic doesn't feel cheap and doesn't get extremely cold to the touch. It feels like the perfect form factor for a laptop and I wouldn't trade it for a slightly more powerful Legion 7 non slim. I really appreciate being able to open it and throw in another NVME SSD and upgrade the RAM. I'm hoping 2023's release will come with both slots RAM slots non soldered. To me this is the perfect laptop, and if I were to upgrade to next year's iteration, it wouldn't be because I'm unhappy with current model but rather to enjoy the marginal improvements.
Fantastic review! I recently got the slim 7i with the 12700H, 16 gb RAM, 2560x1600, and an rtx 3050 Ti. I was wondering , does the lower GPU makes a significant difference compared to the rtx 3060?
Depends on what you do! You can look for different benchmarks for the software or games you need. For gaming is normally more taxing on GPU, as it is too for real time rendering like twinmotion or D5 render even on Davinci Resolve, maybe. But for most things creators, CPU is what makes the difference (as a general statement, there will always be some exceptions)
@@deepee1544 how is it working for you? I have my doubts regarding this model because in my country i’m getting it for around 1325USD. Whereas rhe customisable base model goes for around 1800USD. Dont know what the difference is
@@vanshodhrani9620 I ended up cancelling my order because it was taking longer than expected to ship. I got a different laptop. Sorry I can't help you.
I want to tell you how much I enjoy your videos. I have only JUST discovered your channel and oh boy, you do reviews really well. Other content creators should shoot to strive for your level of quality and informative content. Your graphs are highlighted to follow your talking points, your testing is sound and complete, and you're videos are edited with beautiful pan shots of the products. You should change your channel name to "The Josh".
Always enjoy watching your videos even though I'm not in the market for another laptop at this time. Did watch your X1 Carbon gen9 vid before pulling the trigger on it last year though!
I bought the Legion Slim 7 because of Josh's video. But it is just not so portable for me. I would not carry it for travel, plus its heavy charger. So ppl plz consider the weight factor if you carry laptops a lot.
I bought the regular 7i with i7 CPU and RTX 3070 Ti. Great machine, love the performance and look but saying this as someone who is new to gaming laptops the fan noise is my biggest issue. Looking at the graph in the video, it looks like its giving expected results as I’m measuring 50db when playing a demanding game in auto mode. In quiet mode its fine doing general tasks at least, but it is like a jet engine taking off with games. I might just need some good noise cancelling headphones, as its my only real issue with it.
I had the exact same experience with my first laptop in 2019. Switching from open-backed headphones to closed back helped a lot. You can also limit the fps in games; it’s not necessary to run CSGO at 400 fps.
Hey guys, need a quick help. What u think its better: - Slim 7 Gen 8 AMD (16″) with RTX 4060 with Ryzen™ 7 7840HS (1400€) - Slim 7i Gen 8 Intel (16″) with up to RTX 4070 with i9-13900H Processor (2000€)
Would the Lenovo Slim 7 Pro X be a good choice too? I plan to use a computer for Cad and 3D Modeling but I don’t want a heavy laptop as I’m always moving around
This review really was great, I am so happy you actually recommended a laptop that wasn't an Apple product. I am curious to if the AMD version really is that bad for video editing on Davinci Resolve compared to the Intel Version. These reviews I watch make it sound that the AMD chips are not good for video editing but perhaps it is more of a case that they are good, just not as good as an intel chip for video editing. Looking forward to your thoughts,
Although Lenovo only state that they go up to 24GB of RAM, there are quite a few people online who say they've put in a 32GB stick (so 40GB overall) and it still works well! With that much RAM do you think this laptop would be a good choice for someone who wants to do some gaming and non-professional 4k video editing? Thanks for your videos, they're incredibly helpful for making an informed purchase
I found this year’s Slim 7 to be pretty disappointing. The Intel model I had was hot, loud, and had horrendous battery life. The AMD version has fewer ports and less expansion capability on account of its single M.2 slot. Further, it makes no sense why Lenovo dropped the option to have 16 GB of soldered RAM. All in all, this is a hard pass for me.
I got the Legion 7 2022. Unfortunately, they seemed to have possibly killed the AMD Advantage model completely, which is a huge shame because I love mine.
Thank you for comparing the Intel and AMD versions of these quality laptops, Josh. The Lenovo 7i (Intel) version is my dream laptop, with more memory added.
I am so glad that you are reviewing more affordable RTX 3060 version and not 3070 or 3080. People of Median income nowadays in the light of high inflation want somewhere in the middle of decent performance and affordable prices.
thanks for the great video. I just ordered the notebook. i am from austria, there is the version with rtx 3070 24gb ram and a 100ah battery for 1990€. There is also an option for an i9 processor, but it costs €500 extra
I returned one unit that had pretty sharp edges (not the bottom, but where your wrists go) and it also had insanely subpar speakers, like free airline headphone quality. Got a replacement and both those problems are gone. Speakers still aren't amazing though, somehow worse than the 2021 model I had but completely acceptable when I don't want to wear headphones. I wanted this in particular because I can get power consumption to sub 3 watts on idle and 4-5 watts average doing programming work, which translates to the most battery I've ever seen in my life, exceeding a day. The matte display is also far superior to my M1 Max Macbook's glossy ghost-prone stuttery mess that gives me eye fatigue. Extremely happy with this purchase,.
Looking for the unicorn laptop. Good battery, good screen can do some gaming, some office, quiet side. Its like lenovo saw your video and implemented every change for 2023. Better screen, more ram, better graphics, better build, same quiet and efficiency.
What are your thoughts on gigabyte aero 16? Always been looking forward to your aero reviews since the old days. But it seems this didnt make the cut? Well it has so little port is that what threw you off? It's heavily on sale making people doubt it. But it seems to tick off everything except ports and battery life (which seems to be software issue related)
I have tried both. Asus tends to have more quality issues, slim 7 on the other hand is solid. G14 keyboard can be a nightmare. Keys are soft and pressing on the edge of the keys won’t register. The space bar is particularly issues-prone since it is larger. A small quality control flaw might turn into a nightmare. I had to return my first g14 due to this. Returned my second g14 due to faulty Bluetooth. Returned a g15 for fan whine. Overall, I am not happy with asus quality control. My only issue with slim 7 is my left palm sometimes causes the trackpad to move, but you can disable the trackpad with one key. The function key can be locked in by fn+esc so that you don’t have to press fn every time.
How does the slim 7 amd and intel model compare in battery life to the g14? I think they have similar sized battery’s so it should be simple to tell which is more efficient
Did you try the 3070 model? I'm sending back the 6800H/6800S unit today and not sure I'll spend the extra $400 bucks on the 3070 unit is it performs the same...
I have 24 GB of RAM in my 1 liter Lenovo Thinkcenter M920q with Core i5-8500T, and that's barely enough. Just upgraded to 32. Being capped to 24 in a brand new 2022 performance laptop is absolutely unacceptable.
I bought my lenovo 5i pro during Black Friday at 1400€ on lenovo site It’s the 16 inch hdr screen with 12700h, 3070TI, 32gb ram, 1tb ssd any thought ? Is it a good deal or was I scammed by lenovo special deals
as i always say, what will make your mother more proud is normal battery life test. No one buys those laptops to just watch the videos. Web browsing, office docs, working on some IDEs, video rendering, emails, chatting. That's what is normal battery life test.
Is there a good program you recommend to do that? I'm happy to give it a go as your feedback makes sense. Just need to work out how to reliably implement it
@@JustJoshTech Maybe try recreating, notebookcheck's battery life testing? I feel that their battery life estimates are accurate in my experience. Maybe givev or take 1 hour or so.
@@JustJoshTechI guess you need some kind of macro automation software like autoit or Windows 11’s new Power Automate app. I haven’t used autoit in years and have no experience with Power Automate though.
Web browsing and office work will be close to watching a video with web browsing been a bit more power hungry.. I have a Lenovo yoga laptop, and when batter is set to balanced mode, for the most part, the battery life is same even when I have a graphics software open.. I think Lenovo limits the power consumed when on battery and this is what gets the battery to perform almost same across all use cases. Yeah, maybe just watching a video will give you extra 30mins... But for the most part, when doing something heavy, for a windows laptop that is, plugging in is the way to go.
@@JustJoshTech i thought you were a software developer. Could you not make an automated benchmarking softwarev that does a little bit of everything that OP said?
I ordered an all AMD Version with R7 6800H + RX 6800S (still waiting for shipment). In Europe we have the 99,9wh battery available, so i will expect up to 10h battery life for light tasks. I went with the better screen, 1TB SSD and 16Gb Ram. I did some research regarding the maximum supported RAM amount and it seems that it is not limited to 24GB (it is just limited in the online configurator)....you can put a 32GB Ram bar in it and get 40GB Ram in total. Also i appreciate what AMD have achieved during the last years (after the bulldozer area). So this kind of subjective reason + the objective longer battery times, lower noise and temps made me choose the AMD version. Also price wise it is cheaper. And of course rasterized gaming performance is also superior.
great review! For a pc laptop over $1300, 32GB RAM/1TB SSD should be standard. Also the weight for 16in laptops could be a factor during purchase. 14in laptops with similar specs are usually more expensive.
Interesting video, thank you! I'm trying to decide between this laptop and an XPS15 for Premiere Pro/AfterEffects, as well as programming. I am wondering wether spending an extra £1000 for the XPS15 is better or not...
Do your research to compare how much power is being fed to the CPU and GPU for each laptop. Typically the XPS15 looks really nice and is marketed as a "top-performing" machine, but fails to deliver on performance due to lower power limits and throttling due to thermal limitations. Speaking from experience, my 2016 XPS15 did not live up to the hype and the extra cost wasn't worth it. Although at the time, it was the only laptop that had a decent color accurate screen for photo editing, but today there are many other choices.
@@DefineAdam I just checked the latest XPS 15 specs and even for a RTX 4070 config they are only supplying 40W to the GPU. Other laptops with this same GPU and a better cooling solution can easily feed it 140W or so. If you want maximum performance out of your laptop, then XPS is not an ideal choice unless you are willing to sacrifice performance for looks/weight.
Josh, lovely review. Although I'm not interested in the repasting, I'd like to see a review of the Asus ZenBook pro 15 flip OLED. Crazy laptop for creators with 120Hz 2.5K OLED, Intel i7 2700H, Intel arc370m and 96wh battery.
I have that laptop, the GPU is very poor. Not recommended if you need to do heavy work or play games. But the version without GPU is very recommended for medium workload or study.
I'm still contemplating whether to buy this or not ( btw how is it in my country the intel version has a 100w battery with the QHD model , also they announced a mini led version but I don't see it anywhere
I ordered the amd model with the Ryzen 7 6800 and 6800s gpu with a 170W charger. Would the 230w charger have been the better option or is the 170w charger plenty for this laptop?
@@JustJoshTech Although I really wanna upgrade to newer but yearly upgrade wouldn't make sense. Performance wise it would be in the same ballpark as last year AMD/Nvidia. I'll prolly wait and see what legion would bring with AMD Advantage 7k or Intel 13 / Nvidia 4k. Thanks for response. ❤️
I just have one problem with the legion slim 7 2022, the camera stops working very often. The physical camera switch is also fidgety. The rest is superb.
Legion is the king of gaming laptop in current era... best in class performance and specification while maintaining sleek look unlike other gaming brand.
hey josh i forgot to ask did linux run ok on the Legion Slim 7? i'm sure it will Lenovo is known to work well with linux but it's better to ask just to be sure. and thank you for this video all the others my friend you a great work.
I'm sold.. Now time to start saving for it.. Hopefully early next year.. I'd like to see an updated video with the 2560 parcel screen for Intel model with the 3070 graphics card.. That's the one I'm most interested in.. Wish the panel was a bit more accurate... But not really a problem cause for the most part, I'm hooked to a monitor that's accurate enough. But man $1900.. That's some money.. Hehehe...
And I got it.. Just over a year later.. I got the one with the rtx 3060 intel with 2560 display.. It is a beautiful laptop and display.. Only issue is my eyes are yet to adapt to it.. Coming from a very low res laptop and a 60hz refresh rate. I get headaches sometimes.. But yeah, it's a purchase I am happy with.. Hopefully I won't think of a laptop for another 4-5 years and then maybe move to a gen 2 lunar lake or arrow lake cpu from intel..
I'm trying to buy the Slim 7i through the Lonovo website, and there are two questions that I can't find the answers to. 1. I get two screen options, and I'm not sure which one is right for me. Prices are almost the same. a. 2560x1600, sRGB, 500 nits, 240hz. b. 3200x2000, DCI-P3, 430 nits, 165hz I'm buying it more for productivity then gaming, so I dont really need the 240hz. And higher resolution plus DCI-P3 sound better. But the lower brightness of the 430 nits bugs me. 2. Second question about the chip. Again two options, this time price is really different. a. i9 chip with RTX 4070. b. i7 chip with RTX 4060. Again, I'm not using it as a gaming laptop, so I guess the i7 would be good enough. Although I would like to be able to use the laptop for at least 5 years. And would happily pay some more for the i9 if it would better future proof the laptop.
Not to mention that an "upgrade" to the 12900H over the 6900HX/6800H (practically identical take the 6800H) costs a whopping +$650 for 15% more performance and minus 35% battery life, as well as the tiny little performance gain of the 3070 to the 6800S is absolutely not worth the surcharge! So, in comparison, the pure AMD version is clearly the better and more rounded package overall, and on top of that, it's also by far the better offer!
i agree with the pixel density comment ive always thought how they have 1080 on a phone andyet some tech reviewers say 1080 is stil lsharp on a screen which is way larger, 1440p is definitely better on a 15in+ laptop
It’s interesting to me that you compared the Legion 7 Slim to competitors but not to Lenovo’s own Legion 5 or 7. With just a 100 watt gpu and only a couple mm thinner than the 5 or 7, the slim 7 is an odd product.
Hey Josh, thanks for another great video review! Quick question, for software development, if I have the choice of choosing between this one, & the m2 macbook pro 13" & the m1 macbook pro 14", which one would you recommend?
To all the tech geeks reading this: I'm looking to buy a laptop with a good screen and my budget is usd $1700 MAX. Not a gamer but would still like dedicated graphics for video editing. Anything you guys recommend? Thanks
