[Video Review] Lenovo Legion 7 (16″, 2022) – Does it offer more than the Legion 5 Pro?


Lenovo Legion 7 (16" AMD, 2022) in-depth review

You know, top-tier laptop manufacturers have all kinds of laptops, but all of them offer a one-of-a-kind device meant for the super enthusiast. Acer has the Helios 500, MSI sells the Titan GT77, while ASUS relies on the ROG Strix SCAR 17 G733 with liquid-cooled CPU and GPU. Where does Lenovo stand in this fierce world?Well, Lenovo has the Legion 7. While it is arguably the most powerful laptop on the company's roster, it represents an entirely different philosophy than the aforementioned beasts. The Legion 7 (16", 2022) is elegant, stylish, and it would have been classy if it wasn't for t[...]

Pros

  • Very powerful hardware
  • 2x M.2 PCIe x4 Gen 4 slots, 2x DDR5 RAM SODIMM slots in dual channel, Wi-Fi 6
  • Covers 97% of the sRGB color gamut and has accurate color representation with our Gaming and Web design profile (BOE NE160QDM-NY1 (BOE0A9B))
  • Snappy panel with quick response times (BOE NE160QDM-NY1 (BOE0A9B))
  • FreeSync support + MUX switch
  • Has a ton of ports and a lot of RGB LEDs
  • Fantastic keyboard + fingerprint reader
  • Great build quality with an all-metal design
  • Vapor chamber

Cons

  • No SD card
  • Below-average battery life

Lenovo Legion 7 (16" AMD, 2022) - Specs

  • BOE NE160QDM-NY1 (BOE0A9B)
  • Color accuracy  2.2  1.3
  • HDD/SSD
  • up to 2000GB SSD
  • RAM
  • up to 32GB
  • OS
  • Windows 11 Home, No OS, Windows 11 Pro
  • Battery
  • 99.99Wh
  • Body material
  • Aluminum
  • Dimensions
  • 358.1 x 263.5 x 19.4 mm (14.10" x 10.37" x 0.76")
  • Weight
  • 2.53 kg (5.6 lbs)
  • Ports and connectivity
  • 1x USB Type-A
  • 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps)
  • 1x USB Type-A
  • 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps), Sleep and Charge
  • 1x USB Type-C
  • 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps)
  • 1x USB Type-C
  • 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps), DisplayPort
  • 1x USB Type-C
  • 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps), Power Delivery (PD), DisplayPort
  • 1x USB Type-C
  • 4.0, DisplayPort
  • HDMI
  • 2.1 (8K@60Hz / 4K@120Hz)
  • Card reader
  • Ethernet LAN
  • 10, 100, 1000, 2500 Mbit/s
  • Wi-Fi
  • 802.11ax
  • Bluetooth
  • 5.1
  • Audio jack
  • 3.5mm Combo Jack
  • Features
  • Fingerprint reader
  • Web camera
  • FHD with e-camera shutter, fixed focus
  • Backlit keyboard
  • Microphone
  • Dual Array Microphone
  • Speakers
  • 2x 2W Stereo Speakers, audio by HARMAN, optimized with Nahimic Audio
  • Optical drive
  • Security Lock slot

The Legion 7 is an outlier in the flagship gaming laptop market, relying on more than RGB to grab the attention of consumers. The 2022 version is completely powered by AMD, which should offer some advantages, mainly improved performance and efficiency thanks to AMD’s SmartTechnologies.

[Intro]

The laptop exudes quality, having a fully aluminum lid and chassis. Compared to the Legion 5 and 5 Pro laptops, you get a lot of RGB, including a glowing Legion logo on the lid, lights inside the heat vents, and a long strip on the bottom panel. The laptop is very elegant, with sharp edges and rounded corners. It can be a bit difficult to carry around, weighing 2.53 kg but the profile is slim, measuring 19.4 mm.

[Input devices]

The lid shows a tiny bit of flex, but it opens with one hand, which is a show of quality. Thus, we see the base, with the keyboard and touchpad. There is next to no flex from the keyboard deck, while the keys themselves are very comfortable for typing and gaming. The touchpad is covered in glass, which is very smooth, along with being amazingly accurate.

[Ports]

The I/O is split between all three sides of Legion 7. The left side has two Type-C ports, both with DisplayPort 1.4 output. On the left, we see one more 10-gigabit Type-C port, an audio jack, and a shutter for the webcam. Lastly, most of the ports are on the back, with a LAN port, one 10-gigabit Type-C port, an HDMI 2.1 port, and two full-sized 5-gigabit USB ports.

[Display]

On the front, we see a familiar display, with a 16-inch 16:10 IPS panel with a QHD+ resolution. It’s the same one that’s found on the Legion 5 Pro, with great 470-nit peak brightness, high contrast ratio, and 92% sRGB coverage. Accuracy is decent out of the box but gets even better with our Design and Gaming profile. You can get it from the link in the description below the video.

[Battery]

With a 99.99Wh battery pack and AMD hardware, we expected big things out of the Legion 7. However, the laptop only lasts for 5 hours of Web browsing, or 5 hours and 33 minutes of video playback when paired with the Ryzen 7 6800H and the Radeon RX 6850M XT.

[Performance]

The Ryzen 7 performs well but still falls behind the Intel 12th Gen Alder Lake H-series processors, with even the Core i5-12500H showing a higher score. The 6850M XT comes with 12GB of GDDR6 memory and shows similar performance to the 150W RTX 3080.
In games, we tested the GPU using an external monitor in Full HD. At that resolution, there’s hardly any game that can stop the RX 6850M XT, except for Metro Exodus, which ran at the Extreme preset, reaching 47 fps. In other games, you can expect well over 60FPS at the highest settings, as the GPU is made for much more than 1080p gaming.

[Metro Exodus: 🎮 AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT – Metro Exodus gameplay benchmarks (1080p)]

If you want to check out more footage of the RX 6850M XT, we have a full playlist of games that we’ve tested over on our LaptopMedia benchmarks channel. If you fancy any other GPU, we’ve probably tested it as well with the same attention to detail.

[Cooling]

The Legion 7 uses a big vapor chamber with two fans. The whole thing spreads across most of the motherboard, cooling the VRMs and GPU memory as well.

It keeps the Ryzen 7 running at nearly 4.00GHz even after 15 minutes of testing. The temperature was also stable, albeit a bit high at 89°C.

The Radeon GPU does even better, maintaining constant wattage of 140W. RDNA 2 cards are notorious for clocking highly, and the 6850M XT keeps a frequency of 2.4GHz even after 30 minutes of gaming.

Comfort is alright, as the fans don’t get super loud. On the other hand, the base gets noticeably warm, with a hotspot of 48.6°C.

[Teardown and upgradeability]

Finally, you want to know how the device will fare in the future, as game sizes get larger and RAM requirements increase constantly. There are two SODIMM slots that fit DDR5 modules and two M.2 PCIe x4 slots with Gen 4 SSD support.

We have a detailed teardown video, which shows how to get access to the memory and storage slots inside the Legion 7.

[Verdict]

All in all, the Legion 7 doesn’t take full advantage of the AMD Advantage software that’s available to it. While it does crush games, other similarly priced flagship gaming devices come with NVIDIA’s top-tier graphics, which are not only beasts in games, but also open the door to a lot of Creator work.

We have a more detailed version of this review over on our website, which goes fully in-depth.

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