Hands On with the Lenovo Legion Slim 7
Retail Price: $1,769.99
DISCLAIMER: LENOVO SENT US A LOANER REVIEW UNIT OF THE LENOVO LEGION SLIM 7 BUT ALL THOUGHTS AND OPINIONS ARE OUR OWN
Earlier this year, we got the chance to review one of Lenovo’s largest and most powerful Legion laptops, the Legion 5 Pro. It was a beast both physically and metaphorically. While performance on the Legion 5 Pro was impeccable, its hefty size and awkward charging brick made it less than ideal in terms of portability and ease of use. Fast forward to today and we are going hands on with the new Legion Slim 7 Gen 6. On first impressions, this laptop offers the opposite of what the Legion 5 Pro was designed for, but that doesn’t mean it’s without some of its own tradeoffs.
Take it out of the house
In my opinion, the Legion Slim 7 looks like it was created for the everyday person who is a casual gamer. The design of the laptop is noticeably sleeker yet subtle and incredibly lightweight. The brushed matte black color is quite the fingerprint magnet but feels smooth and high quality on first touch. Unlike the Legion 5 Pro, there is no light up Legion logo when plugged in. The right hand side of the laptop features two USB-C ports while the left hand side includes a headphone jack and a SD card slot. In Legion fashion, the majority of ports can be found along the back slit of the laptop which includes the charging port and two USB-A ports. There’s a total of four slim vents located along the sides and back of the laptop in addition to a stereo bottom firing speaker. The Legion Slim 7 that Lenovo sent us to review has an upgraded GPU and RGB keyboard with the price tag of $1,769.99.
All Powered Up
Despite having a slimmer design, the Legion Slim 7 does appear to also be built for higher level gaming. This version is configured to have an AMD Ryzen 7 5800H processor with 16 GB of RAM and 512 GB of SSD. It also features an Nvidia RTX 3060 graphics card. In terms of display, the Legion 7 has a 15.6” 1920 x 1080p display that uses Dolby Vision. There’s also a 720p HD front facing camera and a fully backlit keyboard. Similar to the Legion 5 Pro, I’m quite impressed with the parts assembled on this laptop and aside from a slightly thicker chin aesthetically, I am pleased to see a well built package here.
Advanced gaming at your fingertips
One feature I’m excited to test out on the Legion Slim 7 is Lenovo’s Coldfront 3.0. It uses AI to intelligently sync the fans to the games you’re playing in order to optimize performance and battery life. Lenovo also touts an “Auto-Optimization mode” that harnesses the Legion Slim 7’s performance with “dynamic CPU/GPU power distribution.” There’s also other gaming features that we’ve seen on other Legion devices including the TrueStrike keyboard that should offer a well rounded gameplay and typing experience if the Legion 5 Pro is anything similar. The fully RGB backlit keyboard is also customizable through Corsairs’ iCUE software and brightness can be adjusted at three different levels. For a laptop this thin and powerful, the Legion Slim 7 still needs to draw from its large 230W power brick for juice which is a bit of a downside, but at least the laptop itself is more transportation friendly than a lot of other gaming laptops.
For the most part, it appears that Lenovo packed everything we loved about the Legion 5 Pro into a slimmer package to offer a more portable and versatile gaming laptop. I’m thrilled to be able to try this laptop out and see how it performs in the real world. Let me know what you want to see in the comments below and stay tuned for the final review.
Lida
Always the number cruncher, the former narrative journalist turned data scientist, can’t help but find herself bursting with excitement with each new generation of tech gadgets. After all, predicting future trends is Lida’s forte. Any gadget that survives Lida’s torturous, adult working woman itinerary of over 700 notifications a day deserves praise!