This is easily Lenovo's best-looking gaming laptop, but that doesn't mean it's the one you should buy

The arrival of new Intel and NVIDIA hardware made 2025 a major year for gaming laptops, and many companies took the opportunity to refresh their offerings. That helped the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i 16 (Gen 10) become one of our top-rated gaming laptops ever in my review, after all.

Now, I'm returning with the Lenovo Legion 7i 16 (Gen 10), the lighter, sleeker, and more reasonable little sibling to the Pro. My first impression when unboxing and setting up this laptop is that the Legion 7i is undoubtedly Lenovo's most beautifully designed gaming laptop yet, and that feeling persisted during my review period.

Of course, that doesn't immediately mean the Legion 7i is my new go-to recommendation. While I do adore this laptop's aesthetics, it may not be the most practical purchase for gamers who prioritize raw performance above all else. It doesn't help that the Legion 7i feels rather pricey, so you're absolutely paying extra for the refined looks.

My Lenovo Legion 7i 16 (Gen 10) review

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Design ⭐⭐⭐⭐½

Is the Lenovo Legion 7i the thinnest and lightest laptop with a discrete GPU? Absolutely not, but it is at least 4mm thinner and nearly 2lbs lighter than its beefier Legion Pro 7i sibling, and it makes a huge difference here.

To cut straight to the point, this is — by a considerable margin — the best-looking Lenovo Legion laptop I have personally handled. I actually love the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i redesign (apart from one change), but this laptop easily clears its more expensive sibling in the aesthetics department.

The all-white, all-aluminum chassis, the black-bordered OLED display, the brushed metal edges, the iconic Legion rear-facing vents, the clean RGB-lit keyboard — this laptop is simply fun to look at and use, and most gaming laptops simply don't achieve that level of design.

Build quality is also exceptional, even if I would still give the edge to Razer when we're talking about thin-and-light gaming laptops. There's definitely some panel flex in areas, but the Legion 7i feels every bit like the premium laptop it's supposed to be.

You can feel the "form over function" mentality here, but Lenovo didn't entirely forget to be practical. You get two, split USB Type-A ports, a full-fledged Thunderbolt 4 port, a USB Type-C port, an HDMI 2.1 port, and even a full-sized SD card slot. The charging port and HDMI port are also rear-facing, when one of my greatest Legion Pro 7i criticisms was Lenovo moving away from that design.

I could ask for a third USB-A port, for that Thunderbolt port to also be on the rear, or even for an Ethernet port (even if that feels slightly unreasonable for a laptop this thin), but Lenovo honestly did a great job all around here.

Display ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Lenovo has been adopting OLED displays for many of its Legion gaming laptops lately, and the Legion 7i also benefits from the upgrade. This 16-inch display comes in 165Hz and 240Hz flavors, but each boasts the same visual characteristics and features.

As expected, it's a gorgeous display with excellent color accuracy, vibrancy, viewing angles, and contrast ratios. Performance is also exemplary with a sub-1ms response time and NVIDIA G-Sync VRR support. For playing games, watching movies, doing work, editing photos, and everything in between, this screen rocks.

It's also slightly brighter than your average laptop OLED display, which is nice, and handles HDR content really well, thanks to its even higher peak brightness and Dolby Vision support.

My one major criticism is that this display is very glossy and prone to reflections and glare. Those sensitive to the PWM dimming common with OLED displays don't have an alternative, either.

Performance ⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Lenovo Legion 7i isn't positioned as an insane gaming powerhouse, and that's obvious just by the fact that the most powerful GPU you can put inside this machine is an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 (8GB).

Still, this laptop makes great use of what it has, and overall is a strong performer with excellent thermal management. The fans can get noticeably loud, and the keyboard deck can become warm to the touch, but I never noticed any thermal throttling, stutters, or performance hangs during my testing.

The Legion 7i is responsive and stable across the board, and is able to handle even the most demanding PC games (even if it won't be with the highest settings or maximum resolution). This is an expensive laptop, though, so starting with just an RTX 5060 under the hood does sting a little — and it's that model (with an Intel Core Ultra 7 and RTX 5060) that I tested.

• Forza Horizon 5 — 96 FPS (Extreme preset, 1600p resolution, NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution/Frame Generation disabled)
• Gears 5 — 85 FPS (Ultra preset, 1600p resolution)
• Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 — 101 FPS (Extreme preset, 1600p resolution, NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution set to Quality, NVIDIA DLSS Frame Generation disabled)
• Cyberpunk 2077 — 46 FPS (Ray Tracing: Ultra preset, 1600p resolution, refresh rate, v-sync, NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution Transformer Model set to Auto, NVIDIA DLSS Frame Generation/Ray Reconstruction disabled)

Battery life ⭐⭐⭐½

Lenovo Legion laptops have never been known for their endurance, but I had hopes the Legion 7i might turn the tide somewhat, given its more compact and portable design... and it did, albeit only a little.

That is to say, the Legion 7i boasts slightly above average endurance for a 16-inch gaming laptop, losing just over 20% of its battery after an hour of looping Microsoft Office tasks or an HD video at 50% volume.

As a rule of thumb, I don't disable features or throttle everything to the max to test battery life, so there's absolutely room to squeeze 6-7 hours of actual usage out of the Legion 7i, but it'll never be a comfortable all-day machine. The bigger concern, though, is that standby time simply wasn't great with the Legion 7i, so I couldn't reliably leave it unplugged overnight without needing to plug it back in the following morning.

Keyboard & touchpad ⭐⭐⭐⭐½

No surprises here, the Lenovo Legion 7i rocks the "TrueStrike" keyboard, except now in all-white. I still love this keyboard, with a comfortable and intuitive layout, full-sized arrow keys, beautiful per-key RGB lighting, and a tenkey number pad that doesn't feel unbelievably cramped.

It's a fun, responsive, and reliable keyboard for gaming and typing. The glass touchpad is also decently spacious, with a smooth surface, consistent performance, and Microsoft Precision drivers. It's no haptic touchpad, but I didn't expect one.

Software & AI ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Windows 11 is the operating system of choice for the Legion 7i, and it feels right at home on this expansive OLED screen. I had no issues with performance or stability, and Lenovo hasn't ruined the setup experience with endless bloatware.

Lenovo Vantage and Legion Space also work well for managing your hardware and settings, even if it is annoying having all those settings divided into two separate apps. It's worth mentioning, though, that the Legion 7i is not a Copilot+ PC because of its underpowered NPU, so it's lacking all the best AI features in Windows (if you cared about them).

This laptop does boast Lenovo's AI Engine+, too, but it ultimately doesn't mean much for the end user and is basically just for optimizing hardware performance and settings in the background.

Everything else ⭐⭐⭐½

Finally, let's wrap up the leftovers. The Legion 7i is a premium laptop, but it does lose some marks here for things like the lackluster, bottom-firing dual speaker system, which sounds good enough for what it is — but falls well behind other high-end laptops.

The 5MP front-facing camera is also average at best, but it does at least boast Windows Hello facial recognition (and that did work great for me). There's an electronic privacy shutter on the side, too, which is always appreciated.

Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 are on board for wireless connectivity, and I had zero issues with either.

Legion 7i 16 review: My final thoughts

✅You should buy this if ...

• You want a thinner and lighter 16-inch gaming laptop.
• You absolutely love this all-white, all-aluminum design.
• You love rear-facing ports for power and display output.

❌You should not buy this if ...

• You need a more powerful GPU with more VRAM.
• You want something that's even more compact.

You can get a great gaming laptop from a lot of places, but one of the first companies I'll recommend to anyone is Lenovo. Legion devices are powerful and reliable, after all, but they're usually not the sleekest on the block, especially when compared to something like the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G16 (2025) we reviewed.

The Lenovo Legion 7i 16 (Gen 10) is different, with an incredible all-white design that struck me the moment I unboxed it. This laptop is a stunner, and it doesn't pull its punches as a gaming laptop, either. That being said, it is an expensive machine, and there's no option to configure it with a more powerful GPU.

If you're on a tight budget or care most about straight performance, the Legion 7i may not be the best option for you. For a lot of people, though, this is a fantastic gaming laptop that runs great but looks even better. You can find the Lenovo Legion 7i 16 (Gen 10) from $1,779.99 at Lenovo.com, or get my review configuration for $1,869.99 at BestBuy.com.

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