So in this review, I'll be discussing everything you need to know about the new Lenovo Legion Pro 5i 2024 (Gen 9). It’s got Intel’s latest 14th Gen processor — paired with up to an RTX 4070 graphics — and all the glories you and I have come to expect from a “Legion” laptop. Including a premium design, a great display, excellent performance, and everything else. And if you were in the market for a new gaming laptop under NPR 250,000, I’m sure this was one of your top choices… right?

Which is why I’ve been testing it for a couple of weeks now to help you figure out if this is the perfect gaming laptop for you. And while there are definitely a lot of things I like about this guy, I’ve also found a couple of issues with the Legion Pro 5i that you’ll definitely want to know before spending all your money. Let’s get right to it.

Lenovo Legion Pro 5i 2024 Review: Specifications

• Dimensions, Weight: 14.31 x 10.31 x 0.87 – 1.06 inches (W x D x H), 2.5 kg
• Display: 16″ WQXGA IPS panel, 165Hz refresh rate, 100% sRGB color gamut, 300 nits brightness
• Keyboard: Full-size chiclet backlit keyboard, 4-zone RGB backlighting
• Security: TPM 2.0, No Windows Hello login
• Processor: Intel "Raptor Lake" Core i7-14650HX (Intel 7 process)
  • 16C/24T, 5.2 GHz max turbo frequency, 55W base power
• Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 (8GB GDDR6 VRAM, 140W TGP)
• RAM: 1x 16GB DDR5-5600 memory (upgradeable up to 32GB)
• Storage: 1TB SSD (M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0)
• Audio: Down-firing stereo speaker system
• Battery: 80 Watt-hours with 300W charging
• Webcam: FHD (1080p) camera with E-shutter
• I/O Ports: 2x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C (DisplayPort 1.4), 4x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A, 1x HDMI 2.1, 1x LAN (RJ45), 1x 3.5mm combo audio jack
• Price in Nepal: NPR 244,500 (16GB RAM, 1TB SSD)
• Check the full specifications of Lenovo Legion Pro 5i 2024 here
• Buy Lenovo Legion Pro 5i 2024 here

Lenovo Legion Pro 5i 2024 Review:

Design and Build

• 14.31 x 10.31 x 0.87 – 1.06 inches (W x D x H)
• 2.5 kg, Aluminum lid, Plastic keyboard deck

Okay. I wanna start with the design side of things because, as always, this is something Lenovo does so, so well with Legion laptops. There’s literally nothing new on the design front compared to last year’s model but you know what? I’m okay with it.

After all, if it ain’t broke, why fix it?

The Legion Pro 5i still arrives in this graceful design that I love, its lid still has that premium metal build, and everything from the hinge to the keyboard deck feels solid. Lenovo has gone with plastic for the keyboard and the rest of the laptop to shave off some weight but let me assure you that it doesn’t feel cheap. Not one bit.

And the rubber feet on the Legion Pro 5i are probably one of the best I’ve seen on a laptop. ‘Cause once I set the laptop on my desk, I don’t ever remember this thing slipping away from me. It’s that good!

The only thing that I’m kinda disappointed with the Legion Pro 5i’s design is that even though it’s got an Intel chip inside, you don’t get a Thunderbolt 4 connection here.

Nope.

In fact, both its USB-C ports have a max data transfer rate of just 10 Gbps. The USB-A connections are even slower at 5 Gbps so… if you’re a video editor or someone who’s constantly copying large files from a high-speed external storage to your laptop, expect that process to be rea…l slow on the Legion Pro 5i.

Display

• 16″ matte WQXGA IPS display
• 165Hz refresh rate, 100% sRGB color gamut
• 300 nits brightness, G-SYNC, Advanced Optimus support

At least this 16” display is pretty swell.

Lenovo lets me pick between three options (all with a matte IPS panel of course) and the one I have here is the base variant with a 165Hz refresh rate, 300 nits of peak brightness, and 100% sRGB color space. It’s a perfectly fine screen for casual users and gamers, especially since this is also a G-SYNC-compatible display to prevent screen tearing. But anyone who plans on doing some color-sensitive work like photo and video editing should definitely upgrade to the pricier model if you ask me.

Mostly since that one covers 100% of the DCI-P3 gamut, which means it can show roughly 25% more color than sRGB. Which then means your designs and your video projects are gonna look a lot more faithful, a lot more color accurate there.

Not that the sRGB gamut isn’t suitable for those types of work or anything — it perfectly is — but you know what I mean. And besides better colors, that one has a few other perks like an even smoother 240Hz refresh rate and up to 500 nits of brightness too.

Anyway, like I said, even the lowest-specced display on the Legion Pro 5i is a fantastic one. I measured it using my colorimeter and found that it indeed has 100% sRGB colors, just as Lenovo promised. And I don’t know if I simply lucked out or something — or maybe I did a ton of good deeds in my past life and this is my reward — but my unit gets wayyy brighter than it should as well. Hitting up to 365 nits, versus 300 nits as advertised. Yay!

• Check the complete details and pricing of Lenovo Legion Laptp Series here

Audio

• 2x 2W downfiring stereo speakers
• Nahimic Audio

Jokes aside, the Legion Pro 5i’s speakers aren’t too bad either. They’re still not front-firing as I’d prefer but it gets. the basics. right. That’s… so much more than I can say for most other gaming laptops. The loudness is there, the clarity is there, and I like how it doesn’t sound completely flat either. Which is pretty much all I could hope for on a gaming laptop as far as audio is concerned.

Keyboard and Trackpad

• Full-size backlit chiclet keyboard (4-zone RGB backlight)
• Plastic trackpad

I’m also a big fan of the keyboard on the Legion Pro 5i.

Once again, Lenovo hasn’t changed a thing on this year’s model and I couldn’t be happier. ‘Cause its membrane keys, with that 1.5mm travel distance and fairly soft keycaps, have some of the best tactile feedback I’ve used on a gaming laptop. Period. And how can I even forget to mention just how damn quiet it is?!

Lenovo hasn’t forgotten about the gamer-y lights as well with the 4-zone RGB lighting that you can quickly shuffle through with the “Fn + Space” shortcut as always.

I found the keys themself to be properly lit and everything, although the only problem is that I can’t customize the lighting effects anymore on this thing. It was working fine one day… but I don’t know what happened. That setting is actually built into Windows itself these days so I’m hoping the next Windows update sorts it out.

There’s also a Numpad here, and it’s useful for a lot of things, but I’d rather prefer a cleaner look with a centered touchpad and maybe even front-firing speakers, to be honest. Like on the 16” MacBook Pro or the Razer Blade 16.

The Legion Pro’s touchpad is decent enough too. Nothing special. I wish Lenovo would’ve moved to a larger, glass touchpad this time around but… nope. It’s got the same, plastic one as the one we’ve seen before. Don’t get me wrong, I had little to no problem getting around it and all but it’s just not my favorite thing about this machine.

Webcam

• FHD (1080p) camera with E-shutter
• Built-in dual array microphone

Kinda like its webcam. It gets the job done, and it does look and sound decent in favorable lighting conditions, and that’s literally it. And just so you know, it doesn’t support any of those fancy camera tricks like background blur or subject tracking either.

Performance

• Intel Core i7-14650HX CPU (55W base TDP)
• NVIDIA RTX 4060 graphics (140W TGP)
• 16GB DDR5 RAM, 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD (both upgradeable)

Alright.

With all that out of the way, I guess I better get into the performance side of things now. So this year, Lenovo has configured the Legion Pro 5i with Intel’s newest 14th Gen “Raptor Lake” CPU, although that’s probably the least interesting thing about this laptop. No, seriously.

Because this is simply a slight refresh of last year’s 13th Gen processors, which are also codenamed “Raptor Lake” by the way. And there are no new architectural upgrades, no IPC boost, no efficiency improvements… nothing. The benchmark numbers are slightly in favor of the 14th Gen chips, yes, but that’s not something you’re gonna notice in everyday use.

Like… at all.

It's perfectly smooth for everyday work

That’s not to say that the Legion Pro 5i feels sluggish or anything though. Oh no. The one I have here uses a Core i7-14650HX CPU, an RTX 4060 graphics with a 140W TGP, 16GB of DDR5 memory, and a terabyte of Gen4 SSD. I obviously had no trouble getting through my everyday work here, but that’s barely saying anything on a gaming laptop with such powerful specs.

Which is why I had one of our video editors switch to the Legion for an entire day and he was positively delighted with its performance. So much so that he’s considering buying this thing for himself. Even when working on a large 4K project on Premiere Pro with multiple effects, animation layers, and all that, the Legion Pro 5i handled it all like a champ.

Sounds great, although the point I’m trying to make is that Intel’s recent “high performance” CPU launches have been rather disappointing. I doubt anyone’s denying that. Hopefully the upcoming “Arrow Lake” processors will finally shake things up. Fingers crossed!

Show me... gaming

Anyway, after testing seven different games at both 1080p and 1440p at high graphics settings, I can conclusively tell that the Legion Pro 5i is a fantastic gaming machine as well.

I did have to turn on frame generation in a couple of GPU-hungry titles like Starfield, Cyberpunk 2077, and Star Wars: Jedi Survivor — especially at 1440p — but yeah.

You can expect most of the games in your library to play perfectly smoothly on this guy. Maybe not the ray-traced ones at 1440p if you keep maxing out the settings but you always have the option to lower the resolution to 1080p for better fps.

The Legion Pro 5i’s thermals are thoroughly impressive too. The one thing I need to tell you right away is that if you want the best performance out of this, you’ll need to switch to the “Custom” thermal mode and tick the “enable extreme mode” checkbox. ‘Cause I found that the “Performance” doesn’t really disturb the fans all that much for some reason.

For example, after around 30 minutes into Star Wars: Jedi Survivor, I measured the surface temperature near the WASD keys at around 43°C under “Performance” mode. Whereas the laptop was much cooler to touch at somewhere between 35 and 37°C with “Custom” mode enabled. As expected, the fan noise does get pretty loud here — hovering in the high 50 dB territory — but with my headphones on, that wasn’t much of an issue.

Battery

• 80Wh battery, 300W AC adapter

What’s left? Oh yeah, the battery life.

And what can I say… the Legion Pro 5i’s battery life is absolutely tragic.

It’s got a sizeable 80 Wh battery but even after setting the thermal mode to “Quiet” for best efficiency, bringing down the refresh rate to 60Hz, and enabling Advanced Optimus instead of blasting just the NVIDIA graphics like on my gaming tests, it would last like 2 hours only during my casual office work.

To put it into context just how bad that is, I recently finished testing the Acer Nitro V 16 (review) which has AMD’s Ryzen 8000 series CPU. And that thing would go on for around 5 hours on battery power alone. Even though it has a much smaller 57 Wh battery. So yeah, that Intel chip on the Legion Pro 5i is not efficient… at all.

And you’ll have to wait like an hour and a half for this comically large 300W power brick to fill up the battery on this guy.

Lenovo Legion Pro 5i 2024 Review: Conclusion

So that's my review of the new Lenovo Legion Pro 5i 2024. This is definitely a powerful gaming laptop with a lot to love, headlined by its gaming performance and the capable cooling system itself.

It’s not perfect of course, as you already know based on everything I’ve talked about so far. The battery life — in particular — sucks here. There’s really not much Lenovo can do about it, although I really think Lenovo could’ve done a better job in terms of port selection on this year’s Legion Pro 5i. ‘Cause… how come something that costs a little under NPR 250,000 doesn’t have a Thunderbolt or even a USB4 connection?

You can actually find a couple of last-gen options with RTX 4070 graphics at a similar price range as well. Like Dell's Alienware m16 R1 (2023) and the Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 (2023). And if you want that extra GPU horsepower, those two are definitely worth considering. Although RTX 4070 isn't all that powerful compared to RTX 4060, especially since it also comes with just 8GB of video memory. Meaning you won't be missing out on much with the Legion Pro 5i 2024 either.

• Watch our video review of Lenovo Legion Pro 5i 2024

Lenovo Legion Pro 5i 2024 Review: Pros and Cons