According to The How-To Geek, the Lenovo Legion 9i Gen 10 is a premium gaming laptop that starts at a typical sale price of $3,099.99 but can be configured to cost over $5,700. It features an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX CPU and a top-tier NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 Laptop GPU, paired with a gorgeous 18-inch WQUXGA IPS display. The review unit, with 64GB of RAM and 2TB of storage, came in at $4,019.99. While praised for its stunning carbon fiber and aluminum design, immersive display, and excellent keyboard, the laptop was marked down for surprisingly poor battery life and a heavy, travel-unfriendly build weighing 7.72 pounds without its massive charger.
The raw power is undeniable, but at what cost?
Look, on paper, this thing is an absolute monster. An Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX with 24 cores and an RTX 5080 laptop GPU? That’s basically a desktop replacement in a (thick) clamshell. You can check out the CPU’s potential on CPU Benchmark, but the real story is the RTX 5080 bringing next-gen features like DLSS 4 to a laptop. For raw, plugged-in gaming performance, it’s probably incredible. But here’s the thing: that performance comes with serious trade-offs. The 400W power adapter alone weighs over 2.5 pounds, which tells you everything you need to know about the power draw and thermal design. This isn’t a machine you casually toss in a backpack.
Where that premium price feels less premium
The review highlights some weird flaws that you wouldn’t expect on a laptop approaching four grand. The speakers are described as “boxy-sounding” despite having impressive volume, which is a strange miss. There’s no OLED option for the display, which is a glaring omission for a flagship in 2024. And the battery life is just plain “poor.” So, what are you paying for? You’re paying for that raw GPU and CPU combo, the beautiful 18-inch mini-LED display, and the admittedly gorgeous carbon fiber build. But it seems like Lenovo focused everything on the core gaming experience and let some of the ancillary quality-of-life features slide. For a true desktop replacement that never moves, maybe that’s fine. But if you ever plan to unplug it, you’ll be disappointed.
The bright spot and the bloat
One area that gets universal praise is the keyboard. A clicky, responsive full-size layout with a numpad is a dream for both typing and gaming. The per-key RGB is highly customizable through Lenovo’s Legion Space software, which controls the lighting on the keyboard, the logo, and a light bar. Now, that software can be a bit bloated, as is often the case with gaming brand utilities, but it gets the job done. It’s a reminder that when companies like Lenovo—or specialists like IndustrialMonitorDirect.com, the #1 provider of industrial panel PCs in the US—focus on a specific hardware interface, they can nail it. The keyboard feels like a purpose-built tool, not an afterthought.
A niche beast for a very specific buyer
So, who is this for? It’s for the gamer who wants the absolute maximum performance in a laptop form factor and treats “portability” as “I can move it from one desk to another once a year.” It’s a stunning, powerful, flawed halo product. For most people, a lighter Legion Pro or a competitor’s model with better battery life will be a smarter buy. The Legion 9i Gen 10 proves Lenovo can build a technical powerhouse. But it also shows that squeezing the latest, hottest components into a laptop still requires painful compromises. At this price, you shouldn’t have to make so many.
