Lenovo brought a large swath of gaming PCs to Las Vegas for CES, including a set of laptops and new towers across its premier Legion line and its more affordable, entry level Loq (pronounced "lock") collection.
Unlike several of its competitors, it appears that Lenovo is entirely eschewing Intel's "Meteor Lake" Core Ultra chips entirely in favor of the company's 14th Gen HX-series processors with faster clock speeds, as well as some of AMD's latest 8040-series "Hawk Point" chips. Some 12th Gen chips can still be found in Loq laptops, while Legion Tower desktops top out at 13th Gen Intel, so there's a range of chips to choose from here.
Lenovo Legion laptops
Lenovo's flagship gaming laptop this year is an update: the 16-inch Legion 9i is getting upgraded specs, including a new AI chip. Lenovo is bumping the processor up to the to-end Intel Core i9-14900HX, paired with up to the existing Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 laptop GPU, with a total of 230W TDP. With those kinds of specs, it’s clearly designed to compete with the best gaming laptops on the market.
The company claims its LA3-P AI chip can use a feature called "Scenario Detection" to adjust CPU and GPU power for best performance based on what you're doing with the machine. The laptop is keeping its 99.9 WHr battery, GPU VRAM cooling, Mini-LED display and forged carbon top cover from the previous generation, and it's getting a bump up to Wi-Fi 7. It will start at an eye-watering $4,399 this month.
There are more mainstream notebooks in the bunch. Lenovo has a new Legion 7i and 5i - a pair of 16-inch gaming laptops going up to an Intel Core i9-14900HX and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Laptop GPU, up to 32GB of RAM and up to 1TB of storage.
The Legion 7i gets a 99.99 WHr battery and either a 2560 x 1600/240 Hz or 3200 x 2000/165 Hz display, as well as the LA3 onboard AI chip. The 5i only gets a 2560 x 1600 display (though all of the screens support Dolby Vision and Nvidia G-Sync. The 5i's battery is smaller, topping out at 80 WHr, and it gets Wi-Fi 6E while certain Legion 7i configs will get Wi-Fi 7 and a keyboard with up to 1.5 mm of travel.
Both laptops will get a new thermal solution that Lenovo calls "Coldfront: Hyper," that has changed the path that cool air takes through the chassis. The chips create hot air that is forced through a channel at the center of the laptop, and the bottom of the laptop is specifically designed to keep that hot air exhausting out of the back of the system and not mixing with cold air pulled in by the fans.
The Legion 5i will show up in April starting at $1,499, while the 7i is coming in March beginning at $2,099.
For those who want something a bit more sleek, there's the Legion Slim 5 16, which will pair AMD's Ryzen 8040 series processors (no specific chips were listed) with Nvidia laptop GPUs up to an RTX 4070.
There's a thin version, with an RTX 4060 or RTX 4070, that's 0.99 inches thick and starts at 5.07 p pounds, while a "thinner version" with an RTX 4050 is 0.86 inches thick and begins at 4.62 pounds.
The display on the Slim 5 is 16-inches and goes up to 2560 x 1600 at 240 Hz with support for Dolby Vision, Nvidia G-Sync, and DisplayHDR 400 certification. The laptops will come with Wi-Fi 7E, up to 32GB of RAM and up to 1TB of SSD storage, along with a 1080p webcam. The laptop is set to launch in April starting at $1,499.
There are two esports-branded Legions, the Pro 5i and Pro 7i. Again, both of these will top out at the Core i9-14900HX, 32GB of RAM and up to 2TB of SSD storage, but the 7i will go up to an RTX 4090, while the 5i will top out with a 4070. (The 5i is also 0.66 pounds lighter than the 7i and 0.4 inches thinner, so there are design reasons for the change). Another difference is that the Pro 7i gets vapor chamber thermals in every single configuration, which the company says lets the RTX 4090 Laptop GPU "max out at a total of 250W TDP in Extreme Mode."
On the Legion Pro 7i, there's per-key RGB lighting and a dedicated Windows Copilot key (similar to what we saw earlier on the Dell XPS line). On the Legion Pro 5i, you get a more standard keyboard with up to 4-zone RGB.
The Legion Pro 5i will release this month beginning at $1,499, while the Pro 7i is coming in March starting at $2,099.
Lenovo Legion Tower Desktops
The Lenovo Legion Tower desktops are getting very slight upgrades. The 34-liter Legion Tower 7i will top out at a 13th Gen Intel Core i9-13900K (presumably 14th Gen "Raptor Lake Refresh" wasn't enough of a difference") while Lenovo's claim of the "latest Nvidia GeForce RTX Desktop GPU" suggests we'll get a meaningful upgrade there. The Tower 7i also goes up to 64GB of RAM and up to 6TB of storage, as well as the option of a power supply up to 1200W.
The Tower 5i will top off at a 13th Gen Core i9-13900F and the existing RTX 4080, with up to 32GB of memory and up to 2TB of storage.
Both systems are set to launch in April, with the 5i starting at $1,249 and the 7i beginning at $2,699.
Lenovo Loq
If all those high price tags up in the Legion lineup were too rich for your blood, Lenovo also has a new lineup of Loq-branded PCs that are a bit cheaper.
In the US, there will be three laptops, all with alphabet-soup names, running on Intel processors. Of those, only one will use a 14th Gen Intel Core chip, combined with up to an RTX 4060 from Nvidia, which is set for April starting at $799. There will be an all-Intel model, but using a 12th Gen Core i5 paired with an intel Arc A530M. An alternate version of that will use Nvidia graphics, b ut top out at the RTX 4050. Both of those Alder Lake-based laptops will be $749.
| Header Cell - Column 0 | Lenovo Loq 15IRX9 | Lenovo Loq 15IAX9I | Lenovo Loq 15IAX9 | Lenovo Loq 15AHP9 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Processor | Up to Intel Core i7-14700HX | Intel Core i5-12450HX | Intel Core i5-12450HX | Up to AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS |
| Graphics | Up to Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Laptop GPU 8GB (115W) | Intel Arc A530M 4GB (95W) | Up to Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 Laptop GPU 6GB (105W) | Up to Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Laptop GPU 8GB (115W) |
| Memory | Up to 16GB DDR5-5600 | Up to 16GB DDR5-4800 | Up to 16GB DDR5-4800 | Up to 16GB DDR5-5600 |
| Storage | Up to 1TB M.2 2242 PCIe SSD | Up to 1TB M.2 2242 PCIe SSD | Up to 1TB M.2 2242 PCIe SSD | Up to 1TB M.2 2242 PCIe SSD |
| Display | Up to 15.6-inch, 2560 x 1440, 165 Hz, Nvidia G-Sync | Up to 15.6-inch, 2560 x 1440, 165 Hz, Nvidia G-Sync | Up to 15.6-inch, 2560 x 1440, 165 Hz, Nvidia G-Sync | Up to 15.6-inch, 2560 x 1440, 165 Hz, Nvidia G-Sync |
| Battery | 60 WHr | 60 WHr | 60 WHr | 60 WHr |
| Networking | Intel Wi-Fi 6 | Intel Wi-Fi 6 | Intel Wi-Fi 6 | Intel Wi-Fi 6 |
| Release Date | April 2024 | April 2024 | April 2024 | March 2024 (EMEA only) |
| Starting Price | $799 | $749 | $749 | $1,049 |
Outside of the US, there will be an AMD 8040-series laptop to match the 14th Gen version we're getting here in the states. That Hawk Point machine will go up to a Ryzen 7 8845HS and RTX 4060 and start at €1,049 in March.
Curiously enough, Lenovo's Loq desktop, the Tower 17IRR9, is getting a 14th Gen Intel processor where the Legion Tower will not. The 17-liter PC will use the Core i7-14700 with up to an RTX 4060 Ti, up to 32GB of RAM and up to 1TB of PCIe SSD storage and a 2TB 3.5-inch HDD, along with a 500W hard drive. It is set to ship in April starting at $899.
