Lenovo Legion Pro 7i (2025) Review: The Best RTX 5080 Laptop You Can Buy Right Now

With a fresh chassis, Intel’s latest Arrow Lake HX processor, and impressive cooling, Lenovo has delivered a powerhouse gaming machine that balances performance, thermals, and a price better than most of its peers (if it doesn't change by the time you're reading this).

Here’s why the Legion Pro 7i should be at the top of your shortlist.

Exceptional Performance, Inside and Out

The Legion Pro 7i (2025) is the fastest RTX 5080 laptop we’ve tested to date. In fact, in some key benchmarks, it holds its own against RTX 5090 models like the ROG Strix Scar 18. Thanks to Intel’s Arrow Lake HX CPU, this machine offers a noticeable leap over last-gen Intel 14th-gen chips and easily outpaces AMD’s Ryzen 9 HX 370 in gaming workloads.

But raw numbers only tell part of the story. Lenovo has done a fantastic job optimizing power delivery, ensuring the CPU and GPU get as much juice as possible without overheating. This means you’re not just getting peak synthetic scores—you’re getting consistent real-world performance, whether you’re gaming, streaming, or multitasking.

Benchmarks and Gaming Results

• CPU benchmarks: The Arrow Lake HX pulls ahead of the 14900HX and Ryzen 9 HX 370, especially in multi-core Cinebench scores where Lenovo’s power allocation really shines.

Cinebench Results

• GPU performance: In 3DMark Time Spy and Steel Nomad, the Legion Pro 7i leads among 5080 laptops, showing 17–24% better performance than last year’s 4080 models. It’s just shy of matching RTX 5090 systems, which is impressive given the price gap.

3DMark - Timespy Results

• Gaming tests: In titles like Cyberpunk 2077 and Monster Hunter Wilds (with DLSS off), the Legion keeps up with heavier, more expensive competitors. Benchmarks with DLSS 4 on further widen the performance gains over prior generations, especially in 1% lows, which translates to smoother gameplay.

Cyberpunk - DLSS On

Efficiency, Thermals, and Fan Noise

One of the biggest wins this year is efficiency. Compared to last year’s Legion, the 2025 model draws about 16% more power but delivers 26% more performance. That improved efficiency means the laptop runs cooler and quieter during intense gaming sessions. Even under load, the keyboard deck stays comfortably cool to the touch, though fan noise is still noticeable in the highest performance modes.

Timespy - Heat You Feel

If you want a quieter experience, switching to Balanced mode cuts noise significantly—just expect about a 25% performance drop. This gives gamers flexibility to prioritize either performance or acoustics depending on the situation.

Timespy in Two Modes

Design and Build: Premium, with a Few Trade-offs

The 2025 chassis introduces some thoughtful updates:

• Customizable RGB lighting on the rear vents and lid logo.
• A bright, vivid 240Hz OLED display covering 100% of both sRGB and P3, with no visible screen door effect and excellent brightness at 535 nits.
• A premium-feeling keyboard with 1.6mm travel, a satisfying soft click, and per-key RGB lighting.

However, it’s not perfect:

• The port layout has shifted to the sides, moving away from the rear—this can lead to cable clutter, especially on the left where all charging-capable ports now sit.
• The chassis is hefty at 5.8 pounds, and with the large 400W charger, your carry weight jumps to 8.5 pounds.
• While the deck feels rigid, the lid has a bit of flex, so you’ll want to be careful when placing something on top of it.

Upgradeability and Connectivity

The Legion Pro 7i offers decent upgradeability, including replaceable SSDs, RAM, Wi-Fi card, and battery. But accessing these components may require patience—the internal aluminum plate can be tricky to remove. Notebookcheck managed it successfully, though our own team hit a stuck screw.

Port selection is solid:

• Left: proprietary charging port, HDMI 2.1, USB-C with 140W PD and DisplayPort 2.1, Thunderbolt, and a 10Gbps USB-A.
• Right: headphone/mic combo, two USB-A 5Gbps, webcam privacy switch, and 2.5G Ethernet.

That said, we would’ve liked to see Thunderbolt 5 support and an SD card reader at this price point.

Battery Life

Gaming laptops rarely shine on battery life, and the Legion Pro 7i is no exception. However, it outperforms many rivals, holding 65% battery after 30 minutes of unplugged performance testing—better than comparable Ryzen 9 systems. In lighter tasks like movie playback, though, the older Legion slightly edges it out. This is pretty disappointing to see.

Full Battery Rundown

Final Verdict

The Lenovo Legion Pro 7i (2025) is hands down our favorite RTX 5080 laptop right now. It delivers near-5090-level performance, a premium display and keyboard, and a well-designed chassis. For pricing, things have been fluctuating wildly, but we’ve seen it as low as $2,700 USD. It’s more often been sitting around $3,000, but this is still somewhat reasonable compared to many 50-series competitors. If you can't find this one on sale, we think the HP OMEN MAX 16 is a good alternative, its main difference being that it doesn't perform quite as well as the Legion with the same components.

If you’re in the market, we strongly recommend checking the price history here on our site where you can see when it hits “Good Deal” or “Great Deal” status. Prices are all over the place lately, so don’t miss your window.