When someone mentions a gaming laptop, the first thing that springs to mind is performance, noisy fans, RGB lighting, and a hefty design. While most gaming laptops balance these four factors, the new Lenovo Legion Slim 7, as the title suggests, attempts to reduce size. The Legion Slim has a slim, portable appearance that is lightweight, and it seeks to carry specifications that are powerful enough to be an excellent gaming machine.
With a weight of 1.9kg, it’s difficult to dispute that the Legion Slim 7 is surprisingly light for its 15.6-inch display and full-size keyboard. It lives true to the ‘slim’ label as well, at less than 20mm thick, but doesn’t appear to compromise itself in any way for that tiny form factor. In fact, despite its comparatively low asking price of $1,770, the Legion S7 is among the very finest gaming laptops in regards to design-build quality.
The Lenovo Legion Slim 7 is available in a few different configurations right now, and that cost gets you the one we received for testing, which has an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 GPU and an AMD Ryzen 7 5800H CPU, as well as 16GB of RAM and 512GB of fast SSD storage. With these specifications, it’s safe to say that Legion S7 falls somewhere in the center of Lenovo’s gaming laptop lineup, with a price to match.
What will you see here?
Price & Availability
The Lenovo Legion S7 starts at $1,200, but that only gets you the lowest-spec model, which has an RTX 3050 Ti GPU instead of the RTX 3060, which costs $1,770. We strongly recommend upgrading to the RTX 3060 since its increased VRAM and faster clock speed make it a far more dependable solution for steady 1080p gameplay. You may improve the CPU, GPU, display, RAM, storage, and keyboard illumination by paying extra. You wouldn’t worry about the CPU upgrade, which replaces the Ryzen 7 5800H with a Ryzen 9 5900H because it’s unlikely to make a significant impact in most games. Every model has Windows 11, the new standard for gaming laptops.
At the time of writing, all US variants of the Legion S7 are reduced by 20% if purchased straight from Lenovo’s website, where you may ‘create’ your perfect model from a variety of parts. Buyers in other countries will have to make do with a tiny selection of pre-selected models. Import costs may apply if you are buying from Australia or New Zealand.
Design
Unlike the great majority of Legion-branded products, the Legion Slim 7 features a completely new design motif. The whole chassis of the laptop is streamlined and adorned with chiseled lines & surfaces to give the impression that bulk has been removed. However, the aluminum chassis, with all of its vents and such, is significantly thicker than a MacBook Air or a 13-inch MacBook Pro. However, it is slim enough to fit into backpacks, which is where the Legion Slim 7 shines.
Aside from the physical aspect, the Legion Slim 7 is a stylish laptop with a low profile. As a result, whether you’re in class or a local cafe, this laptop will blend in. There is no RGB lighting on the exterior, but the keyboard has, and it looks stunning, especially at night.
A LED ring light is also added to the power key to serve as an attention grabber for the fingerprint sensor. Vents and ducts, as well as I/O ports, are neatly arranged all around.
Keyboard & Trackpad
The rainbow-backlit keyboard is a joy to type and play on, with silent actuation and a reasonable amount of force necessary to register input. General key travel is probably a bit less than that of comparable laptops, but considering the Lenovo Legion S7’s thin form shape, this is unsurprising. The layout is full-scale, with a full Numpad and function keys, and holding down Fn lights the keys with associated functions for easy use.
The trackpad is large and has a solid, responsive click. Palm rejection appears to operate flawlessly; with the trackpad being in alignment with the spacebar, there are no problems with it picking up undesired input while using a USB mouse.
Ports
The Legion Slim 7 comes with two USB-3.2 Type-C Gen 2 connections, two USB-3.2 Type-A connectors, a 3.5mm audio port, and an SD card reader. Unfortunately, you don’t have an HDMI port, an Ethernet port, or anything else you may want. But most of you are aware of the trade-offs that come with a compact laptop, and for what it’s worth, there are all the ports that one may want these days.
Display
The Slim 7 has a nice display for a laptop designed for casual gaming. The 15.6-inch IPS display has a resolution of 2560 x 1440p, a refresh rate of 165Hz, and a peak brightness of up to 300 nits. The Slim 7’s display is among the nicest I’ve seen on a gaming laptop at this budget, with a 100 percent sRGB color gamut. Everything looks amazing, whether it’s the Windows 11 interface or Forza Horizon 5 speeding along with the stunning vistas. Unless you’re a content developer looking for precise colors, casual players will be OK with this one.
When you open it up, you find an extraordinarily brilliant RGB keypad and a bright, colorful LCD display. The 99.3 percent sRGB color reproduction is good, and the panel has great contrast at maximum brightness. The 165Hz refresh rate is ideal for competitive games, where framerates are crucial, but keep in mind that the S7 4K model loses this for a fixed 60Hz display. To save battery life, our model may switch to a fixed 60Hz mode.
Performance
Even in its reduced Max-Q form for thinner laptops, the Nvidia RTX 3060 is a superb graphics card for HD gaming. It can’t quite reach a clean 60+ frames per second at extreme settings in the current games, but it simply requires a few modest modifications to surpass 60 fps. Extra testing revealed that 1440p is possible in some games, but not optimal.
From older games to esports stalwarts like Overwatch and Valorant, less GPU-intensive games should have no issue operating at high graphics settings. At the highest settings, Valorant produced steady framerates of more than 90 fps. The Ryzen 7 processor runs well in CPU-bound games like the Total War series, so it won’t be a performance constraint for strategy game lovers.
Ray Tracing
Ray-tracing isn’t really an option unless you’re ready to make major compromises in other areas. Trying to run Cyberpunk 2077 with the Ultra RTX preset results in unplayable framerates ranging from 10 to 20. Nonetheless, ray-tracing is a unique technology that isn’t available in most laptops at this price point, so we won’t hold it against the Legion Slim 7.
Overall CPU performance is robust, with the 5800H’s eight cores assuring that the Legion Slim 7 will not struggle with CPU-intensive workloads. The overall experience, from online surfing to video conferencing, is pleasant and smooth, with minimal UI lag. Running several Chrome tabs isn’t an issue with the Slim 7.
Lenovo Legion Slim 7 – Battery life
Although gaming laptops are typically found hooked into a wall socket while performing their duties, you may require them to be unplugged from time to time for simple work or activities. With its 71Wh battery, the Slim 7 could often last up to 5 hours with mild to medium office tasks. When needed, the Rapid Charge rapid charging mechanism helps to swiftly top up the battery, albeit you will need to carry the bulky 230W adaptor to do so.
The Slim 7 won’t be able to survive lengthy gaming sessions without being plugged in, but it can handle a commute if you’re prepared to turn off the RGB keyboard and reduce the brightness a little. Switching the screen from 165Hz to the previously stated 60Hz frequency also saves electricity.
Is Lenovo Legion good for gaming?
The AMD-powered Lenovo Legion Slim 7 is an excellent gaming laptop for anyone looking for next-generation gaming in a portable package. The RGB-powered laptop yells gaming in every manner, from the surround lighting and keycaps to the strategically positioned vents and speakers.
Conclusion
Compact gaming laptops are still a new genre with few available models, and the Lenovo Legion Slim 7 is presently one of the finest. Despite its reduced size, the Slim delivers excellent middle performance for a laptop equipped with a Ryzen 7 5800H CPU and an NVIDIA RTX 3060 GPU. The inclusion of a 1440P 165Hz screen is a wonderful bonus, and the battery life is adequate for a laptop of this caliber.
A highly polished and wonderfully portable gaming system with very respectable 1080p performance and only a few small shortcomings. With a reasonable price tag and surprisingly powerful speakers, this is a fantastic product from Lenovo.
