Lenovo Legion 7i refresh for 2022 surfaces packing an i9-12900HX, RTX 3080 Ti, and hefty price tag

A record for a Lenovo 16” Legion 7i Gaming Notebook (Storm Grey) has appeared on the B&H website along with a price tag for this apparent 2022 refresh. A whopping US$3,479.95 is the asking price for this particular SKU, although there is a lot of hardware for the money. Fans of Lenovo’s Legion range will be familiar with the high prices that are associated with top-end models in the lineup, while entry-level laptops can be snapped up usually from US$1,799.99 (Legion 7i Gen 6 model with i7-11800H, 16 GB RAM, and RTX 3060 – discounted to US$1,439.99 at the time of writing). The SKU with an i9-11980HK CPU, 32 GB of RAM, and RTX 3080 (16 GB) was priced at US$3,269 when it launched last year.

So, while the high-end price tag for the 2022 Lenovo Legion 7i is still eye-wateringly prohibitive for many gamers, it’s only a couple of hundred dollars more than its predecessor while bringing both a CPU and GPU upgrade. The RTX 3080 Ti Laptop GPU (16 GB) has 7,424 CUDA cores compared to the RTX 3080’s 6,144 cores, and it delivers noticeably greater FPS rates in games especially at higher settings. The Intel Core i9-12900HX and i9-11980HK are entirely different beasts: The former has Alder Lake’s hybrid architecture to fall back on and comes with 16 cores (8P + 8E) and 24 threads whereas the latter is an 8-core, 16-thread part. Maximum clock rates are around 5.0 GHz and the newer chip requires more base power: 55 W vs. 45 W.

The rest of the specs are pretty much to be expected for the 2022 refresh of the 16-inch Lenovo Legion 7i. There is 32 GB of user-replaceable RAM, there’s space for a 1 TB SSD, and the display is still a WQXGA 2560x1600 IPS panel with a 165 Hz refresh rate. There’s also a vast array of ports to take advantage of, including 2x Thunderbolt 4 and 1x USB Type-C 3.2 Gen 2 options. However, there may be a bit of a design refresh for the Lenovo gaming laptop too, as only 2x USB Type-A ports are listed in the B&H Photo entry whereas the Legion 7i Gen 6 model had 3x USB Type-A ports. Extreme performance can be expected from this 2022 model (#82TD0005US), as has already been demonstrated in a recent impressive Geekbench appearance.

Buy a 15.6-inch Lenovo Legion 7i with i7-10750H on Amazon