Lenovo Legion 9 18 performance drops by over 20 percent if set to Balanced mode
Lenovo is now shipping its biggest and fastest gaming laptop yet with the 18-inch Legion 9 18IAX10. We recently had the chance to test the model firsthand and while it may not have been the fancy glasses-free 3D configuration, we were still impressed by its performance and features when compared to more established gaming brands like Razer, Asus, or MSI. To get the most out of the laptop, however, you'll want to ensure that the system is set to Performance mode and not Balanced mode.
As shown by our Fire Strike table and screenshots below, running the system on Balanced mode instead of Performance mode reduces the graphics power draw from ~170 W to just 95 W with GPU clock and memory clock also falling quite significantly. As a result, graphics performance would be slower by just over 20 percent when set to Balanced mode. While a drop is not abnormal for gaming laptops, it is slightly steeper on the Lenovo as the performance deficit between Balanced and Performance modes on most competing models typically hover between 10 to 15 percent only.
| Power Profile | Graphics Score | Physics Score | Combined Score |
| Performance Mode | 55515 | 53870 | 14205 |
| Balanced Mode | 43158 (-22%) | 50370 (-7%) | 13699 (-4%) |
| Battery Power | 33214 (-40%) | 34040 (-37%) | 9167 (-36%) |
Of course, the main benefit of Balanced mode is its lower fan noise ceiling. Running Cyberpunk 2077 on Performance mode entails a fan noise of almost 50 dB(A) compared to 42 dB(A) to 47 dB(A) on Balanced mode.
More details on the Legion 9 18IAX10 can be found on our full review of the system here.
