1. My Introduction And Initial Purchase Of My Legion
My introduction to the Legion series of laptops came around in 2023, for 2 reasons mostly. B&H Photo was doing a sale, and I needed a powerful computer, but not a full desktop. I don't like desktop towers, and I never really have. They feel very clunky, take lots of room and just aren't convenient at all. I don't like being chained to a desk either.
I chose the Legion Pro 7i Gen 8 at the time, my model having a i9-13900HX, Nvidia Geforce RTX 4080 Laptop GPU (more like a 4070 though, given it's based on Ada die AD104, same one used in the 4070), 1TB of storage and 32GB of RAM. Quite a lot of debate later and I bought it, paid $2,230.19 on Wednesday, September 20th, 2023 at 6:59am. Arrived to me on Friday, September 22nd, 2023 at 6:07pm.
This is the part where I have to explain how the inital impression was, right?
2. First Impressions, And What I Immediatley Loved
My first experience with it was pretty great! Sure, Windows 11 isn't the greatest thing in the world, but I didn't care, it was my first proper workstation laptop.
What I loved immediatley:
Now, I know you're there, about to say: Lyra, you bought a laptop for 2 grand, why wouldn't you expect it to be fast? To that I have to say: You have to understand I often came from bad experiences with pretty awful previous laptops and computers, think of it like being introduced to fresh air after the longest time.
Initial setup went well, signed into Windows, installed Forza Horizon 5, and ran a test. Very satisfying results, avg CPU temp was 81c during gameplay, and frame rate hovered around 90-120 FPS. For first impression to me, it was amazing, I finally had something that didn't suck!
Though, Lenovo, *PLEASE* stop pre-installing McAfee, nobody wants that garbage. I would have perferred a better sound chip than the Realtek ALC3306 for $2k as well, Otherwise it's pretty great.
2.1 What I Didn't Love, And It's Major Problems.
As much as I wish that everything was perfect, some things just can't be that way, and I did love my Legion, but it had a few issues at the start:
These issues weren't major though, so I could excuse them, and given I was just estatic to own it, I did, but then the major problems started to roll in:
Once these things started happening, I became pretty bummed, I paid so much for it, you'd expect it to actually work, and not have such major issues.
3. Support and Technician Experience
This is where things really got messy, Lenovo support is... I can't hide it, fucking awful. The first part of the ticket, they called me at a really bad time and temporarily cancelled my ticket, but thats not where the issues start, I'll list them below:
- Issue 1: Getting the keyboard replaced
- Issue 2: Technician trapped WiFi antennas under board, causing no signal at all for any network
- Issue 3: Careless with Liquid Metal
Lenovo did eventually finally contact me, and we got a scheduled on-site repair on November 6th, though by a third party called Hemmersbach. I had to cancel work because I wasn't sure when they'd visit, but I did. I waited... and waited... okay this is getting ridiciulous... finally after 8 hours of not showing up, I gave them a call:
Hello, you guys were supposed to arrive at my apartment today, what gives? I haven't had anyone arrive!
I did get an apology, and the date was scheduled for November 13th next. I had to leave the custody of my laptop to my partner, since I couldn't miss another day of work. Had to take my Dell Insprion 17R 5720 instead, with a gigabit adapter since Dell only put 100Mbps in, ugh. After work though, I was delighted to see it had been fixed, and I was greatful... Until the WiFi card wouldn't work reliably.
My WiFi signal strength is very weak, and this is often a case of the WiFi antennas not being connected... Damn you, Lenovo.
I did get them to fix it, and yes, they used a wrong screw, but whatever. The technician was a sweet dude, but he really didnt pay attention to what he was doing, and while we did get the wifi fixed, and all was well, it was fine until January 13th...
THE LAPTOP IS FUCKING LEAKING LIQUID METAL!!! AHHHH WHAT DO I DO?!
4. Aftermath And Resolve
Okay, calm down, Lyra. I'm sure Lenovo will help you once you properly explain this.. And my mind was right, as soon as I did let Lenovo know, I was instantly transferred to a supervisor, and I was promised a call the next day. Next day came and indeed they did call! I was instructed to send my laptop back to Lenovo... I didn't really want to do that, but they did promise that once they see it, they'd send me a upgraded Gen 9 legion with the i9-14900HX and a 4090 instead, sweet! Not to mention 2 free SSDs inside, Yayyy~
Waiting was indeed pain... I had to use the Insprion during this time, and while its an okay machine, it can chug a little bit on some things, notably discord, and it's screen is awful. Was it worth the wait? Absolutley, on January 22nd, I got my legion, though not before the UPS driver threw it into the streets of Los Angeles...
You Motherfucker! Why did you throw a $4,000 laptop into the street you absolute cunt! >:(
*sigh* That really sucked, but the laptop itself was fine, it arrived unscathed, and once set up, it was back to normal for me at least, and having a extra 4GB of VRAM is really nice. I do hope that Lenovo gets better, but let's be honest, enshittification is inevitable. I'm just glad I have a working laptop again.
