It is that time of the year when a swathe of new gaming notebooks are announced from as myriad companies. Yesterday saw Asus add two new options under its Republic of Gaming (ROG) division, but Lenovo also made some announcements for its Legion 7 series before that.

If for whatever reason those devices slipped past you, we are taking a closer look at the quartet of gaming notebooks announced for the company’s Legion sub-brand.

The notebooks are the Legion 7, 7i, Slim 7 and Slim 7i, with Intel and AMD Ryzen flavours being announced by Lenovo too. It remains to be seen whether the different specced models will be available in SA and indeed what price tag they will feature, but for now we can expect these notebooks in and around the June/July window.

Before we touch on those specifics, let’s run through what’s on offer from each of these four gaming notebooks.

We start with the Slim options, which Lenovo has christened as the “world’s most mobile 16″ gaming laptops.” While that title is certainly up for debate, these devices do keep to their Slim moniker, with the aluminium and magnesium unibody chassis yielding a body that weighs 2kg and is 16mm thick.

Lenovo is also touting the 93 percent screen-to-body ratio on offer here, with the 16″ WQXGA display housed in a chassis normally found in a 15″ device.

In terms of what is happening internally, both notebooks feature up to an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 (up to 100W Boosted TGP) GPU or AMD Radeon RX 6800S mobile graphics, with DDR5 memory and Gen 4 PCIe SSD storage.

Next is the slightly beefier Legion 7 and 7i models. Lenovo has been no less confident of its capabilities, noting that these devices are the “world’s most powerful 16″ gaming laptops.”

Again, we’d have to check out these claims with a review device, but Lenovo has highlighted some of its proprietary software as giving its Legion 7 series the edge over other devices.

To that end, both models will feature up to 12th Gen Intel Core HX Series or AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX processors, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Laptop GPU (up to 175W TGP) or AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT mobile graphics, DDR5 memory, and Gen 4 PCIe SSD storage, all of which is tuned for maximum performance via the Lenovo Legion A.I. Engine 2.0.

Added to this is a 99.99Whr battery, which offers up to 135Whr USB Type-C fast charging, a 16″ WQXGA display that offers up to 240Hz refresh rates depending on the panel chosen and 67 percent thinner fan blades from the previous generation for improved air flow.

As for pricing and availability, as mentioned local pricing is still in the offing, but Stateside the RRPs are as follows:

• The Legion 7i with Intel Core processor starts at $2 449.
• The Legion 7 AMD Advantage Edition with AMD Ryzen processor starts at $2 059.
• The Legion Slim 7i with Intel Core processor starts at $1 589.
• The Legion Slim 7 AMD Advantage Edition with AMD Ryzen processor starts at $1 519.