I Tested a Slim Gaming Laptop with an NVIDIA RTX 5070; Here's How It Went

Over the years, I've had the chance to review quite a few gaming laptops. And since I pretty much switch to them from my work laptop, I use them as my daily driver, which means I'm carrying them to the office or to a cafe where I work from. For that reason, I usually avoid switching to 16-inch gaming laptops whenever one comes in and just keep them on my desk, because they're big, unwieldy, and make my back hurt more than it already does. That's why I've always gravitated towards the likes of the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14, Acer Triton 14, the Omen Transcend 14 — well, you get the idea. They are compact and easier to lug around.

But, very recently, the Lenovo Legion 7i Gen 10 changed my mind. Before you get the wrong idea, this is not a lightweight gaming laptop, not even close. That said, it's a 16-inch laptop with a discrete GPU that's actually not as heavy as the usual suspects and can absolutely hold its own in terms of performance.

I used the Legion 7i Gen 10 with the Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX and RTX 5070 for two weeks, and while it doesn't come cheap, it's well worth looking at if you're in the market for a gaming laptop that breaks the mould.

Dressed in white

The Legion 7i Gen 10 is one of the most gorgeous-looking gaming laptops out there if you don't want flashy RGB all up in your face. It comes in an all-white colorway that covers everything: the palm rest, the keyboard, the trackpad, everything. The only break from white is the frame, which has a brushed-aluminum finish that adds some contrast. The white grabs attention, but it grabs dust and fingerprint smudges just as well, especially on the lid. Thankfully, a single, firm wipe clears it right off.

Build quality overall is solid and sturdy, and the hinge is no different — it holds its position wherever you leave it, goes all the way flat, and you can flip the lid open with a single finger. But what's more commendable than any of that is the thickness and weight. For a laptop that's packing top-of-the-line components, the fact that it sits at 17.9mm and just 2kg is genuinely impressive. To put that in context, the Legion Pro 7i Gen 10 with the same CPU goes up to 26.6mm and weighs 2.72kg. The ROG Strix Scar 16 (2025) sits at up to 30.8mm and 2.85kg. The MSI Raider 16 HX AI is 22-28mm and 2.7kg. The Legion 7i Gen 10 is noticeably thinner and lighter than all of them.

Air comes in from the bottom and exhausts out the back, so the heat isn't blowing at your hands or lap. On the I/O front, the Legion 7i Gen 10 doesn't really ask you to compromise much for the slim chassis either. You get two USB-A ports on each side, a Thunderbolt 4 USB-C, another USB-C, an HDMI 2.1 at the back, and a full-size SD card slot — which is a genuinely nice touch for video editors who'd rather not carry a dongle.

The only thing missing is an Ethernet port, but honestly, fitting an RJ45 into a chassis this thin would've probably been a dealbreaker for the whole design.

Performance Review: Punching Above Its Weight

Before we get into the numbers, here's how all of this was tested.

Every game was run with the dGPU set to 'Performance’ mode inside Lenovo's Legion Space software. This mode only kicks in when the laptop is plugged into the bundled charger. All tests were run at the display's native resolution of 2560x1600 with the refresh rate set to 240Hz. Since this is an RTX 5070, the Legion 7i Gen 10 has access to DLSS 4 and Multi Frame Generation, and, where supported, those have been tested as well.

The game list is a mix of demanding AAA titles — Black Myth: Wukong, Forza Horizon 5, Resident Evil Requiem, Cyberpunk 2077, Dying Light 2, Assassin's Creed Shadows, and Shadow of the Tomb Raider — that should give a fairly honest picture of where this laptop sits.

Before getting into the games, here are some synthetic benchmark numbers to set the baseline. The Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX scores 2843 in single-core and 18115 in multi-core on Geekbench 6, which puts it firmly in the upper tier of laptop processors available right now. On the GPU side, the RTX 5070 scores 47169 on Cinebench 2026's GPU test. These numbers tell you that the hardware inside the Legion 7i Gen 10 is not cut down or hobbled in any way.

Forza Horizon 5 at Ultra settings hits 92fps without any upscaling or frame generation, which is a clean, comfortable result for a racing game where smoothness matters. Now, with DLSS and Frame Generation enabled, this jumps to 152 fps, a 65% increase. Dying Light 2: Stay Human tells a similar story, with 107fps with DLSS alone at High Quality settings, and 155fps once you bring FG into the mix. Shadow of the Tomb Raider at the Highest preset does 102fps natively and climbs to 137fps with just DLSS Quality. These are the games where the RTX 5070 has enough breathing room to perform confidently at native 2.5K without leaning too hard on Nvidia's AI stack.

Then there are the heavier hitters. Cyberpunk 2077 at Ultra with DLSS and no ray tracing lands at 83fps, which is playable but not exactly comfortable if you're chasing smoothness. Turning on Frame Generation, and that becomes 127fps, which is a significant jump. This game is also where the GPU reached 110W of TGP for a brief moment, and that’s exactly when the laptop also looked like it was about to take off.

The more interesting result here is when I switch to the Ray Tracing: Medium preset. With DLSS enabled here and set to Quality, and Frame Generation at 2x, the Legion 7i goes up to 93 fps, which is quite good for a laptop running a 100W GPU (115W with boost).

Black Myth Wukong at Very High is one of the most demanding titles on this list, and it shows. 53fps with DLSS and no FG is right on the edge, and FG pushes that to 85fps, which is where it becomes consistently playable, though you're not getting much headroom beyond that.

Resident Evil Requiem and Assassin's Creed: Shadows are where the slim chassis compromise shows up most clearly. RE Requiem at High with Ray Tracing set to Normal and DLSS on Quality sits at 51fps without Frame Generation, which is borderline. With FG on, it nearly doubles to 94 fps, which shows just how much this GPU leans on that feature when really pushed to the limit in terms of RT and graphics preset. AC Shadows is the toughest result of the lot, at 51 fps on Very High with TAA, rising to 77 fps with DLSS and FG. Still playable, but it's the one game where you'd probably want to drop a preset or two to get more comfortable numbers.

It is also worth noting that all of these results are at the display's native 2.5K resolution. If you drop it down and tweak the presets slightly, the RTX 5070 inside the Legion 7i Gen 10 will push noticeably higher numbers across the board. That is a legitimate way to get more out of this laptop, and something to keep in mind if you find certain titles running closer to the edge than you'd like. Speaking of which, the 8GB of VRAM can be a limiting factor if you push certain games too hard. In AC Shadows, for instance, with or without DLSS, the game was using nearly 7GB of VRAM, leaving almost no headroom. That is something to be aware of if you are planning to run newer, more demanding titles at high presets.

That said, the pattern across all of these is pretty consistent. Without DLSS and Frame Generation, the mobile RTX 5070 at 115W is capable but not always comfortable for demanding titles at native 2.5K. With the full Nvidia stack enabled, it's a different machine altogether. At the end of the day, the Legion 7i Gen 10 makes a pretty compelling case for slim gaming.