Gaming Laptops Just Got Faster

[00:02] refresh deep dive. Today we're going to be going over with the new Ultra 9290HX over the Intel chip we saw in most gaming laptops last year, the 275HX. This video is sponsored by Lenovo's Legion series and Intel themselves.

[00:17] Sponsorships like this are very rare for us, but this is not a review of the Legion Pro 7i. We have one of those coming soon. Get subscribed to see our completely unbiased take on the laptop as a whole. This video is instead a

[00:31] walk-through of the new processor and how it performs versus its predecessor. That is it. In our prior testing, we've almost always seen the 2025 Legion Pro 7i score at the top of the charts, so we should be seeing near max performance

[00:44] here. The new one has the exact same chassis and cooling solution, so it's a fair comparison. These new chips are direct updates to the Arrow Lake HX slight clock speed boost to the efficient cores. It also has improved

[00:57] die-to-die communication. There is the Ultra 9290HX Plus we're testing today, and there is also an Ultra 7270HX Plus likely found in less expensive gaming laptops than this one. These seem to be the replacements of the Ultra 9285HX

[01:10] chip and the Ultra 7265HX. They still have the same core count, cache, and integrated graphics. However, most laptops didn't come with those specific chips. The 290HX Plus seems to be in laptops that previously had the

[01:23] 275HX. For the 270, the Ultra 7255HX was the most common Ultra 7 before, so it's a bit more of an upgrade for two reasons. Arrow Lake HX to HX Plus and going up to the top CPU available. Let's dive in. In

[01:36] Geekbench, we are seeing quite a jump over laptops with the 275HX chip even in the Legion 9i. That is an 18-in gaming laptop versus this one, which is 16. This is a very impressive result and a 14% improvement over last year. Single

[01:51] core is about the same here, though. Moving over to Cinebench, the jump isn't top the chart, beating the version from the prior year. Single-core is a bit When you look at power draw during our 10-minute Cinebench test, you'll notice

[02:05] the new Legion burst slightly higher, but is pulling the same amount of power on average in both versions. The new one does perform better, so this is nice to small. You can see the slight improvement in

[02:18] efficiency in our scatter plot as well, where the new purple line is above the darker blue one. In this graph, you want to see more performance for less power draw. So, the fact that the purple line is higher up means it's performing a

[02:30] little bit better at the same wattage. This is a pretty minor difference, Looking at how much the processor heats up, we look at core temperatures measured in Celsius. During the Cinebench test, the two Pro 7i's are

[02:43] about the same in the upper 80s and both peak at 104. Despite their core temperatures being the same, the new Legion Pro 7i makes some significant improvements to the temperatures you feel on the keyboard deck. 37° C is

[02:55] barely noticeable, while 41° C starts to feel a little warm. As far as fan noise goes, they all get quite loud except for the smaller Legion 5i. Legions in general don't tend to have annoying or high-pitched fan noise, but it is still

[03:08] This doesn't always matter, though, because we usually recommend you run a laptop on its balanced mode for less fan noise during intensive tasks. The new Legion Pro 7i drops down to 49 dB in that mode, while retaining 88% of its

[03:21] performance and draining 39% less power. Its CPU also stays much cooler here. performance and see how the new CPU affects things like gaming. In this case, we will need to compare to the Legion 9i because it has a 5090 like our

[03:36] new Legion Pro 7i instead of a 5080 like our 2025 version. We'll start with Time Spy, and it's good news here, too, because the Legion Pro 7i slightly outperforms the 9i, which is an interesting result. The Pro 7i scores

[03:49] 10% better in CPU here, giving it the edge over the 9i. This is taking into consideration the fact that the CPU gets half as much power in gaming as it does in CPU only tasks. So, this new CPU must also be performing better at lower

[04:03] Let's look at actual games though, leading with Cyberpunk. With upscaling set to balanced at 2560 by 1600 resolution at ultra settings with frame gen off, the Pro 7i keeps that slight lead over the Legion 9i. This is cool to

[04:17] see with only a better CPU inside. When we look at Marvel Rivals, the pattern lines up pretty closely with the other graphs. This new Legion Pro 7i with a 5090 still does the best. Now, we're going to look at Forza Horizon 5

[04:29] where the pattern continues. The new Pro 7i gets about a 7% increase over the Legion 9i here in average FPS. We also updated our testing in the middle of which is more intensive and the trend continues in that game, too. Across Time

[04:43] Spy and our four gaming tests, this new Legion Pro 7i beats the best Legion gaming laptop from last year by 6%. When comparing heat and fan noise among laptops during our new Forza Horizon 6 test, the new Legion Pro 7i does get a

[04:56] bit warm, which you'll notice does not line up with what we saw in Cinebench. But, there's more to the story. Firstly, we are comparing a laptop with a 5090 to one with a less powerful 5080. So, it's more apt to compare to the Legion 9i

[05:11] here, which has more similar specs and a better cooling solution because it's a bigger laptop with room for more cooling. Another factor the hottest surface temperatures graph doesn't show you is where the heat is concentrated

[05:23] while gaming, which is arguably the most important. In actual gaming, none of us here in the office felt the heat on our left hand near the WASD keys or either of the palm rests. The heat is mostly concentrated up and towards the center.

[05:35] Taking that into consideration, it's much more comfortable than it looks on the graph. This might be helped by how high it's running its fans. Fan noise is pretty loud on any of these Legions in their highest modes. As we mentioned

[05:47] new Pro 7i on its balanced performance mode if you're sensitive to loud fans. comfortable use in terms of temperature on the keyboard deck as well, but you do lose a lot of performance. However, 94 FPS on average with 1% lows over 60 is

[06:04] still fantastic in such a modern title at ultra settings at the screen's native resolution with no DLSS. Lenovo does give you the option of manually tuning the laptop though, so you may be able to find a tuning that you prefer. Now,

[06:16] we'll check out how the new Legion Pro 7i does in creator tasks, which is still very well, unsurprisingly, but the rest of our results are more surprising. Of course, this new one tops the charts once again, but what we didn't expect

[06:29] was the old Legion Pro 7i with a 5080 to do so well here with a worse GPU. It performs great in our Premiere Pro test, almost as well as the Legion 9i with the 5090. When we move over to DaVinci Resolve, it does even better, actually

[06:43] pulling ahead of the 9i. This is a bit of an anomaly, but after doing some research and quite a few retests, we realized that our 5080 Legion Pro 7i performs way above average, but still within the expected range for a 5080

[06:57] according to Puget Bench results. The new Legion Pro performs towards the middle of the bell curve for its better 5090 GPU. Josh pointed out that the 5090 does have a third media encoder that the 5080

[07:09] doesn't. Perhaps these benchmarks aren't able to make full use of it. Regardless, here, and it's very unlikely you'd be dealing with any stutters in most video projects. Last thing we'll look at is battery life, which isn't great,

[07:23] gaming laptops. At least we can say there is a 16% improvement over last year's Legion Pro 7i here. This is enough to get you through a plane ride if you're sticking to light tasks, but probably not a full day of work

[07:38] unplugged. We don't test gaming on battery on Nvidia GPUs because they massively underperform and don't last very long. If you do want us to start to let us know. If you're looking for a more portable

[07:50] from Lenovo, we'd recommend the Legion 5i 15-in here. We've already reviewed the new Panther Lake version and the Arrow Lake HX refresh version is coming Since our review actually, there's been a battery life fix and it lasts much

[08:04] longer than in our initial video when it had that bug with its iGPU mode where it was not fully putting the dedicated GPU to sleep. This was remedied with a BIOS update. On that note, Lenovo told us that Legion Space is not currently

[08:17] pushing all of the expected updates that you might need. So, check Lenovo's website for the most up-to-date drivers and BIOS just in case. All right, that is all for our 290HX Plus deep dive. As you can see, this new CPU provides about

[08:30] 6% more performance on average, which makes this Legion Pro 7i the fastest gaming laptop we've tested to date. I know this video is sponsored, but the Legion Pro 7i is genuinely one of our favorite high-performance gaming

[08:42] laptops. Not only does it perform the best, but it's got great thermals, a comfortable keyboard. All combined make for a very comfortable gaming experience. This being said, there may be better deals on last year's version,

[08:54] which still performs very well as you saw, and everything else is the same. So, head on over to our website bestlaptop.deals to check the latest year's version. Over there, we track prices across retailers so you know when

[09:07] is the best time to buy and what store is offering the best deal. Until next rest of your day and I will catch you later.