Which Legion would you choose?
Looking for opinions from people who have used these, especially regarding thermals, battery life, longevity, and portability. Most options are used, so value matters.
All the options are Core Ultra 9, OLED, and 32GB RAM.
Legion Pro 5i — RTX 5070 Ti
- + Powerful, 12GB VRAM, relatively understated design
- - Battery life, limited RGB, no biometrics, plastic body, overall feel and looks
Legion Pro 7i — RTX 5070 Ti
- + Excellent performance and cooling
- - Bulky, heavy, expensive, overall feel and looks
Legion 7i — RTX 5070 8GB
- + Portable, great design/build, OLED, premium feel
- - Battery life, 8GB VRAM
Legion 7i — RTX 5070 12GB
- + Same portability/design I like, but with 12GB VRAM
- - Rare and expensive — around A$3,999 new after discount
Everything except the 12GB 7i is used.
I really like the Legion 7i 12GB, but it's too expensive for my budget and has a lower performance ceiling than the Pro models.
My workload is gaming, 2D game development(looking forward to), mobile app development, VMs, and creative work, so I'm looking for the best balance of performance, portability, and longevity. Biometrics are also a definite plus for me and one of the things I like about the 7i.
For battery life, 4–6 hours of basic use is enough for me, so I don't need exceptional all-day battery life.
I'm also considering an OMEN Max 16 RTX 5080 if I can find one used. It has almost everything I want, except great portability, so I'm open to alternatives.
My budget is around A$3,500. Would you recommend buying one of the used options now, or waiting for Black Friday sales and buying new?
Which would you pick and why? Any ownership issues I should know about?