**The $4,000 Gaming Laptop: A Closer Look**

Lenovo Legion recently reached out to sponsor this video, offering a unique proposition: the opportunity to review and showcase their new gaming laptop, which retails for a staggering $4,000.

**Why Spend So Much on a Gaming Laptop?**

At first glance, spending $4,000 on a gaming laptop may seem outrageous. However, it's clear that there is a market for these high-end devices, and Lenovo is catering to those who want the best of the best. This particular model, the Legion 9i, features a Core i9 processor, 64GB of RAM, an RTX 4090 graphics card, and a 165Hz, 3.2K mini LED display that gets "eye-searingly bright."

**Forged Carbon Fiber: A Unique Material**

One of the most striking features of this laptop is its forged carbon fiber chassis. This material is not only stronger and lighter than traditional aluminum but also has some environmental benefits. The process of creating these carbon fiber laptops is quite complex, involving multiple steps to ensure a high-quality finish.

**Keeping it Cool: Advanced Cooling System**

As one can imagine, keeping a high-performance laptop like this cool is crucial. Lenovo has implemented an advanced cooling system, featuring three fans and two power adapters (a 330W adapter for gaming and a 140W USB-C charger for basic tasks). This design allows the laptop to maintain its performance while staying relatively thin and lightweight.

**Lightweight Design: A Result of Innovative Engineering**

The Legion 9i's weight is truly remarkable, thanks to innovative engineering that has managed to save weight in various areas. The battery, a massive 99.99Wh unit, is one such example. Behind the battery lies a sophisticated cooling system, consisting of three fans.

**A Closer Look Inside: Upgrading RAM and More**

For those who feel confident and bold, it's possible to upgrade the RAM and explore other components inside the laptop. This requires some disassembly, but the reward is well worth it. As shown in this video, the process can be relatively straightforward, allowing users to access and modify various parts of the system.

**Conclusion**

The Lenovo Legion 9i gaming laptop is a behemoth of a device, offering top-of-the-line performance and features at an eye-watering price point. While it may seem like overkill for many users, there are those who will appreciate its capabilities and unique design. This video has provided a closer look inside the laptop, showcasing its advanced cooling system, lightweight design, and the possibility of upgrading RAM.

WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: en- This is a $4,000 gaming laptop.And my number one question is why.So Lenovo Legion reachedout to sponsor this video.They came to me with avery unique proposition.I can do and say whatever I want,which I guess thank you to theLegion team for trusting mewith your shiny prototype laptop.But it really got me thinking.A $4,000 laptop is anoutrageous sum of moneybut clearly they'remaking this for a reason.People are buying these laptops,obviously not a ton of people,but this is a real market that's out thereand it really gets me thinking like,surely no one's spending $4,000on a gaming laptop, right?Are you using this for videoediting or rendering or...I'm super curious, butI will say one thing.This thing for $4,000 as itshould be, is loaded with tech.I mean, you name a spec andthis thing pretty much has it.Core i9, 64 gigs of RAM, RTX 4090,165 Hertz, 3.2K mini LED displaythat gets eye searingly bright.Watch yourselfI'm gonna go crank to full brightness.Eyes!(manic laughter)Now this particularversion of the Legion 9ithat I have here, actually costs $4,400.One of the most striking parts of thisis certainly the forged carbon fiber.So this is real carbon.Now what they've doneis actually something kind of interesting.I was able to speak with theLenovo engineers about itand they actually had to developan entirely new manufacturingprocess to make this happen.So if you look at it,every single one of thesechassis are completely unique.These little carbon chipsare hand-laid by someoneand it's a multiple step processwhere it has to go throughlike different factories.Like there's a lot involvedin actually making this the way it is.And on top of that,the material of the laptop is also unique.The choice of forged carbonis really interesting.So unlike aluminum,which is on pretty much all gaming laptopsfrom the last decade,forged carbon not onlyis stronger and lighterbut importantly it also hassome environmental impacts.So it is a lot of work to do the R&Dto make forged carbon really a thing.But theoretically, carbonis incredibly common.You could capture thisfrom the emissions of asmokestack or something,turn it into these pellets,and then create yourself asuper badass laptop out of it.Now, right now they're usingit only on this halo productand it's on the deck lid.But you can imaginethat while they're using this halo productto sort of fund all the R&Dand build the manufacturinglines and everythingto work with this material, in the futuremaybe it trickles down tomore of the other laptopsin their line and maybeyou're able to use itfor the actual structureof the device or whatever.Like this is the kind of stuffwhere I think a haloproduct makes a lot of senseto sort of trial out a newproduct, a new feature.It's something that's notquite ready for the prime timebut for those of you who have $4,000burning a hole in your pocket,you can kind of have aglimpse at the cutting edge,the next generation of not only materialsbut also performance.If you are a big fan ofcustomization, boy oh boyhave the Legion team loaded you up with,I would say, an overkill amount of RGB.All right, let's count it together.So we've got ourselvesa full RGB keyboard,of course we do.And it also does comewith additional key capsif you wanna swap them out.There's also an RGB strip around the frontand the sides of the device.Come around back, thereis another RGB stripand there's RGB on the Legion logo.Now mind you,if you want a little bitmore of a low key look,you can set these to whiteor turn them off or whatever,but I find it to be almostexcessive levels of RGB.But then again, ifyou're the kind of personwho's spending $4,000 on a laptop,a little flashy isprobably not a bad idea.Port wise, we've got USB A,headphone jack, ethernet,HDMI, Thunderbolt, I mean you name it,it's pretty much got it.But one of the coolestthings about this laptopis actually what's on the inside.Liquid cooling to be specific.This is a prototypelaptop, so the softwareand certainly thehardware's not quite finalbut I like the fact thatyou've got so much cooling.So you see that the top ispretty much all this grate,so you actually can seeall the way through.So the top is meant to intake airand run it through thesefans and exhaust it out.The bottom is specifically out the backwhich I think is a neat wayof sort of taking advantage of thisbecause when you're stuffingthis level of componentsin a laptop, which isrelatively thin and light,honestly keeping it cool isabsolutely the name of the game.And if you don't want tomake it chungus-y thick,which is probably not a termthat the Lenovo engineers usebut I use, then you canget a little bit creative.There's actually two poweradapters that come in the box.So there's your big 330 watt adapterwhich is what you're goingto want to use for gamingbut it also comes with140 watt USB-C charger,and that would still keep thislaptop up and running for,you know, Google Docs or watching YouTube.It's slightly more like basic taskswhen you're not reallyhaving to push it to the max.There we go. All right.Woo, that's magnesium.Or I assume it's magnesium.Wow, dude, that is absurdly light.So this is the thing.When you've got a laptop like thisthat is loaded up withthis level of specs,they do a lot of workto actually make it aslightweight as possiblebecause there's certain placeswhere you just can't save the weight.So take the battery for example.This is a 99.99 watt-hour battery, aka,the largest legal battery youcould take on an airplane.Gaming laptops just generally don't haveany larger batteries.Now behind that, you'llsee a whole lot of cooling,as in three fans, whichis also quite impressive.Oh man, you know what?I mean they did say Icould do whatever I wantso I'm just gonna...(alarm blaring)There we go.I dunno what this is for.Probably not important.All right, I want to see the water coolingand how easy it is toactually upgrade the RAM.I didn't wanna do this,but I'm doing it for your viewing pleasureand potentially an opportunityfor you to laugh at mewhen I break a $4,000 laptop.So here's the thing.This doesn't look super complicated.Like, I'm pretty sure I can do this.I think if I take the battery out,I'm actually gonna have alot easier access to things.There we go. Look at that.99.99 watt-hours.Oh my, look, how much more is behind thereDude, look at the little CMOS batteriesunderneath the SSD, that'sactually kind of cool.Boy, this is the mostadvanced laptop disassemblyI've ever done.What I might do now is I might unscrewthe obvious screws for the motherboard,probably get it a little looseand then see where things are being held.Oh no, no, no, no, no, no.That one I just took out of this one.This makes me nervous.Look how many screws I've got outand I'm definitely notremotely close to this thing.So what I'm assuming isI need to lift this part of the board upand then pull it toward me.Yeah, it actually, it'scoming. It's coming.It actually is free I think.Okay, now with any luck, oh, look at that.Instantly successful, my friends.We're free now,I just need to unhookanything that's on the bottom.Okay, so I'm gonna gentlyremove this little dude.Behold my friends,the inside of a $4,400 gaming laptop,and oh my goodness, there's a lot here.I'm gonna gently set this down.Woohoohoohoohoohoohoo.All right, so first things first.You should not do what I just did.Technically it is possibleand if you feel very confidentand very bold, you can do it.And if you look here, the reward isthat you can easily upgrade your RAM,well, "easy" at this point.So we do have our SO-DIMMs,so these are each 32 gig DIMMS of memory.So the RAM is upgradable.Now because this ships with 64 gigs,you're probably not going to wanna do thatbut I will give Legion props.It is at least replaceable RAM,just maybe not quite aseasy as I would like.Now the other thing thatreally stands out is this.So this is the water cooling for the GPU.So the way it works, as far as I can tell,I believe our CPU is goingto be under this side.So you can see how thick that heat pipe isand there's a number of heat pipesthat basically go all theway around top, bottom,for VRM, for GPU, for CPU.Now the way the watercooling works is interesting.So there's a little pump in hereand the liquid cooling actuallydoesn't work all the time.So it only kicks on once theGPU hits 84 degrees Celsius.At that point, you want to make surethat you're hitting themaximum boost frequencies,yada, yada, yada, so that littleliquid cooler will kick on.So you can see it's very, very small.So it starts it out here, it runs it down,it runs it specificallyacross the GPU VRM, right?So the actual powerdelivery to your graphicsand that gives you about anadditional 10 watts of TDPon that actual GPU.It might not sound like a lotbut when it comes to a laptop like this,pushing every 5 and 10 wattscan be a very big differentiatorbetween going from a chassis,which is 19 mils thickto 25 to 30, like, it's a big deal.And this is the firsttime that I'm aware ofthat there's been a fullycontained liquid cooling pumpinside of a laptop.Now you'll see if you get low,that the Z height, right?So the actual thicknessof the liquid cooling pumpis way above everything else, right?So everything else is quite thinand this absolutelysticks out a huge amount.And because of that, if youlook on the other side hereon the, I guess, this is the deck lid,so we're looking at thekeyboard from the bottom.You see that there's a huge cutout herebehind where the actual screen goes.And that is specifically just designedto actually clear that liquid cooling.They've definitely heavilycommitted to the ideaof fitting the liquidcooling in this laptopbecause that is not aninsignificant amountof size and space.Now I do know that the Legion teampartnered with Cooler Masterto develop this solution.So I'd be very curious to seeif they can continue to developit because it's very coolthat it runs for your GPU VRM.It's hard to arguethat this is not one ofthe more advanced laptopsthat I've ever taken a look at.Certainly one of the more involvedwhen it comes to disassembly.I wanna emphasize that whilethis is sponsored by LegionI have full freedom to saywhatever I want in this video.And what I will say isif you are looking for a gaming laptop,this is probably not your bestprice to performance option.You're paying a lot of moneyfor admittedly very good performance,and it is going to be alittle bit better than say,some of the other Legion devicesthat do also have a 4090.But what you're looking at hereis something which I think is a laptopthat is designed forboth gaming and for work.Working with 8K video, doing colorwhich this does have arelatively color accurate,very bright display.Think about things like game development,maybe 3D rendering, working with AI.The idea that this is a laptopwith all the performance youcould ever ask for for gaming,as well as all thecapability to get work donecould be really appealing tosomeone who has plenty of moneyand can justify it based on the factthat it can get real work done.Thank you very much to theLegion team for, of course,sponsoring this video, butmore importantly trusting meto really kind of approach thisLegion 9i however I wanted.It's not a product I normally look at.$4,000 is an incredibleamount of money for a laptopbut when you put it in the contextof it being a halo productand you know, made for funbut also for work, it is incredibly cool.