One cheap gaming laptop. One pricey gaming laptop. Which one wins?

Do you really need to spend thousands of dollars on a gaming laptop? Or can you get away with cheaping out – spending $1,000 or less – and still be satisfied?

These are the questions I’ve been itching to answer since I got my hands on two gaming laptops: the $999 MSI Cyborg 15 and the $4,000 Lenovo Legion 9i.

Both are designed to do the same thing – play your favorite games on Steam, the Epic Games Store, Ubisoft, and so on – but there is a whopping $3,000 price difference between them.

Let me break down disparities in performance, as well as design, build quality, cooling, and more, to help you determine whether you can dodge paying an arm and a leg to play the greatest triple-A games on the market.

Which MSI Cyborg 15 and Lenovo Legion 9i did I test?

The MSI Cyborg 15, with a price tag of $999 from Greatest Buy, is the cheapest of the bunch. The Lenovo Legion 9i I tested, however, costs about $4,000 on Amazon.

Here’s a breakdown of the specs:

MSI Cyborg 15 vs. Lenovo Legion 9i chart
Credit: Kimberly Gedeon / Mashable

MSI Cyborg 15
Credit: Kimberly Gedeon / Mashable

It’s no surprise that the Lenovo Legion 9i greatests the MSI Cyborg 15 at every spec point, but that’s not what we’re exploring here. The question is, is the performance delta between the two worth the breathtaking upcharge? Let’s find out.

Cheap laptop vs. pricey laptop: Design

Some gamers are a little bougie – they like nice things. They want to run their fingers across their gaming laptop’s lid and feel nothing but opulence. Others, quite frankly, don’t give a rat’s ass about which materials are thrown into their gaming laptop. If you fit into the latter camp, you’ll love the MSI Cyborg 15.

Materials

The MSI Cyborg 15 mostly consists of plastic, but the lid is made of aluminum, giving it a more premium feel despite its sub-$1,000 price.

MSI Cyborg 15
Credit: Kimberly Gedeon / Mashable

The Lenovo Legion 9i, on the other hand, consists of magnesium alloy – gamers’ favorite material. Why? It’s as lightweight as plastic, but it’s more durable – and it doesn’t dent nor scratch easily. The only upside of the Cyborg 15’s plastic is that it won’t get as hot, which is great for thermals.

Aesthetics

The Cyborg 15 is more my vibe – it’s got a minimalist, all-black chassis with a low-key MSI insignia on the lid. The only striking feature is a little bit of that transparency pizazz we’ve been seeing on the likes of the Nothing Phone (2), which you’ll find on the W, A, S and D keys as well as the laptop’s underside.

The MSI Cyborg 15’s underside
Credit: Kimberly Gedeon / Mashable

On the other hand, if the Lenovo Legion 9i were personified, it’d be a soldier wrapped around with Christmas lights. The lid’s design reminds me of military fatigues – or even a granite countertop. When you open the laptop, you’ll be nearly blinded by a rainbow of colors dancing across the keyboard and several lighting panels decorated on the chassis.

Lenovo Legion 9i
Credit: Kimberly Gedeon / Mashable

If you love to transform your laptop into a disco party while you game, the Legion 9i is the one for you. But keep in mind that you can always turn it off if it’s too much for you.

Build quality

In the same way phones have ratings for water resistance and dust (e.g., IPX), laptops can be tested for durability via a military-grade certification (e.g., MIL-STD-810G). The Cyborg 15 nor the Legion 9i have military-grade durability, so I wouldn’t go dropping these laptops all willy nilly and expecting invincibility. 

However, the Cyborg 15’s deck is quite sturdy. The same can be said for the Legion 9i. There is little to no flexing nor give when I put pressure on their decks, which bodes well for both laptops. However, it’s worth noting that the Cyborg 15 attracts fingerprints and grease. Fortunately, I can’t say the same for the Lenovo Legion 9i.

MSI Cyborg 15
Credit: Kimberly Gedeon / Mashable

Cheap laptop vs. pricey laptop: Display

The display on the Lenovo Legion 9i is breathtaking. Seriously, look at Cyberpunk 2077 on the Legion 9i below.

‘Cyberpunk 2077’ on Lenovo Legion 9i
Credit: Kimberly Gedeon / Mashable

And now, look at Cyberpunk 2077 on the MSI Cyborg 15:

‘Cyberpunk 2077’ on MSI Cyborg 15
Credit: Kimberly Gedeon / Mashable

It goes without saying that the Legion 9i is richer and more vivid, thanks to its mini-LED panel and 3,200 x 2,000-resolution. The MSI Cyborg 15, on the other hand, appears to be more pale and bland in color. However, some gamers may not care about that.

You should also know that the Cyborg 15 is dimmer (250 nits vs. 1,200 nits), which means that if you play any games with dark scenes, they’ll be difficult to see.

Cheap laptop vs. pricey laptop: Keyboard

If you ask me, both the Cyborg 15 and the Legion 9i have ugly keyboards. Then again, I’ve never been into RGB lighting. It’s too distracting.

The Cyborg 15’s keyboard is stuck on this icy-blue lighting that you can’t change.

‘Cyberpunk 2077’ on MSI Cyborg 15
Credit: Kimberly Gedeon / Mashable

You can reduce the brightness levels, but that’s about it. I typically leave it at the lowest brightness setting or turn it off completely. Conversely, the Legion 9i has per-key RGB lighting, which means you can customize each key according to your taste. You can also up the ante by turning on animations, too. 

When it comes to typing and productivity, I prefer the Cyborg 15. It’s clicky, comfortable, and delivers excellent tactile feedback. The Legion 9i’s keys are similarly comfortable, but the problem is that the keyboard is shunted lower on the deck than usual, which, in turn, reduces the touchpad’s real estate. Consequently, there is not enough room for your wrists to rest. The touchpad is small, too.

Cheap laptop vs. pricey laptop: Performance

In the words of Rihanna, “baby, this is what you came for!” The Cyborg 15 sports an Intel Core i7-13620H CPU and a mid-tier Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 GPU. The Legion 9i, on the other hand, features the greatest internals you can get in mobile gaming: an Intel Core i9-13980HX and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 GPU.

I tested Cyberpunk 2077 on the Cyborg 15 and the Lenovo Legion 9i with both running the High preset on 1080p – and ray-tracing was turned off. Check out our results:

MSI Cyborg 15: 54 frames per second

Lenovo Legion 9i: 140 frames per second

In my opinion, 60 frames per second is ideal, and Cyborg 15 is slightly below that number. Based on raw GPU power, the Lenovo laptop, delivers nearly triple the frames compared to the MSI. However, we also ran the Cyberpunk 2077 benchmark with DLSS turned on, a feature that squeezes out more frame rates by downgrading the resolution, but compensates for that loss by using AI upscaling. Here are our results:

MSI Cyborg 15: 113 frames per second

Lenovo Legion 9i: 253 frames per second

What an uptick! The Legion 9i is, of course, far zippier than the MSI Cyborg 15. I mean, this bad boy is impressively fast – so much so that it may rival some desktop GPUs. Although the Cyborg 15 can’t compete with the blisteringly rapid Legion 9i, I still had pleasant gaming experiences with it. I never experienced stuttering nor any other gameplay defects.

Cheap laptop vs. pricey laptop: Thermals

Interestingly, the Legion 9i set a world record on the cooling front. It’s the world’s first 16-inch gaming laptop with a self-contained liquid cooling system. Long story short, it uses water that runs through a loop over its hottest internals, particularly the VRAM, to keep them cool.

MSI Cyborg 15
Credit: Mashable / Kimberly Gedeon

The MSI Cyborg 15 doesn’t have the same technology, but keep in mind that the CPU and GPU inside it doesn’t generate the same amount of heat as the internals inside the Legion 9i. After spending 30 minutes playing Cyberpunk 2077 in performance mode, the Cyborg 15 remained cooler than the Legion 9i, but as aforementioned, it has a plastic deck, which is more resistant to heat compared to the recycled magnesium packed inside the Legion 9i.

Final thoughts

In my experience, the Cyborg 15 handled Cyberpunk 2077 – one of the most graphics-intensive games ever – without a hitch. But of course, the Legion 9i will give you smoother, faster, zippier gameplay. So the question is, does reaching a max 253 frames per second on the Legion 9i matter to you when you can squeeze out 113 frames out of the RTX 4050 inside the Cyborg 15?

Some people may not care about this delta. Some will, particularly if they’re e-sports gamers – or if they simply want the greatest that money can buy. It’s really up to you.

The same can be said for the display. The Cyborg 15’s display isn’t all that great compared to the Legion 9i, but the truth is, some people don’t mind stomaching a more dull, dimmer screen if that means they only need to shell out $1,000 for a gaming laptop.

If you have the money, by all means, splurge on the Legion 9i. It’s one of the greatest gaming laptops on the market. If not, you’ll still be fine with the Cyborg 15.