We've been longtime fans of Lenovo's laptops and, in particular, the Yoga Slim models. They tend to offer an enticing blend of portability, performance and affordability.
Lenovo's range is expansive and includes configurable options at just about every price, but with so many models to choose from, it can make things a little confusing. We're testing the 14-inch Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Pro X, the name is a bit of a mouthful, but it looks to be a strong contender for content creation on-the-go.
Our model has almost all of the optional upgrades, making it a bit of a performer, but it can also be configured with a much more modest specification for a significantly lower price.
We've been using it for both work and play during testing, and here's what we've learned.
Design
- Dimensions: 328.2 x 221.4 x 15.9mm
- Weight: 1.45kg
- Dark Teal or Cloud Grey aluminium alloy chassis
The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Pro X makes a great first impression with its sturdy and robust feeling shell and a very attractive 'Dark Teal' colourway. It's made from aluminium alloy throughout and is cool to the touch with soft, chamfered edges. It looks and feels premium in every regard.
It's not the lightest 14-inch notebook around, nor is it the slimmest, but it remains very portable. The difference between carrying this model and something like the XPS 13 Plus is negligible in the real world, and this is particularly impressive when you consider that the Lenovo houses a discrete graphics card, larger screen and a more powerful processor.
The Slim 7i Pro X has a decent array of ports: a full-sized HDMI port and two Thunderbolt 4 ports along the left side, with a USB-A and headphone socket on the right. It charges via USB-C, so it's worth noting that one of those Thunderbolt ports will be occupied during charging.
The keyboard is spacious and comfortable to type on with good spacing between the keys. There's plenty of key travel and a fairly tactile, almost clicky, actuation that we found quite satisfying and very easy to get used to. The backlighting is quite effective, and can automatically activate in low-light scenarios, which is both convenient and saves battery.
The trackpad is massive, glides well and is plenty responsive. It supports all of the usual windows multi-touch gestures and has a solid clicking mechanism that is rattle free and doesn't require too much force.
Display, speakers and webcam
- 14.5-inch IPS display, 3072 x 1920 resolution
- 16:10 aspect ratio, 400 nits, 100 per cent sRGB
- Dual 2W upward-firing stereo speakers
- 1080p webcam with Windows Hello support
The display has an ample 3K resolution with a nippy 120Hz refresh rate. Such a speedy refresh rate is a rare sight on productivity-focused notebooks, normally reserved for gaming machines, so we were pleased to see it here.
The screen has a glass coating, which adds to the premium look and feel, and an anti-glare coating helps to keep reflections at bay. Of course, reflections should still be expected in bright scenarios, the special coating can only do so much. However, we never found it to be an issue indoors.
Given the glass coating, we assumed that we were working with a touchscreen model, but that was not the case. A touchscreen panel is an optional extra (costing around £50) and was just about the only configuration option that wasn't added to our review unit.
The display looks sharp and clear with natural colours and plenty of contrast. It's not on the same level as an OLED panel, of course, but we might expect better battery life with this IPS option. We were surprised that there's no option to configure the laptop with an OLED display, though, especially in this price bracket.
The speakers are detailed and have decent stereo separation thanks to their placement on either side of the keyboard. Don't expect them to blow your socks off, though, there's a distinct lack of bass and they can't get especially loud. They're more than suitable for Zoom calls and watching YouTube around the house, but we'd recommend pairing up some decent headphones for any serious content consumption.
The webcam is 1080p, so it offers more detail than its 720p rivals, but we weren't overly impressed with the image fidelity. Dynamic range is poor and you'll often end up with either a blown-out background or an overexposed face. In all but the most ideal lighting scenarios, things get grainy very quickly. Still, it's likely sufficient for your work meetings, and we were pleased to find a physical privacy switch to disable the webcam when not in use.
Performance and battery
- Intel Core i7 12700H, 14 cores, up to 4.7GHz
- 32GB LPDDR5 and 1TB PCIe Gen 4 SSD
- Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 4GB GDDR6
- 70 Wh battery, 100W USB-C charger included
With an Intel i7 12700H, RTX 3050, speedy storage and shed loads of RAM, the Yoga Slim 7i Pro X will handle most tasks without breaking a sweat. The dedicated GPU comes in especially handy if you're editing video and will really speed up your render times.Â
This spec also means that it'll handle some gaming without issue, and for us, that's quite an attractive proposition. Gaming laptops are typically thicker, heavier devices with a gaudy aesthetic and plasticy construction. We were impressed with how well the Lenovo performed and combining some gaming prowess with a solid construction, lightweight chassis and understated design is a big win in our book.
In GTA VÂ at 1080p resolution, the laptop managed a solid 110fps when connected to power. On battery, with Windows set to performance mode, results were less consistent but the game remained north of 60fps, frequently hovering around the 80fps mark. Not bad for something so thin and light.
Of course, battery life suffers if you're running games on the go, but the same can be said of most dedicated gaming laptops. When you don't have the RTX 3050 flexing its muscles, you'll see much more serviceable battery life, typically in the region of 7-10 hours.
It comes with a 100W USB-C charger in the box, which Lenovo says will net you over 3 hours of additional battery life in just 15 minutes. We found that it took less than an hour and a half to fully charge the device, which is plenty fast enough for us - and the power brick isn't too heavy, either.
Source : https://www.pocket-lint.com/laptops/reviews/lenovo/162851-lenovo-yoga-slim-7i-pro-x14-review
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