Ready for our review of the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 and to find out more about its strengths and weaknesses? When we talk about notebooks, we need to separate products into use cases and categories in order to better compare various makers and models. There are huge notebooks that are hardly considered “laptop” anymore for gaming and other processing-intensive tasks. There are compact notebooks that sometimes are restricted in how you can use them. Smaller products or tablet-hybrids sometimes don’t even offer you a Windows operating system, so you can’t use the apps that you might need to use as part of your normal workflows.
When Lenovo sent us the Yoga Slim 7 notebook for review, it took me a while really to find the right category and niche where to put it and how to rate it. It’s compact and light, which makes it a lot more portable than other products of that segment, but it comes with a normal Windows installation. You don’t have any trouble with the performance either. The AMD Ryzen CPU of the 4000 series is a great example of how to combine power with mobility, and the battery is not giving you headaches either.
Portability without compromises
So what do you need out of a notebook? It’s gotta run fast and can be carried around easily, and of course, the battery has to provide you with enough energy to get through your workday and maybe even enough for binging some shows after the hard work is done. Some will need to carry their notebook back and forth and everywhere they go throughout their day. This is exactly the niche where the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 excels. It gives you a lot of power in a compact body and enough energy, so you don’t have to be a wall-hugger and always be on the lookout for your charging cable.
The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 comes with a 14″ display and has a sleek, simplistic design. The AMD Ryzen CPU, the Zen 2 cores within, and the Radeon GPU let your office applications and browsers run really well, and I was also surprised that it could handle rendering tasks a lot faster than I would have anticipated. Opening up applications is very fast and gives you a really nice user experience overall. I found that very enjoyable and I haven’t seen that sort of performance before in this sort of size. I tested the variant with the AMD Ryzen 5 CPU, but you can also get faster ones if you’re looking for that extra power.
Entertainment quality
The other aspect that stood out very strongly was how well the front-facing Dolby Atmos speakers work on the Yoga Slim 7. Lenovo always had good speaker technology in their Yoga series, but adding Dolby Atmos certified components really makes you feel music and movie audio in a different way. It’s clear, fat, and it simulates 360° audio, which you all love from the cinema, surprisingly well.
And while we’re at “cinema feeling,” I’m also happy to report that the panel includes Dolby Vision tech. What does it do? Basically, Dolby Vision is a concept that does not focus on video resolution to deliver quality. Dolby Vision is aimed at getting the best possible color richness and luminance out of every single pixel you got. This is why the picture on the Yoga Slim 7 can look a lot better on its FHD resolution than a cheaper display with a higher resolution.
Smart features and security
The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 is also pre-installed with helpful assistants like Microsoft Cortana and Amazon Alexa. I am somehow invested in building a smart home with IoT devices that run various sequences, but it really helps to have the ability to trigger commands just being in front of your laptop. Another really smart thing about this product is the IR camera that is part of the webcam with which you can use the Microsoft Windows Hello function to login to your account only by having your face in front of the device.
Sometimes you might be working on confidential things, and when you leave the computer, this function would also then lock the session after it notices that you are no longer in front of the device. Really handy and works like a charm. There’s almost no time wasted on the recognition process. You get in front of the camera, and you’re ready to go. If you’re not feeling well about using facial recognition, you can still use the fingerprint sensor, which is built into the power button.
Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 tech specs
Of course, you want to check what’s what as part of this lovely compact unit. The Yoga Slim 7 is available in various variants, but you can expect the following as key figures.
- Processor: Up to AMD Ryzen 7 4800U Mobile Processor
- Operating System: Windows 10 Pro
- Graphics: AMD Radeon Graphics
- Camera: IR Camera
- Memory: Up to 16 GB LPDDR4X
- Storage: Up to 512 GB PCIe SSD
- Audio: 2 x 2W Front-facing Dolby Atmos Speaker System
- Battery: Up to 14 Hours (FHD)
- Charging: Rapid Charge Pro (a tiny 95 watts charger can deliver 50% charge in 30 minutes)
- Display: 14″ FHD (1920 x 1080) IPS, 300 nits glass display (reflecting)
- Dimensions (W x D x H) mm : 320.6 x 208.18 x 14.9
- Dimensions (W x D x H) inches : 12.62″ x 8.2″ x 0.58″
- Weight Starting at 3.3 lbs (1.5 kg)
- Security: IR Camera, fingerprint reader combined with the power button
- Digital assistants: Cortana, Alexa
- Colors: Slate Grey or Orchid
- WLAN: WiFi 6 (2×2 802.11 ax), WiFi 5 (2×2 802.11 ac)
- Bluetooth: Bluetooth 5.0
- Ports: 2 x USB-A 3.2 Gen 1, 1 x Type-C (USB 3.2⁵ Gen 2 + DisplayPort 1.4b + PD 3.0), 1 x Type-C (PD 3.0), For DC-In, 1 x Audio Jack, 1 x microSD card, 1 x HDMI 2.0b
Benchmark results
We ran benchmarks on this notebook for gaming and for office working scenarios with the software of our testing partner UL Benchmarks. Here are the results from the tests, and if you check the links, you can also dig into result details or compare the score with other machines.
- 3D Mark – Night Raid: Score 11.825 (verification link)
- 3D Mark – Time Spy: Score 1.017 (verification link)
- PCMark 10: Score 4.993 (verification link)
Summary
What else is left to be said? I don’t think that the Yoga Slim 7 is a hardcore gaming notebook but, to be honest, there are really no gaming-spec devices that are compact and nice to carry around. If you want to check into gaming, you can best have a look at what Lenovo has to offer as part of their Legion brand, which is focused on gaming. But the things that the Yoga Slim 7 is aimed for, like working from home, studying, being productive in apps, enjoying music or movies after work is done, that’s where it excels and doesn’t have to be shy of comparison.
https://twitter.com/ChristopherIsak/status/1344687350522195968
Unlike some of the Yoga series, the Slim 7 does not come with a tent-bending function and does also not sport a touchscreen. Still, the MSRP pricing is to be found roughly around 700 USD, which makes it a good deal for anyone who needs the CPU-power and battery life and does not rely on the touchscreen function too much. I think this product would be a really good choice for students as well as everyone who is new to working from home.
Photo credit: All photos have been taken by Christopher Isak for TechAcute. The performance graphic is a screenshot from the UL Benchmark software.
Editorial notice: Lenovo has provided us with a test unit to prepare this review article. The author has used this product for several weeks before preparing this report.
