Lenevo Yoga Slim 7i Pro X manages to marry two words- compact and powerhouse

The Slim series from Lenovo is known to combine performance with a compact and portable form factor. Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Pro X is, in fact, a supercharged laptop and by that I mean they’ve included a discrete graphics card to help accelerate creator-based applications, yet the company has managed to keep it slim.

SIMPLE DESIGN PHILOSOPHY

It has a design that proves how far laptop engineering has evolved. The design has shifted from boxy and sharp aesthetics to curvy and smooth edges that help with everyday handling. It goes easy on the wrist when spending hours typing away. Another thing I noticed is that the included power brick is slightly bigger this time (100W) and this is to ensure that there is enough power for the GPU and it juices up the battery via USB Type-C. Plus it supports fast charge, so if you plug this in for 15 minutes you can get up to three hours of runtime. Lenovo has done a great job by keeping the language simple across the chassis. I love the minimal look. With the new design, the speakers have been relocated, front-facing versus bottom-facing, making a world of a difference to sound quality. You get better audio projection and enough bass to fulfill your content consumption needs.

You also get more ports with this model. You get one USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A port, two USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C ports with support for DisplayPort 1.4, Thunderbolt 4, and power delivery, and an HDMI 2.1 port. There’s also a 3.5mm port for your audio accessories. Wireless connectivity is taken care of by WiFi 6E and Bluetooth 5.1.

HIGH REFRESH RATE ON A COMPACT LAPTOP

The screen dazzles. It’s a 14.5-inch display that has a resolution of 3072 x 1920 pixels and is rated 100 per cent sRGB. It has a high-resolution panel and on top of that, they’ve given it a 120-hertz refresh rate, that too on a compact laptop. Usually, you see high-refresh screens on gaming laptops, so bringing that tech into this form factor elevates the whole experience. If I want to do a quick edit in Adobe Premiere Pro, scrubbing through the timeline is a smooth experience. I also enjoyed editing photos using Lightroom since it’s colour accurate.

Lenovo seems to have kept different use cases in mind while designing the display. It’s important to have a laptop that offers comfort and this thing checks the box. The keyboard layout is the same, including the easily accessible arrow keys and typing experience is very good. There’s excellent key stabilisation. If I push on the side of a key, the whole key goes down instead of just the corner going down. That’s the sort of thing that allows you to have a really fast typing experience. The precision trackpad complements the keyboard. It’s super smooth and fine-tuning edits in Lightroom is easy.

Lenovo has implemented a 1080p webcam sensor into the new machine and it’s a noticeable improvement in terms of quality. This is excellent for Zoom meetings, which I do a lot for tech briefings. We’re in an age when users are opting for hybrid work environments, so virtual meetings are here to stay. The mic quality is also good. The laptop comes with a physical e-shutter switch that disables the webcam. That’s an excellent added security layer for those of you who value privacy.

LET’S TALK ABOUT PERFORMANCE

Or review unit came with 12th Gen Intel i7-12700H, 16GB DDR5 RAM and has NVIDIA RTX 3050 graphics.

The machine has been given a cooling system upgrade to handle the power levels. You get a great balance of performance and battery life. Even something like Microsoft Office works faster on the new 12th Gen CPU and with Lightroom, I was able to get a great experience as I didn’t have to wait long to get images taken from my camera and applying LUTs. Video editing performance is also top-of-the-line.

For gamers, there is the RTX 3050, which delivers a huge performance improvement over the integrated graphics solution. Another leap in performance is with the built-in SSD as read-write speeds have improved greatly. All of this adds to the overall responsiveness of the system.

Now with all of the performance packed into this laptop you might be wondering does it affect battery life? Not much. Yes, it has a faster processor and a far more powerful display. Yet, you get about 10-11 hours with light workload and seven hours watching videos. When you are looking for that perfect balance between performance and efficiency, this laptop can last all day.

SHOULD YOU BUY IT?

Absolutely. Lenovo offers good after-sales service. Having 120Hz display refresh rate on a compact machine is a win-win while the design will ensure the machine doesn’t need to be updated for years to come. Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Pro X manages to marry two words -- compact and powerhouse.