Is the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i the best thin and light laptop under Rs 1 lakh? Well, after spending more than a month with the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i, I am convinced that it fills a very important gap in the Indian laptop market. I say this because recently Intel unveiled its magnum opus, the Core Ultra series, and from what I know about the new chips, after testing them in two of the most popular laptops in the Indian market, it sports some really good changes. A dedicated AI chip, Low-powered Efficiency cores, improved battery life and Wi-Fi 7 support are just to name a few. These changes are so prominent that they make last year’s Intel 13th-generation chips look outdated in every major aspect.
However, getting your hands on the new Intel Core ultra series CPUs could potentially mean shelling out anywhere between Rs 1.3 to 1.6 lakh. Thankfully, Lenovo saw this and swooped in at the first opportunity with a laptop which I think is great in all but some aspects. This is the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i review featuring the brand-new Intel Core 7 Ultra chip. Before we jump into the meat and potatoes, the laptop has a retail price of Rs 1.10 lakh, at the time of writing this article. However, you can bring the price down by Rs 9,000 to Rs 1.02 lakh by choosing Windows 11 Home as your OS instead of Windows 11 Pro. I suggest that you do this because the laptop’s final Digit rating is independent of the type of OS in use.
The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i has a full metal body and according to their website, the brand is using a 50% recycled aluminium bottom cover. The chassis feels strong with little to no flex and the entire surface is surprisingly fingerprint and smudge-free. I think the Luna Grey colours add to the fingerprint-resistant as well on top of giving the Yoga Slim 7i a very premium and minimalist look. At the bottom, the laptop has two speaker vents and one large circular vent for air dissipation which is further aided by four very prominent rubberised features. You will also find speaker vents on either side of the keyboard, which I firmly believe greatly enhances the media consumption capabilities of the laptop.
Meanwhile, the I/O ports will serve almost your every need. You have one USB Type-A port, two USB Type-C thunderbolt ports, a 3.5mm audio jack, and an HDMI 2.1 slot. Along with these ports, the laptop also has a camera shutter slider and a power button. Considering how thin and small this laptop is, the port selection has everything barring an SD card reader.
The trackpad, on the other hand, isn’t too big, it is smaller when compared to some of the recent Intel Core Ultra-powered laptops I tested. What is noteworthy on this laptop though, is the keyboard. Lenovo is using a Dish keyboard which has slightly curved keys in the middle and a 1.5mm key travel. So what I am trying to say is that the Yoga Slim 7i has a great keyboard. The keys have good travel, as mentioned above, and a good spring action.
One of the main highlights of the laptop is its 14-inch WUXGA OLED display. Now, WUXGA is just a fancy way of saying that the laptop has a 16:10 aspect ratio display instead of the 16:9 standard. In simpler words, the laptop has more height, an extra 120 lines of vertical resolution to be exact. So the resulting resolution isn’t 1920 x 1080 but instead 1920 x 1200. Colloquially, people also refer to this as a 1200p display instead of a 1080p display.
In the Calman display test, the Yoga Slim 7i’s display showcased a peak resolution of 301 nits. However, the actual perceived brightness of the screen looks relatively high. Mainly because an OLED display has per-pixel lighting, better viewing angles and superior colour saturation and contrast.
During the display test, the screen’s sRGB and DCI-P3 colour space coverage came out to be 100% and 99%. Such a screen is great for general and professional usage. It offers all the possible colours while surfing the web or streaming a video and also while photo and video editing.
While the Yoga Slim 7i’s display can showcase a wide variety of colours. It showcases them relatively less accurately compared to some of the other Core Ultra 7-powered laptops I tested earlier. However, those are fairly more expensive than the Slim 7i so it is understandable. Moreover, the Average Delta E value of 3.2 is also fairly decent. Lastly, the display features 10-bit
I also compared the Yoga Slim 7i’s speaker system with that of my 14-inch M3 Max MacBook Pro, which is considered the benchmark in the 14-inch segment. Right off the bat, it is clear that the Yoga Slim 7i’s speaker system has a smaller sound stage and less bass compared to that of the M3 Max MacBook Pro. However, both sets of speakers deliver sound very well at maximum volume without distortion. Overall, Yoga Slim 7i’s speakers are good but not the best and yet not very far from it.
Coming to the heart of the matter, the best way I can summarise the performance of the Intel Core Ultra 7 is as a “big overhaul” from the previous generation. Different OEMs like HP, ASUS, Lenovo and others will tweak the Core Ultra chip as per their requirement. But better performance and efficiency are what you will get to see as a common theme with the new Intel CPUs.
For instance, among the three Core Ultra 7 laptops I tested, the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i comes out on top, beating both the HP Spectre x360 14 and the ASUS Zenbook 14 OLED. In terms of sustained performance as well, the Core Ultra 7 is a champ as it consistently maintained 34-36W CPU package power during a 10-minute throttle test.
The power draw is similar to the ASUS Zenbook 14 OLED and higher than the HP Spectre x360 14. However, the R23 throttle difference makes the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i the better-cooled laptop among the three. Although the HP Spectre x360 14 technically loses fewer points in the test, it’s Core Ultra 7 chip only draws between 25-27W, which is relatively lower than both laptops.
Even the integrated Intel Arc GPU on the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i performs better than the other two laptops. In 3d Mark’s Firestrike and TimeSpy GPU test, the Yoga Slim 7i came out on top. Moreover, in cross-platform GPU tests like Wildlife and Wildlife Extreme, the Yoga Slim 7i easily beats the competition by a good margin.
In the real world, this laptop will perform without any issues and very snappily even if you have multiple apps and Windows open. It has 32GB LPDDR5X RAM, which is more than enough and it is paired with a 1TB PCIe Gen 4 SSD. I’ll get into the benchmarks of those two in a minute but in day-to-day use, they perform flawlessly.
Although, ever so often, I do hear the fans spin up whenever I run any big software like a game or any productivity tool. But the sound isn’t very loud and it is also nice to know that the laptop is doing everything it can to lose as little performance as possible.
Coming to the benchmarks, the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i comes with 32GB LPDDR5X running at 7467MHz and in the AIDA 64 RAM test it delivered 83948 and 75456 MB/s memory read and write speed respectively. In terms of memory latency though, the Yoga Slim 7i came last compared to the other laptops.
All three laptops use a PCIe Gen4 SSD storage but the read and write speed of the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i is more than that of the ASUS Zenbook 14 OLED but less than that of HP Spectre x360 14.
Speaking of coming last, the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i delivered the lowest battery life when compared to the other two laptops. It draws similar power compared to the Zenbook 14 OLED but sadly has a smaller 54Wh battery compared to the 75Wh unit on its rival. One upside is that the 65W USB Type-C power brick that comes with both laptops charges the Yoga Slim 7i’s battery relatively faster.
Like I said earlier in the review, the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i fills a very important gap in India’s laptop market. It is relatively affordable than its much pricier competitor and the compromises it asks you to make are something most people can easily live with. The laptop is well-built and has a great keyboard, a decent display and great performance. The Yoga Slim 7i delivers more power and handles the thermal stress that comes with it even better. Needless to say, if you’re ready to spend Rs 1 lakh for a thin and light laptop, then the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i is probably your only (at least at the time of writing) and the best option in the Indian market.
