Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Pro X Review: Portable Powerhouse

Lenovo’s Yoga line of 2-in-1, convertible laptops is popular, but its Yoga S or Slim series is equally interesting. These laptops are designed to be slim and powerful, offering a mix of multimedia capabilities and raw performance for those who don’t need a convertible design. The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Pro X sits at the top of the stack and while the name is quite a mouthful, it’s designed for content creators and professionals who need calibrated hardware for their workflows. Let’s get into all the details so you can decide if this should be your next laptop.

Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Pro X price in India

The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Pro X starts at Rs. 1,12,200 as per the Lenovo India website. The base variant comes with a 12th Gen Intel Core i5 CPU, 16GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD, and a 3K non-touch display. The configuration however, can be customised to suit your needs. Lenovo sent me a higher spec’d variant which had an Intel Core i7 CPU, 16GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD, and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 GPU, priced at Rs. 1,54,100. The price can go higher if you opt for additional software, double the RAM, and a touchscreen display.

The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Pro X looks good in this Dark Teal colour

Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Pro X design

The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Pro X looks like any other premium clamshell laptop. The lid can be opened up to 180 degrees, but not beyond that like other Yoga convertibles. I think the Dark Teal finish of my review unit looks very nice as it’s not a common colour. The smooth matte texture is also easy on the fingers and doesn’t attract fingerprints easily. All the edges and side panels have been thoughtfully rounded so this device is comfortable to hold and use. The laptop is moderately heavy, tipping the scales at a little over the claimed 1.4kg.

You get a decent selection of ports on the Yoga Slim 7i Pro X. The left side has two Thunderbolt 4 ports (Type-C) for charging and video output, along with a full-sized HDMI 2.0 port. The right side of the laptop has a Type-A USB 3.2 (Gen 1) port, a headphone and microphone combo socket, the power button, and a toggle switch to disable the webcam and the Windows Hello IR camera for at the hardware level, so no malicious app can use them in the background, if you need privacy.

The 14.5-inch display on the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Pro X is quite immersive thanks to the slim bezels all around it, and good brightness. The IPS display has a 3K (3072 x 1920 pixels) resolution and 120Hz refresh rate. It comes factory calibrated with a claimed colour accuracy of Delta E<1. The display also supports Dolby Vision playback and Nvidia’s G-Sync.

The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Pro X features two Thunderbolt 4 ports

The keyboard is evenly backlit with well-spaced keys, good travel, and relatively silent operation. There are perforated speaker grilles on either sides of the keyboard and a large trackpad below it. The exhaust vents are hidden near the display’s hinge. The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Pro X ships with a 100W USB Type-C power adapter.

Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Pro X specifications

Lenovo’s current configurations of the Yoga Slim 7i Pro X in India are based on Intel 12th Gen Core CPUs, but 13th Gen options should arrive soon, just like the Yoga 9i 2-in-1 was recently refreshed. The variant I have has an Intel Core i7-12700H CPU with a total of 14 cores (six performance, eight efficiency). The 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM is soldered to the motherboard, so expansion isn’t possible.

My unit is also kitted out with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 GPU with 4GB of GDDR6 RAM. The stereo speakers are tuned by Harman and support Dolby Atmos. Other features include Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.1, and a 4-cell 70WHr battery which is said to deliver up to 10 hours of battery life. There’s no fingerprint sensor, but you get the IR camera for Windows Hello face recognition.

The backlit keyboard on the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Pro X is very comfortable for typing on

The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Pro X ships with Windows 11 Home, although you can upgrade to 11 Pro when configuring it. You get the typical Lenovo apps preinstalled such as Lenovo Vantage for keeping drivers and firmware updated, Lenovo Smart Appearance (webcam enhancements), Lenovo Voice, etc. The Yoga Slim 7i Pro X is also Nvidia Studio validated which means it’s optimised to work better with creator apps such as Adobe Premiere Pro.

Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Pro X performance and battery life

With the top-end specs of my review unit, the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Pro X was an absolute joy to use for both work and play. The exhaust fan stays silent in normal use cases but can be heard faintly when gaming or running other heavy workloads. Certain spots on the bottom of the laptop, near the intake vents, stay a bit warm even with light usage. When gaming, the base and some of the keys tend to get a little hot, probably because of the dedicated GPU.

If you’ll be doing a lot of typing, then you’ll be happy to know that the keyboard is very comfortable. The trackpad works just as well. This 3K non-touch display on the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Pro X offers sharp visuals with punchy colours. I found the brightness to be more than adequate and the display’s backlight intensity is automatically adjusted based on ambient light. By default, the Nvidia GPU runs in Optimus mode, which means it’s only enabled when an application needs it. In order to use G-Sync in games, you’ll need to switch to the GPU-only mode, but this will impact battery life.

Modern games such as Death Stranding run well on the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Pro X with an Nvidia RTX 3050 GPU

Benchmark performance of the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Pro X was impressive. In Cinebench R20’s single and multi-core tests, the laptop scored 682 and 5,025 points respectively. 3DMark Time Spy’s graphics test suite returned 3,966 points. SSD performance was equally good. The 1TB SSD in my unit returned a little over 6GBps read speeds in sequential and random tests, and over 4.5GBps write speeds in sequential and random tests. Real-world tests ran well too. It took 1 minute, 12 seconds to compress a 3.7GB folder of assorted files, while encoding a 1.3GB AVI file to MKV using Handbrake took just 42 seconds.

Since my review unit had a decent GPU, I fired up a few popular games to see how well the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Pro X performs. Fortnite ran smoothly at a steady 30+fps at the ‘High’ graphics preset at full-HD. Death Stranding was also very playable at 1440p, using the ‘High’ graphics preset with Nvidia’s DLSS enabled. This laptop can definitely handle AAA titles at moderate settings and resolutions, but it does get quite hot in the process.

Netflix in Microsoft Edge detected the Dolby Vision-compatible display and automatically bumped up the brightness. HDR videos looked good for an IPS panel, although blacks weren’t as deep as what you’d get from an OLED panel. The stereo speakers get decently loud and sounded clear. The 1080p webcam is not bad, and even in poorly lit environments, Lenovo’s software does a good job of reducing noise in the shadows while maintaining a good exposure on your face. The laptop also supports presence detection and can automatically lock itself after a certain interval when you walk away from it, or wake up when you come back to use it.

Lenovo’s bundled software with the Yoga Slim 7i Pro X offers useful features

Battery life on the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Pro X was not too bad. In the Battery Eater Pro drain test, the laptop lasted for a little under two hours (1 hours, 54 minutes), which was decent considering my unit’s configuration and the high-resolution display. The refresh rate was always set to Dynamic (60Hz or 120Hz, based on the app) in Windows. I could typically average five to six hours of light to medium usage (Slack and Chrome use, no gaming), which once again, I felt was decent for the configuration I tested.

Perhaps a lower spec’d version of this laptop could get closer to the rated 10 hours of battery life. The battery charges fairly quickly with the bundled adapter, going from zero to roughly 60 percent in half an hour.

Verdict

The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Pro X is a well-crafted premium laptop that delivers good performance and features for the price. The high-resolution display, solid construction, speedy performance and fairly low weight make it a good tool for content creators and professionals who want to work when travelling. Even though it’s not meant to be a gaming laptop, it can hold its own in modern 3D games if you configure it with the GeForce RTX 3050 GPU.

The only real criticism that I can think of is that this particular configuration tends to run a bit warm most of the time, even if you aren’t doing anything intensive. It would have been nice to have an SD card slot too, but that’s not exactly a deal-breaker. It wouldn’t hurt to wait a bit until Lenovo refreshes this model with 13th Gen Intel CPUs, but even if you buy it right now, this should still be good enough.