Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Pro X review: A portable powerhouse

Lenovo’s Yoga line of 2-in-1 convertible laptops is popular, but its Yoga S or Slim series is just as good. These laptops are designed to be thin 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 pile and while the name is quite long, 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 according to the Lenovo India website. The base variant comes with a 12th Gen Intel Core i5 processor, 16GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD, and a 3K non-touch display. However, the configuration can be customized according to your needs. Lenovo sent me a higher spec variant that had an Intel Core i7 processor, 16GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 GPU, priced at Rs. 1,54,100. The price may increase if you opt for additional software, double the RAM and a touchscreen.

The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Pro X looks great in this Dark Teal color

Design of the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Pro X

The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Pro X looks like any other high-end clamshell laptop. The lid can be opened up to 180 degrees, but not beyond like other Yoga convertibles. I think the Dark Teal finish on my review unit looks very nice since it’s not a common color. The smooth, matte texture is also finger-friendly and does not easily attract fingerprints. All edges and side panels have been carefully rounded to make this device comfortable to hold and use. The laptop is moderately heavy, tipping the scales a bit above 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 (Type-C) ports for charging and video output, along with a full-size HDMI 2.0 port. The right side of the laptop has a USB 3.2 Type A (Gen 1) port, a headphone and microphone combo jack, the power button, and a toggle switch to disable the webcam and video. Windows Hello IR camera at the hardware level, so no malicious apps can use them in the background, if you need privacy.

The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Pro X’s 14.5-inch screen is quite immersive thanks to the slim bezels all around and good brightness. The IPS display has a 3K resolution (3072 x 1920 pixels) and 120Hz refresh rate. It is factory calibrated with a claimed color accuracy of Delta E

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

The keyboard is evenly backlit with well-spaced keys, good travel, and relatively quiet operation. There are perforated speaker grilles on either side of the keyboard and a large touchpad below. The air vents are hidden near the display hinge. The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Pro X comes 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 12th Gen Intel Core processors, but 13th Gen options are expected to arrive soon, as is the recently refreshed Yoga 9i 2-in-1. The variant I have has an Intel Core i7-12700H processor with a total of 14 cores (six performance, eight efficiency). The 16 GB of LPDDR5 RAM is soldered to the motherboard, so expansion is not possible.

My device also has 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 70Wh 4-cell battery which is said to provide up to 10 hours of battery life. There’s no fingerprint sensor, but you do get the infrared camera for Windows Hello facial recognition.

The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Pro X’s backlit keyboard is very comfortable to type on

The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Pro X comes with Windows 11 Home, although you can upgrade to 11 Pro when setting it up. You get the typical Lenovo apps pre-installed like Lenovo Vantage to keep drivers and firmware up to date, Lenovo Smart Appearance (webcam enhancements), Lenovo Voice, and more. The Yoga Slim 7i Pro X is also Nvidia Studio validated, which means it’s optimized to work best with creative apps like Adobe Premiere Pro.

Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Pro X performance and battery life

With the high-end specs of my review unit, the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Pro X was an absolute pleasure to use for work and play. The exhaust fan remains quiet under normal use, but may be slightly heard when gaming or running other heavy workloads. Some spots on the bottom of the laptop, near the air vents, stay a bit warm even with light use. When gaming, the base and some keys tend to heat up a bit, probably due to the dedicated GPU.

If you do a lot of typing, you’ll be happy to know that the keyboard is very comfortable. The trackpad works just as well. This Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Pro X 3K non-touch display delivers crisp visuals with vivid colors. I found the brightness to be more than adequate, and the intensity of the screen’s backlight is automatically adjusted according to ambient light. By default, the Nvidia GPU runs in Optimus mode, which means it’s only activated when an application needs it. To use G-Sync in games, you’ll need to switch to 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

The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Pro X’s benchmark performance was impressive. In the Cinebench R20 single-core and multi-core tests, the laptop scored 682 and 5,025 points respectively. The 3DMark Time Spy graphics test suite yielded 3,966 points. SSD performance was equally good. The 1TB SSD in my unit returned just over 6GB/s of read speed in sequential and random tests, and over 4.5GB/s of write speed in sequential and random tests. Real-world testing also went well. It took 1 minute and 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 ran a few popular games to see how the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Pro X performed. Fortnite ran smoothly at over 30fps on the “high” graphics preset. ” in Full HD. Death Stranding was also very playable at 1440p, using the “High” graphics preset with Nvidia’s DLSS enabled. This laptop can certainly handle AAA titles at moderate settings and resolutions, but it does get quite hot in the process.

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

Software provided by Lenovo with the Yoga Slim 7i Pro X offers useful features

The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Pro X’s battery life wasn’t too bad. In the Battery Eater Pro drain test, the laptop lasted just under two hours (1 hour and 54 minutes), which was okay considering my device configuration and high-resolution display. The refresh rate was always set to Dynamic (60Hz or 120Hz, depending on the app) on Windows. I could average five to six hours of light to medium usage (using Slack and Chrome, no gaming), which again seemed about right for the configuration I tested.

Perhaps a lower-spec version of this laptop could come closer to 10 hours of battery life. The battery charges fairly quickly with the supplied adapter, going from zero to around 60% in half an hour.

Verdict

The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Pro X is a well-designed premium laptop that offers good performance and features for the price. The high-resolution screen, solid construction, fast performance, and relatively low weight make it a good tool for content creators and professionals who want to work while traveling. 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 I can think of is that this particular setup tends to get a little hot most of the time, even if you’re not doing anything intensive. It would have been nice to have an SD card slot as well, 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 processors, but even if you buy it now, that should still be enough.