If you’re after a laptop that’s feather-light yet feature packed, powerful yet relatively affordable (at least in these fraught times), then the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Ultra might be something worth checking out.
For folks who are familiar with the PC maker, the name of this latest thin and light machine might give you a hint of what to expect.
Yoga is Lenovo’s more consumer-focused line, usually sitting below the flagship ThinkPads for corporate spenders. Slim 7 is the sub-category that offers a standard clamshell design (not foldable or convertible) and i stands for the Intel CPU inside.
The Ultra is the interesting part because that’s relatively new. So, the Yoga Slim 7i Ultra is a line of extremely portable laptops that weigh under 1kg and rival the best of Lenovo’s ThinkPad line.
The reason why I bring all this up is because it offers great performance at great value. It’s for folks who want the best without breaking the bank for Lenovo’s top-end ThinkPads.
First, the Yoga Slim 7i Ultra’s magnesium-aluminium chassis. This design helps bring the laptop’s weight down to just 975g. Not a long time ago, Lenovo was still touting the under-1kg feature for its top ThinkPad X1 Carbon laptop.
Now, the Yoga Slim 7i Ultra has that too. Pick it up and you’ll instantly feel how the difference, making it a lot easier to bring to and from work. Yes, especially during long commutes.
I also like it that the 14-inch screen has thin bezels, which not only contributes to the lighter weight but also makes the design a lot sleeker than other laptops.
For my review unit, I have a 2.8K screen with 2,880 x 1,800 resolution. That’s mighty sharp for a compact screen. Plus, having an OLED display makes content like movies so much more enjoyable with great contrast and vibrant colours.
The design, I should say, follows many of Lenovo’s winning formulas. The camera array at the top, for example, doubles up as a lever to lift the screen.
The laptop’s matt, fingerprint-free surface also gives off a premium feel. In terms of the finish, this Ultra version of the Yoga Slim 7 series is pushing up at the next tier of high-end rivals like Asus’ Zenbooks.
Under the surface, the engine powering things for my review unit include a top-end Intel Core Ultra X9 388H chip, 32GB memory, and a 1TB solid state drive. Horsepower is what you’d expect.
Crucially, integrated in this Intel processor is an Arc B390 graphics processing unit (GPU), which is powerful enough to run many of your AAA games today. Yes, even with a bit of ray tracing (see our review earlier this year).
As the hardware goes, this is loaded with the best that a thin-and-light machine is likely to have. Typically, more powerful Nvidia or AMD GPUs need bigger chassis, like those for gaming laptops.
The Lenovo laptop’s performance shows in everyday apps and some gaming simulations I tried out in my tests.
In PCMark, which measures how well a PC handles everyday tasks like videoconferencing and spreadsheets, the Yoga Slim 7i Ultra scored 9,818. This is higher than an Asus laptop with a Core Ultra X7 chip we reviewed earlier.
In Geekbench 7, which also tests a PC’s performance in productivity tasks, the Lenovo laptop’s CPU scored 2,546 for single-core performance and 17,263 in multi-core performance. This is higher than the Asus machine again.
What about AI? Here, the Lenovo laptop’s Intel processor with its beefy neural processing unit (NPU) offer a good account of themselves.
Running Geekbench AI, which tests for performance in tasks like image classification, the laptop came back with scores of 4,941 (single precision score), 2,005 and 9,072 when using the ONNX AI framework.
With the OpenVino AI framework that usually favours Intel processors more, the Yoga Slim 7i Ultra scored 4,821, 4,435 and 9,480 with the CPU and 4,605, 38,344 and 56,653 with the NPU.
If you’re looking to run some AI tasks with Microsoft’s Copilot on your laptop, the Lenovo machine should prove to be an able assistant.
Earlier, I had mentioned the gaming performance of the integrated Arc B390 GPU here and unsurprisingly, it doesn’t disappoint.
In 3DMark, which simulates many of today’s games, the Lenovo laptop scored 7,726 in the Time Spy subtest. This is higher than what you’d get on less-powerful integrated GPUs.
Fortunately, even with the benchmark tests running, the Lenovo machine doesn’t get too hot to touch, as I found with some laptops with a similar integrated GPU.
Besides performance, what I also like is the keyboard. It offers good tactile feedback, with a nice spring responding to each press as you fire away.
And surprisingly, the Dolby Atmos-enabled speakers play back music and games with a good amount of clarity and body that is usually lacking on a laptop.
Of course, you’re going to be using your headphones for more serious listening, but it’s good to have decent sound right out of the box.
Speaking of peripherals, there are a good number of ports on either side of the Lenovo PC – three zippy Thunderbolt 4 ports should let you juice up the laptop and plug in fast external SSDs.
However, the slim chassis means you lose a fat USB-A port for your old USB flash drives and some wireless mouse dongles. Win some, lose some, I guess.
To run everything, the Yoga Slim 7i Ultra comes with a 75Wh power pack, which is beefier than the 55Wh unit on the heavier ThinkPad X9 I bought last year. The review unit’s four-cell battery is expected to provide “all-day” power.
Of course, last year, laptop prices were much lower as well. Now, the Yoga Slim 7i Ultra, while usually priced lower than the top ThinkPad X1 Carbon and X9 range, won’t be dirt cheap, thanks to inflated memory and storage costs.
The unit I’m reviewing here comes with a princely price tag of S$3,999. However, you do get just about the best you can pack into a thin and light machine today.
Fortunately, you can cut the price down drastically to under S$2,200 if you pick a Core Ultra 5 processor with 32GB memory and an 512GB SSD. Those are still very decent specs though you do without the performance of the Core Ultra X9’s GPU.
For a premium ultralight laptop with an OLED screen, I’d say that’s not a bad deal, especially with prices for laptops through the roof now. If the ThinkPads are out of reach, there’s still the Yoga Slim 7i Ultra.
