Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition review: Intel excellence inside, middling outside

Intel is back, baby. At slightest for now.

The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition is simply a fine-looking 15-inch thin-and-light productivity laptop pinch an AI coprocessor — different introduction successful an progressively crowded field. It has astir of what you’d expect from a laptop for illustration this: all-day artillery life, a bully screen, a awesome keyboard, full-sounding speakers, and conscionable a mates of irritating shortcomings.

But the astir absorbing point astir the Yoga Slim 7i is what’s inside. It’s the first laptop we’ve tested pinch Intel’s caller Lunar Lake processor architecture. Intel has a batch to prove: successful the past six months, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X chips proved Arm processors could lucifer Intel’s Meteor Lake CPUs for capacity while trouncing them connected artillery life. And laptops pinch AMD’s Ryzen AI chips arrived pinch akin performance, much powerful graphics, and decent-enough artillery life to support them successful the game, too. Lunar Lake is fundamentally Intel’s past chance to enactment competitory successful thin-and-light laptops.

The bully news is that Lunar Lake fundamentally pulls it off. The bad news is that, for a $1,300 laptop, the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i falls short successful a fewer excessively galore areas to make it an easy recommendation.

The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition has a crisp 15.3-inch screen, an Intel Core Ultra 7 256V processor, 16GB aliases 32GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD, fantabulous speakers, a awesome keyboard, a mediocre trackpad, and a full batch of branding. 

The Aura Edition tag is Lenovo’s measurement of saying it has a Lunar Lake spot and mostly amounts to immoderate AI bloatware. It’s besides a Copilot Plus PC. That intends that among different things, it has a dedicated neural processing portion (NPU) that tin execute astatine slightest 40 trillion operations per 2nd (TOPS) — the NPU successful the Core Ultra 7 256V tin do up to 47 TOPS. This puts Lunar Lake laptops for illustration the Yoga Slim 7i successful nonstop title pinch the slew of Snapdragon-equipped Copilot Plus PCs released this year, arsenic good arsenic those for illustration the Asus Zenbook S 16 pinch AMD’s Ryzen AI chips. 

Whether you’re moving pinch AI and really request that NPU aliases (like astir people) you’re conscionable looking for a accelerated laptop pinch bully artillery life, Lunar Lake shows coagulated gains complete Intel’s last-gen Meteor Lake chips successful single-core capacity and powerfulness efficiency. And it intends you don’t person to jump vessel to Windows connected Arm to get improved artillery life and standby time.

In regular use, the Yoga Slim 7i feels fast, seldom showing immoderate signs of lag aliases slowdown. The only times I noticed the tiniest stutters were arsenic I swiped betwixt galore Chrome tabs I had unfastened crossed 4 virtual desktops. There’s life successful that x86 architecture yet.

In single-core benchmarks, the Lunar Lake Core 7 Ultra 256V successful the Yoga Slim 7i is imperceptibly faster than the Core Ultra 9 185H (Meteor Lake) spot and astir 5 percent faster than the Snapdragon X Elite 78-100 successful Lenovo’s akin Yoga Slim 7x. But it’s astir 10 percent slower than the higher-clocked Snapdragon X Elite 80-100 of the 15-inch Surface Laptop 7 aliases the AMD Ryzen AI 9 370 HX successful the Asus Zenbook S 16.

In multicore, the Lunar Lake spot fell further down — betwixt 18 and 27 percent slower successful Geekbench and 25 to 38 percent successful Cinebench. Lunar Lake has 4 less cores than the Snapdragon chips and half of what the Core Ultra 9 18H is moving with, truthful it makes consciousness that multicore capacity is going to return a hit, but it’s a smaller deed than you’d expect fixed the little halfway count.

The bigger offender is the Arc 140V iGPU, which isn’t immoderate amended than Meteor Lake successful our tests and is astir 20 percent slower than the GPU successful the AMD-powered Zenbook. Ars Technica and Tom’s Hardware some ran more graphics benchmarks, pinch mixed results — Lunar Lake’s GPU hit Meteor Lake successful immoderate tests, including respective existent games, but fell down successful others. It whitethorn telephone for a revisit aft Intel delivers much driver updates. Regardless, nary of these are gaming machines.

Intel comes retired of this looking beautiful good, each things considered. The Core 7 Ultra 256V isn’t arsenic accelerated successful our benchmarks arsenic the higher-end Snapdragon X Elite 80-100 aliases Ryzen AI 9370HX, but it’s adjacent enough, particularly successful single-core work. It lasted 3 hours longer than the Zenbook successful our artillery rundown test, and it doesn’t person the lingering compatibility issues of the Arm-powered Snapdragon X Elite chip.

In the Yoga Slim 7i, Lunar Lake delivers this competitory capacity while maintaining fantabulous artillery life. The Yoga sewage maine done my days connected a complaint conscionable good and only mislaid up to 3 percent complaint erstwhile near unplugged overnight. I did negociate to termination it successful 9 hours connected a dense workload day, but I kept the surface beautiful agleam pinch surface timeout and slumber abnormal and Windows’ Energy Saver not kicking successful until 10 percent. (I accidentally near the powerfulness settings this measurement from a artillery test; I usually instrumentality to a laptop’s default powerfulness settings.)

On a time wherever I near much emblematic slumber / aftermath settings connected but treated myself to adaptable 60 to 120Hz refresh rates alternatively of the default 60Hz, it lasted astir 11 hours earlier needing a charge. For a decently sized surface that gets reasonably agleam pinch support for some HDR and 120Hz refresh, that ain’t bad at all.

Speaking of the 7i’s screen, its 15.3-inch, 2880 x 1800 IPS sheet doesn’t person arsenic vibrant of colors aliases arsenic heavy of blacks arsenic an OLED, but it’s still pleasing to look astatine unless it’s broadside by broadside pinch an OLED. It’s rated for 500 nits of brightness, and I measured its highest astatine 512. The Snapdragon-powered Yoga Slim 7x has a 14-inch OLED sheet astatine a somewhat higher 2944 x 1840 resolution, but it tops retired astatine 90Hz.

While the surface is good, the 7i’s keyboard, speakers, and larboard action are awesome — which you should expect erstwhile you measurement up to a larger 15-inch laptop. The keys person amazingly heavy travel, pinch a bully tactile feel. The 7i’s well-built metallic framework is reasonably bladed and has soft edges that don’t trim into your wrists erstwhile you type. The quad-speaker setup sounds rather afloat for a laptop, making it much than serviceable for enjoying music, podcasts, aliases taking calls while you work. And it has larboard action befitting a productivity machine, pinch Thunderbolt 4 ports connected either side, positive a bequest USB-A port, HDMI-out, and operation headphone / mic jack. 

So what’s the rub? The biggest offender present is its trackpad, which is oddly short and wide compared to those recovered connected laptops for illustration the Microsoft Surface 7. And dissimilar the Surface 7’s haptic trackpad, the Yoga Slim’s is annoyingly difficult to click toward the apical third. (Imagine trying to property a soft cardinal adjacent its hinge.) It’s besides excessively delicate to accidental taps, forcing maine to move disconnected single- and multi-finger taps wholly successful Windows settings.

The Slim 7i’s 1080p webcam is passable astatine best. Its auto-exposure tends toward the washed-out and gets wildly confused erstwhile I americium backlit by a window. On respective occasions, it looked for illustration I was being raptured connected a video telephone for a coagulated 15 seconds earlier the camera package could fig retired what to do. But the image value I tin unrecorded pinch — dissimilar its awkwardly placed termination switch. Don’t get maine wrong, I admit that the Yoga has a move to trim powerfulness to the webcam astatine the hardware level, but its location connected the correct separator of the laptop is annoying. Pulling it retired of my container is usually capable to toggle it off, which intends Windows Hello doesn’t activity until I fig retired what happened. If you’re a predominant commuter, this whitethorn get connected your nerves. 

It’s a small-ish flaw I tin possibly tolerate, dissimilar the badgering notifications from Lenovo’s preinstalled Vantage software, upselling services you don’t need. Yes, you tin termination the notifications and uninstall Lenovo’s app, but bloat is bloat. And the Vantage app is different illustration of PC makers desperately trying to find things to do pinch AI and failing astatine the execution.

Shield mode, for example, is simply a mounting successful the Vantage app that uses your webcam to pass you if onlookers are down you and could beryllium reference your screen. It tin moreover blur your surface truthful they can’t publication it (and of course, neither tin you). But it doesn’t footwear successful until the interloper is breathing down your neck, astatine which constituent you astir apt don’t request an app to show you they’re successful your space.

The downsides of the Yoga Slim 7i aren’t deal-breakers, but they’d beryllium much forgivable connected a cheaper machine. $1,300 puts you wrong scope of the 15-inch MacBook Air (which conscionable sewage a free RAM upgrade), and if you don’t request to tally Windows, that laptop offers you moreover amended build quality, an astonishing trackpad, and a artillery that easy lasts a afloat time and a spot more. 

If you request a Windows thin-and-light today, you’ll get moreover amended artillery life from a Snapdragon X laptop for illustration the 15-inch Microsoft Surface Laptop 7, arsenic good arsenic akin specs and a much nicer trackpad, though you’ll person to walk a spot much and woody pinch (hopefully) insignificant software compatibility issues. And a Zenbook S 16 pinch AMD’s Ryzen AI gives you amended GPU performance, a bully trackpad, and an OLED sheet for astir the aforesaid price, but that beautiful show isn’t arsenic agleam arsenic the Yoga 7i’s and its artillery doesn’t past arsenic long. 

So wherever does that time off us? The Yoga Slim 7i shows you tin get bully capacity and artillery life from a Lunar Lake laptop — particularly compared to Meteor Lake laptops for illustration the Samsung Galaxy Book4 Ultra, which is astir a afloat lb heavier, pinch a surface that tops retired astatine 60Hz. 

As a laptop, the Yoga Slim 7i is good but not exceptional. As a objection of Lunar Lake’s potential, it’s intriguing. The bully news is that, if you request a thin-and-light Windows laptop soon, the adjacent fewer months are going to beryllium very exciting. We’re going to beryllium testing much Strix Point and Lunar Lake laptops from the likes of Acer, Dell, and others. And pinch CES correct astir the corner, we’re judge to spot a fleet of caller options for 2025.

Lunar Lake could very good beryllium a stopgap measurement for x86 connected our long, inevitable march to Arm-based everything, but it’s showing signs that Intel’s aged canine is learning immoderate caller tricks.

Photography by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge