Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x hands-on review: One of the most beautiful laptops I've ever seen
The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x is the company’s first AI laptop powered by Snapdragon X Elite. Though it bears the familiar “Yoga Slim” moniker, this is a completely new notebook built for portability and efficiency. Lenovo is billing this as a laptop for creatives due to its promised performance, but the svelte design makes it appealing for anyone looking for an elegant and lightweight Windows laptop.
I recently got a brief look at the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x and was captivated by its (pardon the pun) slim design which clearly takes inspiration from the 13-inch MacBook Air M3. It’s one of the thinnest laptops I’ve ever held. Its 14.5-inch 3K OLED touch display is also quite striking. The promised power and efficiency of X Elite could also make this thin laptop a big deal.
I’ll have a full review of the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x sometime this June when it launches. For now, here are my early impressions of Lenovo’s first AI laptop.
Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x hands-on review: Cheat sheet
What is it? Lenovo's first Snapdragon X Elite laptop, featuring an all-new design.
Who is it for? For people who need a dependable laptop to use on the go
How much does it cost? The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x starts at $1,199.
What do we like? The lightweight design and OLED display
What don't we like? There's no headphone jack.
Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x hands-on review: Specs
Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x hands-on review: Price and availability
The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x will be available starting June 2024 and have an expected starting price of $1,199.
Expect configurations with up to 32GB of RAM and 1TB of SSD storage. All models will have a 14.5-inch 3K (2,944 x 1,840) 90 Hz 16:10 OLED touch display.
Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x hands-on review: Design and display
The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x is exactly what I imagine when I think of a slim and portable laptop. At 12.80 x 8.86 x 0.51 inches and weighing 2.82 pounds, this svelte notebook is almost as thin and light as the 13-inch MacBook Air. And thanks to its sturdy aluminum chassis and tasteful Cosmic Blue color, it looks just as good as Apple’s popular laptop.
Lenovo’s notebooks have excellent keyboards and the Yoga Slim 7x is no exception. The thick large keycaps offer a good amount of resistance when pressed and the keyboard deck is spacious enough to comfortably type on. The smooth and responsive touchpad is also pretty roomy.
Port-wise, the Yoga Slim 7x features a pair of USB-C ports on its left-hand side and another USB-C port on the right. Unfortunately, there is no headphone jack.
This laptop’s 14.5-inch 3K (2,944 x 1,840) 90 Hz 16:10 OLED touch display will likely be a big selling point. We’ll need to get the laptop into our testing lab to see what the display can achieve in terms of brightness, color accuracy and reproduction. That said, I found the display bright and colorful during my brief time with the Slim 7x. The OLED panel should make everything look its best.
Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x hands-on review: Performance
Like the HP OmniBook X, the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x packs a Snapdragon X Elite processor. The chip’s NPU (Neural Processing Unite) is capable of 45 TOPS (trillion operations per second) for running LLMs (large language models) and generative AI locally on the laptop instead of via the cloud. This might not mean much now, but could prove useful as AI-driven apps become more ubiquitous.
According to internal testing we at Tom’s Guide saw, the X Elite is 28% faster than the Apple M3 chip in Geekbench, which tests a CPU’s overall performance. This test used Qualcomm’s laptop reference design which we put through its paces during one of the company’s press events.
Based on our testing, the X Elite promises great multi-core performance that could be more capable than Apple’s lower- and middle-tier M-series chips. The tests also saw X Elite outperforming Intel’s powerful Core Ultra 9 CPU.
We’ll need to get the Yoga Slim 7x (and other Snapdragon X Elite laptops) into our testing lab and run them through our gauntlet of benchmarks. If Qualcomm’s claims about performance and efficiency are true, this and other X Elite laptops could put Apple on notice.
Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x hands-on review: Outlook
Snapdragon X Elite laptops arrive in June and Lenovo might have the most elegant one of all with the Yoga Slim 7x.
The laptop's slim design and OLED panel are enough to make it enticing but the promised power of Qualcomm’s chip could make it downright irresistible. Will it land a spot on our best Windows laptops list? It’s too early to say, but we’ll know in about a month.
Stay tuned for my full review of the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x!
