Intel is again, child. At least for now.
The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition is a fine-looking 15-inch thin-and-light productiveness laptop computer with an AI coprocessor — one other entry in an more and more crowded area. It has most of what you’d count on from a laptop computer like this: all-day battery life, a pleasant display screen, an important keyboard, full-sounding audio system, and simply a few irritating shortcomings.
But essentially the most fascinating factor concerning the Yoga Slim 7i is what’s inside. It’s the primary laptop computer we’ve examined with Intel’s new Lunar Lake processor structure. Intel has lots to show: within the final six months, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X chips proved Arm processors might match Intel’s Meteor Lake CPUs for efficiency whereas trouncing them on battery life. And laptops with AMD’s Ryzen AI chips arrived with comparable efficiency, extra highly effective graphics, and decent-enough battery life to maintain them within the sport, too. Lunar Lake is actually Intel’s final likelihood to remain aggressive in thin-and-light laptops.
The excellent news is that Lunar Lake mainly pulls it off. The unhealthy information is that, for a $1,300 laptop computer, the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i falls brief in a number of too many areas to make it a straightforward suggestion.
The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition has a pointy 15.3-inch display screen, an Intel Core Ultra 7 256V processor, 16GB or 32GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD, glorious audio system, an important keyboard, a mediocre trackpad, and a complete lot of branding.
The Aura Edition tag is Lenovo’s method of claiming it has a Lunar Lake chip and largely quantities to some AI bloatware. It’s additionally a Copilot Plus PC. That implies that amongst different issues, it has a devoted neural processing unit (NPU) that may carry out at the very least 40 trillion operations per second (TOPS) — the NPU within the Core Ultra 7 256V can do as much as 47 TOPS. This places Lunar Lake laptops just like the Yoga Slim 7i in direct competitors with the slew of Snapdragon-equipped Copilot Plus PCs launched this 12 months, in addition to these just like the Asus Zenbook S 16 with AMD’s Ryzen AI chips.
Whether you’re working with AI and truly want that NPU or (like most individuals) you’re simply searching for a quick laptop computer with good battery life, Lunar Lake reveals stable beneficial properties over Intel’s last-gen Meteor Lake chips in single-core efficiency and energy effectivity. And it means you don’t have to leap ship to Windows on Arm to get improved battery life and standby time.
In day by day use, the Yoga Slim 7i feels quick, hardly ever exhibiting any indicators of lag or slowdown. The solely instances I seen the tiniest stutters have been as I swiped between many Chrome tabs I had open throughout 4 digital desktops. There’s life in that x86 structure but.
In single-core benchmarks, the Lunar Lake Core 7 Ultra 256V within the Yoga Slim 7i is imperceptibly quicker than the Core Ultra 9 185H (Meteor Lake) chip and about 5 p.c quicker than the Snapdragon X Elite 78-100 in Lenovo’s comparable Yoga Slim 7x. But it’s almost 10 p.c slower than the higher-clocked Snapdragon X Elite 80-100 of the 15-inch Surface Laptop 7 or the AMD Ryzen AI 9 370 HX within the Asus Zenbook S 16.
In multicore, the Lunar Lake chip fell additional behind — between 18 and 27 p.c slower in Geekbench and 25 to 38 p.c in Cinebench. Lunar Lake has 4 fewer cores than the Snapdragon chips and half of what the Core Ultra 9 18H is working with, so it is sensible that multicore efficiency goes to take a success, but it surely’s a smaller hit than you’d count on given the decrease core depend.
The larger offender is the Arc 140V iGPU, which isn’t any higher than Meteor Lake in our assessments and is about 20 p.c slower than the GPU within the AMD-powered Zenbook. Ars Technica and Tom’s Hardware each ran extra graphics benchmarks, with blended outcomes — Lunar Lake’s GPU beat Meteor Lake in some assessments, together with a number of precise video games, however fell behind in others. It might name for a revisit after Intel delivers extra driver updates. Regardless, none of those are gaming machines.
Intel comes out of this trying fairly good, all issues thought of. The Core 7 Ultra 256V isn’t as quick in our benchmarks because the higher-end Snapdragon X Elite 80-100 or Ryzen AI 9370HX, but it surely’s shut sufficient, particularly in single-core work. It lasted three hours longer than the Zenbook in our battery rundown check, and it doesn’t have the lingering compatibility problems with the Arm-powered Snapdragon X Elite chip.
In the Yoga Slim 7i, Lunar Lake delivers this aggressive efficiency whereas sustaining glorious battery life. The Yoga bought me by means of my days on a cost simply wonderful and solely misplaced as much as 3 p.c cost when left unplugged in a single day. I did handle to kill it in 9 hours on a heavy workload day, however I saved the display screen fairly vibrant with display screen timeout and sleep disabled and Windows’ Energy Saver not kicking in till 10 p.c. (I by chance left the facility settings this fashion from a battery check; I usually persist with a laptop computer’s default energy settings.)
On a day the place I left extra typical sleep / wake settings on however handled myself to variable 60 to 120Hz refresh charges as a substitute of the default 60Hz, it lasted almost 11 hours earlier than needing a cost. For a decently sized display screen that will get pretty vibrant with help for each HDR and 120Hz refresh, that ain’t unhealthy in any respect.
Speaking of the 7i’s display screen, its 15.3-inch, 2880 x 1800 IPS panel doesn’t have as vibrant of colours or as deep of blacks as an OLED, but it surely’s nonetheless pleasing to take a look at until it’s facet by facet with an OLED. It’s rated for 500 nits of brightness, and I measured its peak at 512. The Snapdragon-powered Yoga Slim 7x has a 14-inch OLED panel at a barely greater 2944 x 1840 decision, but it surely tops out at 90Hz.
While the display screen is nice, the 7i’s keyboard, audio system, and port choice are incredible — which it is best to count on whenever you step as much as a bigger 15-inch laptop computer. The keys have surprisingly deep journey, with a pleasant tactile really feel. The 7i’s well-built steel body is pretty skinny and has clean edges that don’t reduce into your wrists whenever you sort. The quad-speaker setup sounds fairly full for a laptop computer, making it greater than serviceable for having fun with music, podcasts, or taking calls when you work. And it has port choice befitting a productiveness machine, with Thunderbolt 4 ports on both facet, plus a legacy USB-A port, HDMI-out, and mixture headphone / mic jack.
So what’s the rub? The largest offender right here is its trackpad, which is oddly brief and large in comparison with these discovered on laptops just like the Microsoft Surface 7. And not like the Surface 7’s haptic trackpad, the Yoga Slim’s is annoyingly onerous to click on towards the highest third. (Imagine making an attempt to press a piano key close to its hinge.) It’s additionally excessively delicate to unintended faucets, forcing me to show off single- and multi-finger faucets solely in Windows settings.
The Slim 7i’s 1080p webcam is satisfactory at greatest. Its auto-exposure tends towards the washed-out and will get wildly confused when I’m backlit by a window. On a number of events, it appeared like I used to be being raptured on a video name for a stable 15 seconds earlier than the digicam software program might work out what to do. But the picture high quality I can dwell with — not like its awkwardly positioned kill swap. Don’t get me improper, I respect that the Yoga has a swap to chop energy to the webcam on the {hardware} degree, however its location on the fitting fringe of the laptop computer is annoying. Pulling it out of my bag is often sufficient to toggle it off, which suggests Windows Hello doesn’t work till I work out what occurred. If you’re a frequent commuter, this may occasionally get in your nerves.
It’s a small-ish flaw I can possibly tolerate, not like the badgering notifications from Lenovo’s preinstalled Vantage software program, upselling providers you don’t want. Yes, you possibly can kill the notifications and uninstall Lenovo’s app, however bloat is bloat. And the Vantage app is one other instance of PC makers desperately looking for issues to do with AI and failing on the execution.
Shield mode, for instance, is a setting within the Vantage app that makes use of your webcam to warn you if onlookers are behind you and might be studying your display screen. It may even blur your display screen to allow them to’t learn it (and naturally, neither are you able to). But it doesn’t kick in till the interloper is respiratory down your neck, at which level you in all probability don’t want an app to inform you they’re in your area.
The downsides of the Yoga Slim 7i aren’t deal-breakers, however they’d be extra forgivable on a less expensive machine. $1,300 places you inside vary of the 15-inch MacBook Air (which simply bought a free RAM improve), and if you happen to don’t have to run Windows, that laptop computer gives you even higher construct high quality, a tremendous trackpad, and a battery that simply lasts a full day and a bit extra.
If you want a Windows thin-and-light as we speak, you’ll get even higher battery life from a Snapdragon X laptop computer just like the 15-inch Microsoft Surface Laptop 7, in addition to comparable specs and a a lot nicer trackpad, although you’ll must spend a bit extra and cope with (hopefully) minor software program compatibility points. And a Zenbook S 16 with AMD’s Ryzen AI provides you higher GPU efficiency, a very good trackpad, and an OLED panel for about the identical worth, however that beautiful show isn’t as vibrant because the Yoga 7i’s and its battery doesn’t final as lengthy.
So the place does that depart us? The Yoga Slim 7i reveals you will get good efficiency and battery life from a Lunar Lake laptop computer — particularly in comparison with Meteor Lake laptops just like the Samsung Galaxy Book4 Ultra, which is almost a full pound heavier, with a display screen that tops out at 60Hz.
As a laptop computer, the Yoga Slim 7i is ok however not distinctive. As an illustration of Lunar Lake’s potential, it’s intriguing. The excellent news is that, if you happen to want a thin-and-light Windows laptop computer quickly, the subsequent few months are going to be very thrilling. We’re going to be testing extra Strix Point and Lunar Lake laptops from the likes of Acer, Dell, and others. And with CES proper across the nook, we’re certain to see a fleet of recent choices for 2025.
Lunar Lake might very nicely be a stopgap measure for x86 on our lengthy, inevitable march to Arm-based every part, but it surely’s exhibiting indicators that Intel’s outdated canine is studying some new methods.
Photography by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge
