Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition review: The display, not Smart Modes, steals the show

There’s nothing like a good team up. When Intel announced its Core Ultra Series 2 processors, Lenovo proudly announced that its Yoga Slim 7i would be an “Aura Edition,” a collaboration with the chipmaker to make more advanced machines.

Those efforts lead to what’S… mostly a completely normal laptop. Lenovo has added a vivid, high-resolution display and plenty of ports. Intel’s Core Ultra 7 256V runs nice and cool in the chassis.

But the Smart Modes have largely been done before in other laptops; they’re just now in one place. While tapping your phone to the laptop to see your recent pictures is a neat parlor trick, Intel Unison, the software that powers it, works on many notebooks.

This all means that the best parts of the Yoga Slim 7i are what you look for on the best ultrabooks: a nice screen, sleek design, and long battery life. But with a slippery keyboard and, on our review unit, jarringly rumbling speakers, there’s room for improvement.

Design of the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition

The Slim 7i is a Yoga in name, but its design doesn’t match what the brand used to imply. In the US, there’s been a bit of a question over whether or not laptops that don’t flip into tablets should be Yogas, so it seems Lenovo split the difference by putting a reflective, tone-on-tone Lenovo logo on the aluminum lid. In fact, there’s no mention of the Yoga brand on the lid at all, which is different. It’s spartan, but not in an unpleasant way.

While the laptop’s lid is flat, the bottom half is more rounded, giving it a unique profile, though you won’t really notice a difference while you actually use the device.

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The first mention of the Yoga brand is on the palm rest (also made of aluminum). Our unit came in a gunmetal “luna” gray finish. The display is surrounded by a thin bezel with a camera bump on top that helps for opening and closing the machine.

Despite the lithe (0.55 inches thick) design, Lenovo has managed to squeeze in a fair number of ports on the sides. The left has an HDMI port, Thunderbolt 4, and a 3.5 mm headphone jack while the right side houses the second Thunderbolt 4 port (charging on both sides, nice!), a USB Type-A port, and the camera shutter switch.

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The Slim 7i measures 13.54 x 9.27 x 0.55 inches and weighs 3.37 pounds. That’s only slightly heavier than the 15-inch MacBook Air, which is 3.3 pounds and a slimmer 13.4 x 9.35 x 0.45 inches.

Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition Specifications

Productivity Performance on the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition

The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i joins the ranks of laptops carrying Intel’s Core Ultra Series 2 “Lunar Lake” chips. We tested it with an Intel Core Ultra 7 256V, which has 16GB of RAM on board. Lenovo also includes 1TB of PCIe 4 storage.

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On Geekbench 6, the Yoga earned a single-core score of 2,531 and a multi-core score of 10,711, which is close to the Dell XPS 13 (9350) and its Intel Core Ultra 7 258V. The Dell XPS 13 (9345), with a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite (X1E-80-100), was higher in single-core performance and had the highest multi-core performance of the group. The MacBook Air with M3 had the highest single-core performance (3,093) and also beat the Lunar Lake Laptop at 12,025 in multi-core.

Lenovo came out on top in our file transfer test. The Yoga copied 25GB of files at a rate of 1,613.44 MBps. The Mac was the slowest here, while the Intel XPS was faster than the Qualcomm option.

On Handbrake, the Yoga Slim 7i transcoded a 4K video to 1080p in 6 minutes and 23 seconds. That came in just ahead of the MacBook Air (6:30), but the Qualcomm-based XPS was the speediest at 4:47.

We stress tested the Yoga Slim 7i with Cinebench 2024, pushing it to complete 10 runs in a row. It appeared to take the system a bit of time to warm up, but once it did, scores were consistently in the low 600’s. The CPU’s performance cores averaged 3.47 GHz, while the E cores ran at a faster 3.55 GHz. (E cores running faster than P cores is a trend we’ve seen on Lunar Lake laptops). The CPU package measured 75.88 degrees Celsius.

Display on the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition

Lenovo’s 15.3-inch, 2880 x 1800 display is bright and vibrant. It delivers 120 Hz refresh, and supports Dolby Vision.

I used the laptop to watch the trailer for Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (what can’t Keanu Reeves do?). The cast of Sonic and his friends were vibrant blues, oranges and reds, while Shadow the Hedgehog’s white and red spots popped from among his black fur. Even a dark battle scene where the trio of Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles first meet Shadow had plenty of detail visible in the background, which isn’t always the case on some laptop screens.

The Yoga’s display is vibrant, especially compared to the competition. It covered 108.5% of the DCIP-3 color gamut and 153.2% of the smaller sRGB spectrum. That’s far better than the two XPS 13’s we tested, and even the MacBook Air (109.4% sRGB).

Lenovo’s panel was also the brightest of the bunch, at 486.6 nits. Here, though, the victory wasn’t as decisive, with the MacBook Air coming in at 482.4 nits, while the Snapdragon-based XPS 13 reached 456 nits.

Keyboard and Touchpad on the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition

The keyboard on the Slim 7i is a real mixed bag. Sure, the keys feel responsive and clicky, which I generally like, but the keycaps are slippery. I found it hard for my fingertips to really grip on the keys, and that was an uncomfortable feeling that led to slower typing and occasional missed keystrokes. I handed the laptop to two other Tom’s Hardware editors, and both agreed that the material seemed slick, with one likening it to the material on the bottom of a mouse (Though I wouldn’t go quite that far). I hit 100 words per minute on the monkeytype test, which is a bit slow for me, with a 95% accuracy rate — about 3% lower than usual.

The Slim 7i’s touchpad is 5.3 inches wide and 3.16 inches tall, which is sizable given how much space is available. It’s a standard touchpad, not haptics (which would be nice to see here), but it was responsive and worked with all of Windows 11’s gestures in my testing.

Audio on the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition

The speakers on the Yoga Slim 7i are decent, but you have to be able to withstand their vibrations against your palms.

The sounds of Linkin Park’s “Waiting for the End” easily filled my apartment with sound and, in general, the audio was pretty good with a clear mix of vocals, drums, and synths. But like many thin laptops, bass was difficult to make out. Going into Dolby Access to change to the “Detailed” preset gave the song a bit more of a pop and helped eke out just a bit of the low end, but nothing life-changing.

The issue, though, is that any song I played on the laptop at high volumes caused the touchpad and palmrest to vibrate significantly. This often happens to some degree with most thin notebooks, but the Yoga’s speaker rumbling was far more annoying and noticeable in this regard. If you were to actually use this laptop while working, like I did, you’d likely find it just as distracting as I did. The only thing that worked to reduce these vibrations was to lower the volume significantly, though I had to make it fairly quiet to get it to a point I could tolerate.

Lenovo told me that there was no known issue here, and recommended making changes in Dolby Access. Another reviewer at another publication showed me their identically specced Yoga, and I didn’t have the same vibration issues. This makes me wonder if it’s specific to our unit, but there’s not really a way to tell.

Upgradeability of the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition

It’s pretty easy to get into the Yoga Slim 7i. After removing five Torx screws from the bottom of the chassis, I was able to make quick work of the bottom of the case with a pry tool, and had it removed in minutes.

The one easily removable part is the M.2 2242 SSD. The RAM is part of the Lunar Lake CPU design, and the Wi-Fi chips are soldered to the motherboard.

The battery is replaceable, but it has an odd design. There’s a small gap in the middle, with what appears to be a lock switch. It corresponds to a matching piece of plastic on the inside of the base plate, presumably to hold the two together. Lenovo tells me it will still offer replacement batteries.

While most people are unlikely to unscrew the entire motherboard, there is a Lenovo sticker that will show if you broke a seal to reach the screws.

Battery Life on the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition

In general, it’s hard to argue about a laptop with 14 hours of battery life. The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i ran for 14 hours and 8 minutes on our test, which involves web browsing, video streaming, and WebGL tests with the display set at 150 nits of brightness.

But the Dell XPS 13 with Lunar Lake ran a much longer 17:29, though that system had a 1920 x 1200 display. It’s almost certain that the higher-res screen consumes more energy. The Snapdragon version of the XPS ran for an even longer 19:31. Apple’s 15-inch MacBook Air, with a 2880 x 1864 screen (similar to the Lenovo, in that regard), ran for 15:03.

Heat on the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition

The Yoga stayed remarkably cool during our Cinebench 2024 stress test. The keyboard reached 94.9 degrees Fahrenheit, while the touchpad was a crisp 84.3 F. The bottom of the laptop was perhaps the most impressive, topping out at 102.7 F on the bottom, near the exhaust. That’s pretty good for a thin laptop under that much stress.

Webcam on the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition

There’s a 1080p webcam housed in the small bump above the Yoga Slim 7i’s screen. It’s fine if you keep camera windows small, and has accurate colors, but I did find that on the high-resolution screen, it was easy to see some grain, even in our decently lit office.

The camera bump also houses a sensor for Windows Hello, which is your only biometric option, as there’s no fingerprint reader. (I prefer it to the fingerprint reader, anyway).

On the right side of the laptop, there’s an “e-shutter.” It’s a small privacy switch that prevents the camera from turning on.

Smart Modes, Software and Warranty on the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition

The “Aura Edition” label on the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i is supposed to indicate that Lenovo worked closely with Intel on a number of “smart” features. On our laptop, none of them were on by default, and they required setup.

The Smart Modes include an Attention Mode (bringing up the built in Windows focus timer and the option to block selected “distracting” websites); a “Wellness Mode” that reminds you to look away from the screen and attempts to remind you to sit up straight if you slouch; a “Shield Mode” to blur your screen or warn you when someone is looking over your shoulder; a “Collaboration Mode” with a low-light video enhancer; and a “Power Mode” that can be switched between Battery Saver, Adaptive power mode, and Performance.

Some of these are helpful whule others just use built-in Windows features, and none of them seem particularly new. I’ve seen these types of features on laptops for many years, so it’s unclear what Intel and Lenovo did other than put them in one place.

What is arguably more useful is Smart Share, which lets you sync your files, texts, and photos from your phone to the laptop, even with an iPhone. This is built into Intel Unison, an app that comes bundled with plenty of Intel laptops, so that’s not exactly mind-blowing. What is new is that there’s a way to tap your phone against the side of the screen to use a mix of Bluetooth and a “AI Virtual Smart Sensor” to access your last 30 photos. This was a neat party trick for a bit, but it’s ultimately easier to go into the app and see all of your photos. It does feel surprising, though, that it works with both iPhone and Android. Windows and iPhone working together? What world do we live in?

Lenovo includes a fair bit of software on the Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition. Vantage, as usual, serves as a one-stop shop for serial numbers, BIOS versions, and serves as home to a number of power modes and customization options.

Lenovo Now feels like an extension of Windows Setup, in a bad way, in that it suggests third party apps from partners to download, tries to sell you Lenovo Support Services, and suggests signing up for McAfee security, Amazon Music trials, Fubo, and more. You can safely avoid this.

Lenovo Hotkeys is a quick guide to keyboard shortcuts that the company has programmed – and there’s no way to customise them. These buttons would be better served in the online user guide that Lenovo links to on the Start Menu.

There are also pieces of bloat from Lenovos’s partners, like a preinstalled trial of McAfee Security and a Dropbox Promotion to get 100GB for 6 months.

Lenovo sells the Yoga Slim 7i with a one-year warranty.

Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition Configurations

Our Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition, with an Intel Core Ultra 7 256V, 16GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD, and 2880 x 1800 touchscreen is sold at Best Buy and costs $1,299.99.

On Lenovo’s website, the Slim 7i starts at $1,299.99 and is identical to our review unit except for a smaller 512GB SSD. (Spend the extra $20 and get the bigger drive.)

If you want 32GB of RAM, you also have to jump to the Core Ultra 7 258V, which costs an extra $100 (which is honestly not so crazy considering the way some OEMs handle RAM and CPU upgrades). In Lenovo’s customizer, switching between 512GB and 1TB is an extra $42.

Bottom Line

There’s a lot to like about the Yoga Slim 7i, from its lovely display, to plenty of ports (full HDMI on a thin laptop? Yes please) to decent (though not class-topping) battery life.

But there’s room for more polish. While the keyboard feels good in terms of clicky responsiveness, the plastic of the keycaps is slippery, making for a sub-par typing experience. Our unit also had speakers that rumbled enough to be distracting.

The Smart Modes and photo sharing are nifty if you want them, though they’re not standout features (and most are turned off to start, anyway). The ones tied to Intel Unison can be found on many laptops. The idea of tapping your phone (including an iPhone!) to a Windows laptop to see your photos is cool, but it needs to do more to feel less like a gimmick. Hopefully Intel and Lenovo find more innovative ways to make the next Aura even more useful and unique in that regard.

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