IFA 2024: Everything you need to know about Lenovo’s Aura Edition laptops

Lenovo’s new Aura Edition portable PCs are among the countless new laptop launches at IFA this year. But what exactly does Aura Edition mean and should the brand’s latest Intel-powered devices be on your radar? Read on to find out.

The Lenovo Aura Edition series is the result of a multi-year collaboration with chip manufacturer Intel. The two companies have been canvassing the opinions of more than ten thousand people to determine ways in which they can personalise, simplify and optimise their laptop experience, and the Aura Edition models are the fruit of those labours.

Two of Lenovo’s flagship laptops – the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 and Yoga Slim 7i – have both received the Aura Edition treatment and, as such, integrated some useful functionality you won’t find available within the rest of the Lenovo range.

This functionality is split into three specific pillars: Smart Modes, Smart Share and Smart Care. As the name suggests, Smart Modes provide access to four profiles designed to optimise performance, make use of AI and adapt to the individual user’s needs.

The first of these, Shield mode, supports pre-existing features including Privacy Alert and Privacy Guard, which will let you know whether you’ve got someone looking over your shoulder trying to get a look at your personal information and use light-reflecting technology to obscure others’ view of your screen. There’s also a handy function that will automatically launch your VPN of choice when accessing a public Wi-Fi network.

Attention mode, meanwhile, gives you the option to silence notifications and set attention timers to help you focus on the job at hand rather than be distracted by Slack messages and new emails popping into your inbox. The third mode – Collaboration – optimises video performance while in virtual meetings and lets you preset preferred image settings to your liking. Finally, there’s a Wellness mode that’s focused on ensuring you’re healthily interacting with your laptop. It will notify you if it spots you in an unhealthy posture and also remind you to take a break if you’ve been working long enough to risk eye fatigue.

The other two pillars are slightly more straightforward. Smart Share uses AI to enable picture sharing between compatible laptops and smartphones with the companion app installed. Once launched, you’ll be able to drag and drop photos from one device to the other with ease.

Smart Care is simply an umbrella term that covers the various ways of accessing Lenovo’s support tools. These include a chatbot and dedicated concierge-style voice, text and video chat services.

Now that you’ve got an idea of what the Aura Edition models can do, let’s take a quick look at the devices, both of which are set to support Copilot+ from November and will include a dedicated Copilot keyboard key.

The ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 is a 14in clamshell laptop powered by an Intel Core Ultra 9 (Series 2) processor and has Integrated Intel Arc Xe2 graphics. The panel uses OLED technology, has a resolution of 2.8K, a refresh rate of 120Hz and supports Dolby Vision HDR. The whole device weighs under a kilogram and has a 57Wh battery. It will be available with memory up to 32GB and storage of up to 2TB. We’re yet to receive UK pricing but have been told that the laptop will start at €2,699 in Europe.

The Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition runs a slightly different processor – the Intel Core Ultra 7 – and has more basic Integrated Intel Graphics. Its OLED screen is larger at 15.3in but has the same refresh rate and resolution. The panel is claimed to have exceptional colour accuracy, with delta E errors of less than one (the visible threshold is around three). It has four speakers compared with the ThinkPad X1’s two, so should be a solid choice for enjoying films and TV shows, especially given there’s support for Dolby Atmos. The only model we have pricing for comes with 32GB RAM and 1TB SSD and costs £1,400.