Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Gen 9 Aura Edition review: In touching distance of greatness

The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Gen 9 Aura Edition isn’t a 2-in-1 device that can be folded through 360 degrees and used as a tablet, like the Yoga-branded Lenovo’s of years gone by. While it may not do such technological gymnastics, it is still a laptop with plenty going for it. It’s built around one of Intel’s new highly efficient Core Ultra 7 Lunar Lake CPUs, has bumper battery life and manages to fit a 15.3in touchscreen display into a very compact footprint.

Small yet frustrating issues with the webcam and touchpad and the odd positioning of a couple of buttons prevent it from being a mid-range superstar but this is still an impressive effort from Lenovo.

Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Gen 9 Aura Edition review: What you need to know

Before I get into the meat and potatoes of this review it’s worth clarifying what an Aura Edition PC is and whether you should care or not

In simple terms, Aura is a range of settings and options which can quickly put your laptop into various Scenario and Smart modes. The former manages tasks like engaging the noise cancelling system in Meeting mode or tuning the speakers’ sound profile in Media mode.

That latter harnesses AI to improve security by using a proximity sensor to launch protocols such as blurring the screen if you move away from your laptop or someone looks over your shoulder. It can also help facilitate distraction-free work by limiting notifications for a set duration, and keep an eye on your well-being by monitoring your posture and time spent staring at the screen.

The majority of the features found in Aura form part of Windows anyway but Lenovo brings them together in the Vantage app which comes with an associated widget and taskbar menu. Aura is a convenience rather than a must-have. During my time with the Yoga Slim 7i, I only used the system to see what it could do but your mileage may vary.

Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Gen 9 Aura Edition review: Price and competition

Configuration tested: Intel Core Ultra 7 258V CPU, Intel Arc 140v iGPU, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD, 15.3in, 120Hz, 2,880 x 1,800 IPS touch display. Price when reviewed: £1,400

Lenovo is currently offering its Yoga Slim 7i in three flavours. All feature the same display though the international spec sheet for the Slim 7i mentions an optional 2.8K OLED screen coming “early in 2025”.

For £1,299, you can have a Core Ultra 7 256V CPU with 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD. Next up, £1,350 gets you the same but with a 1TB SSD. Add another £50 and get a Core Ultra 7 258V, 32GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD. That makes the top-end model the best value by some margin; £101 gets you a faster CPU, double the RAM and double the storage.

If you’re in the market for a light and compact laptop and have around £1,400 to spend, there are some very tempting alternatives to consider:

• LG’s Gram SuperSlim 15.6 is the lightest of the light when it comes to full-sized laptops, weighing in at a negligible 820g. It’s a wee bit bendy and the design has resulted in some thermal compromises that hamstring the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H CPU but the FHD OLED screen is lovely and the battery life is strong, making it to the 14-hour mark and then some in our tests. Great value at £1,699 at the moment

• The Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 is the best of the new Snapdragon-powered Copilot+ Windows laptops. It’s one of the most easily repairable laptops on the market and has a great 2.5K IPS touchscreen and epic battery life. It’s not the lightest of laptops but is solid value with the 15in model starting at £1,549

• The Asus Zenbook S16 is one of the prettiest laptops around thanks to its cool Ceraluminium coating and boasts excellent battery life, towering CPU performance from the new AMD Ryzen 9 CPI and a superb 2.8K OLED screen. At the time of writing the Ryzen AI 9 365 model is on sale for £1,199 which is staggeringly good value

• A direct competitor for the new Lenovo in size, weight and screen size, the 15.3in Apple MacBook Air is still the compact laptop against which others are judged. No other laptop is quite this thin — under 12mm — and prices start at just £1,099, though that leaps to £1,499 if you want a 512GB SSD

Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Gen 9 Aura Edition review: Design and key features

For what is effectively a full-sized laptop — the difference between 15.3in and 15.6in is impossible to tell unless you have two such laptops side-by-side – the Yoga Slim 7i is impressively thin at just 14mm.

At 1.53kg — the 15.3in MacBook Air weighs 1.51kg — the new Lenovo is surprisingly light given its all-aluminium construction and feels very solid and well-made. It boasts MIL-STD-810H military-grade durability and resistance to shocks, vibration, changes in humidity and such. It may be a side effect of the overall build quality but the display hinge is very stiff, making opening it up a two-handed job.

I’d describe the design as smart but anonymous, a situation not helped by the single non-descript Luna Grey colourway. The styling won’t be keeping the product designers at Asus or Apple awake at night. Being more positive, the matte finish does a great job of not showing greasy fingerprints or palmprints.

When it comes to I/O ports Lenovo has endowed the Yoga Slim 7i with two Thunderbolt 4 ports, a 5Gbit/s USB-A port, a 3.5mm audio jack and an HDMI 2.1 video output. That’s not a bad selection per se but remember you lose one Type-C port to charging duties. A second USB-A port or USB-C port would not have gone amiss and the Type-A really should be able to handle 10Gbit/s. The Intel BE201 modem supports Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 which is as up-to-date as possible.

One layout feature I’m less happy with is the power and webcam electronic shutter buttons being located on the left side of the chassis rather than on the keyboard deck and above the screen respectively, where they are more commonly found.

I found that I tended to snag both buttons when dumping the Yoga Slim 7i into my backpack. This is particularly annoying with the webcam because if you toggle the switch Windows Hello facial recognition won’t work when you open the lid.

Getting inside the Slim 7i is a bit nerve-wracking because the plastic clips that hold the base in place just don’t want to let go. Once inside all you can do is swap out the single 2242 M.2 SSD and the battery and clean the two fans. The memory is an on-package design as it is with all Lunar Lake chips so can’t be upgraded. The wireless card is also soldered in place.

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Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Gen 9 Aura Edition review: Keyboard, touchpad and webcam

When one writes the words “Lenovo” and “keyboard” in the same sentence they tend to be followed by a string of superlatives, and that’s very much true of the Yoga Slim 7i. The keyboard deck is solid, the keys themselves are perfectly shaped and very nice to touch, while the action is light, deep and positive.

The keycap graphics are models of clarity with or without the assistance of the two-stage – three-stage if you include the Auto mode – white backlight.

The quality of the touchpad doesn’t quite match the keyboard, which demands a large haptic affair rather than a small (135 x 80mm) mechanical one. It’s not inherently bad – I like the clean and usefully quiet click-action – but it’s not special while the keyboard above it is.

The 1080p webcam is even more ordinary. The images it renders are neither remarkably bright, colourful nor crisp. It’s a long, long way behind the high-quality 1440p webcams that Acer is now fitting to its new laptops like the competing Swift 14.

A feature missing from the Yoga Slim 7i is Windows Studio Effects webcam enhancements. Usually with a Lenovo machine, you’d fix this by downloading the Lenovo Smart Appearance app, but the driver package that you need to get this to work doesn’t yet support the Yoga Slim 7i. I’ve contacted Lenovo about this but have yet to hear back as to when the issue might be resolved.

Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Gen 9 Aura Edition review: Display and audio

One might think that having an IPS screen would put the Yoga Slim 7i at a disadvantage to competing machines with OLED displays but that’s not the case.

The 15.3in 2,880 x 1,800 panel is bright, hitting 503cd/m2 and colourful, with gamut volumes of 134.4% sRGB, 95.2% DCI-P3 and 92.6% AdobeRGB. It’s accurate too, registering Delta E variances of exactly 1 in Display P3 mode and 0.95 in sRGB mode. Thanks to a 120Hz refresh rate, animations are buttery smooth.

The screen doesn’t have the deep blacks and infinite contrast of an OLED display but the contrast ratio of 1154:1 is still pretty good. It also carries a VESA DisplayHDR 400 certificate which guarantees a competent HDR ability.

Some users may take issue with the ultra-glossy, highly reflective finish. This can be an issue when working under strip lights or in sunlight but cranking the brightness up towards the max proved a good fix.

It’s unusual to find such a slim laptop with more than two speakers but the Slim 7i manages to squeeze four in: two 2W woofers and two 2W tweeters. The result is a loud – peaking at 75.7dBA – and punchy soundscape that projects strongly into the room thanks to the up-firing drivers that flank the keyboard.

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Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Gen 9 Aura Edition review: Performance and battery life

The Intel Core Ultra 7 258V chip inside the Yoga Slim 7i is the same 8-core, 8-thread affair found inside the Acer Swift 14 AI OLED I tested recently and performance levels were very similar. The Lenovo scored 278 in the Expert Reviews 4K multi-media benchmark to the Acer’s 272.

In all the other CPU benchmarks the new Lenovo just shaded the Acer Swift 14 AI, though only by the smallest amounts. When it came to the performance of the integrated Intel Arc 140V GPU the reverse was true, the Acer just shaded the Lenovo, again by the smallest of margins.

To give you some examples, the Lenovo machine ran the Cinebench R23 benchmark at 9,638 multi-core and 1,882 single-core while the Acer scored 9,299 and 1,705. Moving to the SPECviewperf 3dsmax 3D modelling test, the Acer had the advantage at 26.1fs vs. 25.5fs. Those margins are too small to be relevant in the real world.

Thermal performance was also very similar to the Acer laptop. After a short period of running stress test apps on both the CPU and GPU utilisation, the Yoga Slim 7i’s CPU settled at 74% while the GPU continued to run at 100% which is acceptable for a compact laptop. The noise made by the cooling fans never became intrusive while maintaining this level of performance.

Thanks to a generous 70Wh battery and a very efficient chipset the Yoga Slim 7i’s battery life is stupendously good. In our regular test, which involves looping an SD video in VLC with the display brightness set to 170cd/m2, the Yoga Slim 7i ran for 21hrs 10mins, the second-best innings we’ve ever seen, beaten only by the Snapdragon-powered version of the Acer Swift 14 which marched on to 24hrs 2mins.

That is an extremely good result and almost reason enough to pick the Lenovo machine over any of its natural competition if you plan on being away from a power socket for prolonged periods.

Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Gen 9 Aura Edition review: Verdict

I arrive at the end of this review less excited by the Yoga Slim 7i than I should be. Why? Because this is a laptop that is within touching distance of greatness and the reasons it falls short are so easily fixed. It’s irksome to see Lenovo trip over such a low hurdle.

Let’s get the good points out of the way first: the battery life is brilliant, the keyboard excellent, the display bright, smooth, colourful and colour-accurate. The laptop itself is solid, well-made and not unpleasant to look at. The speaker system is very good too.

But, the webcam is mediocre, the power button is in a daft place and you don’t get Windows Studio Effects. I anticipate that a driver update will fix that problem sooner rather than later, though. And the more I used the Slim 7i the more I started to think it needs rather more in the way of I/O ports.

Those few fixes would have been so simple to implement and had they been, the Yoga Slim 7i would have been a clear and easy recommendation. As it stands, this is just a very good laptop rather than a great one.