When looking for the next ultrabook that will serve as a daily driver for work-related tasks, there are three main things that consumers watch out for: sheer performance, a capable battery that breezes through the day, and build quality that screams “longevity”.
There’s a lot of reasons why the new Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 is the perfect remote working gear for professionals, if you can look past the underperforming webcam, highly reflective display, and lack of memory expansion options. For its P69,995 suggested retail price, the laptop packs an amazing cost-to-spec ratio. Here’s why.
The Yoga Slim 7 is a beast that combines an Intel Core i7-1065G7 Ice Lake processor clocking at base 1.3GHz and max at 3.9GHz, a dedicated entry-level Nvidia GeForce MX350 2GB GDDR5 mobile graphics card with DirectX 12 support, a 16GB Soldered LPDDR4x-3200 RAM which is not upgradeable, and an integrated 60.7Wh battery.
The only difference with the Intel and AMD variants are the stickers placed on the palm rest and the larger power adapter for the model featuring the Nvidia GPU – now with a 95W instead of 65W capacity charger.
The Yoga Slim 7 sports a 14″ Full HD 1920×1080 IPS LCD display with 300 nits of brightness, 100% sRGB, and 10-point multi-touch touchscreen. The glossy and reflective display struggles in outdoor environments but provides good viewing angles and accurate color reproduction used for editing images and videos.
Whether it’s running on battery power or charging, the CPU performance is similar on both modes. With four cores running at maxed 3.5GHz and built with a 10nm Ice Lake architecture, the Intel i7 manages to breeze through graphic and resource-heavy tasks with ease. The built-in cooling system is also up to par with the Slim 7’s power consumption.
With four cores and eight threads, the laptop delivers a snappy response without input delay, which is improved by the device’s PCIe NVMe 3.0 x4 interface. Meanwhile, the integrated Intel Iris Plus Graphics is able to reproduce high-resolution content with ease. When playing games, however, the system automatically uses the 2GB GDDR5 Nvidia GeForce MX350 discrete graphics that puts out decent framerates in 720p.
Verdict
The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 is designed to be a workhorse notebook that is boosted by its discrete graphics and NVMe SSD. And while it offers plenty of performance and power delivery housed in a durable build, some features that are important to remote work are missing. With videoconferencing on the rise, a subpar webcam and glossy display do not work in its favor. It can handle games at medium settings, performs well for editing content, and is built like a tank. The product appeals to on-the-go professionals who rely on the help of an additional graphics power on a quiet and highly responsive laptop.
