The Yoga Slim 7X is Lenovo’s premier thin-and-light laptop that leverages Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X series of chips. It is very similar to the company’s Yoga Slim 7i, which features an Intel chipset, but differs enough to justify being its own product. The Slim 7i is available in both 14-inch and 15.6-inch sizes, while the 7X is available only in 14-inch. Lenovo offers many different configurations of the Yoga Slim 7i with and without OLED displays, but all with the latest Intel Core Ultra 3 Series chips. The Slim 7X comes in a single configuration with Qualcomm Snapdragon X Series chips.
I was excited to try out the Yoga Slim 7X mostly because Lenovo has given it a considerable number of upgrades across the board, including from the Snapdragon X to the Snapdragon X2 series. The first model of the Yoga Slim 7X really impressed me, so I was happy to see that Lenovo gave this iteration a nice refresh that did more than just swap in the new Snapdragon chips.
The Snapdragon X2 Elite Makes a Difference
Now that I’ve spent some time putting this machine through its paces, the biggest and most noticeable difference is indeed the upgrade from the Snapdragon X1 to the Snapdragon X2, which at the highest SKU offers a considerably more powerful CPU and GPU. The top-level CPU core count goes up to 18 from a max of 12 in the prior version, and the GPU performance is essentially doubled. I verified the performance improvements with my own benchmark testing across my usual suite of apps including Geekbench 6, Cinebench, Blender, and 3DMark. On single-core and multi-core Geekbench performance, there was a 50% or better improvement, and the improvement on Cinebench multi-core was in the 30% range. Blender also showed improvement in the 50% range, while 3Dmark GPU performance was 100% better.
I haven’t had a chance to compare the performance of the Slim 7X to other Snapdragon X2 Elite laptops yet, but I do have an HP EliteBook Ultra with the X2 Elite waiting in the wings, which may prove an interesting comparison across OEMs. That said, the X2 Elite in the Slim 7X did prove to me when I was writing my ASUS X2 Elite Extreme review that the X2 Elite is a better value; the X2 Plus might even be a better value for some users for whom GPU performance isn’t as important as battery life. Unfortunately, I don’t have any X2 Plus machines for testing in hand yet, so that comparison might take more time to prove out.
Some of these benefits come directly from having a much better SoC, and it’s important to understand that this applies specifically to the comparison between the Snapdragon X2 Elite and X1 Elite. Lenovo is now shipping the Slim 7X at a starting price of $899, considerably lower than the launch price of $1,199 — which is impressive considering today’s PC pricing realities. Using the Snapdragon X2 Plus allows Lenovo to launch at a lower price point while still making this an attractive machine. Using an X2 Plus does affect the generational performance improvements, though it will also improve battery life. Lenovo also increased the memory speed to 9,523 MT/s from 8,448 MT/s for all models, which I believe is designed to better feed the SoC with memory bandwidth for higher performance.
Speaking of feeding the SoC, I also tested the SSD, because I have found that a lot of PC OEMs are shipping these high-end systems with last-gen Gen4 NVMe storage, which I believe detracts from the user experience. It turns out that the SSD in this PC was indeed a Gen4 NVMe drive, and not even one that maxed out the 7 GB/s Gen4 speeds; it managed only a 6 GB/s sequential read speed. That’s a bit of a disappointment, especially if this compromise was made only to enable slightly lower prices.
What Else Is New in the Yoga Slim 7X?
The configuration of the Yoga Slim 7X I tested has 32GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD, along with the Snapdragon X2 Elite SoC, and it retails for $2,099. Confusingly, Lenovo still sells the last-generation Slim 7X with the Snapdragon X1 Elite on its site for $1,439.99; this may confuse some consumers, given that the company also sells a Snapdragon X2 Plus variant with 16GB of RAM for $999.99. One interesting development for the new Slim 7X is that it ships in most configurations with a 14-inch 60Hz 1920 x 1200 touch OLED display, which is a bit of a step back from the 14.5-inch 90Hz PureSight 3K OLED display on the original Slim 7X.
That said, if you go into Lenovo’s online configurator and build your own version of this laptop, you can pay a meager $60 to get a 14-inch 120Hz 2880 x 1800 OLED display with touch and 1,100 nits of peak brightness. I feel like this should have been the default option for the $2,099.99 configuration that Lenovo offers on its site and not be buried under a configurator. Best Buy has its own configuration of this laptop for $1,299.99; that one comes with a Snapdragon X2 Plus, the 60Hz 1920 x 1200 OLED display, and 16GB of RAM with 512GB of storage. This is the same configuration that Lenovo sells for $999, which is a significant discount, but it’s always hard to track what’s an actual retail price versus what’s a sale when you’re shopping at Lenovo, Dell, or HP.
Lenovo also gave the Slim 7X Gen11 a 9MP IR webcam, an upgrade over the 1080 webcam of the previous generation. The new webcam is a welcome improvement for video calling and low-light situations. Like the prior generation, the laptop also has Windows Hello capability, including the presence detection features, which were enabled by default on this PC. Curiously, these features weren’t enabled by default on the Dell XPS 14 I recently reviewed; I believe this unique Windows PC feature should be enabled, because it enhances the user experience with improved security and better battery life.
Lenovo also made the new Slim 7X more compact and lighter, with a design that is half an inch narrower and 4mm shorter, while adding 4mm of thickness at its thinnest point. I will say that holding the two models next to each other, it’s hard to tell that the new one is smaller, though it does feel different and slightly lighter (which it is, by 0.3 pounds or 110g). The keyboard also feels different and arguably better, even if it looks almost the same.
Also, on the topic of portability, Lenovo has introduced a new 65W GaN charger for this generation of its thin-and-light laptops, and I am in love with it. The charger is extremely compact compared to previous examples in this price tier and is more in line with what I’ve seen from high-end machines like the ThinkPad X1 Carbon series. I believe that chargers are an extremely important factor in the user experience, even for laptops like this one that have great battery life. Add this to the USB-C ports on both sides of the laptop for convenient charging and the laptop’s multi-week standby duration, and this device has all the bases covered for power management.
The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7X Is a Good Laptop in a Field of Many
Lenovo’s Yoga Slim 7x Gen11 laptop is a genuinely good laptop. It comes from a solid foundation in the Slim 7X series, and the Snapdragon X2 and other improvements validate this laptop as a great back-to-school PC or just something that you might want to use for its long battery life and OLED display. While this laptop isn’t a powerhouse by any measure, it’s also no slouch. I think that the $899 base-model price (as it sells on Lenovo’s site as of this writing) is probably the best value, although the non-upgradable 16GB of RAM on that model could be a limiting factor for some. If anything, I would likely pay the $60 for the upgraded display, which, as I mentioned earlier, is where Lenovo may have missed the mark by not including it in the highest $2,099 pre-configured spec.
Above all, this laptop shows how much of an improvement the Snapdragon X2 Elite is over its predecessor — and how one can enable an overall better user experience simply by upgrading the SoC. Qualcomm and Lenovo have a great partnership going with this laptop. Though it’s also quite clear that the memory crunch is forcing some laptop OEMs to make decisions they wouldn’t have made before with pricing, display, and memory, Qualcomm’s SoC lineup does give its OEM partners, including Lenovo, some flexibility in how they make those decisions.
