Do you love thin & light laptops a lot? Well, Lenovo has a plethora of them at your disposal but this Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Carbon is indeed a special one. Though you already might hear the name, the Yoga Slim 7i Carbon is a popular model because of its carbon-fibre design that makes it incredibly light yet premium.
Here we have the 12th Gen Intel-powered Yoga Slim 7i Carbon for review that weighs only 0.97kg, yes, it’s very portable because of its weight. The Moon White color design and carbon-fibre body give it a premium look from the moment you unbox it, it’s one of the sleekest and most eye-catchy laptops I’ve ever seen.
It’s a compact 13-inch form factor laptop with a 16:10 aspect ratio, and the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Carbon could easily be your everyday companion, having spent around two weeks with it, here’s a detailed review about the laptop:
Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Carbon Specifications
- 13-inch 2.5K (2560 x 1600) PureSight IPS, 400 nits, 16:10 aspect ratio, 100% sRGB colour space & volume, 90Hz refresh rate, Dolby Video®, Delta Ε<1 hardware calibrated, TÜV Rheinland® Low Blue Light certification
- Up to 12th Gen Intel® Core™ i7-1260P processor with Intel Evo certification, comes with Integrated Intel® Iris® Xe graphics
- Up to 32GB 4800MHz dual channel LDDR5 RAM
- Up to 1TB SSD PCIe M.2 SSD storage
- 2x2W Harman Speaker with Dolby Atmos support
- HD 720p + IR webcam
- WiFi 6E and Bluetooth® 5.1 connectivity
- Ports: Intel® Thunderbolt™ 4 (DisplayPort™ 1.4, power delivery, 40Gps data transfer) and USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 (DisplayPort™ 1.4, power delivery, 20Gbps data transfer)
- Edge-to-edge backlit keyboard with 1mm key travel
- 50Whr battery that lasts up to 10 hours (for productivity work) and up to 13 hours on video playback
Design & Build Quality
As I told you earlier, this Yoga Slim 7i Carbon is very thin and light, leading to aerospace-grade lightness accompanied by military-grade toughness. Why? Because this laptop is made of aerospace-grade magnesium alloy reinforced with multi-layer carbon Web-Core 2.0 for an incredibly thin, rugged chassis.
So, even though it weighs less than 1kg, its hinge is very sturdy and can be opened with one hand, easy to lift with your fingers, and still doesn’t have any sort of flex. I am really impressed with the build quality and would highly recommend this Yoga Slim 7i Carbon laptop for anyone who is looking for a portable laptop which is very light.
Display
Coming to the display, Lenovo has given you a 13.3-inch 2.5K PureSight display with up to 90Hz refresh rate, though the panel is not OLED still Lenovo promises good color accuracy. Because of the modern 16:10 aspect ratio, and an anti-glare screen, the laptop’s display is very much usable as you get more screen real estate.
For professionals, Lenovo has used hardware-calibrated Delta E <1 accurate 100% sRGB color space and volume for the display. Also, having the TÜV Rheinland Hardware Low Blue Light certification is very important especially if you forget to wear computer glasses, reducing eye strain if you work for long hours.
Having used the laptop’s display for quite some time now I can easily say it’s one of the best, though lacks that extraordinary contrast which OLED panels bring but apart from that I was quite happy doing my everyday work.
From watching movies to writing articles or casual YouTube sessions, the display is good enough for almost everything and even professionals can take use of the color accuracy of this Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Carbon.
Let’s see this 13.3-inch 2.5K display’s metrics in our DataColor SypderX Pro test and does it live up to Lenovo’s claims:
As you see in our tests, the Yoga Slim 7i Carbon’s display is quite good, covering up to 99% sRGB color gamut but this is not up to MacBook or ZenBook standards these days which cover 100% DCI-P3 color gamut. Though it’s good enough for daily usage professionals who need more color-accurate displays can look for alternatives if this satisfies your needs then it’s fine.
Also, the advertised 400 nits of peak brightness look capped at 369 nits, still quite a descent, the high resolution makes the thing look sharp but due to lack of good contrast makes things shabby sometimes. However, if you omit hi-fi productive work, for media consumption the display is very good, with both Dolby Atmos & Vision support, you do enjoy watching movies or YouTube as well.
We told you everything about this Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Carbon display but you should decide if the display will suit your needs or not.
Performance
Lenovo has kept its partnership with Intel intact and though powered by the older 12-core 12th Gen Core i7-1260P processor, the laptop is quite powerful for everyday needs. This is paired with 16GB LPDDR5 RAM and PCIe Gen4 SSD support, you get a blazing-fast Windows experience and everyday work is done in a jiffy.
However, sometimes in power saving mode or when too many tabs are open in Chrome there is a lag in performance, now when you do high-end workloads, the laptop gets heated up pretty quickly. So, heavy rendering or hours of high-end work is not the best I would say, anyways better on a dedicated work desktop or a MacBook.
To see its productivity performance, here are some benchmarks for your reference:
As you see in the benchmarks, this Core i7-1260P processor is a powerful chip but cannot deliver a sustained performance because of the weak thermals. In single-core, though you will see a good score in multi-core, the laptop struggles a lot and even the older Yoga Slim 7 Carbon with Ryzen 7 5800U we reviewed gives better performance than this one.
As you see during prolonged benchmarking, the CPU temperature goes up to 91 degrees Celsius which is again a weak point of this Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Carbon. We feel, the performance of this notebook isn’t bad but the thermals could have been better to properly utilize the chipset inside the laptop and the lack of discrete GPU also doesn’t do justice if you want to do heavy graphics intensive workload.
In terms of SSD speed, the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Carbon really excels and posts flagship Gen4 speeds of up to 6505MB/s read and 4874MB/s write speeds. This kind of speed is excellent for a laptop you plan to use in the long run and overall for most people this laptop should be enough but not for high-end users.
Even though at Performance mode, you still feel the thermals are doing good to push the performance, however, it cannot sustain much of the peak performance. If you are a business-oriented person and need a reliable medium-usage laptop for everyday purpose then the Yoga Slim 7i Carbon makes sense or even people like me who uses a laptop for writing mainly makes real sense. However, don’t think of comparing this one with MacBook Pros and keep your performance expectations a bit real.
Connectivity & I/O
Lenovo has kept things simple with the Yoga Slim 7i Carbon and the ThunderBolt 4 port here on the left-hand side is responsible for both charging and transfers. On the right-hand side, you have a USB Type-C 3.2 Gen 2 port which again is a Type-C anyways so you have to carry a dongle to connect hard drives, etc.
In terms of connectivity, the Wi-Fi 6E support is excellent, and the broader coverage does help when you take the laptop outdoors still in search of better connectivity. My plan speeds are capped at 150MB/s and as you see there is no loss of speed, I am getting very low latency as well, also the upload speeds are very accurate.
Also, Bluetooth 5.1 does help you to connect to multiple devices easily and I have been using my dedicated mouse or headphones or speaker and faced no issues at all.
Keyboard & Trackpad
The white theme obviously compliments the laptop pretty well, the keyboard area has been stretched so that the keys remain standard. The edge-to-edge backlit keyboard serves the purpose for me as they are quite comfortable to type on, not the clickiest but has decent key travel for daily usage.
In terms of the trackpad, Lenovo has stuffed in a larger trackpad which again is usable not that I used it very often but when my mouse wasn’t around, I could use the trackpad as an alternative.
Audio & Webcam
Lenovo has never compromised on the audio department, and here you also have 2x2W Harman speakers with Dolby Atmos support which is loud & accurate enough. I did play music a lot and the sound quality is quite decent, it is not as loud as MacBooks or ZenBooks but still, it’s very usable.
For the webcam, this Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Carbon sports a 720p HD webcam, again very simple but comes with a privacy shutter and also an IR sensor for Windows Hello face recognition. Though the webcam quality is average, Windows Hello support is very convenient if you are too lazy to give a pin during every unlock.
Battery life
Coming to battery life, though there are big claims around this Yoga Slim 7i Carbon to last up to 10 hours, however, being an Intel-powered one, the battery life is a bit slender. As per my usage with 60% brightness and at silent mode, the laptop lasts up to 6.30 hours in some cases but on average last around 5.30 hours.
So, for typical usage, the numbers are quite good but can be stretched if you are casual binge watching and to be fair these numbers are decent enough but not close to the MacBooks anywhere.
Verdict
Now, should you buy this Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Carbon laptop powered by 12th Gen Intel processors or not? Well, if you need an ultra-thin & light notebook which you will use for basic to mid-range usage, need decent battery life and want to carry & use it anywhere this Lenovo laptop solves your purpose quite easily.
Obviously, things aren’t cheap these days, and neither this laptop is, costing around $999.99 and is in the MacBook Air zone. Well, for a Windows laptop I have no complaints as such and being an elegant, thin & light laptop, it served me quite well for a few days, however, it cannot handle a sustained load.
Even the newer MacBook Air struggles with a heavy load but has great battery life, however, if you are inclined towards Windows laptops, and love features like Windows Hello or seamless integration to Microsoft you can go for this Yoga Slim 7i Carbon else go for MacBook if you don’t mind macOS. I hope Lenovo improve the thermals and performance while still being light on the 2023 variants which will head into the market pretty soon.
Buy from Lenovo website: https://lite.al/NhSdO
