Review Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Gen 9 Aura Edition – Compact, Buffalo battery, great keyboard

With a 15.3-inch screen, Yoga Slim 7i is located in the middle of the micro laptop segment (under 14.5 inches) and large laptops (15.6-16 inches). This size is considered to be “golden ratio”, bringing the convenience and ease of laptops in a more compact design. The most noticeable point of this model is the new Intel Core Ultra 7 Lake Lake processor, along with Snapdragon X, it has redefined the standard of battery life on Windows laptop.

1. What is Aura Edition?

Before going into the evaluation, it is necessary to clarify the concept of “Aura Edition”. Basically, Aura is a set of settings and options that allow you to quickly switch laptops to “Scenario” modes (situations) and “smart” (smart).

• Scenario mode includes tasks such as activating noise reduction feature (meeting mode) or adjusting speaker audio configuration when watching movies.
• Smart mode (Smart) uses AI features to improve the security of the web browsing by using the asymptotic sensor to activate security protocols. For example, the screen will be blurred if you leave the laptop or someone peeked. The “District-Free Work” mode (not distracted) will limit the notice for a certain period of time, and the “Wellness” mode will monitor your posture and eye fatigue.

2. Design Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Gen 9 Aura Edition: thin, durable

Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Gen 9 Aura Edition weighs 1.53kg, quite light compared to a laptop with aluminum structure entirely. To compare, the MacBook Air 15.3 inch weighs 1.51kg. The machine feels solid, sturdy, well completed and can withstand collisions during daily use. In addition, Yoga Slim 7i also meets Mil-STD-810H military durability, shockproof, vibration and moisture change.

The design of the device is quite minimalist and towards work, but that's why it is not very prominent. However, the fuzzy coating has the advantage of not clinging to the fingerprint, this is sometimes more important than the beauty designed in practical use.

With size 344mm x 235mm x 14mm, Yoga Slim 7i Gen 9 is thin and compact when compared to a standard laptop of the same size. It is a bit wider than the 15.3 -inch MacBook Air, but not as deep and as thin. Put the device in a thin bag or a backpack without any problems.

3. Port connection: just enough for needs

Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i laptop is equipped with two Thunderbolt 4 ports, a 5gbit USB-A port, 3.5mm audio jack and HDMI 2.1 video export port. Because there is no dedicated DC charging port, you will have to use a type-C port for charging. The presence of at least one type-A port is very welcome, but it is better if there are two ports and ideally reaches 10g/bits.

The position of the power button and the camera closed/closed button on the right side of the frame is not ideal. We easily press the wrong when putting yoga in or removing the device from the bag. Small power button should not be used as a fingerprint scanner, making Windows Hello infrared camera become the only biometric security option on this 15 -inch laptop.

4. Upgrade capabilities: Limit

The ability to upgrade after buying of Yoga Slim 7i is very limited. After removing the bottom lid, you can only replace the M.2 2242 SSD and the battery, as well as clean the fan. Because this is a machine using Lunar Lake processor, RAM is integrated on the chip, while the Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth Intel Be201 cards are also welded to death into the board.

5. Keyboard, touchpad and webcam: strengths and points to be improved

Often the keyboard of Lenovo laptop is very good quality, especially the models towards the demand for office, business, and Yoga Slim 7i Gen 9 Aura Edition is no exception. The keyboard area is firmly designed, the keys have the perfect shape, pleasant to touch and gently typing but good feedback. The characters on the key are clear, with a white backlight that automatically supports.

In contrast, the touchpad is not completely comparable to the keyboard quality. It must be said that this 15 -inch laptop deserves a bigger and 'genuine' touchpad of the small mechanical touchpad (135 x 80mm). Although this touchpad is not bad, the touches and clicks are comfortable and comfortable, the feeling is a bit poor.

The 1080p webcam is quite normal. The image quality is not too bad as well as no noise, but compared to the high quality 1440P webcam that some manufacturers have equipped the latest compact laptops, Yoga Slim 7i's webcam is far behind. Besides, although the Ultrabook generation uses the Intel Core Ultra 2 series chip, the current Yoga Slim 7i Gen 9 is currently lacking the Windows Studio Effects feature. But this problem is not too big, can be improved by a future update.

6. HLenovo Yoga Slim 7i Gen 9 Aura Edition: 2.8k super sharp, accurate colors

The 15.3 inch 2.880 x 1,800 screen of Lenov Yoga Slim 7i has high brightness, reaches 503 nits, and vivid colors with 134.4% SRGB, 95.2% DCI-P3 and 92.6% ADOBERGB. The color accuracy is also very good, with Delta E deviations 1 in Display P3 and 0.95 mode in SRGB mode. 120Hz scanning frequency helps smooth motion images.

This combination makes the screen ideal for general productivity tasks (composing large spreadsheets easier on the 16:10 120Hz screen compared to 16: 9 60Hz) and creative tasks, where the color accuracy right after the factory is mandatory.

The Slim 7i Yoga screen is not deep black and infinite contrast as the OLED screen, but the contrast ratio of 1154: 1 is still quite good and it has a VESA Displayhdr 400 certification, ensuring good HDR performance.

Although the screen has a very good display quality, some users may not like its glossy, easy -to -reflective coating. This can sometimes make it difficult to work under the light or in the sun.

7. Specifications and performance: Strong, energy saving

The Intel Core Ultra 7 258V chip inside Yoga Slim 7i is a adjusted version of the Core Ultra 9 288V clock reduction on the Asus ZenBook S14. The basic structure is the same with four cores and 4 cores, but the maximum clock speed drops to 4.8GHz from 5.1GHz, while the basic power is placed at 17W instead of 30W.

Both chipset use the same GPU integrated Intel Arc 140V with Intel's high -performance car architecture and NPU enhanced AI to provide 48TOPS performance, helping Yoga Slim 7i are compatible with Copilot+.

In the single -core test of Geekbench 6, Yoga Slim 7i reached 2682 points compared to 2807 points of ZenBook S14 and 2427 points of ASUS Vivobook S15 running Snapdragon X Elite. This is a sign that Lunar Lake focuses on efficiency rather than outstanding performance compared to Meteor Lake. In the PCMark10 test, Yoga Slim 7i reached 6964 points, surpassing ZenBook S14 only reached 6235 points.

Intel's latest IGPU capabilities can run tests such as Benchmark 3D SpecViewPerF 3DSMAX at 25.5FS, very impressive for a system without specialized GPUs. The 3DMark Time Spy test showed the same result: Yoga Slim7i reached 3960 points, very impressive and no less than 4329 points of ZenBook S14. Interestingly, Yoga Slim 7i defeated ZenBook S16 running AMD Radeon 890M, which reached 3725 points, showing that Intel had a significant step in the field of integrated GPU.

Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Gen 9 Aura Edition does not have any abnormal heat dissipation problems. After a short time running stress-test on both CPUs and GPUs, the usage of the CPU is stable at 75%, while the GPU is always at 100%. This is an acceptable situation for a compact laptop. The noise produced by the heating fan does not cause discomfort when maintaining this performance.

PCIE 4 Western Digital 1TB SSD is not the fastest hard drive on a compact laptop (that title belongs to HP Omnibook Ultra 14), but the reading speed is 4,140 MB/s and the rate of 2,350 MB/s is definitely enough for daily use.

8. Battery time: Unmatched

Thanks to a large 70Wh battery, the battery life of Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Gen 9 laptop is very impressive and is enough to choose Lenovo instead of any direct competitor if you have a working schedule away from the power outlet for a long time.

In video broadcast tests with 170 nits, Yoga Slim 7i can operate continuously for 21 hours and 10 minutes, surpassing both ZenBook S14 (17 hours 9 minutes) and Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 running Snapdragon X Elite (18 hours 35 minutes).

9. Should I buy Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Gen 9 Aura Edition?

As a versatile business laptop, Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Gen 9 Aura Edition is a very considerate choice. Excellent battery life, difficult keyboard can be criticized, bright screen, smooth, vivid colors and very good color accuracy. This laptop itself is also very solid, well completed and the sound system is very good.

Although there are still small errors, such as the webcam is only average, the power button is not optimal, the ability to upgrade is limited, but in general, the positive points remain far beyond the negative point, making the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Gen 9 AURA Edition a very valuable device for anyone who wants a versatile laptop for all working environments.