Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 review: another top-class Windows laptop from Lenovo

Welcome to our Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 review, where we'll be guiding you through everything this lightweight, powerful laptop has to offer – and by the time you've finished reading you should have a much better idea about whether this is the best laptop for you.

Whether you're shopping for work laptops or student laptops, the Yoga Slim 7 has got plenty to offer: long battery life, decent performance, and a style and polish that's testament to the number of years that Lenovo has been busy making laptops.

Check the widgets embedded on this page for the latest online deals and prices on the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7, and be sure to consider the Yoga Slim 7i too – that's the Intel version of this laptop (Lenovo also announced a few extra configurations at the CES 2021 expo). 

Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 review: screen and design

There's no doubt about it: the Yoga Slim 7 is a fine-looking laptop. The grey aluminium casing looks superb (a fabric-topped model and an orchid shade are also available), and there's an understated style about every aspect of the laptop's aesthetic that we are really impressed by. It's lightweight – tipping the scales at just 1.54 kg – but it's not light on features, and unless you need gaming-level performance, it's well worth considering.

The laptop is available with a choice of display configurations at both 14-inch and 15.6-inch screen sizes – all the way up to 4K UHD (3840 x 2160 pixels) if needed. Our review unit came with a 14-inch FHD (1920 x 1080 pixels) display attached, with brightness levels up to 300 nits. Overall, we found the screen sharp and bright enough for everyday use, although we have to admit preferring the 16:10 aspect ratio on laptop displays (you can fit more on screen vertically).

The laptop is a pleasure to type on, with soft, rounded keys, and the trackpad is both spacious and responsive. If you've got a lot of typing to get through, then it won't be a problem with the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 – it's suitable for office, student and casual home use. Dolby Atmos stereo speakers are positioned either side of the keyboard, which produce a level of sound that's fine for music and movies. 

In terms of ports and connections, the Yoga Slim 7 offers two USB-A ports, one USB-C/Thunderbolt port, an HDMI port, an SD card reader, and a 3.5 mm audio jack that you can plug headphones or a microphone into. That's a decent selection, considering the relative thinness of the laptop, and we've got no complaints about the design or the build quality of the Yoga Slim 7.

• Read up on the best laptops on the market

Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 review: performance and features

You've got a choice of several Intel and AMD processors to kit out the Yoga Slim 7 with, so you can really make it as powerful as you need it to be. Our review unit came with a very decent AMD Ryzen 7 4700U processor, 8GB of RAM, 512GB of SSD storage, and integrated graphics – for just about everything except video editing and gaming, that's a very capable specification for a laptop.

If you do need more power than you can pay more for a better spec, but the review unit that we had dealt very well with everything we threw at it: web browsing, document editing and image editing, on the whole. The benefit of going for something like the Yoga Slim 7 rather than a cheaper model is that it's not going to slow down to a crawl when you've got a dozen web browser tabs and multiple applications open. It stays nice and cool while in use as well.

On a laptop like this, battery life is all important, and the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 doesn't disappoint in this department: you can easily get through a day of work and still have some battery charge left in the tank. In our two-hour video streaming test, with the screen brightness ramped up, the battery went from 100 percent to 85 percent – suggesting you'll get a total of 12-13 hours overall for your movies and shows.

Unfortunately, there's no fingerprint sensor on the laptop, for easy access to your Windows user account – it's something we've come to rely on with other laptops around this price point, and it's a shame not to see it here. Microsoft Windows 10, meanwhile, continues to improve, with new functionality and features added on a regular basis (with a visual overhaul rumoured for later this year).

• These are the best lightweight laptops

Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 review: price and verdict

It depends on the configuration you go for, obviously, but you should be able to pick up most Yoga Slim 7 models for less than £1,000 (including the one that we've reviewed here) – check the widgets on this page for the most up-to-date prices. Considering the specs and the design of this Lenovo laptop that's a pretty good deal, and while there are plenty of cheaper laptops out there, they don't offer the quality of the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7.

The Yoga Slim 7 scores highly in just about all the departments that matter: every part of the laptop design and construction, the performance you get under the hood, the experience of typing and using the trackpad, the extended battery life, the Dolby Atmos sound, the quality of the display, and more besides. You certainly won't be disappointed if you pick this as your next laptop.

Maybe the biggest problem for the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 is that there are so many other decent laptops around at the moment. With prices fluctuating all the time, the best choice can change from day to day, depending on what you want from your portable computer. We like the Yoga Slim 7 a lot, but we've also liked a lot of the other laptops that have crossed the T3 review desk in recent months.

The only real complaints we have are minor ones, such as the 16:9 aspect ratio (which you may love) and the lack of a fingerprint scanner (which you may not mind). If you can find the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 at a competitive price online – and at the time of writing that's certainly possible – then we're definitely happy recommending it.

Browse our Lenovo discount codes to make a saving on your purchase.

• Check out the best 2-in-1 laptops that we've found