Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 Carbon
RM6,059
Pros | Cons |
+ Lightweight and durable | - Lack onboard HDMI and USB-A ports |
+ Beautiful OLED display | |
+ Comfortable keyboard and touchpad | |
+ Decent battery life | |
+ Great performance | |
The Yoga Slim 7 Carbon is our first Lenovo laptop and it's branded as a device "in its own category of lightest overall laptops in the industry". Targeted for the business market, I really liked its portability without compromising build quality and performance.
Design
The Yoga Slim 7 Carbon comes in a beautifully compact box that fits the laptop just right in a very portable size. Usually, I'm not particularly impressed with laptop boxes as they look pretty much the same, big and chunky. This one, however, is packed in a beautiful dark blue box with patterns that resemble the galaxy and a huge "YOGA" logo in the middle.
As for the laptop itself, it gives off a typical business device kind of vibe in a Cloud Grey finish. The "Carbon" in its name refers to the aero-grade strength carbon fiber lid for lightweight and increased durability. Meanwhile, the rest of the chassis is made of a magnesium-aluminum alloy. I actually love to touch the laptop's cover because of its matte feeling and fingerprint resistance. Lenovo claims that it's achieved with a process involving 3-layer, 8 hours high-heat baking, and 6 - 9 hours of painting over the carbon black base.
In terms of design, the lid has only a small Lenovo logo engraved on a plate located at the upper corner and a Yoga logo at the bottom corner. While the hinge is sturdy, it can be easily lifted and folded 180°, where it can lay flat on a table.
Weighing just 1.07kg, the Slim 7 Carbon is ultra-portable as I could carry it in my backpack for hours and I didn't feel fatigued on my shoulders. Overall, I love that it has a nice grip, and its plain design suits well for minimalists.
Display and Audio
Amazingly, the OLED panel is another thing that I love about this laptop. Although it's not something new, I do appreciate Lenovo's efforts on the screen instead of an IPS panel that will suffer from backlight bleed. On this 14" laptop is a Samsung E4 OLED panel with a QHD+ (2880 x 1800) resolution, a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio, and 600 nits of peak brightness.
It has a 16:10 aspect ratio, which allows for more vertical content on-screen when browsing the web or reading documents, all the more suitable for office use. On top of that, it has a 90Hz refresh rate, making it nice for productivity use. To conserve battery consumption, you can toggle the Fn + R shortcut to change the refresh rate to a lower 60Hz.
Aside from its OLED technology, the laptop's screen also meets VESA's DisplayHDR 500 True Black specifications. For creators who would like to work with this one, it covers 100% of the DCI-P3 and 125% of the sRGB color gamuts. Viewing HDR content on the display is certainly a pleasure with crisp details, spot-on brightness, and vibrant colors. The display is also protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 3 and supports Dolby Vision.
Above the display is a 720p webcam camera for video calls and video conferences, along with a ToF sensor that can identify your face for quick login via Windows Hello.
Audio-wise, it has a two tweeter and woofer configuration that supports Dolby Atmos. Sound output is loud and clear with minimal bass. The speakers are also upwards-facing so I don't have to worry about muffled sounds when you curl up on bed watching K-dramas.
Keyboard and Touchpad
Despite the Yoga Slim 7 Carbon having a simple keyboard, it's actually very easy to get used to. What Lenovo calls, the TrueStrike keyboard offers a 1.3mm key travel with a "unique caterpillar mechanism and rubber dome switches". In any case, I'm very comfortable with its key travel. The keyboard has 3-level white backlighting, which is actually quite hard to see when the screen is very bright. It also has an auto setting that will automatically light up the keyboard when needed.
The large glass touchpad is responsive, smooth, and accurate. During my time of using it, I didn't experience any unregistered clicks and I had no issues with the multi-touch gestures.
Ports
Since this is a compact laptop, I didn't expect many ports included and it didn't prove me otherwise too. On the left side, there are two USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 ports that support DisplayPort and Power Delivery 3.0, as well as an audio jack. On the right, there's only a single USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 port that supports data transfer.
Besides the Type-C port, there's also a power button and a webcam kill switch. If you're looking for the missing USB-A port, Lenovo provides a USB-C dongle bundled in the box, which supports a single USB-A port, VGA, and HDMI outputs. The lack of a Type-A port could be a major drawback for many because that means you won't be able to connect a mouse to it had there not been a dongle.
Performance
The unit that I received is powered by an AMD Ryzen 7 5800U processor with a Lenovo AI chip and AMD Radeon graphics based on Vega GPU architecture. The configuration is paired with 16GB of DDR4 RAM and 512GB of SSD storage.
In real-world practice, the laptop is capable of handling productivity and content-creation tasks from web browsing to image editing. I had a great time using it for my day-to-day article writing and entertainment.
Interestingly, the Lenovo AI chip offers quite a range of special features that improve user experience, such as Flip to Boot and Smart Presence Detection. Flip to Boot allows the laptop to boot instantly the moment you lift the display lid. The laptop is now capable of detecting the user's presence, dimming the display when the user is away, and intelligently lighting up again the user is back in front of the screen.
Packed in this device is a 61Whr lithium-ion polymer battery along with a 65W USB-C charging support. Even with maximum brightness settings, I'm impressed that it can last well over 8 hours of work and entertainment. It took me around two full hours to fully charge the battery from 9%.
Buy or no buy
The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 Carbon is by far one of the best business laptops I've ever reviewed - ultra-portable, beautiful 90Hz OLED display, and decent battery life. It's not entirely flawless, though, if I point out the lack of a USB-A port. If you're someone like me who uses a mouse a lot, the attached dongle is not an ideal solution, or you could opt to settle for a Bluetooth mouse. Still, it's a solid and well-performing notebook that I would use again.
