Lenovo Yoga 7i Review: Focus on performance, productivity and price in this premium ultrabook

The Yoga 7i is a convertible laptop that is designed for work on the go but makes little use of its build.

While AMD is attempting to stage a comeback in the PC market, Intel currently holds an ironclad hold of the premium laptop segment. And if you are looking for a premium laptop in 2021, you might want to look for one backed by Intel’s 10nm Tiger Lake CPUs. Today, we are going to put one such premium laptop to the test. The Lenovo Yoga 7 is a 14-inch 2-in-1 notebook that has all the makings of an excellent slim and light laptop. But when it comes to premium notebooks, does the Lenovo Yoga 7 have what it takes to cut; well, stick around and let’s find out together.

Design and Build

The Yoga 7i is a convertible laptop that is designed for work on the go but makes little use of its build. The notebook features a glossy aluminium lid with the “Yoga” branding on the top and the “Lenovo” logo encased in metal. Once you open the lid, which takes two hands FYI, you are greeted by a keyboard that matches the chassis’ finish. A speaker grille sits on either side of the keyboard with another Lenovo logo and a fingerprint reader on the bottom right.

The Dolby Atmos branding also sits right under the keyboard on the left. Because this is a convertible, you get a 360-degree hinge design, while the hinges themselves feel pretty solid. Additionally, the Yoga 7i weighs in at 3.1 pounds and measures 12.6 x 8.5 x 0.6~0.7 inches, making it slightly incredibly slim and light, but marginally heavier than some of the competition.

Ports and More

In terms of the port selection, the Yoga 7i could be doing a bit more. You get two Thunderbolt 4 ports and a headphone/mic output on the left and a single USB Type-A 3.2 Gen 1 port on the right. The power button also sits on the right side of the Yoga 7i. I think a single extra full-fledge USB port to the right would go a long way here.

You also get a fingerprint reader and a 720p webcam, but there’s no IR scanner, so no Windows Hello unlocking. However, Lenovo has added a privacy shutter for the webcam. Additionally, the Lenovo Yoga 7i also comes with an Active Pen.

Keyboard and Touchpad

The Lenovo Yoga 7i’s keyboard definitely takes a few design cues from the ThinkPad, and that’s always a good thing. I felt the keyboard to be quite comfortable to type on with adequate spacing between the keys, although key travel seems to be less compared to some of its competitors. Additionally, the Yoga 7i’s keyboard is also disabled when using the laptop in different orientations, primarily while it faces down on a desk.

The touchpad is quite responsive and smooth to the touch. However, gestures still worked quite well. The touchpad is not the best but does get the job done. I had a mouse hooked up for the most part, but I didn’t face any difficulties when switching to the touchpad. Overall, the keyboard was great for the most part, but the touchpad is average at best.

Display

The Yoga 7i’s display has some pretty sizeable bezels, but the panel itself looks pretty sharp. The notebook arrives with a 14-inch Full HD (1080p) IPS display and offers around 300 nits of brightness. The screen also features 72-percent NTSC and 80 percent DCI-P3 colour coverage. While the screen does reproduce accurate and vibrant colours, the blacks often lack depth, making darker scenes look bleak without much detail.

Additionally, the glossy screen is highly reflective, while overall brightness is slightly lower than that of the competition. The Yoga 7i’s IPS panel features touch support, which makes navigation in tablet mode or any other mode, pretty simple. The screen also offers seamless transition when using the notebook in different orientations. Overall, this screen tends to fall short in the quality department, but is nevertheless, highly functional.

Performance

There’s no doubt that the Yoga 7i is built to perform with its 11th Gen Intel Core i5 or Core i7 processor options paired with up to 16GB of DDR4 RAM. Our model arrived with the Intel Core i7-11655 and 16GB of RAM. It also featured 512GB M.2 PICe SSD storage and Intel’s new Iris Xe graphics. But let’s take a brief look at how the Yoga 7i fared in terms of real-world usage.

In Geekbench, the Lenovo Yoga 7i managed a single-core score of 1515 and a multi-core score of 5120. The Iris Xe graphics hit an OpenCL score of 17,041 on Geekbench. In Cinebench R23, the processor hit a single-core score of 1529 points and a multi-core score of 5324 points. Data transfer speeds on the SSD were also quite fast, although the ZenBook Flip S were much faster.

The Yoga 7i definitely aces the multitasking test. Handling most productivity tasks was a walk in the part, with 10 tabs open on Google Chrome, MS Office, and Excel opened simultaneously. Beyond productivity, the laptop also handled gaming on low graphics, including titles like Overwatch, Counter Strike: Global Offensive, and GTA V quite well.

The Yoga 7i tends to shine when it comes to performance, its powerful performance makes multitasking a breeze. I don’t think it has a category-leading screen for graphic design, but it certainly packs enough of a punch to effortlessly undertake tasks on apps like Photoshop and Adobe Premiere Pro. Additionally, the new Intel Iris Xe graphics also enables some casual gaming, on low graphics, but nevertheless, this is an ultrabook and any type of lag-free gaming is great.

Battery

The Lenovo Yoga 7i packs a 71Whr battery that can easily get you through the entire workday. The laptop lasted over nine hours on a single charge, with my use consisted of multi-tasking between MS Word and Google Chrome. The battery life I got on the Yoga 7i exceeded that of the Dell XPS 13 (Review) and Asus ZenBook Flip S (Review). If we’re only looking at ultrabooks, then the Yoga 7i might just have the best battery life of the lot.

Audio

The Yoga 7i has two front-firing speakers that output powerful audio that gets quite loud without much distortion. The speakers even pumped out solid bass, making any audio on the laptop sound really good, especially considering this is an ultrabook. The speakers support Dolby Atmos with the System app featuring Dynamic, Movie, Music, Game, Voice and Personalize audio presets. You can further customise the audio in some of the preset modes with a full equalizer. I have to say that this is arguably the best-sounding ultrabook I’ve used.

Verdict

With a starting price of Rs 82,990, the Lenovo Yoga 7i sits in a sweet spot between affordable and premium. Our model will set you back Rs 99,990, although you’ll find that the Yoga 7i is still more affordable than the competition. When it comes to performance and productivity, the Yoga 7i definitely feels like a cut above the competition, but it does have some shortcomings like a slightly less responsive touchpad, a bulkier form factor, and a screen that is average at best.

But when you factor in a great keyboard, incredible audio, the backing of Intel’s Evo branding, and most importantly, a relatively cheaper price tag, then the scale does tend to tip in Lenovo’s favour. Overall, I think the Lenovo Yoga 7i makes a pretty strong case for the best premium 2-in-1 laptops in its segment.