Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 and Slim 7 Pro Review – Fast middle class with Ryzen 5000

By Faryad On Dec 14, 2021

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The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 Pro is a laptop with an interesting formula: a powerful 45W Ryzen processor with the latest Zen 3 computing cores in a thin and light design. Even the performance of our ‘base’ model with six cores is excellent for a device of this size. Lenovo has also provided the metal laptop with a nice and sharp display with a nice 16:10 ratio, which could have been calibrated a bit better. Compared to last year’s Yoga Slim 7, the new Pro also has some downsides. For example, the HDMI port and card reader are missing, and the battery life is a lot shorter. If you can ignore its illustrious predecessor, the Yoga Slim 7 Pro remains an interesting laptop, which is also attractively priced. A copy with eight processor cores will also be available in the shops for less than a thousand euros.

Pros

Fast Zen3 CPU
45W processor in thin metal housing
16:10 aspect ratio screen
Great value for money

Cons

Summary connections
Battery life shorter than Yoga Slim 7 2020
Screen calibration could be better

In our opinion, the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 14″ was one of the best laptops of last year. Not only was the thin and light laptop remarkably fast thanks to a then new AMD Ryzen 4000 processor, the manufacturer also provided it with a good screen. and plenty of connectivity, and battery life was excellent. More than a year after its original launch, the 2020 Yoga Slim 7 remains a must-see, according to our recent Best Buy Guide .

This year, Lenovo is once again releasing Yoga Slim 7 laptops based on an AMD processor. This time, in addition to the ‘regular’ Yoga Slim 7, there is a Yoga Slim 7 Pro. Interestingly, the manufacturer has incorporated a Ryzen 5000 processor from the powerful H series in a very compact housing. The regular Yoga Slim 7 also has a new Ryzen 5000 chip in the front, but just like the 2020 model of the Yoga Slim 7, it is a processor from the energy-efficient U-series. Both new laptops have a new screen panel with a higher resolution and a nice 16:10 ratio. With a diagonal of 13.3 “, the screen of the Yoga Slim 7 is slightly smaller than that of the Pro model with 14 ” display.

The new Yoga Slim 7 hits the market for about the same price as its illustrious predecessor. For less than 1000 euros you already have the variant we tested with Ryzen 7 5800U octacore processor, 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD. There are also two cheaper versions. The Yoga Slim 7 Pro will soon be available in many more variants, even if you leave out the Intel configurations with Tiger Lake H35 processor . Versions with an AMD processor are currently exclusively available at the Media Markt, such as our test model. That is a fairly basic version with Ryzen 5 5600H hexacore, 16GB RAM, 512GB storage and a ‘2.2K’ screen that costs 900 euros. In the most expensive variantof 1,300 euros include a Ryzen 9 5900HX octacore, 1TB storage and a more luxurious ‘2.8K’ display.

Besides the Yoga Slim 7 and Slim 7 Pro, there are few other laptops with the new Ryzen 5000 processors. Inventory problems are still affecting the processor series months after its introduction. So in advance Lenovo promises an interesting offer, but are the laptops of 2021 just as successful as last year’s model?

Casing and connections

Like the recently reviewed IdeaPad 5 Pro, the Yoga Slim 7 and Slim 7 Pro feature an all-metal housing. Only the screen edges are made of plastic with ‘our’ Slim 7 Pro. The Yoga Slim 7 has a glass plate in front of the screen, which makes the lid feel a bit firmer with that model. With some laptops, you can easily press the lid in the middle or bend it when you grab it at the corners, something that also affected the Yoga Slim 7 from 2020, for example. The bottom of the housing has the same construction as the lid, with a top and sides made of one piece of metal. The bottom plate is a loose part and is secured with Torx screws. Although the bottom of both Yoga laptops is also made of metal, that part of the housing does not feel as sturdy as the rest. When you pick up the laptop closed, you will feel the bottom bend slightly under your fingers. Fortunately, the space around the keyboard is made of sturdier material, so that the laptop does not give too much when you press it in the middle.

As mentioned, the Yoga Slim 7 from 2021 is smaller than the 2020 model, which is partly due to the smaller screen, but the new Yoga Slim 7 is also compact for a 13.3 “laptop. Thanks to the narrower screen, the laptop is nice and narrow. Lenovo has also shaved 2.5mm off the thickness compared to the 2020 model, while the weight has fallen by 120g to 1.22kg. The Yoga Slim 7 Pro is about the same thickness (2cm) and heavy (1 .35kg) as the old Yoga Slim 7, the case is deeper but less wide due to the changed screen ratio, making both laptops comparable in size to the competition of this size and price range.

Like the 2020 Yoga Slim 7, the 2021 Yoga Slim 7 and Slim 7 Pro are pure laptops; the screen can rotate 180 degrees until it lies completely flat on the table, but it doesn’t go any further. You can open the lid with one hand without the laptop’s base coming along, thanks to the smoothly moving hinge. The slightly protruding tab in the top screen edge houses a 720p webcam on both laptops. The quality is, as usual, not great. It’s nice that Lenovo has added an option in its Vantage software to automatically blur the background, if your streaming software or platform can’t do that yet. The infrared LED is switched on for this, which is also used to let you quickly log in with facial recognition. Although the system must be able to recognize depth in the camera image,

Unlocking with facial recognition is made easier because Lenovo has also placed a time of flight sensor in the Yoga Slim 7 and Slim 7 Pro, just like the earlier model. This allows the laptop to continuously scan whether someone is sitting in front of the device without having to keep the infrared camera on all the time, which would cost a lot of energy. This allows the system to wake up automatically and start the login procedure when you sit in front of it. The Slim 7 duo has another trick to get started faster; even if you turn the laptop off completely, it will automatically turn on when you open it, like other more expensive Windows laptops and Chromebooks can.

We were pleased with the 2020 Yoga Slim 7 about the wide connection options; the meager connection range of the new Yoga Slim 7 resembles that of the average Apple laptop. Also with the Pro model you are not treated to many ports, although this laptop at least has a USB-A port on the right side, in addition to the two type-C ports on the left. The regular Yoga Slim 7 only has type-C ports, which makes it difficult to connect classic peripherals. Also with the Yoga Slim 7 Pro, if you want to connect a screen, for example, you will need an adapter, which is not included. Both laptops also have a 3.5mm port for your headphones.

The USB-C port that the Yoga Slim 7 has on the right is a bit of a dummy with no multi-function features, though it can charge another device when the laptop is off. Like the type-A port that the Yoga Slim 7 Pro has in that place, it supports a maximum throughput of 5Gbit/s, which is lower than the two USB-C ports on the left, which are 10Gbit/s on both laptops. support. You can also charge the laptop and connect screens via these ports. According to the official specifications, the Yoga Slim 7 can only drive 4k screens at 30Hz, which is no longer of this time. Fortunately, that turns out to be a mistake; in our field test, the duo handled 4k displays at 60Hz just fine, which you would expect given the DisplayPort 1.4 support.

The Yoga Slim 7 and Slim 7 Pro not only have MacBook-like connections, but also a MacBook-like keyboard. The keys have very little travel, as you can see in the chart below, for which we put both laptops under our keyboard tester. So you just have to love that. However, both keyboards give clear feedback, with a pleasant resistance when pressing each key. The dark gray keycaps are completely flat, not too close together and have the slightly rounded bottom that is typical for Lenovo. You can manually set the white key lighting to one of three positions, or have it adjusted automatically based on the ambient light. The duo has a great touchpad; the surface is sufficiently large and is made of glass,

System Performance

The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 is only the second laptop we tested with a processor based on AMD’s Zen 3 architecture and a 15W TDP. Most processors in the frugal Ryzen 5000U series secretly have the older Zen 2 cores on board, which were also already in the Ryzen 4000U series and offer less good performance per clock tick. Laptops with the really new processors based on Zen 3, the Ryzen 5 5600U hexacore and Ryzen 7 5800U octacore, are still very rare, but the Yoga Slim 7 is one of them. Lenovo also does not use Zen 2 processors for this laptop series.

	Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 13ACN5 (82CY000VMH)	Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 Pro 14ACH5 (82MS001SMH)
cpu	Ryzen 7 5800U (8c/16t, 15W-tdp)	Ryzen 5 5600H (6c/12t, 45W-tdp)
Memory	16GB Lpddr4X-4266	16GB DDR4-3200
SSD	512GB	512GB
Wi-Fi	Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX200 160MHz	Realtek RTL8852AE
Screen	13.3″, ips, 2560×1600, 60Hz	14″, ips, 2240×1400, 60Hz
Price	€949	€ 899,-

The Ryzen 5000H family, which includes more powerful processors with a wider 45W power limit, is based entirely on the Zen 3 architecture. There are now more different laptops available with such a chip. Usually these are gaming laptops with a screen larger than 15″, a weight of more than 2 kg and a fast, separate video card. The Yoga Slim 7 Pro is a pleasant break in that overview. Due to the ‘inefficient’ processor and the lack of a separate video card, it can be a lot lighter, just like the recently reviewed Acer Swift 3 SF316.

In Cinebench 20 Multi and Cinebench 23 Multi, the new Yoga Slim 7 is doing good business. In these short-lived benchmarks, in which all computing cores are loaded, the laptop is clearly the fastest of all and about 20 percent faster than its immediate predecessor. The Yoga Slim 7 Pro with six-score CPU scores in Cinebench 20 Multi about the same as the Yoga Slim 7 from 2020 with eight computing cores. In that sense, that device also performs well, although the IdeaPad 5 Pro surpasses it with the on paper considerably more economical 5600U processor. In fact, that laptop gives the processor a lot of room to go beyond its TDP limit; we noted a practical consumption of 38W for the cpu package. In combination with the extra space for cooling in the thicker housing, it is therefore not surprising that the ’15W’

As we saw in the IdeaPad 5 Pro review, Intel’s Tiger Lake series may not be able to keep up when it comes to multicore performance, but the singlecore scores are better than the Ryzen chips. The graphics part of Intel processors is also stronger these days. There is little development in the Vega igpu of the Ryzen processors. In fact, the architecture has remained unchanged since AMD’s first Ryzen laptop chips from 2017.

We then run DaVinci Resolve, a video editor, in which we render a movie. That render takes a lot longer than Cinebench and in this way it becomes clear whether the laptop still performs well under prolonged load. That turns out to be a bit disappointing with the Yoga Slim 7. The laptop also loses a lot of performance if you leave it on the standard energy profile ‘Intelligent cooling’. For DaVinci Resolve we set all laptops on the fastest profile. As Lenovo warns, this makes the laptop noisier and doesn’t help power consumption. The Yoga Slim 7 briefly continues to use 46W, but quickly drops to about 20W, still well above the actual TDP limit. This results in a more than 20 percent better score.

As with Cinebench, the reviewed Yoga Slim 7 Pro with hexacore CPU performs about as well as the Yoga Slim 7 with its octacore when we set both devices to their fastest performance mode. The Yoga Slim 7 Pro doesn’t sacrifice much in performance when you use the standard mode. Also unlike the Yoga Slim 7, the Pro model doesn’t approach the actual TDP limit of 45W until you put it in performance mode, peak consumption in this mode rises to over 60W. Although in our opinion no less noisy, we find the noise produced by the Yoga Slim 7 Pro in full operation more pleasant than that of the Yoga Slim 7. The fans of the latter produce a high-frequency whistle.

Finally, we render an image in Blender. We do this repeatedly, noting the render time of each image. This makes it clear whether the laptop can sustain good performance in the long run; with a poorly cooled device, the line will continue to ramp up or yo-yo over time as the processor hits its thermal limit and needs to clock back. Note that we didn’t run this test on the 2020 Yoga Slim 7 with Ryzen 7 4800U like other benchmarks, so here’s the scores for the variant with Ryzen 5 4600U. We also run this test again on the standard performance profile for all laptops.

The Yoga Slim 7 Pro has virtually no problems with throttling in this test. The line of this laptop is very nice and consistent, with almost the same performance in the last test as at the beginning. Lenovo sells this laptop with processors that are even more powerful, which gives the processor in our base model some extra headroom .

The Yoga Slim 7 is faster than the Pro model at the start of the benchmark thanks to the two extra processor cores and slightly higher boost clock speed, but the performance then drops quickly until it stabilizes at about the same level as that of the IdeaPad 5 Pro. As mentioned, it has ‘only’ a Ryzen 5 CPU, but it can consume much more power in that device and the larger housing can also lose that heat well. Apparently this is no longer possible with the more compact size of the Yoga Slim 7.

Display

Lenovo equips the Yoga Slim 7 with two almost identical displays, IPS screens with a resolution of 2560×1600 pixels, a promised sRGB coverage of 100 percent and a brightness of 300cd/m². The only difference is that one of the two screens uses less power. Unfortunately, the configurations that are now for sale in the Netherlands do not have this ‘Low power’ panel on board. Although the screen of the Yoga Slim 7 is not touch-sensitive, there is still a glass plate in front of the panel, like on a laptop with a touch screen. As a result, you see reflections clearly in the screen, which is not useful in our opinion. The 2020 Yoga Slim 7 had another matte panel option.

You have more choices with the Yoga Slim 7 Pro. Our test model is equipped with the ‘2.2K’ IPS panel with an unusual resolution of 2240×1400 pixels, a promised maximum brightness of 300cd/m², 100 percent sRGB color coverage and a 60Hz refresh rate. The panel has a matte finish, unlike the more luxurious ‘2.8K’ option that has a glass plate in front. That display’s specs — 2880×1800 pixels, 400cd/m² brightness, 100 percent sRGB coverage, and 90Hz refresh rate — suggest it’s the same panel as the one in the recently reviewed IdeaPad 5 Pro. A Yoga Slim 7 Pro with an AMD processor that has a 2.8K OLED screen should also be released later this year, but Lenovo could not tell us exactly when.

In our opinion, the resolution of the screens in both tested laptops is a nice compromise between full HD and 4k. Letters and images look a bit sharper than on a full-HD screen with the same diagonal. In addition, there are not as many pixels to be controlled as with a 4k panel, which is generally favorable for the battery life. The 16:10 ratio of the screens is certainly fine for everyday office use. Because you have more vertical space, you see more of a text or web page.

If we look at our colorimeter and Calman software, it turns out that the screen of the new Yoga Slim 7 can indeed produce 300cd/m² of brightness quite precisely. That is less than the competition and also less than the old Yoga Slim 7. We would have liked a higher maximum brightness, especially in combination with the mirrored panel. The reviewed Yoga Slim 7 Pro does better than stated with 349cd/m², but still scores below average in this test field.

Also in terms of contrast, the Yoga duo does not achieve top scores, although the noted values for ips panels are not really bad either. Lenovo could do with a little more work on the adjustment. The average color deviation or ΔE is certainly not that bad with the Yoga 7 Pro, but the average gray deviation for both laptops is clearly higher than the visible limit of 3. If you want to use them for image editing, calibration yourself is therefore recommended. As promised, the screens can display almost all colors of the sRGB color space, which is usually not the case with cheaper laptops under 700 euros. The measured color coverage of the Yoga Slim 7 is slightly on the low side at 94.5 percent compared to the rest of the test field, but the difference is not very significant.

Battery life and upgrades

The smaller housing of this year’s Yoga Slim 7 has not only affected the connections, but also the battery. The capacity drops by no less than 20 percent to 51Wh. The Slim 7 Pro also has a smaller battery at 61Wh than last year’s Yoga Slim 7, albeit slightly.

Unsurprisingly, the Yoga Slim 7 and Yoga Slim 7 Pro have a much shorter battery life than the 2020 model, especially in the browsing test. Then both laptops reach a working time of eleven hours. Due to the powerful components and the higher screen resolution, that’s not really bad, especially in the case of the Yoga Slim 7 Pro, which is equipped with an ‘uneconomical’ H processor, but the Yoga Slim 7 from 2020 only stopped. more than fifteen hours.

In the PCMark battery test, which loads the system more heavily than the browsing test, the screen goes black after about five hours, a reasonable result. It turns out that performance suffers as a result. As you can see on the third tab, the battery performance score is lower than some laptops with an Intel Tiger Lake quad-core, which have little to do with the plug when it comes to computing power. In short, if you really care about long battery life, there are better options than the two Yoga laptops, for example the MacBook Air 2020 or the LG Gram 14Z90P. Both are also a bit more expensive.

Looking at the interior of the Yoga Slim 7 and Slim 7 Pro, you can see a cooling system with two fans. Some versions of the new Yoga Slim 7 have a dummy in place of the second fan, but fortunately, Lenovo does not opt for that with the AMD model. After purchase, you can still replace the network card and the same applies to the SSD, a standard M.2 2280 module. There is no longer room for a second SSD with both laptops, unlike with last year’s model. The working memory is soldered back to the motherboard and can therefore no longer be expanded. The 16GB of most versions will generally suffice, but unfortunately there are no configurations with 32GB of memory for the Pro model, if you need it.

Conclusion

The 2021 Yoga Slim 7 and Slim 7 Pro aren’t quite as stunners as last year’s Yoga Slim 7, a laptop that did almost everything right. In terms of battery life, the new duo takes quite a step back in our tests. The connection options are not left this time, especially in the case of the Yoga Slim 7, which no longer even has a USB-A port. You will also want to have a dock with the Slim 7 Pro due to the lack of separate image connections. We have mixed feelings, especially with the Yoga Slim 7’s screen. The higher resolution and 16:10 aspect ratio are nice, but the glossy finish isn’t that useful, especially considering the low maximum brightness.

Although the comparison with the Yoga Slim 7 from 2020 is not always positive, the new Yoga Slim 7 and Slim 7 Pro are also quite attractive if you think away the predecessor. Whichever of the two you choose, for less than 1000 euros you get a thin, light and luxuriously designed laptop, equipped with a very fast Ryzen 5000 processor with Zen 3 computing cores. The Yoga Slim 7 is one of the few laptops available with such a U-series chip, with a 15W TDP. For the Slim 7 Pro, Lenovo is focusing on another rare formula: a powerful 45W CPU without a separate video card in a very compact design. The system hardly suffers from throttling, so the performance is excellent even under prolonged load. They outperform almost any other laptop of this size, and we tested the slowest version too. That makes the Yoga Slim 7 Pro highly recommended.