The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition isn't the most exciting laptop in the world, but it does carry its weight pretty well and offers a decent bang for your buck. For $1,299, often discounted to $999, you get a Core Ultra 7 256V, 16GB RAM, and a 1TB SSD.

The keyboard is solid, like you'd expect from a high-end Lenovo consumer laptop. The only real downsides are a middling display, a bland design, and a mechanical touchpad.

And then there's the whole 'Aura Edition' aspect of it. You can tap your phone against the screen to share photos, it can help you adjust your posture when you're slouching, and more. I wouldn't buy a laptop just for that, but it's a nice differentiator from the competition.

Ultimately, the Yoga Slim 7i is what I wrote in the title. It's a good laptop. It's not the best, but it's solid, just like you'd expect from a Yoga 7 series device.

Lenovo sent us the Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition for review. It has no input on the contents of this article.

Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition pricing and availability

The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition is available now, and while the normal starting price is $1,299.99, it's currently discounted to $999.99 on Lenovo.com. That model comes with an Intel Core Ultra 7 256V and a 1TB SSD, which puts you in pretty good shape. With Lunar Lake, memory is on the chip, so this one has 16GB RAM. There's an option for the Core Ultra 7 258V with 32GB for $100 more.

Other than that, there don't seem to be any configuration options.

Design

It's a boring design, but it does have a lot of ports

Like I said earlier, the design is pretty dull. It's a metal laptop that comes in a color called Luna Grey. It's that standard gunmetal gray that frankly won't turn any heads. And yes, I say this every time Lenovo ships a laptop in one of these colors.

It weighs in at 3.2 pounds, which is pretty impressive for a laptop with a 15.3-inch display. Indeed, this is among the largest laptops to ship with Intel's Lunar Lake processors, so if you want the goodness that comes with the chip along with a big screen, this is it. So at 3.2 pounds, I'm impressed. For comparison, the 15-inch Surface Laptop is considered light at 3.67 pounds.

It also has a solid port selection. You'll find two Thunderbolt ports, one on each side, as it should be. There's also HDMI on the left and USB Type-A on the right, so you'll likely not end up finding yourself living the dongle life.

Also on the right side are the power button and a toggle to disable the webcam. The power button is awkwardly placed, which is frustrating exactly once a day.

The camera switch is odd. It disconnects the camera internally, but there's no physical indicator to show that the camera is blocked, something that HP had to adapt after a generation or two of doing it this way. For a feature that's based on distrust, I'd expect that to be there.

Overall, the design is fine. It's a regular gray aluminum laptop, that's exceptionally light for its class.

Display and keyboard

OLED would have been nice

I appreciate that Lenovo used a 15.3-inch display on the Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition, and it's 2.8K 120Hz, which is nice. But what if I told you that Lenovo had another Yoga Slim 7 series laptop that had a 14.5-inch 90Hz OLED display, the same 16GB RAM and 1TB storage, better battery life, and it still came in at almost $300 less than the standard price of the 7i Aura Edition?

I'm talking, of course, about the Snapdragon X Elite-powered Yoga Slim 7x. Aside from the unique Aura Edition features, it's a better product in many ways.

Like the design of the laptop, the screen is just fine. The refresh rate gives you smooth animations, but the colors aren't what you'd get from OLED.

The screen supports 99% sRGB, 69% NTSC, 75% Adobe RGB, and 75% P3, which isn't fantastic. Brightness is an impressive 524.3 nits, but again, I just wish it was OLED. LCDs at this upper tier tend to have higher resolutions and refresh rates like this, while compromising on color gamut.

The keyboard is solid, and it's a bit deeper than previous consumer Lenovo laptops I've reviewed, and that's actually a trend I've been seeing across the industry on several products. But overall, it's comfortable to type on.

The touchpad is mechanical, unfortunately. We're really at that stage of laptop reviews where while mechanical keyboards are fine, I really just want to see haptic ones in everything. They're all so good now. I also wish that the touchpad was a bit bigger, given the side of the device.

But overall, it's good for a mechanical touchpad.

The keyboard is flanked by 2W speakers, and there are another two underneath the chassis. The audio is clear and loud, whether you're listening to music or on a call.

Aura Edition

AI PCs are good

I've talked a lot about HP's AI Companion in my recent reviews of the OmniBook Ultra and OmniBook Ultra Flip, and now it's Lenovo's turn with Aura Edition. And I'm here for it. With the NPUs in new processors from AMD, Intel, and Qualcomm, we can do things that we couldn't before, and I love to see OEMs building on top of Copilot+. Seriously, software differentiation is something that's common in phones, but not so much on PCs.

One big difference with Lenovo, however, is that Aura Edition is developed in collaboration with Intel, meaning you won't find it on the company's AMD- or Qualcomm-powered laptops. That also means it doesn't rely solely on the NPU, since Intel is more focused on total package AI power.

The Aura range of features is pretty broad. Let's run through it. Note that some of these are AI features, some require other hardware, and some could run on potato hardware.

Smart Share

Of all of the Aura features, this is the one I ran to try. I've used it in demo areas, and it's pretty neat. Put simply, you can tap your phone to the side of the screen to share photos and such, using Intel Unison.

I couldn't get it to work, unfortunately, and the whole thing seems a little clunky. It works with both iPhones and Android phones, but iPhones tend to disconnect when you're not using the connection.

But the other side of it is that you can just open the Intel Unison app to do the same thing. Being able to tap your phone against the side is more of a novelty.

Attention Mode

Aside from Smart Share, the rest of the features can be found in the Lenovo Vantage application, and they're a bit buried. It's unfortunate, since I'm pretty sure people are trained to avoid pre-installed apps, which usually feel like bloatware.

Attention Mode is great. It lets you set intervals when you want to focus and blocks websites that you set, no matter which browser you're using. By default, apps like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are there, but you can change it if you want.

Wellness Mode

Wellness Mode is another one I couldn't get to work, and I don't even know why. I was able to turn it on, but it just says "Error message", with no way to tell what the error is.

The concept is cool though. It gives you an alert if you're slouching in front of your computer, with controls for things like if you want it turned on when not connected to power.

Shield Mode

Shield Mode will alert you if someone is looking at your screen over your shoulder. On top of that, you can set it to blur your screen when that happens.

Collaboration Mode

Probably the most common use of AI features is camera effects. Everyone is doing it. Collaboration mode tunes your camera, sets your desired effects, and so on.

Smart Care

Smart Care is one of those things that makes no sense to be tied to a specific product. It's just a support program, with 24-hour assistance, and there's an upsell to a premium plan that offers things like a replacement plan.

Performance

Lunar Lake is excellent

I've reviewed a few Lunar Lake systems by now, so nothing really comes as a surprise by now. Ultimately, any modern premium laptop chip is going to get a productivity job done, and Lunar Lake is specifically really good at creativity as well.

With more choices than ever in laptop chips, here's what you need to know. AMD Ryzen AI 300 has the best CPU, Lunar Lake has the best graphics, and Snapdragon X Elite has the best battery life.

I do want to call out the graphics on Intel's Core Ultra Series 2 though, because it's a game-changer. The Windows market is all about having tons of different products aimed at different use cases. One thing that every OEM ignores is that the MacBook Air is aimed at almost everyone, aside from those that would buy a MacBook Pro. You don't see Apple saying, "No, sorry, you wouldn't use this for editing videos. It's for office workers that are on-the-go."

And no one is asking for dedicated graphics on a Mac. I've been thinking about this since 2022 when Microsoft demoed the Surface Laptop Studio 2, proudly showing it beating a MacBook Pro in a video rendering test. I sat there thinking, right, no one is saying Macs are the most powerful products on the planet, but this thing is going to get just a few hours of battery life doing that.

Lunar Lake solves that problem. You can finally get the graphics power, with the battery life you want, like you can with Apple Silicon.

To round it up, performance is great no matter your work load. That's what you need to know.

Note that CrossMark and Time Spy are x86-only, so they run in emulation on the Surface Laptop 7. Also, PCMark 10 just doesn't run on Snapdragon.

As I said earlier, the highest CPU scores come from AMD, while the best 3DMark scores come from Intel. I'm excited to get my hands on a Core Ultra 9 288V unit at some point, since everything has either been 256V or 258V to this point.

Average battery life is seven hours and one minute, and while that's great for Windows historically, it's disappointing for a Lunar Lake laptop. For products like the Dell XPS 13, I was regularly getting over 10 hours. However, note that I used it on the 'best performance' setting.

Indeed, I do recommend using Lunar Lake laptops on that power setting. You'll notice a drop in performance is you set it to something else, and it's too much. But with previous laptops I've reviewed, I've found almost no compromise in battery life by using it at full power.

Should you buy the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition?

You should buy the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition if:

• You want a premium laptop at a decent price
• You value a light weight, but also care about graphics performance
• You care about on-device AI

You should NOT buy the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition if:

• You want something flashy
• You need the best webcam
• You want a pretty display

The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition is a good laptop, but that's about it. If you buy it, you won't regret it. That being said, there are other products around this price point that I'd probably recommend, including the Yoga Slim 7x.

Of course, when comparing the 7i and the 7x, you do get better graphics performance and compatibility with the 7i, so there are still pros here. It's a good laptop; there's just nothing that's going to make me scream from the rooftops about it.