Snapdragon X Elite laptops may have been out for over a month now, but they're still very much worth your attention. In fact, it's used in today's best laptops, because it's just that good. The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x is one of the best among them.

It's got a 3K OLED display, an comfortable and accurate keyboard, and comes in a stunning blue color. It's everything I want a laptop to be.

My only complaint is an admittedly minor one. It's that Lenovo chose the Snapdragon X Elite X1E-78-100 to go under the hood, rather than the superior Snapdragon X Elite X1E-80-100. Still, it's better than the Snapdragon X Plus that you'll find at a lot of similar price points.

Lenovo sent us the Yoga Slim 7x for review. It had no input on the contents of this article.

Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x pricing and availability

Launched in the first wave of Copilot+ PCs, the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x is available now, starting at $1,199. That comes with the Snapdragon X Elite X1E-78-100, 16GB RAM, and a 512GB SSD; that's also the unit that Lenovo sent me for review.

There aren't a whole lot of configuration options, but you can boost the RAM to 32GB for $69, and you can boost the storage to 1TB for $45. Frankly, at those prices, you should totally get 32GB/1TB. It's the way to go.

Lenovo chose to only use the Snapdragon X Elite chipset in this product, whereas companies like Microsoft used the entry-tier (for now) Snapdragon X Plus to hit lower price points with the Surface Pro 11 and Surface Laptop 7.

Design

Cosmic Blue is out of this world

The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x is made out of metal and it comes in a deep blue color, similar to HP's EliteBook Ultra. The difference is that Lenovo did it better in seemingly every way. It's lighter while packing a larger screen, and it has three USB4 ports. It's kind of funny how they almost look like the same laptop at first glance, but Lenovo just made better choices.

A lot of times when it comes to laptops, the prettiest part is the logo on the lid, and Lenovo finally did the same. Historically, we've seen small Lenovo branding in the corner and maybe Yoga logo text in another corner, but now, there's a big shiny Lenovo stamp right in the middle. I like it.

It comes in at 2.82 pounds, making it among the lightest Snapdragon X Elite laptops. Most of them are closer to three pounds, ironic for the Windows on Arm platform, which was billed for years as the thing that would enable ultra-light laptops. The lightest, of course, is the Dell XPS 13 at 2.6 pounds, albeit that device has a 13.4-inch screen while the Yoga Slim 7x is 14.5 inches.

This laptop has just three ports, and they're all USB4. When I reviewed the HP EliteBook Ultra, I noted that one of its USB Type-C ports was USB 3.2, a cost-cutting measure that I didn't appreciate on a $1,700 laptop. Lenovo did the right thing here. Two of them are on the left and one is on the right, so you can charge comfortable from either side.

All three ports support 40Gbps data transfer speeds, the same as Thunderbolt 4, along with things like Power Delivery and DisplayPort. There's no USB Type-A, which I'm fine with. The industry has been moving to USB Type-C for about a decade now. I think we can let the legacy ports go.

One legacy port that's still valuable, however, is a 3.5mm audio jack. We've moved beyond these on phones, but on PCs, they matter for audio recording and editing. I'd never record a podcast using a wireless headset.

There's also a camera privacy toggle on the right, which is something I like to use. Lenovo doesn't have a physical indicator that the webcam is covered like HP does though, although to be fair, the Surface Laptop 7 and Surface Pro 11 don't have any kind of camera switch at all.

Display and keyboard

It's just the right size, and did I mention it's OLED

The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x has a 14.5-inch 2944x1840 90Hz OLED display. Indeed, all of those things check the right boxes for everything I'd want in a screen. 14.5 inches puts it on the larger side, while this laptop doesn't compromise on weight. If you want a laptop with an almost 15-inch screen that's not going to weigh down your bag, your choices are, well, your choices are Slim.

If you want an almost 15-inch laptop that doesn't weigh down your bag, your choices are Slim.

Traditionally, 13-inch laptops are for portability, while 15-inch laptops are for power, so they tend to be heavier and bulkier. That's not the case here. You get performance, albeit not gaming or video-editing performance, without the product weighing four or five pounds.

And it's OLED, an option that HP curiously omitted from its OmniBook X / EliteBook Ultra, and Microsoft doesn't offer on the Surface Laptop 7. As far as Snapdragon X Elite laptops go with OLED displays, you've also got the Surface Pro 11, Dell XPS 13, Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge, and Asus Vivobook S.

In my testing, it supports 100% sRGB, 92% NTSC, 94% Adobe RGB, and 100% P3. I'd expect those numbers from a good OLED display.

Brightness maxed out at 470.3 nits, which is pretty good. I didn't have any issues with outdoor use, and you can even see that with how visible the display is in photographs taken outdoors. The contrast ratio shoots up when brightness is turned up, being that black levels don't move with brightness on an OLED panel.

The webcam is solid, although it's only 2.1MP. You get the whole suite of Windows Studio Effects to use, something I still don't care for since things like blurring your background are already baked into any meeting software, and in many cases, these effects are better than the Windows ones.

2.1MP, or 1080p, or FHD, is fine for meetings, since you're not going to be broadcasting anything more than that anyway. It's just that if you want to turn on automatic reframing, which is when the camera follows you around, there isn't a lot of spare resolution to crop the field of view.

The keyboard is one of the best you'll find on a consumer laptop, which is pretty standard for a Lenovo PC. The company just makes great keyboards, and not only on ThinkPads. Moreover, it doesn't just reserve them for the best of the best products.

Lenovo makes the best keyboards on consumer laptops. That's it.

The key press feels firm yet comfortable, with just the right amount of force required to type. It's one of those things that's easy to overlook when flashy features like Copilot+ headline the product listing, but ultimately, a great laptop still boils down to the keyboard, the display, and performance, with battery life and portability sprinkled on top.

Copilot+ and app compatibility

You can skip Copilot+

When I reviewed the Surface Laptop 7 and Surface Pro 11, I talked a lot about Copilot+, Microsoft's new suite of on-device AI features that are exclusive to Snapdragon laptops, at least until around Q4 (you'll still need a new device to get it). Here we are, two months later, and I'm still telling you that Copilot+ is not something that you should buy a new PC for.

Recall was the hero feature, and that ended up being a PR nightmare. Microsoft went back to the drawing board, postponed it indefinitely, and promised it would come to Windows Insiders soon. The company hasn't mentioned it since, so honestly, I'm wondering if it's ever going to ship.

The rest of Copilot+ is fine. Cocreator is a neat way of using drawing combined with AI to generate images, although it really doesn't work well. Windows Studio Effects are good enough, but they're no more useful than the tools that are in meeting software. Live Captions is probably the most useful of the bunch.

The point is, you should buy the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x because it's a great laptop, but not because it has Copilot+.

Now, let's talk about app compatibility, a topic you'll hear a lot in discussions about Windows on Arm. Microsoft thinks you'll spend about 87% of your time in native apps, and for me, it's well above that. The apps I use, like Google Chrome, Adobe Photoshop, Slack, OneNote, and Microsoft To Do all run natively. Lightroom Classic is the only one that's emulated, and I wouldn't even know it if Adobe didn't warn me when I downloaded it.

Adobe promised to deliver Illustrator and Premiere Pro by the end of July, which is failed to do. It did, however, release x86 versions that run in emulation. Right, I'm not looking to edit video on emulated software either.

The biggest issues you might run into are gaming and with very old peripherals that use obscure drivers. This is not a gaming or video editing laptop.

Performance and battery life

It's delightful

Touching again on the above, the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x, like any Snapdragon laptop right now, is not for video editing or gaming. DaVinci Resolve is native, and it's pretty great, but you'll probably still want something more powerful for video editing, and in fact, you'll probably just want the freedom to use other software if you choose to.

Gaming is a different beast. Qualcomm talked up gaming a lot before this launch, and the games it showed did work well. The problem is that you have no idea if the game you actually want will work. My expectation is that if it works on an Intel PC with integrated graphics, it should work on Snapdragon X Elite. That's not the case for certain games.

All of that said, performance is fantastic in terms of productivity and photo editing. Like I said, even emulated apps like Adobe Lightroom Classic feel snappy, although the AI Denoise feature is awful. Frankly, you'll want dedicated graphics for that feature anyway.

There's almost something intangible about how good these Snapdragon X Elite laptops are. Everything feels a bit more responsive, when I lift the lid, the screen just comes on, battery life is mostly where I left it if it's been asleep for a little while, etc. It's what Microsoft used to call "delighters". You get this product expecting it to feel like yet another laptop, but there are these little things that just make the experience pleasant.

It really shines as a productivity machine. Pretty much all major browsers are native now, and that was by far the biggest drawback of Windows on Arm in the past. Just six months ago, a Windows on Arm review would have to say that it's only good if the only browser you're using it Microsoft Edge. For Chrome users like myself, WOA has grown up.

Qualcomm makes three tiers of Snapdragon X Elite chipsets, and Lenovo went with the bottom one, meaning that out of the eight Oryon cores, it doesn't have the two boost cores found on the two top-tier SKUs. Benchmark scores and real-world performance show a big difference, so it's definitely notable.

One real-world example of the performance delta between the X1E-78-100 and the X1E-80-100 is that when on battery life, the power slider matters more. Unfortunately, much like with Intel PCs, Snapdragon X Elite is still a case where you'll have to use the lowest power settings for great battery life, and the highest power settings for great performance. That's especially true for the Yoga Slim 7x, where I had to boost those settings for photo editing. That wasn't the case on the Surface Laptop 7.

11-hour battery life is insane.

I was able to get up to 11 hours and seven minutes of battery life on the Yoga Slim 7x, which is fantastic. As usual, that's from doing regular work and letting the battery drain, and the power slider set to the lowest settings. I didn't use Google Meet for that run, and meetings will suck down battery life like nobody's business. When I had to boost the power settings, I could get as little as seven hours, which is still really good; I just want the simplicity of great power and great battery life in one without having to touch power settings.

Should you buy the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x?

You should buy the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x if:

• Your work flow is mostly productivity
• You want a big screen without the extra bulk that usually comes with it
• You just want a great all-around laptop

You should NOT buy the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x if:

• Your work flow includes video editing
• You want to play games, even casually

You'll notice that I didn't include photo editing as a reason to buy the Yoga Slim 7x, and that's because while it can handle it well, I think products like the Surface Laptop 7 with the Snapdragon X Elite X1E-80-100 are better suited for it. The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x is just great all-around, with a big OLED display, an excellent keyboard, fast performance, and impressive battery life, all at a really solid price.