Lenovo’s Yoga laptops have been a mainstay of the ultra-portable range available. I took a look at the Yoga Slim 7i Carbon last year, and wanted to see how it was going in 2022.

On paper, the 2022 Yoga Slim 7i Carbon includes an updated 12th Gen Intel Core processor, along with a PureSight 13.3-inch 2.5k touchscreen featuring ultra-smooth 90Hz refresh rate in a slightly taller 16:10 aspect ratio. 

The laptop is still light, weighing in just under 1kg making it an excellent choice if you’re trying to avoid heavy laptops, while still retaining powerful internals. It’s thin as well at just 14.8mm at its thinnest point. Lenovo has used lightweight components to achieve this, with a carbon fibre top in Moon White for the review unit, with a magnesium-aluminium keyboard deck below. 

Priced from  $1,899, the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Carbon (2022) offers a well priced option in theory, as well as in practice. I spent few weeks with the laptop and here’s how it went. 

Hardware and Design

Lenovo has made a few changes from last years model, but the laptop still retains the smooth performance you expect while offering a thin, light device that can fit easily into your bag for travel. 

The laptop comes in two-tone colour options, with the Moon White top deck given to us for review surprisingly not attracting fingerprints. It can also be wiped easily so it retains that crisp, clean look. There are other colour options available though if white is a little too daring for you, with Lenovo also offering Onyx Grey and Ultimate Grey, with all three using a ‘Cloud Grey’ keyboard deck. 

The multi-layered carbon fibre used in the chassis allows it to be a little rugged, and the magnesium alloy deck gives it a nice premium metallic feel. There’s no MIL-spec rating or IP rating though, so it’s not tough, but it certainly doesn’t feel ‘plasticky’ in the hand.

There’s very few ports on the laptop, with Lenovo opting for dual USB-C ports, with a USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 on the right and a Thunderbolt 4 port on the left. Both USB-C ports are Power Delivery 3.0 capable and offer Display Port 1.4 video out – but you’ll get up to 40Gbps data transfer from the Thunderbolt 4 port. 

There’s no other ports though, meaning no full-sized USB-A port, so you’ll need an adapter to plug in legacy hardware. There’s also no headphone jack, so if you need to listen to audio you’ll need bluetooth headphones or use the dual 2W Dolby Atmos speakers located underneath the laptop which are tuned by Harman. These speakers are surprisingly good quality for their size, though could do with a bit more punchiness on the bass.

There is a mic built-in to the laptop for use with the 720p HD webcam built-in to the top of the display. Lenovo has designed the top of the display with a slight lip protruding out from the unit to make the laptop easier to open, but also allows more room for things like InfraRed to allow for Windows Hello touchless login and an e-Privacy shutter which can be activated by a switch on the right hand side of the keyboard deck. 

The display itself is very nice, with very little bezel except for the bottom and the 2560×1600 resolution at a 90Hz refresh rate offers good quality viewing for using the machine for reading text, and offers smooth scrolling. The screen can go up to 400 nits brightness and has an anti-glare coating making it easy to see in both full sunlight, or indoors. 

Lenovo sent the touch enabled model, though there’s a non-touch version if you want.

At 400 nits, the screen can run down the battery fairly quickly, but I only found it needed to be that bright when used outside or in brightly lit areas. For the most part I found it more comfortable around 50-60% brightness, which also means you get that additional battery life. 

The keyboard is backlit, making it easy to use in low-light and the keyboard itself is slightly wider than last year’s model, which makes it more comfortable to type on, with the keys not allowing too much travel. The trackpad too is quite well placed and very responsive, also allowing for multi-touch gestures. 

Lenovo’s Yoga range made their name with a 360-degree hinge, but these days a number of models simply offer a lay-flat 180-degree hinge which I’m not a huge fan of – and never really found a use-case for. It certainly works, though doesn’t quite lay flat on the table when fully laid out. 

Performance

The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Carbon uses a 12th Gen Intel Core processor, with Lenovo offering both a Core i5 and Core i7 option – with 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM and a 1TB SSD M.2 2280 PCIe 4.0×4 NVMe. These core specs offer a fast laptop for the uninitiated, though its gaming chops are somewhat hampered by the Intel Iris Xe Graphics.

For the most part, the performance is excellent for what most people want with web surfing, watching videos and doing day-to-day work in Office (Google Docs etc.) working extremely well. Using tabs in browsers (multiple 

For gamers though, the Intel Iris Xe graphics aren’t quite up to the task, with some choppy performance when using high or ultra settings in games like Tomb Raider, No Mans Sky and Forza Horizon 5. You can do quite well on lower end games like Planet Crafter, but if you’re after a gaming powerhouse you’d do well to look into something else.

I ran some benchmarks using 3D Mark and here’s how it went.

Battery Life and Charging

The Yoga Slim 7i Carbon includes a 50,200mWh battery which offers all-day battery life. There’s a 65W charger included in the box which supports RapidCharge Express, which Lenovo says ‘gets you out the door faster, and unplugged longer’.

In practice, you get all-day battery life out of the Yoga Slim 7i, though there are some caveats. As noted above, blasting the display at full brightness will decrease your battery life. At 100% you’ll still get over 4.5 hours of use, while if you’re a little more circumspect at 50% usage you’ll see a far better result at around 11 hours use. 

You can use the battery profiles built-in to Windows to also smooth out your battery usage as well, but I found the screen brightness to really be the biggest factor.

The RapidCharge Express charging is decent, though a full charge will take just over an hour and a half. If you just need some charge though the 65W charger will give you a fairly decent amount of charge in just half an hour though. 

Software

While last year Lenovo was promising an update to Windows 11, the Yoga Slim 7i Carbon (2022) now comes with Windows 11 pre-installed, taking the hassle out of updating when you set the laptop up. You will of course receive Microsoft updates and security patches throughout the life of the laptop to keep it up to date. 

There’s a fair few additional applications pre-installed, ranging from the usual Microsoft Office trial, McAfee LiveSafe software and of course a range of utilities to configure some of the hardware on-board including Dolby Access software to tune the Dolby Atmos speakers and  Dolby Vision capable display. 

Overall, it’s the usual mix of tools and pre-installed applications you find on most new laptops these days. You can uninstall them, or leave them as you see fit – but you have over 950Gb of usable storage on the 1TB SSD, so it’s up to you.

Should You Buy It?

The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Carbon offers a great option for those wanting an ultra-portable laptop with a clean look and comfortable performance for work, and limited play.

If you want multiple connection options, or a machine that will keep up with content creation or gaming it’s not going to suit your needs. If however you’re after a great looking machine which can handle the day-to-day stuff, while looking great it’s got what you want.

There are limitations on the amount of performance on offer, but in the price range it’s being offered at, it’s a great option to check out. You can find the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Carbon over on the lenovo.com website.