Microsoft’s new category of Copilot+ PCs launched with Qualcomm Snapdragon Elite platform and the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x was one of the first laptops to launch using the chipset, and also the full Copilot+ experience from Microsoft. 

Priced from $2,499 RRP, the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x (14”, Gen 9) offers a portable, stylish and premium form factor powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon Elite platform offering excellent performance and battery life and with a stunning 3K resolution OLED display.

The Yoga Slim 7x was one of the first generation of Copilot+ PCs announced back in May, blending AI features including generative AI art with Image Creator, as well as Copilot, with the integrated NPU in the Snapdragon Elite to offer up to 45 Trillion Operations Per Second (TOPS). 

I’ve been using the Yoga Slim 7x over the past couple of weeks and here’s how it went. 

Hardware 

Design

In terms of design, the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x ticks all the boxes. It’s thin and light, weighing just 1.28kg, and it’s just 12.9mm thick. The laptop has a durable aluminium design inside and out which also includes MIL-STD-810H certification – and a clean Cosmic Blue colourway which looks classy. 

The laptop includes a big 14.5” 3K resolution OLED touch display, which is deliciously bright and responsive, with a FullHD resolution IR webcam built into the small lip above. The webcam has a physical privacy shutter on the side making for great security, and it logs in fast with Windows Hello. 

The Yoga Slim 7x has a 180° hinge, which unfortunately doesn’t quite allow the laptop to lay flat. If you’re wanting that more versatile form-factor, Lenovo include the 360° hinge twith the non-Slim Yoga’ branded laptops. 

The lower deck includes a comfortably spaced backlit keyboard with dish shaped keys that are nice to rest you fingertips on and with 1.5mm of key travel it has nicely accurate key presses without too much ‘mush’.  The Keyboard does of course include a CoPilot button on the right of the spacebar, giving you fast access to the AI assistant.

There’s a generous 135mm glass touchpad below which is responsive and supports multi-touch gestures with plenty of room for scrolling.

The keyboard is bookended by speaker grilles which is a great design, letting the up-firing speakers give you full force of the Dolby Atmos tuned sound system.

For connectivity, Lenovo has included Wi-Fi 7 support and Bluetooth 5.3 on the wireless front, and for physical connectivity you only get USB Type-C ports. This does limit the accessories you can attach, or means you’ll need dongles or wireless accessories if you need to attach something older.

The upside is that the USB Type-C ports are all USB 4 with support for up to 40 Gbps data transfers, display port and more and the positioning of the ports with two on the left and a single on the right, gives you great flexibility for plugging in accessories and for when it comes to the power point location and charging. 

The base of the laptop includes vents for air intake, with fans visible behind. The rubber feet on the base raise the base enough to ensure good airflow.

Display & Audio

There’s a 14.5” 3K resolution PureSight OLED touch display and a four speaker setup for audio, with both Dolby Vision and Atmos support included in the Yoga Slim 7x. 

The OLED display has a 90Hz refresh rate that’s super smooth, and it also supports 100% sRGB and P3 Colour gamut for colour accuracy. The OLED panel is nice and bright, with those colours really popping, and nice deep blacks. 

The only downside to the display is the glossy finish on the display which can show reflections if you’re in a bright area – however the gloss does look fantastic.

On the audio side, the four speaker setup includes dual woofers and dual tweeters – and it makes for a very nice sound. Lenovo positions their speakers at the end of the keyboard so they’re up-firing, which makes for a good, full sound without having to worry about bouncing it off a tabletop. 

Performance

The specs include the new Snapdragon X Elite X1E-78-100 processor with 32GB DDR5 RAM and 1TB Gen 4 SSD M.2 storage. The Snapdragon Elite X includes an integrated Qualcomm Adreno GPU, so you’re not going to be playing high-end games, but you can give almost anything else a go. 

You can certainly give gaming a go, though the low 15-20fps frame rates are enough to be frustrating. 

For anything else, the Snapdragon Elite X chipset works wonders, powering through day-to-day web surfing and office work like a breeze. The laptop can also jump into Creative Cloud and work well with video editing and more. 

I was using the Yoga Slim 7x for a few days before I realised I hadn’t heard the fans kick in, but they were running – they’re just quiet. 

The laptop performed pretty well on 3DMark

Battery and Charging

There’s a 4-cell (70Wh) Lithium Ion battery with a 65W USB Type-C charger in the box. On their website, Lenovo claims up to 23.5 hours of battery life from the Yoga Slim 7x, with the power efficient Qualcomm Snapdragon Elite X bearing the load. 

In terms of battery life – that 23.5 hours is almost spot on. The laptop seems to never die, just soldiering on through a full day of work and followed by a night on the couch watching a movie. It then had the audacity to power on the next day and keep going….I don’t think my brain is ready for this new generation of excellent battery life,It’s breathtakingly good.

On the charging front, Lenovo says the laptop ‘Supports Rapid Charge Express (get 3 hours of runtime with a 15-minute charge)’. 

I love testing the charging times – but with such a long battery life it was difficult. Still, the laptop gets around 18% charge in 15 minutes from the 65W charger which was enough to last a fairly long time, though I’d have to lower screen brightness and avoid intensive apps to really hit the three hours. 

A full recharge takes a little over two hours, but you can get most of the way there in just over an hour. 

Software and AI

Windows ARM Edition

The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x comes with Windows 11 Home Edition for ARM. Microsoft has been running Windows on ARM since it was announced as a dev preview back in 2020 for Windows 10. 

There’s very few applications pre-installed on the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x. You DO get the usual McAfee software that will bug you to extend the 30-Day trial, for a price, and there’s the usual smattering of Microsoft app including an offer for a MSOffice 365 trial.

There’s also a smattering of utilities for your hardware, including Lenovo Vantage – Lenovo’s command centre software for controlling your laptop, as well as accessing support and diagnostics. You’ll also find Dolby Access , but overall, the 3rd party bloat software is pretty light. 

ARM

While Windows has been primarily an x86 based Operating System, ARM architecture is being embraced and now your apps will mostly work on ARM architecture. This is thanks to Microsoft’s emulator – Prism, which runs in the background making sure all of these things just work. 

As we found in our first look at the Copilot+ PC experience, it’s still not smooth sailing. Three apps we found had issues include the Xbox app, which still strangely has no Search bar in the app on ARM processors, while Premiere Pro and Fortnite are steadfastly not going to run on ARM…..for now, though Premiere has a small caveat. 

There’s going to be some issues for a while, but as developers see more ARM based hardware running Windows, there’s sure to be some movement in the future, but don’t rely on it if you need the software now. 

AI

The catch-all for the measure of AI performance seems to be Trillions of Operations Per Second (TOPS). The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x with the dedicated AI co-processor, the Qualcomm Hexagon NPU, can perform up to 45 TOPS for AI functions. 

In terms of AI functions, this doesn’t mean a lot, though will have an impact down the track when more local AI work is available. The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x, Copilot + experience still requires an active internet connection, and we’re still waiting for a lot of killer AI apps, to really test this out, but the Yoga Slim 7x is ready. 

One of the more interesting AI features still to launch is Microsoft’s Recall feature. Recall uses locally stored, indexed snapshots to scroll through your history, so you can literally ask CoPilot to find ‘That site I was looking at 3 days ago with dogs on it” and Recall will find it. That feature has been delayed until November and it’s one AI based feature I’m excited about. 

On the generative AI front, Microsoft includes CoCreator and Image Creator. My experience with these two apps have been relatively lacklustre, with the CoCreator images lacking details, while Image Creator still won’t let me accrue credit (Coins) to try it out. 

Overall, AI applications seems to be still ‘coming’ or at least we’re still needing more promptin g on how AI can improve our lives, beyond more than upscaling content and noise cancelling on microphones. I’m looking forward to Microsoft’s November update which should bring Recall, as well as some surprises. coming in a more usable format than noise cancelling on microphones. 

Should you buy it?

While the AI features of the new Copilot+ PCs are still growing, the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x as a PC is a wonderful mix of stylish design, bright and colourful OLED display and a battery life that’s essentially measured in days.

The nascent AI features are there, just waiting for a use-case to fully utilise it – but in the meantime, the Intel platform has enough power to run almost any application you need – though the Intel Iris Xe GPU still can’t deliver the gaming goods. 

For creators, students and business though, the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x represents style, power and extreme battery life and should definitely be on your list of devices to check out. 

You can see the Yoga Slim 7x at Lenovo.com.au, Bing Lee, Harvey Norman, JB HiFi, Officeworks and The Good Guys with a RRP of $2,499 AUD.