After 100 days, I decided to keep the Lenovo Slim 7 Pro X (14ARH7), aka Lenovo (Yoga) Slim 7 Pro X in other regions of the world. I bought it during holiday time (November 2022) and Lenovo allowed returns all the way thru January 2023, so the opportunity to return it was there. However, I am happy with it but I will share both the pros and cons in this article. I use it to write code, edit videos, and other unmentionable activities…
Terrible Touch Screen Reflections
My honest opinion is that if you have no interest in a touch screen, don’t get this laptop or any other touch screen laptop…unless you like to check yourself out while you work. When the screen is dark and the room is bright, the reflections on the Lenovo (Yoga) Slim 7 Pro X can get pretty bad. The picture below shows the worst-case condition. You could mitigate the reflection issue by adjusting the screen brightness and the ambient lighting, or just turn a little bit and change the angle of where you’re facing. But, you’re probably going to have to give up dark themes.
When the screen is towards the lighter colors, there are no reflections or at least minimal. I do want a touch screen so I’m willing to put up with the reflection issue. The reason is that as a computer guy, I have a variety of input devices to hold off carpal tunnel. I have a trackball, a split keyboard, and what is called a vertical Mouse. I use touch to waste time on the internet. I am still bummed out that I can’t use the darkest dark themes anymore, but I can get by with the grayish dark theme.
Perfect Screen Size
The 3K display on the Lenovo (Yoga) Slim 7 Pro X looks excellent, at least to my untrained eyeballs. I like the 14.5″ screen. This is one of 2 laptops that I know of with a 14.5″ screen, the other one is the Asus Vivobook S 14X (who the H is naming these things?). The extra half an inch makes a lot of difference <insert dirty joke here>. Another thing that is great is the 16:10 ratio for the extra vertical space. The screen goes to 180 degrees. The touchscreen is at perfect eye level when I unfold the laptop to 180 degrees, sit on the couch and rest it on my stomach. My two old laptops can both fold into 360 degrees tablet mode, but I literally never used them like that.
Good Enough Battery Life
Lenovo claims almost 15 hours of battery life at the lowest brightness which is great for my caving trips.
However, during normal use, I get about 7 to 8 hours of battery life. That is with my screen brightness anywhere between 50% to 90%. Windows “Power Mode” set to “Best Power Efficiency”. This mode decreases the frequency of the processor and allows fewer background processes to run. The screen Refresh Rate is set to 60hz rather than 120hz. Under the Lenovo Vantage app, “Smart Power” is set to “Battery Saver”. This setting controls the laptop fan speed and also seems to lower the CPU frequency. Obviously, with these power conservation settings, the laptop responsiveness is a little bit slower, but still OK.
Excellent Performance
The AMD 6800HS processor that comes with my version of the Lenovo (Yoga) Slim 7 Pro X is one of the fastest laptop processors in the market around the end of 2022/early 2023. We know it’s powerful. The question is, can it sustain performance without being thermal-throttled? In other words, can the laptop keep itself cool enough such that the processor operates at full speed?
I tested with a video rendering job in Davinci Resolve.
- The temperature of the CPU was 56 degrees before starting the job.
- After rendering for 1 minute, the CPU was at 86 degrees and going at full speed (CPU 100% at around 4.0GHz to 4.2GHz).
- After 10 minutes, the CPU temperature was 89 degrees and still running at full speed.
- At the 20-minute mark, things look pretty much the same.
- At 30 minutes, the CPU temperature is still around 90 degrees and running at full frequency. At this point, it looked like everything was stabilized and the laptop was able to keep itself cool so I stopped the job.
- In less than a minute or two, the laptop temperature went back down to the 50s.
Looks like the cooling is able to keep up with the processor load. Note that at the same time, there were 30-40% GPU activities as well. For better airflow, I did have this laptop sitting on top of a homemade riser, otherwise known as a piece of wood.
Excellent Level of Fan Noise and Thermals
Under non-intensive use, the Lenovo (Yoga) Slim 7 Pro X is dead silent. When the fan was going at full blast during the video rendering test, it was actually not loud at all. I measured it to be about 50 decibels which according to the chart below is like a humming of a refrigerator and who doesn’t love the refrigerator, right? Also, the top and bottom of the laptop felt lukewarm at most during the 30-minute video rendering, which felt so much better than my old thigh-scorching Intel laptops.
Keyboard Layout
One thing that I don’t like about laptop keyboards is having to choose between holding the Function key to use the F1-F12 or holding the Function key to use the multimedia shortcuts. The Lenovo (Yoga) Slim 7 Pro X keyboard comes with a Function Lock, that works just like the Cap Locks and lets me toggle between the two sets of keys. What I don’t like are the baby-sized UP/DOWN arrows. Also, ESC and DELETE need to be full-size as well. Also, I have to hold down the Function (Fn) to use the HOME, END, PG UP/DN keys which is a pain. There are no toggles for these 4 keys.
Perfect Portability
Dimensions: 328.2 x 221.4 x 15.9 mm (12.92 x 8.72 x 0.63 inches). Weight: 1.45 kg (3.20 lbs)
I like the size of the Lenovo (Yoga) Slim 7 Pro X, it’s not much bigger than a piece of printer paper. This 14-inch laptop is actually smaller than the 13-inch OG Lenovo Yoga (from 2012). It is only slightly wider than my 5-year-old 13-inch HP Spectra X360. Thickness-wise, all 3 are about the same. I like that this laptop has a small notch at the bottom to improve airflow, so take that into account when looking at the measurements. The charger is about the size of a bar of soap and weighs about 3/4 of an lb (12.6oz) or 1/3 of a kg (36kg). It is USB-C so you can leech off of somebody else’s charger.
Good WiFi Speeds
My Lenovo (Yoga) Slim 7 Pro X came with the Realtek RTL8852BE 802.11ax WiFi 6 PCIe Adapter. This is what I did to test the speed.
I have 200Mb/s and I’m using the Asus RT-AX86S router sitting on the first floor. For the first test, I went to the part of the house farthest away from the router, which is 1 floor up and thru 2 doors/walls, about 36ft from the router. A speed test from fast.com showed 240Mbps. For the second test, I went outside my house and crossed the street, so one front door/wall/window and 80ft away. I got some weird looks from the neighbors but also got 240Mbps.
Give Me Back My Memory
Like most other laptops today, the Lenovo (Yoga) Slim 7 Pro X’s memory is not upgradeable. I have the 16GB version, would have loved to get the 32GB, but the price wasn’t right. 16GB is enough for me for now, but you should probably get the 32GB if you can.
Modern processors come with integrated graphics. Out of the box, Lenovo reserved 2GB of memory for the integrated AMD graphics, so my 16GB went down to 14GB of usable memory. Since I have a dedicated GPU, I went into the BIOS and reduce the iGPU memory to 512MB. That is the minimum I can select, I’m not sure if that is the same limitation for other manufacturers. The bottom line is that some of your memory will be tied up by the iGPU forever, so say NO to 8GB laptops, if you are considering those.
Bad Laptop, Good Support Experience
I did have a problem with the Lenovo (Yoga) Slim 7 Pro X. The “V” key doesn’t register unless I hit it dead center. If I press the edges, it doesn’t register. I was doing copy and paste and sometimes it doesn’t paste, so I was wondering what was going on. After a while, I realized that if I just hit the edge of the key it doesn’t register.
I called support and they answered literally instantly, I’m not sure if I was just lucky in timing. Since the laptop was within the 30-day return window. They offered me the option of troubleshooting vs get a new one. Troubleshooting means he’s going to have to run through his script, then ultimately replace the keyboard somehow since this is a mechanical issue. Of course, I asked for a new one. He forwarded me to a “post-sales” customer service who also answered instantly and didn’t hesitate to send me a new laptop. I received it within 5 days. I couldn’t have asked for a better experience…well maybe if the laptop wasn’t broken in the first place of course. If I was outside the return window, I’m pretty sure it would have been much more of a hassle. So that’s a sliver of what Lenovo support looks like.
How Much I Paid
Let me show you how much I paid for the Lenovo (Yoga) Slim 7 Pro X, just to give you a point of reference. I purchased the laptop in early November 2022 and Lenovo was having its Thanksgiving/Christmas holiday sale. I have a CapitalOne QuickSilver credit card (not advertising for them, but I have that card) and they also had a holiday promotion of 10% cashback on Lenovo purchases. Surprisingly, they also gave me the regular 1.5% any-purchase cashback. Here’s the breakdown:
- Lenovo Holiday Sale Price: $1,090
- CapitalOne QuickSilver 10% Cashback: -$109
- CapitalOne QuickSilver 1.5% Cashback: -$18
- Final (before tax): $963
Lenovo seems to offer cash back on many cashback sites and credit cards, so definitely check around and look at your credit card benefits. Hey, if I just save you a bunch of money, give me a Like on my Lenovo (Yoga) Slim 7 Pro X Review video (and maybe Subscribe) 😀
Wrap Up
I thought the price was pretty good for the specs. Overall, I’m quite happy with this laptop. The performance is good, the screen looks great, and the battery life is decent. The biggest drawback is the reflections on the screen. I hope this article helped you decide whether the Lenovo (Yoga) Slim 7 Pro X is right for you or not.
References for Lenovo Slim 7 Pro X (14ARH7):
Full Specifications: https://psref.lenovo.com/Detail/Lenovo/Lenovo_Slim_7_ProX_14ARH7?M=82V20002US
Model Variants: https://psref.lenovo.com/Product/Lenovo/Lenovo_Slim_7_ProX_14ARH7?MT=82v2