One of the issues with every OEM being pushed rapidly into a new hardware platform is that it tends to result in a lot of products that aren’t well differentiated from each other. While the feature set for these PCs is far from complete (even the initial launch of the indexing feature Recall is currently unavailable), this class of PC anticipates the coming wave of AI technology, suggesting it is a good buy for those who are in the market for a new PC and don’t want to experience premature obsolescence. While there isn’t enough AI-based software yet to justify moving to this class now, that’ll likely change by the early part of next year when you’ll also get more choices, and there will likely be more differentiation between product lines and vendors.
Let’s talk about some of the highlights of the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x this week.
Appearance
I have several new AI PCs in for testing. It’s amazing how similar in appearance the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x and the new HP EliteBook 14 are. Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x is slightly darker, but both are the same deep blue color I favor, and you could be proud of either. However, the OLED display on the Lenovo really pops out when the two laptops are next to each other, making it likely it will sell better if put next to HP’s (or any vendor without OLED) offering.
The Lenovo is slightly more Mac-like in my opinion. Otherwise, these two machines could be twins if it weren’t for the different logos. So many of the other laptops in this class are just generic black or silver, so it’s nice to see another color that I like show up as a choice. It’s a shame it isn’t purple.
Differentiators
As with all of the Snapdragon X Elite AI-PC laptops, this one stands out in terms of battery life, though it takes a slight penalty from its OLED 3K display. It should still allow you to leave your power supply at home and provide a full day of work on the road. I’ve been able to get up to two days on a Snapdragon laptop just by not leaving it open and on when not in use. For me, this is a game changer. With a head-of-its-class nearly 500-nit display, this is one of the few AI laptops that could be used outside. While OLED takes a power penalty, the deep blacks and brilliant colors make it worth the sacrifice.
Of course, you buy these mostly for the 40 TOPS NPU which currently allows the Snapdragon solution to outperform the others in this space until the new AMD Ryzen AI (estimated 50 TOPS) and Intel’s Lunar Lake (estimated 45 TOPS) hit the market.
It has 3 USB4 slots, one of which is used by the power supply, but no headphone jack. Since most of us use wireless headphones now, I don’t miss the headphone jack, but some might. It is also one of the laptops that sport Wi-Fi 7 technology, though it doesn’t have WAN support (Lenovo’s similar ThinkPad product with Snapdragon X Elite does have WAN).
It uses the slowest of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chipsets, but given none of these products have discrete graphics that would allow high-end gaming or workstation loads to push the chipset, the performance penalty appears negligible.
As you would expect from Lenovo, the keyboard is well-made. The keys have plenty of space between them which makes the keyboard more ideal for someone like me with larger-than-average hands, something to consider if your hands are unusually large or small.
Wrapping Up
The base price of this notebook with 512 GB is $1,199 which is very good given the OLED display. Upgrading to 1TB and adding another 16G of memory takes you to $1,313, but I question whether most of us would need the extra memory or storage given this isn’t a good workstation or gaming configuration, both of which would appreciate the extra memory and storage.
The only thing I miss in this notebook is the expansion capability of Lenovo’s latest x86 notebook I’ve used, allowing the addition of a better camera, WAN support or better camera light. That would have truly allowed it to stand above the crowd. Still, this is my favorite of all the laptops I’ve evaluated so far. The keyboard fits my hands, it’s in a color I prefer and it has the OLED display and outdoor capability that most impressed me.
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