I no longer expect laptops to be breathtaking. Instead, I want to see laptops that deliver on those features that I use the most in my daily life. It could be as basic as a high-quality webcam or longer battery life. Sadly over the past few months, Intel-based laptops have left me disappointed and confused. But after spending a week with the Lenovo Yoga 7i 14 Gen 7, I am pleasantly surprised. I will tell you the good and bad aspects of the Yoga 7i and why it is refreshing to see what Lenovo has done to a premium Windows-based notebook segment that was in dire need of a revamp.
Lenovo Yoga 7i 14 Gen 7 (12th gen, i7) price in India: Rs 111,490
The size
I absolutely love the Yoga 7’s aesthetic, and it’s easily the most satisfying laptop I’ve seen this year. The notebook is made of anodised aluminum which not only feels sturdy but also premium. This isn’t a massive laptop and if you are considering the 14-inch Yoga 7i for travel and work, you don’t need to worry about its size. For me, this is perfect. I love the design, especially the rounded corners on the side of the laptop. The Yoga 7i is being sold in Storm Grey, which has a vibe of a professional-looking laptop. Despite its slim profile, the laptop feels incredibly solid, with no flex in the deck and a lid.
The notebook also stands out for being a 2-in-1 machine, opening new ways to use a notebook. The hinge allows the screen to flip back completely, turning the Yoga 7i into a tablet-like device. But I must say the notebook is a bit heavy to use as a tablet for longer periods.
This is a laptop with plenty of ports. On the left side, you will find an HDMI video output, two USB-C Thunderbolt 4 ports, and a microSD card slot. A USB 3.2 Type-A port is on the right, along with an audio jack for headphones and the power button.
The Yoga 7i design allows it to go from laptop to tablet mode by rotating the display all the way. (Image credit: Anuj Bhatia/Indian Express)
The display
Opening the lid reveals a 14-inch IPS panel. While the panel isn’t an OLED, it’s still bright and colorful and has an excellent contrast ratio. While I was watching Netflix’s Heartstopper, I could see small details on Nick Nelson’s face. Every scene brings realism in HDR. The quad speakers are loud and clear, good enough for watching a movie. The display supports touch and is also stylus-compatible which needs to be purchased separately. The refresh rate tops out at 60Hz.
For a laptop that costs over a lakh, you expect a little extra. The display is fine for streaming, but web browsing feels so much better on a 120Hz panel. But the lack of a high-refresh-rate screen can’t just be the reason not to get the Yoga 7i. The fact that the screen has a 16:10 aspect ratio gives a little extra room at the top and bottom for taskbars and panels, compared to a 16:9 panel. The resolution defaults to 2880 x 1880 pixels but can be scaled down via a built-in Windows excellent scaling support.
The Yoga 7i ships with a 1080p webcam. (Image credit: Anuj Bhatia/Indian Express)
The webcam
The big change for me while using the Yoga 7i was the difference I found when I did multiple video interviews using the notebook’s Windows Hello-compatible 1080p webcam. Video calls looked so much better on the Yoga 7i, a long overdue upgrade in my opinion. Even though we are already past the pandemic, I feel video calls will still be part of my work life going forward.
The notebook is made of anodised aluminum which not only feels sturdy but also premium. (Image credit: Anuj Bhatia/Indian Express)
The keyboard
I have always been a big fan of keyboards on both Yoga and ThinkPad notebooks, and this is no different. The keyboard layout is perfect. The keys are large, and the sculpted layout is familiar to me since I have been using Lenovo laptops for a very long time. The backlit keyboard is snappy with a solid click, good enough for a writer like me. This is a fantastic keyboard, a big selling point to buying the Yoga 7i. However, I didn’t like the touchpad as much as I wanted to. It’s quite large and roomy, but somehow lacks smoothness. It handles scrolling not as smoothly as one finds on the MacBook Air M1.
The backlit keyboard is snappy with a solid click, good enough for a writer like me. (Image credit: Anuj Bhatia/Indian Express)
The performance
My review unit came with the Intel Corei7-1260P, a CPU aimed at thin and light notebooks. The default specs, which include 16GB of memory, a 1TB SSD, Iris Xe graphics, and a 12-thread CPU, should be enough for running basic computing tasks. The Yoga 7i is incredibly fast for what it can do. The notebook handled my day-to-day heavy workloads of Chrome tabs, streaming, writing and editing stories, uploading stories on WordPress and even basic photo editing on Canva. The fact that the performance is identical to my M1 MacBook Air is a great sign. That level of performance is acceptable and works for me since I am an average user. The Yoga 7i is not designed for visual media professionals or gamers. In real-world usage, the laptop feels fast and responsive and that’s what matters to me at the end of the day.
The battery life
The 14-inch Yoga 7i is impressive when it comes to battery life – I rarely plug it in when writing a long-form feature story. Its 71-watt battery lasted 7 and a half hours in my web browsing test and hit over 11 hours in my video test. So yes, the battery life on this machine is a step up from what I was getting previously on notebooks running on Intel’s 11th gen processors.
The screen has a 16:10 aspect ratio, which makes it ideal for reading news on Indianexpress.com. (Image credit: Anuj Bhatia/Indian Express)
Should you buy the Lenovo Yoga 7i 14 Gen 7?
Spending over a lakh on a notebook is a huge investment and one should be clear about what exactly they want from a computer. The Yoga 7i is an easy recommendation because it stands out on various parameters, including performance which matters to me on a regular basis. And for a person like me who travels for work a lot, the Yoga 7i is a much smaller notebook, perfect to take along on trips. If you have great taste in design and want a premium Windows notebook, the Yoga 7i will fit the bill perfectly.
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