Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition reviewed: fast and capable

Even if you don’t use the few AI features in the Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition, the laptop sets you up for the AI PC era with plenty of specs.

It’s a new era for computer owners, but whether it’s exciting or not remains to be seen. Ever since Microsoft reworked its Windows keyboard and brought in a special key to activate Copilot, we’ve rolled our eyes a bit and waited for the features to present themselves.

With every feature drop and update to Windows, a little more creeps out: an AI-enhanced version of Paint, an improved version of Notepad, and a version of Windows that will eventually act on your behalf for settings changes.

This is the beginning of the AI PC era, but it’s only the beginning, and as AI software grows alongside its uses, having a capable machine is a must have.

Armed with one of Intel’s latest, Lenovo’s Yoga Slim 7i could be that machine, delivering the specs to keep going for a few years. Is it a laptop worth owning?

Design

Grab the laptop and feast your eyes on the otherwise ordinary grey exterior, and you might be inclined to brush off the look as being plastic. It’s not. It’s actually an aluminium chassis that doesn’t feel too bad, offering a curved edge in an otherwise flat body.

In fairness, it has been some time since we reviewed a Yoga, but the style is still very much the same: two curved edge slabs slapped together with a hinge in between. It’s not like other laptops, and that’s a good thing.

Weighing around 1.5kg, it also comes with a military spec rating, also known as MIL-STD-810H. For those not in the know, that combination of letters and numbers is one companies get when a device has been slightly ruggedised, and can survive the elements and some moving about in your bad or even dropping on the floor.

We’re not going to suggest going out of your way and dropping the Yoga Slim 7i — don’t do that intentionally — but it should survive more than most laptops, and that’s a good thing.

Features

Inside, Lenovo’s 2025 edition of the Yoga Slim 7i (which is also the 9th generation of this laptop) sports the latest chips for the year, meaning you get high-end Intel Core hardware, and a good assortment of equally matched memory and storage options, too. A solid 32GB RAM and 1TB SSD arrives on the laptop out of the box, essentially guaranteeing space for plenty of files for a while to come.

Windows 11 Home arrives on the laptop out of the box, and while there’s no fingerprint reader, there is Windows Hello used for facial security via the Full HD front-facing camera and infrared sensor at the top above the screen, with a webcam disable switch on the side of the laptop.

In terms of connections, there’s a little more going for the Slim 7i than simply a few USB-C ports. Rather, you’ll find two Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports supporting USB 4.0, a single old-school USB-A port (the rectangular kind!) with support for USB 3.2, one HDMI 2.1 port, and a lone 3.5mm headset jack. You’ll also find support for 802.11a/b/g/n/ac/ax/be WiFi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4. Plus there are four speakers and four mics, too.

Display

A sizeable laptop, the Slim 7i Aura Edition sports a 15.3 inch screen with a decent resolution, running 2880×1800, a 2.8K res that offers more pixels than a typical Full HD screen, and even gets more in than a Quad HD panel.

It’s a lovely reoslution for a 15 inch screen, and even though you won’t find AMOLED here, the screen is bright, clear, and sharp.

Officially, Lenovo calls this screen a “PureSight Pro” screen, which means it has a lower amount of blue light than its other dfisplays, as well as 100 percent colour accuracy for the P3 colour gamut. That’ll be handy for content creators for sure, but the screen is just easy on the eyes and comfortable to use.

Our review unit also came equipped with touch, giving you the ability to use Windows 11 by prodding the screen, which thankfull also comes with an anti-fingerprint coating. That part kind of works, but truth be told, we definitely saw the odd fingerprint here and there.

In-use

You probably won’t be poking or prodding Windows — the days of touchscreen Windows on a laptop aren’t as big as they once were — but the option is there. The screen does lie flat, but it doesn’t fold all the way back, so you won’t be using the Slim 7 as a tablet, more just to poke things if need be.

A touchpad is going to be your main way of using the Aura Edition Slim 7, as if the keyvboard, which is a decent island key keyboard with a reasonable amount of travel and a softened circular bottom for each key.

It’s a comfortable-enough keyboard with most of what you’d need: a set of function keys up top, a couple of levels of keyboard backlighting (with an auto settings), and a small set of directional keys squished on the right side.

Oh, and of course, you get the Copilot key for all the AI you might possibly want to use on Windows. This is a Copilot+ PC, after all.

We didn’t lean on the AI functionality at all, but the keyboard was definitely usable for typing this review on. Leaving the laptop on a bench top, Lenovo’s keyboard was as comfortable as we’re used to, though it can feel a lot softer and more shallow on your lap.

In short, it’s not quite the benchmark keys you can find from Lenovo’s ThinkPad line, but it does just fine in most circumstances.

Waking up the laptop from standby will see you use the Windows Hello functionality with your face which is, thankfully, super speedy and a great way to get stuck in.

Performance

Once you do get stuck in, you’ll find 2025’s chips really give you an edge. Intel’s latest chips make an appearance, with the Core Ultra 7 258V in this laptop, coming from the second-gen Core Ultra tech Intel actually launched last year.

Benchmark-wise, the system performs nicely, even beating out the only other second-gen Core Ultra 7 we checked out earlier from the Asus ZenBook S 14 OLED. They both feature the same chip and even the same memory, but Lenovo has managed to wrench more speed from the Slim 7i Aura Edition. Not too shabby.

Comparing the Lenovo against the elephant in the room, the Slim 7i doesn’t quite match the performance of the M4 MacBook Air, at least not from the perspective of our benchmarks.

Granted, that’s a case of apple vs oranges almost literally — it’s an Apple versus something else, and those benchmarks aren’t on even footing given the major changes between the platforms. Apple technically has the lead here, but credit to Lenovo, the Yoga Slim 7i is still a speedy laptop.

Battery

The battery is also a stellar part of the package, achieving greater battery life than even Lenovo’s battery metre would suggest.

The app inside Lenovo Vantage is fairly pessimistic: at 85 percent from simply using the laptop for productivity, it suggests 4 hours was likely. After a few minutes, the system suggested 6 to 7 was possible. From the 100 percent mark, Lenovo touts at least 8, and more are definitely possible.

The 70Whr is technically rated for all day life, and with at least 7 to 8 hours dependent on what you’re using it for, you can definitely get decent life. An extra USB-C charger will help you make up for any shortfall, since it supports that standard, but we doubt you’ll need it, and you get a 65W USB-C charger in the box.

Value

The price is where things get a little sticky, and possibly because of just how high-end the specs are.

The “Aura edition” comes in one style — great — and so you are in effect paying for the Intel Core Ultra 7, the 32GB RAM, 1TB of solid state storage, and all the other high-end features you’re finding here. About the only thing that isn’t high-end is the screen, which feels like it should be AMOLED but isn’t.

This combination of features runs a recommended retail price of $2999 in Australia, though street price sees that value closer to the $2099 mark. At RRP, the price isn’t necessarily easy to swallow, and is veering into territory where the OLED-equipped Asus VivoBook would normally sit, or even possibly something from MSI.

But at the $2099 price point (which is where it was at the time of publishing), the Slim 7i makes far more sense, delivering value for the solid specs and battery play.

What needs work?

In terms of being a great and versatile laptop, it seems like Lenovo has that nailed.

But flexibility? That’s something that feels a little underweighted for a laptop featuring the “Yoga” name.

When something sports the word “yoga”, it typically means it’s flexible, and in years past, Lenovo’s Yoga has been that. This year’s kind of is — the screen certainly lies flat — but it feels like Lenovo only went some of the way there.

The hinge isn’t one of the 2-in-1 varieties, so it’s not going to work as a tablet or one of the other convertible form-factors we’d normally associated with the Yoga name.

The extras and Lenovo-specific AI is also a bit of a mixed bag, thanks in part to AI still trying to find an actual use in modern day computing. Microsoft has already talked up the concept of an agent for Windows, but the Yoga Slim 7i’s Aura Edition grab bag isn’t even focused on that sort of thing, at least not yet.

Rather, it’s a mode app that jumps between modes to better optimise battery life (this seems to work, but it also could be just part of how the laptop runs), a syncing system with your phone that uses AI to work out when your phone is nearby (Smart Share), and privacy alerts if the camera picks up on someone checking over your screen. Nice to have, but not exactly game changing.

With regards to the extras, at times the laptop can feel like a marketing exercise. As in “you’ve bought it, now get ready to be advertised to throughout the setup process”.

Setting up the laptop using the included “Lenovo Now” app basically just shows ads for Amazon Music, YouTube, McAfee, and even a Lenovo Smart Lock service for security of physical hardware that costs a good $50 per year. It doesn’t really matter what you pick for the laptop use, either; personal, work, gaming, and education all yield the same response: buy some more apps and services, people.

Bloatware has become the norm for many a laptop, certainly in the Windows world, and this is just Lenovo getting space in for some apps and services you may not even need.

There’s also no SD or microSD card slot, but outside of these quibbles, the Slim 7i feels like a solid option for someone craving a great Windows laptop in a sleek form-factor.

What we love

And one of the aspects this reviewer loves is that it is clearly not a MacBook clone.

The edges are different, with a curved shape a little reminiscent of what Motorola is doing for the frame of its Razr 50 Ultra and Razr 50. Given Motorola is owned by Lenovo, this should probably come as no surprise; hardware designs are likely going to follow similar styles at times, especially from the same company.

The Moto-made ThinkPhone was an intentional dead ringer for the Lenovo ThinkPad laptops. While the Razr isn’t intended to be in the same family as the Yoga, there may be some cross over, at least intended to keep buyers of each in the same mindset. Maybe.

But the point is pretty clear either way, because the Yoga Slim 7i isn’t simply a MacBook Air or MacBook Pro clone.

That’s not to say that attempt to clone Apple’s successes is a bad thing, but we prefer it when companies do their own thing. Lenovo definitely has here, and the Yoga softened style seen over the years has been retained, kept alongside quality materials and hardware.

Final thoughts (TLDR)

While we’re still not at a point where the AI that comes pre-installed with laptops is all that useful, Lenovo’s Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition sets up its owners for when that does become an eventuality.

The software it has? Not fantastic. Eventual AI? That’ll probably be a lot better. But right now, you can just do what many people do when presented with AI on their devices, and ignore it completely.

Once you ignore the AI aspects of the Slim 7i, you’ll find a fast and capable laptop inside. Lenovo’s Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition delivers what most people want in a laptop: performance and battery life to spare. It’s difficult to argue with. Recommended.