Review: My thoughts on the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x

In case you were worried that Windows on ARM would suck forever, boy do I have some good news for you.

Jul 17, 2024

By now, you might’ve heard that Windows on ARM is back in full effect. Thanks to Qualcomm’s surprisingly excellent Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus processors, using a Windows 11-powered laptop without an Intel or AMD chip is delightfully pleasant, or at least that’s what I heard before I got my hands on one.

I attended a party with a friend who happened to have an early sample of a Snapdragon X Elite laptop, and because I’m a good reporter, I pried them for information on whether the chip actually met all the claims Qualcomm was making. Sure enough, they told me everything they said was true and that soon, using a Windows laptop would be just as good as using a MacBook with an M-series chip in it.

It wasn’t long afterward that Lenovo hit me up and offered a review unit of the Yoga Slim 7x, one of only two laptops in their lineup powered by the Snapdragon X Elite. I immediately replied and said to send it my way, and since then, I’ve been using it on and off alongside my usual workhorse: a 2021 MacBook Pro with an M1 Pro chip.

Lo and behold, the Yoga Slim 7x can not only keep up on the performance front but with battery life, too. And it’s quickly become my favorite Windows laptop I’ve ever used, even though it’s by and large a very basic machine.

The Great Reset

Forget everything you know about ARM chips inside Windows laptops. The poor performance, so-so battery life, and app compatibility issues all need to go out the window, at least for the most part. These new Snapdragon chips fix those issues and create an experience that, to put it frankly, makes me want to use Windows again.

The Yoga Slim 7x I have is equipped with the Snapdragon X Elite processor, 16GB of RAM, and 512GB of storage. It’s Lenovo’s standard configuration priced at $1,199, while double the storage will cost you $1,289. And like Apple’s MacBooks with M-series chips, for the money, this laptop punches well above its weight class.

I have never seen this laptop choke, slow down, or otherwise crawl under heavy workloads. I’ve had 6-10 apps open at once, edited photos in Lightroom, used it on top of my comforter in bed, used it on a blazing-hot metal table in the middle of summer in Brooklyn, and never once has it shown any example that it can’t keep up.

Part of that is thanks to the cooling system Lenovo has provided. This laptop has really good ventilation, coupled with fans that rarely spin and—when they do—work efficiently. But the chip itself is also designed to stay cool when you’re doing a lot, something the folks at Intel could take inspiration from.

Everything feels instantaneous on this laptop. Click on something, it opens right away. Navigate a few pages back in Chrome, it moves as fast as your finger does. Open a heavy app like Lightroom and watch it appear in half the time it used to. These aren’t edge cases, either—this is the basic experience of using a laptop with a Snapdragon X Elite. Compared to Intel machines, the performance difference is night and day.

It’s also tough enough to handle most GPU-intensive tasks, like running a bunch of external 4K monitors or editing videos. I didn’t do much of the latter, but I did connect a couple 4K monitors to it at the same time, and performance never dipped. It only got a bit warm on the under side, but that’s to be expected from any laptop. I’ve heard that some reviewers have also tried gaming on it, and while it isn’t designed for gaming, you can certainly run some games on it and it’ll be fine.

I didn’t run a slew of benchmarks on the Slim 7x, but for those curious how it compares under those tests, I’ll point you to XDA who compared the results to other laptops with Intel’s Core Ultra 7. The bottom line? The X Elite is one of the fastest chips on the market, beating the performance of Apple’s M1 series and competing neck-and-neck with the M2 lineup in a variety of ways.

Granted, that means Apple still has Qualcomm beat in raw computing power, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is this chip, along with the X Plus which is similarly powerful, have finally brought a modern computing experience to the Windows laptop space, and it’s about damn time.

What may be even more important is battery life. My MacBook’s 11+ hours of reliable battery life has forced me to bring it with me on every trip I embark on instead of a Windows machine, but the Slim 7x is good enough to make me think twice.

There’s a 70Wh battery inside this laptop despite it being so thin, and when paired with the X Elite, it gives the Slim 7x better endurance than every thin and light laptop I’ve tried powered by Intel.

I’m able to get 10-14 hours of normal to heavy usage, which is simply delightful. Granted, it depends on how many apps I’m using and whether they’ve been optimized well for the ARM processor, but even if your workflow depends on nothing but heavy apps, you can still easily get 10 hours of usage.

One of the biggest issues with Windows on ARM in the past was app compatibility. There used to be very few apps that could run natively on PCs of this caliber, and while that issue hasn’t gone away, it’s the best it’s ever been.

It’s becoming a rarity to run into an app that requires an x64 processor to run. More often than not, the app can either run natively on the ARM chip or through emulation software Microsoft built into Windows. Some of the biggest developers like Google, Spotify, Adobe, Mozilla, and Dropbox all have versions of their apps built for ARM, like hundreds of other developers out in the ether. I’ve only run into two instances where I couldn’t install the software I wanted: once when I tried to install NordVPN, and again when I tried to install a printer driver for a commercial printer that hasn’t been updated in years.

Beyond that, app compatibility issues haven’t hindered my workflow at all, which tells me that you’ll probably experience the same thing (that is, unless your job depends on you running x64-only software). Many of the most popular apps on the market have been updated to run natively on ARM, so you won’t be served any “incompatible with device” pop-ups when you try to install them. Plus, you’ll get better performance and battery life than their x64-based counterparts.

You’ll also get access to new AI features, which have yet to roll out. The Yoga Slim 7x is a Copilot+ PC, which means it meets all of Microsoft’s performance and security requirements for features like Recall, Image Creator, and features inside third-party apps that rely on the neural processing unit (NPU). Full disclosure: my workflow has yet to adopt AI, but I did use Copilot for generating some WordPress scripts and crafting some email, which was nice.

Over time, “Copilot+” will mean a lot more, but for the time, it’s just a way to let you know that these ARM-based PCs are ready for an AI future. The Slim 7x is part of that class, so you can hold onto it for years on end without losing access to the latest features.

I swore off using Windows laptops for my daily routine years ago after I bought my MacBook Pro, simply because there was no laptop that could compete with it on performance and battery life. That conversation has changed. Now, we have these laptops powered by Snapdragon chips that can easily compete with whatever Apple cooks up, and that’s incredibly exciting for the future of the industry.

Will it take a long time for Intel to no longer dominate the Windows laptop market? Yes, but given how Lenovo, HP, Dell, Samsung, Asus, Acer, and Microsoft have already announced Snapdragon X-powered laptops, it’s safe to say the market for Windows on ARM will grow exponentially in the near future, and it won’t be long until you can get one in your price range.

Slim, sexy, sensational

Outside of the chipset, the Slim 7x itself is a great laptop. The biggest thing I enjoy is how thin and light it is. At its thickest point, the laptop is just 0.51-inch thick, and it weighs 2.82 pounds. Throw this sucker in your bag and you’ll forget it’s even there (take my word for it: there were a number of times I had to stop and unzip my backpack to make sure I remembered it before leaving the coffee shop).

What’s also impressive is the keyboard. Lenovo was able to fit keys with 1.5mm of travel, which is by far one of the best design attributes of the entire laptop. It means that typing on the Slim 7x is beyond comfortable. It almost ruins every other laptop I’ve tested recently, which is saying something. The keys are nice and clicky, and it isn’t too loud that it becomes annoying over time. Similarly, the trackpad is spacious and responsive enough that it’s one of the best I’ve used on a Lenovo laptop.

Around the sides, you’ll find a few USB-C ports, one of which uses USB 4 for quicker data transfer speeds. There’s a physical mute switch to disable the microphone, and a reverse notch sits above the display housing the Windows Hello sensors and webcam (which, for the record, isn’t amazing).

The display itself is gorgeous. Lenovo included a 14.5-inch PureSight OLED touchscreen with a 3K resolution, and it looks amazing. Colors are vibrant while avoiding oversaturation, it’s pin-sharp, and black levels are deep as hell. It also comes with a 90Hz refresh rate so everything looks and feels smooth. Honestly, I almost like it more than my MacBook’s Mini-LED screen.

I’d also like to note two small things about the hardware of this laptop:

You can open it using just your thumb. The hinge and base are engineered so that you don’t have to pry it open, which is amazing.
The cosmic blue color that Lenovo used for the Yoga Slim 7x looks fantastic, but it attracts a lot of finger and hand prints over time.

Nothing to hate

The whole time I was reviewing the Yoga Slim 7x, I struggled to find things I genuinely disliked or hated. Do I wish you could configure it with more than 16GB of RAM? Sure. Would it be nice if the speakers didn’t sound like crap? Yeah, I guess. Are the ports somewhat limiting for creators, who Lenovo says this laptop is designed for? Absolutely.

But none of these are dealbreakers. This is a $1,200 laptop, and in the Windows world, it’s the laptop I’ve used that’s come the closest to replicating the experience of a MacBook Air. Its gorgeous display, fast performance, and reliable battery life are all characteristics of the MacBook Air, and now, Windows users get to enjoy them with their operating system of choice.

Bottom line

While there are other Snapdragon X Elite-powered machines I need to check out, I think the Yoga Slim 7x is an amazing laptop and one that you should consider buying under a few circumstances:

you don’t need old software to get your work done,
you don’t need a ton of ports,
you’re okay with having a blue laptop.

If all of that sits well with you and you have a $1,300 budget for your next laptop, get the Slim 7x. It’s great for business users, college students, and even creators. The Snapdragon chip inside has revolutionized the Windows laptop experience, and you can enjoy all the fruits of its labor in this Lenovo machine.