Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 (15) review – powerful ultrabook for your content-creating needs

Thin and light notebooks with powerful components? Well, that’s something that gets everybody excited. In the case with the Yoga Slim 7 (15), you can pick from two processor families. There is the Slim 7 (15IIL) and the Slim 7 (15IMH) with the former employing Ice Lake CPUs, and the latter being equipped with the more powerful Comet Lake-H processors, as well as NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 graphics card.

However, looking at the price of the device, it costs a fraction of a similarly specced Dell XPS 15. However, Dell has another semi-premium notebook, which can battle with the Yoga Slim 7 (15) – the Inspiron 15 7590. And we will be using the Dell for reference in the review because, from our experience, we know that thin and light powerhouses will struggle with the cooling.

Other than that, you can expect Wi-Fi 6 connectivity, an optional IR face recognition camera, and a 70Wh battery, which according to Lenovo, should grant 12 hours of screen-on time. So, let’s see if the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 (15) can be considered as the ultimate content creator ultrabook.

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/lenovo-yoga-slim-7-15-imh/

Contents


Specs Sheet

Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 (15" IMH) - 仕様

  • BOE NV156FHM-N69
  • 色の精度  4.6  1.2
  • HDD/SSD
  • まで 1000GB SSD
  • ラム
  • up to 16GB
  • OS
  • Windows 10 Home
  • バッテリー
  • 70Wh
  • 本体材質
  • Aluminum
  • 寸法
  • 356.6 x 229.4 x 17.2 mm (14.04" x 9.03" x 0.68")
  • 重量
  • 1.95 kg (4.3 lbs)
  • ポートと接続性
  • 2x USB Type-A
  • 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps)
  • 1x USB Type-C
  • 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps), Thunderbolt 3, Power Delivery (PD), DisplayPort
  • HDMI
  • 2.0b
  • カードリーダー
  • SD
  • Wi-Fi
  • 802.11ax
  • ブルートゥース
  • 5.0
  • オーディオジャック
  • 3.5 mm combo
  • 特徴
  • 指紋リーダー
  • optional
  • 対戦相手
  • HD
  • バックライト付きキーボード
  • メモリタイプ
  • Dual-Array Microphone
  • スピーカー
  • 3x 2W, Dolby Atmos
  • 光学ドライブ
  • セキュリティロックスロット

What’s in the box?

Inside the package, we found a 135W power brick, some paper manuals, and the laptop itself.


Design and construction

We have to give some credit to Lenovo for the build quality of this notebook. It is strong, both when it comes to the body and the lid. It also uses premium materials, like aluminum for the chassis and the lid cover, and the display is protected by a sheet of glass. What is more impressive are the dimensions. The Yoga Slim 7 (15) has a profile of just 17.2mm and weighs 1.95 kg (1.80 kg if you opt for the non-glass variant).

Thankfully, the lid can be opened with a single hand, thanks to the smooth hinges and the notch, that enables you to grip it easier. This is also where you will find the optional IR face recognition system.

Further down below, you will notice the keyboard and a grill, paired with a Dolby Atmos branding. Actually, this is where one of the three 2W speakers reside, and from what we can hear, it is the tweeter. The keyboard, itself, is pretty much the same unit as the one we found on Lenovo Ideapad 5 (15). It features a NumberPad section with smaller keycaps. Other than that, we get pretty large keys with good spacing, clicky feedback, and decent key travel. The keyboard deck, on the other side, has a matte finish on the aluminum, which attracts a surprisingly low amount of fingerprints.

Unfortunately, despite the great gliding, provided by the glass-covered touchpad, and the tracking that many other notebooks fail to replicate, we feel that the overall size of the unit is a bit too small for the 2020 standards.

If we turn the laptop upside down, we’re going to see the ventilation grill, as well as the other two 2W speakers. And as for the hot air exhaust – it is located at the back of the base and fires toward the hinge shroud.

Ports

On the left side, you will see the proprietary charging plug, an HDMI 2.0b connector, as well as a Thunderbolt 3 port, and an audio jack. On the right, there’s the Power button, two USB Type-A 3.2 (Gen. 1) ports, and an SD card reader.


Disassembly, upgrade options, and maintenance

This laptop requires 7 Torx-head screws to be removed in order to access its internals. After you undo them, pry the bottom panel with a plastic tool, starting from the back.

Since we have the Core i7-10750H processor inside, which is paired with a GeForce GTX 1650, we can see a formidable cooling solution, consisting of two heat pipes. Not only is one of them extremely thick, but there are cooling plates above the graphics memory, as well as the VRMs and presumably the RAM chips.

Sadly, the memory is soldered to the motherboard, and the only thing you can change is the M.2 PCIe x4 drive. Keep in mind, that Lenovo is selling the notebook in two configurations – 8GB and 16GB.

As of the battery, its capacity is 70Wh.


Display quality

Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 (15) in the configuration we tested has a Full HD IPS panel with a model number BOE NV156FHM-N69 (LEN8993). Its diagonal is 15.6″ (39.62 cm), and the resolution 1920 х 1080 pixels. The screen ratio is 16:9, and we are looking at a pixel density of – 142 ppi, and a pitch of 0.18 х 0.18 mm. The screen turns into Retina when viewed at distance equal to or greater than 60cm (24″) (from this distance one’s eye stops differentiating the separate pixels, and it is normal for looking at a laptop).

It has comfortable viewing angles. We offer images at 45° to evaluate image quality.

The measured maximum brightness of 370 nits in the middle of the screen and 330 nits as an average for the whole area, with a maximum deviation of 15%. The Correlated Color Temperature on a white screen is 7500K – colder than the optimal for the sRGB standard of 6500K.
In the illustration below you can see how the display performs from a uniformity perspective. In other words, the leakage of light from the light source.

Values of dE2000 over 4.0 should not occur, and this parameter is one of the first you should check if you intend to use the laptop for color-sensitive work. The contrast ratio is good – 1110:1.

To make sure we are on the same page, we would like to give you a little introduction to the sRGB color gamut and the Adobe RGB. To start, there’s the CIE 1976 Uniform Chromaticity Diagram that represents the visible specter of colors by the human eye, giving you a better perception of the color gamut coverage and the color accuracy.

Inside the black triangle, you will see the standard color gamut (sRGB) that is being used by millions of people in HDTV and on the web. As for the Adobe RGB, this is used in professional cameras, monitors, etc for printing. Basically, colors inside the black triangle are used by everyone and this is the essential part of the color quality and color accuracy of a mainstream notebook.

Still, we’ve included other color spaces like the famous DCI-P3 standard used by movie studios, as well as the digital UHD Rec.2020 standard. Rec.2020, however, is still a thing of the future and it’s difficult for today’s displays to cover that well. We’ve also included the so-called Michael Pointer gamut, or Pointer’s gamut, which represents the colors that naturally occur around us every day.

The yellow dotted line shows Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 (15)’s color gamut coverage.

Its display covers 94% of the sRGB/ITU-R BT.709 (web/HDTV standard) in CIE1976.

Our “Design and Gaming” profile delivers optimal color temperature (6500K) at 140 cd/m2 luminance and sRGB gamma mode.

We tested the accuracy of the display with 24 commonly used colors like light and dark human skin, blue sky, green grass, orange, etc. You can check out the results at factory condition and also, with the “Design and Gaming” profile.

Below you can compare the scores of Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 (15) with the default settings (left), and with the “Gaming and Web design” profile (right).

The next figure shows how well the display is able to reproduce really dark parts of an image, which is essential when watching movies or playing games in low ambient light.

The left side of the image represents the display with stock settings, while the right one is with the “Gaming and Web Design” profile activated. On the horizontal axis, you will find the grayscale, and on the vertical axis – the luminance of the display. On the two graphs below you can easily check for yourself how your display handles the darkest nuances but keep in mind that this also depends on the settings of your current display, the calibration, the viewing angle, and the surrounding light conditions.

Response time (Gaming capabilities)

We test the reaction time of the pixels with the usual “black-to-white” and “white-to-black” method from 10% to 90% and vice versa.

We recorded Fall Time + Rise Time = 17 ms.


PWM (Screen flickering)

Pulse-width modulation (PWM) is an easy way to control monitor brightness. When you lower the brightness, the light intensity of the backlight is not lowered, but instead turned off and on by the electronics with a frequency indistinguishable to the human eye. In these light impulses, the light/no-light time ratio varies, while brightness remains unchanged, which is harmful to your eyes. You can read more about that in our dedicated article on PWM.

We found Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 (15)’s display to be free of flickering throughout all brightness levels. This means the laptop is safe for use for extended periods of work in this aspect.

Blue light emissions

Installing our Health-Guard profile not only eliminates PWM but also reduces the harmful Blue Light emissions while keeping the colors of the screen perceptually accurate. If you’re not familiar with the Blue light, the TL;DR version is – emissions that negatively affect your eyes, skin, and your whole body. You can find more information about that in our dedicated article on Blue Light.

Conclusion

Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 (15)’s IPS panel has a Full HD resolution and comfortable viewing angles. It also covers 94% of the sRGB color gamut, and its backlight doesn’t flicker at any brightness level. Thankfully for all content creators, and generally, to people who value color accuracy and work with color-sensitive content, our Gaming and Web design profile helps the panel reach an Average dE value of 1.2, matching the standards pretty closely.

Buy our profiles

Since our profiles are tailored for each individual display model, this article and its respective profile package are meant for Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 (15) configurations with 15.6″ FHD IPS BOE NV156FHM-N69.

*Should you have problems with downloading the purchased file, try using a different browser to open the link you’ll receive via e-mail. If the download target is a .php file instead of an archive, change the file extension to .zip or contact us at [email protected].

Read more about the profiles HERE.

ここでは、すべてのCPUに搭載されているCPUの価格/性能差を確認することができます。

オフィスワーク

オフィスワークは、ほとんどの時間をテキストや表を見たり、ただネットサーフィンをしたりしているユーザーが使用するべきです。このプロファイルは、フラットなガンマカーブ(2.20)、ネイティブな色温度、知覚的に正確な色を維持することで、より鮮明で明瞭な色を提供することを目指しています。

デザインとゲーム

このプロファイルは、色を専門的に扱うデザイナーに向けたもので、ゲームや映画でも使用されています。Design and Gamingは、ディスプレイパネルを限界まで引き出し、WebやHDTV用のsRGB IEC61966-2-1規格の白点D65で可能な限り正確な色を実現しています。

ヘルスガード

ヘルスガードは、有害なパルス幅変調(PWM)を除去し、私たちの目や体に影響を与えるネガティブブルーライトを低減します。それはすべてのパネルのためにカスタマイズされているので、それは知覚的に正確な色を維持するために管理します。ヘルスガードは紙をシミュレートするので、目への圧力が大幅に軽減されます。

3 つのプロファイルすべてを 33% 割引で入手


Sound

Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 (15)’s triple speaker setup provides a crisp sound with deep lows and very good quality. It is Dolby Atmos-certified, as well.


Drivers

All of the drivers and utilities for this notebook can be found here: https://pcsupport.lenovo.com/us/en/products/laptops-and-netbooks/yoga-series/yoga-slim-7-15imh05/downloads/driver-list

Battery

Now, we conduct the battery tests with Windows Better performance setting turned on, screen brightness adjusted to 120 nits, and all other programs turned off except for the one we are testing the notebook with. This notebook’s 70Wh battery delivers 12 hours and a half of Web browsing and 9 hours and a half of video playback.


CPU options

We got the Comet Lake-H version of the notebook, so the processors of choice here are the quad-core Core i5-10300H, and the six-core Core i7-10750H.


GPU options

Finishing a pretty powerful combination, the graphics card is the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650, which comes with 4GB of GDDR6 memory.


Gaming tests

Far Cry 5Full HD, Normal (Check settings)Full HD, High (Check settings)Full HD, Ultra (Check settings)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 (40W)59 fps54 fps50 fps

rise-of-the-tomb-raider

Rise of the Tomb Raider (2016)Full HD, Lowest (Check settings)Full HD, Medium (Check settings)Full HD, Very High (Check settings)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 (40W)107 fps72 fps35 fps

Shadow of the Tomb Raider (2018)Full HD, Lowest (Check settings)Full HD, Medium (Check settings)Full HD, High (Check settings)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 (40W)90 fps49 fps45 fps

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon WildlandsFull HD, Medium (Check settings)Full HD, High (Check settings)Full HD, Very High (Check settings)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 (40W)53 fps48 fps43 fps

Temperatures and comfort

Max CPU load

In this test we use 100% on the CPU cores, monitoring their frequencies and chip temperature. The first column shows a computer’s reaction to a short load (2-10 seconds), the second column simulates a serious task (between 15 and 30 seconds), and the third column is a good indicator of how good the laptop is for long loads such as video rendering.

Average core frequency (base frequency + X); CPU temp.

Intel Core i7-10750H (45W TDP)0:02 – 0:10 sec0:15 – 0:30 sec10:00 – 15:00 min
Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 (15)3.44 GHz (B+32%) @ 95°C3.22 GHz (B+24%) @ 95°C2.87 GHz (B+10%) @ 95°C
Dell G7 17 77003.84 GHz (B+48%) @ 94°C3.70 GHz (B+42%) @ 95°C3.48 GHz (B+34%) @ 98°C
HP Omen 15 2019 (15-dh1000)4.03 GHz (B+55%) @ 96°C3.87 GHz (B+45%) @ 97°C3.65 GHz (B+40%) @ 96°C
MSI GF65 Thin 10Sx3.59 GHz (B+38%) @ 95°C3.48 GHz (B+34%) @ 95°C3.08 GHz (B+18%) @ 91°C
HP Pavilion Gaming 16 (16-a0000)3.74 GHz (B+44%) @ 97°C3.17 GHz (B+22%) @ 88°C2.98 GHz (B+15%) @ 78°C
Acer Predator Helios 300 (PH315-53)3.56 GHz (B+37%) @ 76°C3.52 GHz (B+35%) @ 85°C2.98 GHz (B+15%) @ 75°C
Dell G5 15 55003.82 GHz (B+47%) @ 75°C3.63 GHz (B+40%) @ 99°C3.01 GHz (B+16%) @ 81°C
ASUS ROG Strix G15 G5124.16 GHz (B+60%) @ 81°C3.99 GHz (B+53%) @ 95°C3.52 GHz (B+35%) @ 87°C
Acer Nitro 5 (AN515-55)3.02 GHz (B+16%) @ 82°C3.04 GHz (B+17%) @ 92°C2.67 GHz (B+3%) @ 92°C
Lenovo Legion 7 (15)3.78 GHz (B+45%) @ 80°C3.69 GHz (B+42%) @ 83°C3.51 GHz (B+35%) @ 83°C

Well, the thin body takes its toll in the CPU stress test. We didn’t see the processor work at temperatures lower than 95C during extreme load. This is where some gaming notebooks have the upper hand, with their overengineered thermal configurations.

Real-life gaming

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650GPU frequency/ Core temp (after 2 min)GPU frequency/ Core temp (after 30 min)
Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 (15)1517 MHz @ 65°C1505 MHz @ 66°C
Dell Inspiron 15 75901395 MHz @ 80°C1395 MHz @ 84°C
Lenovo Ideapad Gaming 3i (15)1593 MHz @ 72°C1579 MHz @ 75°C
Lenovo Legion 5 (15)1659 MHz @ 58°C1671 MHz @ 56°C
Acer Nitro 5 (AN517-52)1746 MHz @ 65°C1723 MHz @ 71°C
Acer Aspire 7 (A715-74G)1552 MHz @ 70°C1532 MHz @ 76°C
Dell G3 15 35901605 MHz @ 67°C1566 MHz @ 74°C
ASUS ROG G5311461 MHz @ 65°C1408 MHz @ 71°C
ASUS TUF FX7051566 MHz @ 74°C1568 MHz @ 74°C
Acer Nitro 7 (AN715-51)1633 MHz @ 61°C1599 MHz @ 67°C

So, this laptop’s GTX 1650 is more of a GTX 1650 Max-Q Turbo, because it has a TGP of 40W (Max-Q works at 35W, while the regular version works at 50W). This enables it to run higher clock speeds at a lower temperature, but, it has fewer CUDA cores, which equals less performance.

Comfort during combined load

Interestingly, the laptop is not too loud under combined load (like gaming), and it keeps its surface temperatures in check.


Verdict

So what is this laptop best at? Playing games? Well, it is good at that, but that’s definitely not its greatest jams. How about being a daily driver? Honestly, if you just needed a daily driver, it would be better to save some money by buying something a bit less pretentious.

And then we come to the actual purpose of this device – being a content creator, Web design, or developer tool. It has the power to compile, render 3D scenes, or edit photos/videos. Sadly, there is only one caveat here – its memory is soldered to the motherboard. So either you get the 16GB version and you’re happy for the next three to four years, or you get the 8GB model, and buy a new notebook in no time.

Thankfully, the device offers decent battery life, which stands at 12 hours and a half of Web browsing and 9 hours and a half of video playback. So, if you’re not doing any intensive workload, you should easily get an entire workday out of it.

Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 (15)’s IPS panel has a Full HD resolution and comfortable viewing angles. It also covers 94% of the sRGB color gamut, and its backlight doesn’t flicker at any brightness level. Thankfully for all content creators, and generally, to people who value color accuracy and work with color-sensitive content, our Gaming and Web design profile helps the panel reach an Average dE value of 1.2, matching the standards pretty closely.

And when we compare it to the Dell Inspiron 15 7590 we see a couple of major differences. First, we have the color-accurate display, the good quality of the build, the Wi-Fi 6 support, and the relatively powerful hardware. But then again, the Inspiron is similarly well-built, has pretty much the same hardware, but has one big advantage over today’s notebook – upgradability. Not only does it offer RAID 0 support via two M.2 slots, but there are two RAM SODIMM slots.

This leaves the Yoga Slim 7 with a lot to learn. On the bright side, the notebook from Lenovo actually features a better cooling solution, which puts even some gaming laptops to shame.

At the end of the day, we would have strongly recommended the notebook, should it have featured at least one RAM SODIMM slot. Or at least 32GB version of onboard memory. Alas, this is not the case, so we can’t 100% advise getting the Yoga Slim 7 (15).

Pros

  • Thin and light aluminum body
  • Backlit spill-resistant keyboard
  • Thunderbolt 3 and SD card reader
  • Wi-Fi 6 and optional IR face recognition
  • Lacks PWM for brightness adjustment (AUO B156HAN02.4 (AUO24ED))
  • Covers 94% of sRGB (AUO B156HAN02.4 (AUO24ED)) and has standard-matching color accuracy thanks to our Gaming and Web design profile
  • Great battery life
  • Very good performance for a notebook of this size


Cons

  • Lack of RAM upgrades greatly reduces the appeal
  • No RJ-45 connectivity

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/lenovo-yoga-slim-7-15-imh/

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