Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 Pro (14″, 2022) review

At this point, it is getting really hard to differentiate one Lenovo notebook from another. Not only does the brand have the ThinkPads, IdeaPads, Legions, and Yogas, but some of them have their own mini iterations. For example, the Yoga can be found in a convertible, and a “Slim” variant, which is a clamshell device.

Furthermore, the Yoga Slim can come in vanilla, Pro, and ProX type. Today, we’re going to cover the Pro model. Particularly, we’re talking about the AMD version. It features the Ryzen 6000HS processors. They are somewhat energy-efficient while offering almost the same performance as the regular 45W chips.

In fact, AMD calls these CPUs “Creator Edition”, which pretty much tells you where this laptop is targeted at. Of course, it is not a very affordable product, but the lack of a dedicated GPU makes it slightly more bearable for the budget.

This shouldn’t let you down, though. AMD now integrates RDNA 2 chips in their mobile processors. They support features like ray tracing natively. We doubt that this would be of any use for gaming for instance, but the general power of the iGPU is significantly better than the last-gen Vega options.

Here, the display is also one of the major talking points. There are three options – a 2.2K IPS, a 2.8K IPS, or a 2.8K OLED display. Both panels that come with 2.8K resolution also feature a 90Hz refresh rate, and you should expect the OLED unit to be significantly more responsive.

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/lenovo-yoga-slim-7-pro-14-2022/

Contents


Specs Sheet

Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 Pro (14", 2022) - Specs

  • BOE NV140DRM-N61 (BOE0931)
  • Color accuracy  4.1  1.3
  • HDD/SSD
  • up to 1000GB SSD
  • RAM
  • up to 16GB
  • OS
  • Windows 11 Home, Windows 11 Pro
  • Battery
  • 61Wh
  • Body material
  • Aluminum
  • Dimensions
  • 312.4 x 221.4 x 14.6 - 14.9 mm (12.30" x 8.72" x 0.57")
  • Weight
  • 1.39 kg (3.1 lbs)
  • Ports and connectivity
  • 1x USB Type-A
  • 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps), Sleep and Charge
  • 1x USB Type-C
  • 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps), Power Delivery (PD), DisplayPort
  • 1x USB Type-C
  • 4.0, Power Delivery (PD), DisplayPort
  • Card reader
  • Ethernet LAN
  • Wi-Fi
  • 802.11ax
  • Bluetooth
  • 5.1
  • Audio jack
  • 3.5mm Combo Jack
  • Features
  • Fingerprint reader
  • optional
  • Web camera
  • FHD with fixed focus + IR
  • Backlit keyboard
  • Microphone
  • Dual Array Microphone with Noise Cancellation, near-field
  • Speakers
  • 2x 2W, Stereo Speakers
  • Optical drive
  • Security Lock slot

What’s in the box?

This notebook comes bundled with the mandatory paperwork and a 100W USB Type-C charger.


Design and construction

Lenovo says that this laptop is a Yoga Slim 7 Pro, and slim it is indeed. We are talking about a thickness of less than 15mm, and a weight that stops the scales at 1.39 kg.

In addition to the cool-to-the-touch feeling, the all-aluminum chassis offers a greater benefit. The laptop is pretty resistant to flex, despite its petite form factor.

Surprisingly, or not, the lid opens easily with a single hand. This reveals thin bezels around the matte lid (in our case). The OLED devices feature a glass cover made by Panda King Glass.

Here, you will find a 1080p Web camera, as well as an IR face recognition scanner and a proximity sensor. This enables Windows Hello, plus some functions hidden in the Lenovo Vantage app. They are pretty neat but can be annoying if you forget to disable them. We are talking about “Zero touch” login, lock, and video playback. To find these features, just search for “Zero touch” in the app itself.

Interestingly, all of the aforementioned extras are enabled by default. Needless to say, it took us some time to figure out why it paused the video every so often, during our battery tests.

Nevertheless, moving to the keyboard, we see a pretty comfortable unit. It comes with a two-stage backlight, which can also be turned in Auto mode. The key travel is pretty average, but the feedback is clicky, which is the reason for the typing comfort.

Unlike most Lenovo devices, the touchpad features a glass cover. This provides good smoothness. Furthermore, it features accurate tracking and is pretty responsive.

On the bottom panel, you will see the two speaker cutouts, as well as the ventilation grill. The heat exhaust happens through two vents between the base and the lid.

Ports

On the left side, there is one USB Type-C 3.2 (Gen. 2) port, and a USB4, working at 40Gbps. Both of these ports support Power Delivery 3.0, and DisplayPort 1.4 outputs. Switch to the right side, and you will find the power button, a USB Type-A 3.2 (Gen. 1) port, and an Audio jack.


Disassembly, upgrade options, and maintenance

To open this notebook, you need to undo 7 Torx-head screws. Then, pry the bottom panel with a plastic tool and remove it from the chassis.

Here, we have a 61Wh battery pack. It lasts for 18 hours of Web browsing, or 12 hours and 30 minutes of video playback. To take the battery out, you need to undo 5 Phillips-head screws. Then, unplug the connector from the motherboard. After that, you will need to carefully untangle the Wi-Fi antenna cables from the top, and the speaker cables from the bottom of the battery housing.

Unfortunately, the memory here is soldered to the motherboard. The device can be found in configurations with up to 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM, working at 6400 MHz. Storage-wise, there is one M.2 PCIe x4 slot, which supports Gen 4 SSDs.

Lenovo has provided decent cooling, comprising two heat pipes, two fans, and a heat spreader over the VRMs.


Display quality

Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 Pro (14″, 2022) in the configuration we tested has a 60Hz 2.2K IPS panel – BOE NV140DRM-N61 (LEN140WU+, BOE0931). Its diagonal is 14-inch (35.6 cm), and the resolution is 2240 x 1400 pixels. The screen ratio is 16:10, and we are looking at a pixel density of – 188 ppi, and a pitch of 0.13 х 0.13 mm. The screen turns into Retina when viewed at distance equal to or greater than 46cm (18″) (from this distance one’s eye stops differentiating the separate pixels, and it is normal for looking at a laptop).

The viewing angles are excellent. We offer images at 45° to evaluate image quality.

Also, a video with locked focus and exposure.

We measured a maximum brightness of 328 nits in the middle of the screen and 302 nits as an average for the whole area, with a maximum deviation of 13%. The Correlated Color Temperature on a white screen is 6670K – slightly colder than the optimal for the sRGB standard of 6500K.
In the illustration below you can see how the main 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 very good – 1570:1.

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 on 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 Pro (14″, 2022)’s color gamut coverage.

Its display covers 96% 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 in factory condition and also, with the “Design and Gaming” profile.

Below you can compare the scores of Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 Pro (14″, 2022) 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 = 31 ms.

After that, we test the reaction time of the pixels with the usual “Gray-to-Gray” method from 50% White to 80% White and vice versa between 10% and 90% of the amplitude.


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.

The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 Pro (14″, 2022)’s display doesn’t use PWM to adjust its brightness at any point. This means it is comfortable for long gaming sessions without harming your eyes 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.

Gloss level measurement

Glossy-coated displays are sometimes inconvenient in high ambient light conditions. We show the level of reflection on the screen for the respective laptop when the display is turned off and the measurement angle is 60° (in this case, the result is 51.5 GU).


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 Pro (14″, 2022) configurations with 14″ WQXGA IPS BOE NV140DRM-N61 (LEN140WU+, BOE0931).

*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.

In addition to receiving efficient and health-friendly profiles, by buying LaptopMedia's products you also support the development of our labs, where we test devices in order to produce the most objective reviews possible.

Office Work

Office Work should be used mostly by users who spend most of the time looking at pieces of text, tables or just surfing. This profile aims to deliver better distinctness and clarity by keeping a flat gamma curve (2.20), native color temperature and perceptually accurate colors.

Design and Gaming

This profile is aimed at designers who work with colors professionally, and for games and movies as well. Design and Gaming takes display panels to their limits, making them as accurate as possible in the sRGB IEC61966-2-1 standard for Web and HDTV, at white point D65.

Health-Guard

Health-Guard eliminates the harmful Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM) and reduces the negative Blue Light which affects our eyes and body. Since it’s custom tailored for every panel, it manages to keep the colors perceptually accurate. Health-Guard simulates paper so the pressure on the eyes is greatly reduced.

Get all 3 profiles with 33% discount


Sound

Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 Pro (14″, 2022)’s Dolby Atmos speakers produce a sound of pretty good quality. Its low, mid, and high tones are clear of deviations.


Drivers

All 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-pro-14arh7/downloads/driver-list

Battery

Now, we conduct the battery tests with the 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. The laptop’s battery capacity is 61Wh. It lasts for 18 hours of Web browsing, or 12 hours and 35 minutes of video playback.

In order to simulate real-life conditions, we used our own script for automatic web browsing through over 70 websites.


CPU options

Lenovo provides you with the option of three processors – AMD Ryzen 5 6600HS, Ryzen 7 6800HS, and Ryzen 9 6900HS. All of them are part of the Creator Edition lineup of 35W AMD CPUs.


GPU options

Graphics-wise, you get only the integrated solution inside of the processor you choose. The Ryzen 5 gets the Radeon 660M, while the other two options feature the Radeon 680M.


Gaming tests

cs-go-benchmarks

CS:GOHD 1080p, Low (Check settings)HD 1080p, Medium (Check settings)HD 1080p, MAX (Check settings)
Average FPS170 fps147 fps111 fps

DOTA 2HD 1080p, Low (Check settings)HD 1080p, Normal (Check settings)HD 1080p, High (Check settings)
Average FPS139 fps111 fps61 fps

 

Shadow of the Tomb Raider (2018)Full HD, Lowest (Check settings)Full HD, Medium (Check settings)Full HD, High (Check settings)
Average FPS51 fps27 fps25 fps

Borderlands 3Full HD, V.Low (Check settings)Full HD, Medium (Check settings)Full HD, High (Check settings)
Average FPS45 fps29 fps18 fps

[eBook Guide + Tools] How to MAX OUT your Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 Pro (14″, 2022)

Your Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 Pro (14″, 2022) can be Faster. LaptopMedia has tested thousands of models in the last 15 years, and we’re yet to see a notebook that couldn’t be made more powerful through modifications. And have you seen the most popular search on Google related to “how to make my …”? No? OK, here it is:

As you see, having a faster laptop is more important than having more hair.

Well, the main issue here is that there are thousands of advices on the Web. Some work, some don’t. Some are easy, some are complicated. Some are safe, and some are risky. If only there could be an Easy-to-Follow, Step-by-Step, and Laboratory-Tested guide by a proven organization, right?

That’s what we’ve done. We have hundreds of laptops scattered in our office, and we’ve spent a whole year testing different optimizations. We’ve chosen the ones that really make a difference, that are easy to implement without expert skills, and that are safe for your laptop in the long term.

🚀 What’s the performance boost I could expect?

There’s no general answer but we’ve reached more than 30% GPU Performance boost on some models, while typically it’s between 10% and 20%. You could always go beyond but we want to be sure that our advice will keep your laptop on the safe side in the long term. But you want to get the absolute maximum? We’ll show you how, and then it’s up to you.

We even set several World Records on 3DMark, one being our first Max Out for a specific laptop model – MSI Katana B13V.

We’d be happy to compete with YOU on the 3DMark rank lists, and see what YOUR laptop can do using our guide!

📦 What’s included?

📖 Our eBook includes All the tools you need, along with an Easy-to-follow guide for hassle-free:

GPU Performance boost by vBIOS replacement, Overclocking, and Undervolting
⚙️ Checking the hardware components and finding if you could get a significant boost by upgrading some of them
💾 Installing a clean Windows OS, with all the base settings you need
📋 Software optimization steps that really give a performance boost
Building a RAID Storage configuration for doubling sequential read/write speeds or protecting your data
🎯 Display Profiles bundle for a panel of your choice, enhancing the display for accurate colors, better experience, and protection of your eyes

🎁 To receive the Display Profiles bundle as a gift, simply email us your panel model through our “Contact Us” form.

💵 What is the price?

R&D on laptops isn’t easy nor cheap, especially when you’re not using cherry-picked review samples but real units instead. Our idea is to reinvest the profits from the sales back in our laboratory. However, we also want to make it a killer deal for everyone who is planning or has already spent on a gaming laptop, as this product would significantly boost the performance per dollar they get.

[eBook Guide] How to MAX OUT your Laptop

🛠️ GPU Modifications: vBIOS, Overclocking, Undervolting
⚙️ Building Fast/Reliable RAID configuration
💻 Hardware upgrade tips for best results
🖼 Display enhancing
💾 OS Optimization for best performance

✖ But if these optimizations are easy, why don’t manufacturers do them?

There are a lot of reasons for the manufacturers to put boundaries on your machine, locking part of its performance:

📊 Market Segmentation: To create different product tiers, manufacturers often limit performance. This allows them to target various market segments and price points, encouraging consumers to pay more for higher-performing models.
❓Unknown Potential: Each unit’s performance varies. Checking each one individually isn’t feasible.
🏢 Regulatory Compliance: Certain regions have regulations regarding energy consumption, and manufacturers often place some boundaries to fit all standards.
🏭 Supply Chain Constraints: Limitations are imposed due to the current availability of components.
🫰 Cost-effective solutions: Often, less popular but important details are overlooked. For example, better RAM types can boost performance by up to 30%, but many users ignore this, and many online stores don’t even provide that info.
🔒 Security concerns: Many protections impact performance while being negligible for regular users. However, manufacturers don’t know if their laptops will be purchased by individuals or large corporations, so they can’t disable these features by default.

 

Not a bad performance bump in terms of Storage Speeds:


What are the default apps that impact performance the most?

What to do when RAID drives don’t show up?
How to optimize Windows further for maximum FPS gain in games?

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.

AMD Ryzen 5 6600HS (45W TDP)0:02 – 0:10 sec0:15 – 0:30 sec10:00 – 15:00 min
Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 Pro (14″, 2022)3.82 GHz @ 87°C @ 65W3.44 GHz @ 88°C @ 45W3.45 GHz @ 88°C @ 45W
Lenovo IdeaPad 5 Pro (16″, 2022)3.86 GHz @ 79°C @ 61W3.72 GHz @ 81°C @ 54W3.71 GHz @ 84°C @ 54W

This device runs at decent clock speeds and a temperature that is not too high. Interestingly, the fans weren’t spinning super fast, perhaps leaving some performance on the table.

Comfort during full load

On the other hand, the comfort was there – a rather quiet experience and a pretty cool keyboard hotspot.


Verdict

Considering the fact that this device is aimed at professionals of sorts, we are pretty happy with the performance results. Its CPU gets the cooling it needs, which corresponds to good benchmark figures.

What is more surprising, is that the integrated RDNA2 GPU overachieves. Well, not to an extent, where it would eliminate the need for a dedicated solution, like the RTX 3050, but it definitely does a great job.

Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 Pro (14″, 2022)’s IPS panel has a 2.2K resolution, comfortable viewing angles, and a very good contrast ratio. It covers 96% of the sRGB color gamut, This is combined with decent color accuracy when our Gaming and Web design profile is applied. Furthermore, the screen doesn’t use PWM for brightness adjustment.

All of this means that you can use the Yoga Slim 7 Pro (14″, 2022) for professional work. Thanks to the lack of PWM, you don’t need to worry about how overtime will affect your eyes or brain.

We were pretty impressed by the battery life. This device’s 61Wh package lasts for 18 hours of Web browsing, or about 12 hours and 30 minutes of video playback. On a single charge. Keep in mind that there is a “Zero touch” function that will pause your videos when you walk away from the laptop – we learned that the hard way.

This function also works for other things like locking and turning off. Combine that with the IR face recognition scanner, and you get one neat and secure little machine.

Of course, there are disadvantages like the soldered memory and the fact that you get a maximum of 16GB. Yes, it works at 6400MHz, which is currently the maximum speed for LPDDR5 RAM. And you get one M.2 PCIe x4 slot for Gen 4 SSDs.

The I/O is also a bit limited. On the bright side, there are two USB Type-C ports, one of them is 3.2 (Gen. 2), while the other is USB4. However, you get no SD card slot.

At the end of the day, the laptop is pretty good. We feel that you will be happy with what AMD offers in the form of a Ryzen 6000HS CPU, and its integrated graphics. You can also check out the Acer Swift 5 (SF514-56T), which is pretty good too.

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/lenovo-yoga-slim-7-pro-14-2022/

Pros

  • Great battery life
  • Super rigid chassis
  • 96% sRGB coverage and accurate colors with our profiles (BOE NV140DRM-N61)
  • No PWM (BOE NV140DRM-N61)
  • 1x USB4 + Gen 4 SSD support
  • IR face recognition
  • Proximity sensor


Cons

  • No SD card reader
  • Soldered memory

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