Lenovo Yoga Pro 7i review: Lots of power, great display (2024)

Just last month over here at India Today Tech, we reviewed Lenovo's latest convertible — the Lenovo Yoga 7i 2-in-1 laptop. It was a good laptop but is there anything better as well? Sure, said Lenovo. And sent us a beefed up Lenovo Yoga Pro 7i, which is a regular laptop and not a convertible, so that we can take a closer look at it. It’s indeed much more powerful and surely a better package than that convertible, although it also costs a little bit more.

This new laptop too belongs to the Yoga series. But it does not do all the crazy convertible stuff. Instead, it offers top performance with the power of the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H, a new processor that uses Intel’s latest CPU architecture. And not just a top CPU, but the Lenovo Yoga Pro 7i also comes with a discrete graphics card from Nvidia. You see, the Yoga Pro 7i has the RTX GeForce 4050 inside it.

Essentially, and at least on paper, the Yoga Pro 7i is a laptop meant for those who work hard and play harder. This is because it has a place in an office, but due to its graphics card it is also capable of handling some casual gaming with ease. The rest of the hardware too is fairly capable. The question, however, is if the entirety of it — the all of Yoga Pro 7i — can it justify its rather hefty starting price of Rs 1.5 lakh. And on that aspect I am not entirely certain. But about that in my conclusion.

First a quick run through the specs: The Lenovo Yoga Pro 7i drives its power from the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H and is complemented by the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 with 6GB VRAM. The unit I am reviewing comes with 32GB RAM and 1TB storage. The screen of the laptop measures 14.5 inches. It is also a brilliant screen due to its OLED panel and fairly high resolution of 2880x1800 pixels. It supports 120Hz refresh rate. The software is Windows 11 Home Edition, and Lenovo has bundled Office Home & Student with it, although the Office suite needs to be activated.

Yoga Pro 7i design and display: Deja vu

The Lenovo Yoga Pro 7i looks similar to the Lenovo Yoga 7i 2-in-1 that I reviewed earlier. It has the same aluminium build, which I find okay and not exactly as solid as I have noticed on Apple laptops. It has a similar Teal Blue colour and it weighs around 2 kg. The speaker grills are on the side of the keyboard. The only big difference is that you cannot fold the screen 360 degrees to use it as a tablet. However, it is from the Yoga family so it does offer some flexibility by laying flat at 180 degrees. Of course, this is a slightly bigger laptop and that does mean there are a few other changes.

For example, ahem, on the port side. On the right, there is one USB 2.0 port, one 3-mm audio jack port, and the power button. On the right there is also a unique camera button, which can be toggled to electronically switch on and switch off the front camera. Privacy-minded users will appreciate it.

On the left, there is an HDMI port and two USB-C ports. Though I would have liked to see more ports, particularly one more USB-C port, and more on the right, because it would have added some more convenience for a user. After all, one of the USB-C ports is anyway occupied by the charger.

Design and build-wise, the Lenovo Yoga Pro 7i looks sturdy and premium and is easy to carry around everywhere. I used it as my primary work device for over a week, doing my work on it in the office carrying it all around my house as I browsed on it or watched something on it, and didn’t find it bothersome at all.

Display is one of the best parts of the Yoga Pro 7i. Its 14.5-inch OLED display offers up to a 120Hz refresh rate, up to 2880x1800 resolution, and 10-bit colour depth, something that allows Lenovo to offers users 100 per cent P3 colour coverage as well as support for Dolby Vision. Beyond the technical buzzwords and jargons: it is a mighty fine display. It shows brilliant colours, as OLED panels tend to do, and its up to 400nits of peak brightness ensures the screen is not reflective even in well-lit rooms or outdoors.

I watched a lot of YouTube videos and streamed Netflix shows on the Yoga Pro 7i and I really enjoyed the viewing experience it offers. It's clear, crisp, and balanced equally from all viewing angles. The display can also lay flat at 180 degrees. Though I don't really see the practical use of this flexibility, it does save me from the scare I usually get with other laptops whenever I accidentally tend to push the screen a bit too much while opening the lid.

Lenovo Yoga Pro 7i performance

The Lenovo Yoga Pro 7i is all about performance, and with the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H paired with the Nvidia graphics card, it does a good job. I used the laptop for work, juggling between CMS, documents, YouTube — music is important— and even the AI powers of Copilot, as it is one of the latest Windows laptops to come with a dedicated Copilot button. The laptop chugs along merrily irrespective of what you are doing on it. It’s smooth and fuss-free.
I even played some games like GTA 5 — a little old but still fairly demanding — and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 allowed me to play at the highest settings. Though the 4050 is not the fastest, it does a decent job, demonstrating that the Yoga Pro 7i can handle those sudden gaming urges if you are into games.

Just to put it in some perspective I ran a few basic benchmarks on the laptop. In Cinebench 24, the single-core score for the 155H — and single-core is the more important one — was 101 points, which theoretically makes the laptop almost as fast as an extremely high-end desktop from one to two years ago. Not bad at all. Similarly, the RTX 4060 in the scores around 6500 points in the GPU test, which too is fairly respectable given that this is similar to desktop-class GPUs from a few years ago.

In GeekBench, the Yoga Pro 7i got 2099 points in single core and 12347 points in the multi-core test. On the GPU side it scored close to 63000 points.

What does this mean? It means that some of the laptop chipsets like Apple M3 are still faster, particularly in important single-core performance, but the Intel 155H and Nvidia RTX 4050 is fast enough to make for a very potent combination, the kind of combination that one can almost call desktop-class.

In terms of performance, one thing I did not like that much. The heat and the fan noise. In regular, day to day use, the laptop is fine. It runs cool and quiet. But if you are playing games on it, or doing something strenuous like running Cinebench, it can heat up and its fans start spinning like a mini tornado. And they make enough noise to be audible to your office colleagues sitting a metre away from you.

Just like the display, I also loved the keyboard in the Yoga Pro 7i. It is tactile and I liked typing on it — given that I type around 3000 to 4000 words daily. Not once did I feel strain on my fingers. The keyboard offers 3 settings of backlighting— auto, low, and high — so it was easy to work in dimly lit environments or even at night after turning off the lights.

Last time when I reviewed a Lenovo laptop, one of my grouses was its trackpad. Well, not with the Yoga Pro 7i. I love the trackpad in this laptop — it is large, smooth and it tracks the fingers and gestures quickly and accurately.

Oh, but the speakers! This is one bit I found middling or rather average in the Yoga Pro 7i. Under the hood, the Yoga Pro 7i offers Dolby Atmos-powered speakers — there are 4 of them — but they do only an okay job. In fact, while playing music or streaming videos, the audio output feels screechy at higher volumes and not at all pleasant. Talking of volume, they don’t go very loud. If you are using a window AC like I do at home and if you sit near it to watch a movie on the Yoga Pro 7i, you would do better to route the audio through a headphone or an external speaker.

Hurrah for fast charging

Given that this is a laptop with powerful hardware, it does sips through the battery rather quickly. In my regular use, I mostly found that it would give me around 3 to 4 hours of battery life, which is on the lower side. But thankfully, there is faster charging support in the laptop. It comes with a 140W charger, which powers it from 0 to 100 within an hour, which is very fast and obviously convenient.

Lenovo Yoga Pro 7i review: should you buy it?

This is somewhat of a tricky question because you see the Lenovo Yoga Pro 7i is a jack of all, master of none. It’s an all-purpose laptop but it does have its share of weaknesses, which kind of leaves it neither here nor there. You see, if you want a laptop for long battery life and work, there are better choices available. Similarly if you want something for gaming, there are better choices available.

Still, if you are looking for a powerful laptop that will work as your office and work companion, and yet it is a laptop on which you can fire up Steam to play a game or two, you should take a look at the Yoga Pro 7i. I wish it had a better set of speakers and better battery life, but at the same time I also admire its great display, well-built keyboard and smooth trackpad.

In other words, like any other laptop out in the market the Yoga Pro 7i too is a mixed bag. Its price also doesn’t help it because Rs 1.5 lakh is a lot of money, which pits the Yoga Pro 7i against formidable machines like MacBook Air 15. Yet, if you are looking for a powerful and do-it-all Windows laptop, you should take a closer look at it.