Lenovo YOGA Slim 7x Highlights the Best of Snapdragon X Elite
A YOGA By Any Other Name
It’s easier to list the things I don’t like about Lenovo’s YOGA Slim 7x Copilot+ PC than what it gets right:
The name itself: it’s a YOGA, but it doesn’t have a 360 degree hinge.
The speakers: with this display and battery life, the YOGA Slim 7x could be an ideal entertainment device, but the speakers – despite visibly flanking the keyboard – just don’t get loud enough.
Gaming: like all Snapdragon X devices, there are some limited app compatibility issues. For the consumer-focused YOGA, gaming is the area where that is most acutely felt (even if it still beats out the MacBook Air in this regard).
Nitpicks: there’s no stylus support, no headphone jack, and no 5G option.
That’s it. Everything else is great.
Lenovo’s overall packaging – the build quality, size, and weight – are nicely balanced for the $1200 price. The 14.5” 3K OLED display is inky black with punchy colors, and the chipset is so efficient that battery life is still excellent. The HP OmniBook and Microsoft Surface Laptop use LCD displays to enable even longer times between charges, but I’d much rather have the YOGA’s better display given its ability to last a full day away from a charger anyway. Microsoft offers a faster version of the Snapdragon X Elite, but I didn’t notice a difference in most real-world tasks. Lenovo’s keyboard is fantastic, and the trackpad and webcam are both very good.
New Silicon Architecture: Snapdragon X Elite
Today’s Qualcomm is diversified across IP, phones, automotive, and IoT, but it wasn’t always thus. One of the first phone-adjacent markets that Qualcomm tried to enter was computing, and it was not seeing much success. To help break through, Qualcomm acquired NUVIA in 2021 for its engineering talent. NUVIA CEO Gerard Williams was the chief architect of Apple Silicon before leaving to found NUVIA, and he agreed to take some of the Arm-based ideas his team was developing for datacenters and repurpose them for personal computing. The resulting architecture is roughly competitive with Apple’s base M3 in some performance-per-watt comparisons and has an enormous NPU for on-device AI processing.
Lenovo is fielding two 14” laptops using the Snapdragon X platform so far: the consumer-focused YOGA Slim 7x, and the ThinkPad T14s Gen6 which looks identical to every other recent ThinkPad model. The ThinkPad will be purchased by large enterprise accounts, so retail pricing isn’t especially relevant; the YOGA is priced at $1200, which is highly competitive given its specs and performance. All Snapdragon X platforms offer 45 TOPS of AI performance and are part of Microsoft’s Copilot+ PC program (see below). Lenovo is one of the few big PC OEMs with a significant smartphone portfolio. Lenovo’s Motorola razr and YOGA brands should be nicely compatible, but I didn’t see any explicit links to Motorola phones on the Slim 7x.
The review unit that I have features the entry-level Snapdragon X Elite X1E78100 with 12 Oryon CPU cores and an NPU with 45 TOPS, 16 GB RAM, 512 GB SSD, three USB-C ports that can drive two external 4K 60Hz monitors, Wi-Fi 7, and a 1080p webcam. A 70WH battery is stuffed in there, but it still comes in comfortably under 3 lb. (2.82lbs/1.28kg). Build quality is excellent and Lenovo certifies the YOGA Slim 7x to MIL-STD-810H durability standards (though there’s no indication which parts of the standard are covered). The case is a dark “Cosmic Blue” livened up by a lighter blue keyboard, and that keyboard is a highlight, with backlit keys with 1.5mm travel. The system does have a fan, but it’s exceptionally quiet. Unfortunately, so are the quad-Dolby Atmos speakers, which really need to be louder. The display is wonderful: a 14.5" 3K (2944 x 1840) OLED 90Hz touchscreen with Dolby Vision and enough brightness to make HDR content really pop: 500 nits standard, with peaks at 1000 nits.
If you build your YOGA Slim 7x on Lenovo.com, upgrades are remarkably affordable: 32GB RAM adds $69, and bumping up to a 1 TB SSD is just $45. These aren’t Apple price tiers.
While Lenovo didn’t pick the highest performing Snapdragon X Elite chip from the part bin, performance never suffered, and I still got a full day’s battery life – and exceptional standby time – with productivity workloads. Every Snapdragon X Elite laptop I have tested does not need a charger nearby for hybrid work scenarios, even if the workload is processor-heavy. This is the first Windows platform that's truly competitive with MacOS/Apple Silicon in this regard. In some ways, the Qualcomm platform handily beats Apple’s MacBook Air implementation; I spent a chunk of my review time with the YOGA Slim 7x plugged into a docking station driving two 32” 4K displays plus the internal display. The M2 MacBook Air only supports one high-resolution external monitor, while the M3 MacBook Air can support two, but only with the lid closed.
| Geekbench 6 - on battery | Apple iPad Pro M4 16GB | Apple MacBook Air 15" M2 16GB | Apple MacBook Pro 14" M3 Max 64GB | HP Elitebook Snapdragon X Elite X1E78100 | Lenovo Slim 7x Snapdragon X Elite X1E78100 | Microsoft Surface Laptop Snapdragon X Elite X1E80100 | Samsung GalaxyBook4 Edge Snapdragon X Elite X1E84100 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CPU single-core | 3846 | 2649 | 2886 | 2415 | 2418 | 2831 | 2913 |
| CPU multi-core | 14608 | 10097 | 21106 | 13765 | 13909 | 14494 | 14145 |
Windows on Arm (Not New, But Might as Well Be)
This is not the first time Microsoft and Qualcomm have attempted to build a market for Windows on Arm architecture, but this is the first time it has a chance to be broadly viable. All of Microsoft’s productivity apps have been recompiled to native apps for Arm. (Fair warning: the one issue I ran into was that only the new version of Outlook is available for Snapdragon X Elite now, and it has different license restrictions.) All the major web browsers now have native versions as well. Many core creative apps from Adobe and others are either native today, or will be in the coming months. As I finished this review, a native version of Da Vince Resolve 19 shipped.
Finally, most apps that don’t have native Arm versions can run well in emulation thanks to Microsoft’s new improved Prism emulation layer and the raw horsepower that the Snapdragon X Elite platform provides. You wouldn’t want to buy a Snapdragon X PC just to run emulated apps – they won’t be as fast or as efficient as native apps – but it rounds out the experience so that long tail apps like music players, image viewers, and even the encryption apps I tried all worked without issue.
One critical audience for the YOGA Slim 7x shouldn’t worry: students should have no issues with test-monitoring apps. I was able to download and run Bluebook (for SAT and AP exams) without any problem, and the battery meter barely budged when I took a practice exam, so students won’t have to find a table with a nearby power outlet.
There are still three areas to be aware of:
Gaming – The YOGA is a general consumer laptop, not part of Lenovo’s Legion gaming line, and if you are cross-shopping the YOGA with Apple’s MacBook Air, Lenovo actually comes out slightly ahead in terms of compatibility. However, most AAA titles are not optimized for the Snapdragon X Elite or its GPU, and that makes gaming an area where Qualcomm, Microsoft, and game developers are a long way from fully solving. There are over a thousand games that are known to work (see worksonwoa.com), but that’s a fraction of what’s available. Windows on Arm also supports cloud gaming, and I was able to connect an Xbox controller over Bluetooth and play some AAA titles that way. Still, the YOGA Slim 7x is not competitive with a Lenovo Legion Slim if you really want to play games.
Device drivers – Compatibility could be a problem if you regularly need to connect to unique printers, scanners, or lab equipment. However, I had no problems with anything normal (consumer printers, small business scanners) or obscure (old external media drives).
Unique corporate, engineering, VPN, and creativity apps – Consumers aren’t likely to encounter too many of these, and this is a problem that I expect will largely be resolved over time as apps from Adobe, Box, and others get updated. For example, Adobe Acrobat, Photoshop, and Lightroom are all native now, and the rest of Adobe’s Creative Suite is scheduled for optimization. Adobe Premiere Pro didn’t run at launch, but just a few weeks later it can run (very slowly) in emulation, and a native version is expected soon. Also worth noting: the iTunes app for Windows works fine, but Apple TV+ will not even download.
Copilot+ PC Isn’t Helping
Microsoft launched its Copilot+ PC initiative alongside Qualcomm to great fanfare ahead of its BUILD developer conference in May (see Microsoft Reinvigorates Windows with Recall and Snapdragon). The Copilot+ PC program requires PCs to have an NPU (Neural Processing Unit) with a performance measurement of at least 40 TOPS to handle on-device AI tasks without slowing down the CPU or GPU or killing battery life. The Snapdragon X provides 45 TOPS, and Microsoft has written its Copilot+ PC software and AI models for Windows on Arm to start, so even as Intel and AMD are starting to ship systems with as much as 55 TOPS they won’t be part of the Copilot+ PC program until Microsoft updates it for x86.
Unfortunately, the Copilot+ PC featureset isn’t all that compelling even a few months after it launched. The flagship feature, Recall, has been recalled for security reasons and isn’t expected to ship until later this year. That leaves drawing assistant CoCreator in Microsoft Paint, Live Captions, and Studio Effects in Teams video calls as the main AI-enhanced features.
When I tested CoCreator in Paint, it was fun and responsive, but not a reason to buy a computer. CoCreator works on-device to help you create somewhat polished results starting with stick drawings you make with your finger. The lack of stylus support on the YOGA also makes this less of a serious use case.
There are also a small but growing number of third-party apps that take advantage of the Snapdragon X Elite’s NPU to power AI features on-device. For example, Zoom and Camo have Snapdragon X -specific image processing capabilities that run on the NPU for better performance without impacting battery life.
Conclusion
Microsoft’s Copilot+ PC program might not be much of a draw to purchase the YOGA Slim 7x, it’s not a gaming PC, there are no explicit ties to Lenovo’s smartphones, and I wish it had louder speakers. However, pretty much everything else about this laptop is compelling. Great performance, great battery life, great keyboard, and a gorgeous display, all at a reasonable price.
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