Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition Review: A True MacBook Competitor or Just Hype?

February 17, 2025, 10:08 AM
by Md. Mehedi Hasan

UNB News
Publish- February 17, 2025, 10:08 AM
Md. Mehedi Hasan
Update- February 17, 2025, 10:25 AM

Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition

Lenovo unveiled its latest premium ultrabook, the Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition, on September 5, 2024, positioning it as a serious MacBook competitor. This upgraded model boasts the powerful Lunar Arc chipset, built on Intel’s second-generation Arc architecture, along with extended battery life, enhanced performance, and several cutting-edge features. But does it truly rival the MacBook’s iconic design and top-tier performance? Let’s break down its specifications, strengths, weaknesses, and real-world performance to find out if it lives up to the hype.

Key Features of the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition

Design

The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition has introduced a plain grey aluminium chassis that adds robustness to the design but lacks aesthetic appeal. Measuring 13.54 by 9.27 by 0.55 inches, its size is well around the size of the MacBook Air 15 M3 model. At a weight of 1.5kg, the Aura Edition doesn’t feel as light as it looks. However, its thin and sleek body can bolster super portability.

The Aura Edition is only available in grey, keeping the appearance as plain as possible. Users will not find any textured or engraved decoration on any front of the laptop, but just a smooth, solid plain touch. The corners are rounded, boosting the overall elegance of its appearance.

A complete set of essential ports is arranged along the sides, including a full-sized HDMI port, 2x Thunderbolt 4 ports, a 3.5mm audio jack, and a USB-A port. Moreover, on the right side, users will also find a power button and a camera security stutter that lets you disable the camera without meddling with software.

Speaker, Keyboard, and Trackpad

Sandwiching the keyboard in the middle, two sound channels vertically sit just by the sides of the laptop. Both soundbars keep a fair enough distance from the keyboard to justify harmony. In terms of performance, these speakers live up to the mark by sounding loud, bassist, and undistorted. However, it still struggles to overcome Apple’s sound system in providing precise and clear audio.

The keyboard of the Aura Edition gives it an edge over a few market peers, championing a satisfactory feel with crips strokes and springy rebounds. To keep it simple and comfortable, the laptop has chosen not to cram extra keys; instead, it has opted for minimal keys keeping enough breathing room for finger manoeuvre.

The trackpad will break hearts as it fails to match the quality and performance of the ones introduced in the ThinkPad series, let alone premium competitors, like the one provided by the MacBook 15 M3. Wider, yet shorter, the Aura Edition’s trackpad is not up for executing complex tasks. Besides basic touch navigation, it only supports a couple of gesture inputs and clicks.

Display

The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition glares back with its 15.3” 2880x1800 IPS LCD display tying with the MacBook 15 M3’s panel. However, the Aura Edition breaks the tie by featuring a 120Hz refresh rate on the face of the M3’s 60Hz.

While the display goes beyond providing a top-of-the-market experience, an OLED display would be preferable in the premium market contender. The typical background glow of the LCD display and the greyish tone in black scenes will feel unacceptable.

Performance and Hardware

Intel’s Meteor Arc’s next-generation chipset, the Lunar Arc, does its best to offer seamless overall performance, overwhelming many competitors, but not the M3. The Lunar Arc is the code name of the Intel Core Ultra 7 258V, an 8-core chipset that runs at a basic 2.2GHz clock cycle rate, allowing a limit of up to 4.2GHz with the Turbo Booster.

As the GPU, the Aura Edition uses the 140V Intel Arc Graphics, enabling a highly customizable management system and rendering vivid graphics. However, like the chipset, the GPU also doesn’t match Apple’s M3 GPU in performance. In Geekbench 6 tests, the MacBook 15 M3 far exceeds the Aura Edition, resulting in higher scores in single-core and multi-core performance.

Webcam and Microphone

A 1080p/60fps webcam supplies sharp and bright videos but grapples with saturation and colour definitions. Under bright light, the live streams seem explicit with details, but in low light, the screen becomes grainy and obscure.

The featured microphone can filter noise and give a decent performance. It will deliver a clear sound during a video calling session.

Battery and Charging

The Lenovo Yoga 7i Aura Edition comes with a 70Wh battery that lives up to its promise. With heavy usage, the battery can run for 8 to 10 hours at a stretch and can be extended to 12 hours with light usage. No laptop running on Windows has ever shown such supremacy in battery life, and if compared to the M3’s battery performance, it is a sure tie.

Pros and Cons of the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition

Pros

- Light and sleek design
- Robust metal chassis
- Bright display
- Good speakers
- A complete set of ports
- Powerful Lunar Arc chipset
- Enduring battery life.

Cons

- Annoying bloatware
- High price
- Horrendous touchpad
- Poor webcam

Price of the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition

The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition is priced at $1,299.99 or BDT 1,57,533 (at the current conversion rate, 1 USD = BDT 121.18).

Conclusion

With the cutting-edge Lunar Arc chipset, the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura edition excels in performance and battery life, defeating its predecessors. But the Aura Edition’s performance is a far cry from MacBook’s. The crispy display, bass-amplifying speakers, potent chipset and GPU, and top-of-the-line battery performance collectively place the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura edition among the best laptops.