Lenovo Yoga 7i 14 (2021) Laptop Review

The Lenovo Yoga 7i's design is simple and understated. It has relatively thin bezels on three sides of the display, with a slight outward notch at the top to house the front-facing camera and to provide a place to hold onto when opening the laptop. It has up-firing speakers on both sides of the keyboard and exhaust vents on the bottom, near the back. It's available in two color schemes: Slate Gray and Dark Moss.

The build quality is good. The chassis is entirely aluminum and feels sturdy overall, with no obvious gaps in the construction. However, there's some flex in the display and the keyboard deck, more in the former than the latter. There's also a slight bend in the display, though it could be just our unit, so your mileage may vary.

The Lenovo Yoga 7i has a good hinge. It feels solid and stable, and its 360-degree range lets you flip the screen around into tablet mode. There's some wobble, but it's minimal and isn't an issue. There's too much resistance to open the laptop with one hand, which is disappointing as it's a nice quality-of-life feature that gives laptops a more premium feel.

The Lenovo 7i 14 is a very portable, thin, and light laptop. Its power adapter is compact and easily fits into most bags.

The serviceability is mediocre. To access the internals, you need to remove seven T5 screws and pry open the bottom panel with a pick or prying tool. The storage slot is easily accessible if you want to upgrade the drive later on, and it supports M.2 2242 and 2280 PCIe NVMe SSDs.

• Lenovo Yoga 7i laptop
• 65W USB-C power adapter and cord
• Documentation

The Lenovo Yoga 7i's screen displays sharp images and text thanks to its high pixel density, and it provides just enough space for split-screen multitasking. Its 16:9 aspect ratio is great for media consumption as most videos are in the same format and fill the entire screen; however, it feels a little too short for productivity, meaning you have to scroll more when reading a document or website.

The Lenovo Yoga 7i is only available with a 60Hz display, which is typical for most thin and light productivity laptops. The display has a slow response time, resulting in visible blur trails behind moving objects, which isn't ideal for viewing fast-moving content like sports or gaming.

The Lenovo Yoga 7i's contrast ratio is decent and within the typical range of most IPS panels. However, it's still a relatively low number compared to other panel technologies like VA and OLED. This level of contrast makes blacks look gray in dim settings.

The Lenovo Yoga 7i's maximum brightness is mediocre. It doesn't get bright enough to overcome glare, so it's best to avoid very well-lit or sunny environments. It gets very dim at the lowest brightness setting, though, which is great for viewing content in the dark as it causes less eye strain. If you want a similar laptop with a brighter display, check out the Lenovo Yoga 9i 14 (2021).

The reflection handling is mediocre. Its glossy finish struggles with direct reflections, which are visible even with the screen at maximum brightness, so it's best to avoid having bright lights shining directly at the screen.

The black uniformity is sub-par. There's severe backlight bleed at the bottom left corner, and there's some along the bottom edge and at the top left corner as well. The vertical lines are artifacts caused by the camera and aren't visible in person.

The Lenovo Yoga 7i 2-in-1 has passable horizontal viewing angles. The image dims and washes out fairly quickly as you move off-center. The image quality is still good enough from the side for sharing text documents and such with someone else, but not work that requires perfect accuracy. There's a slight offset on the right side near the center of the screen because our unit's display has a small indent; your mileage may vary. The vertical lines are artifacts caused by the camera and aren't visible in person.

The Lenovo Yoga 7i 14 has okay vertical viewing angles. The image looks dimmer and more washed out from above and below, but you still have a fair amount of play before image quality degrades, which can be helpful when using the laptop in a tight space like a bus or an airplane. Again, there's a slight offset on the below side because our unit's display has a small indent, so your mileage may vary.

The display accuracy is okay out of the box. Most color inaccuracies are minor and hard to spot without a colorimeter; however, the white balance is visibly off, especially at higher brightness levels. The color temperature is only slightly warmer than the standard 6500K target, giving the image a barely noticeable reddish tint. The gamma is too high throughout, making most scenes appear darker than they should.

The Lenovo Yoga 7i has a great color gamut. It's essentially an sRGB panel as it's the only color space that it has near full coverage. It doesn't cover enough of the wider color spaces like Adobe RGB, DCI P3, and Rec. 2020 for any practical purposes.

The backlight is flicker-free, which helps reduce eye strain. The luminosity level is very low on the 50% graph because the display's brightness at 50% is much dimmer than 50% of the display's maximum brightness.

The Lenovo Yoga 7i has a great keyboard. The keys are stable and have sufficient spacing between them. They don't require much force to actuate, but some people might find them tiring to type on because they have a lot of travel distance and feel slightly mushy. You can toggle through two backlight brightness levels using FN and the spacebar or turn the backlight off completely.

The touchpad is decent. It's on the smaller side, but it's adequate for a laptop this size. It feels smooth and tracks well, and there aren't any issues with palm rejection or other actions like dragging and dropping. However, you can only click at the bottom or middle of the touchpad, not at the top.

The Lenovo Yoga 7i has great speakers. They have a decent amount of bass extension for laptop speakers, but they still sound slightly treble-heavy as there's a lot of emphasis in the higher frequencies, making them good for speech-heavy content but not music or movies. They get very loud with minimal compression artifacts at max volume.

The webcam's video quality is just okay. The image looks soft, with only a small amount of fine detail, and the colors aren't true to life. The microphone sounds quiet, but speech comes across clearly with no static and minimal background noise. There's a physical privacy cover for the webcam; however, it doesn't disable the camera at the software level, so the microphone can still record audio even if you cover the lens.

The Lenovo Yoga 7i has a good port selection. Its two USB-C ports support Thunderbolt 4/USB4 data transfer speed (up to 40Gbps), video output (up to two 4k @ 60Hz external displays), and Power Delivery 3.0. Power Delivery allows for fast charging of the laptop and mobile devices. The USB-A port supports USB 3.2 Gen 1 data transfer speed (up to 5Gbps), and it's always on, meaning you can use it to charge a mobile device even when the laptop is off.

The wireless adapter is an Intel Wi-Fi AX201.

You can configure the Lenovo Yoga 7i with an Intel Core i5-1135G7 or an Intel Core i7-1165G7. They're both power-efficient quad-core processors designed for light workloads like web browsing, text formatting, video playback, and even some more demanding tasks like photo editing, so long as the material isn't overly complex. The Core i7 is faster on paper because it has higher clock speeds and more cache memory; however, the performance difference isn't huge and only noticeable if you perform intensive tasks that push the CPUs to their maximum capacity.

The Lenovo Yoga 7i is only available with integrated graphics. Both CPUs have Intel Iris Xe Graphics; however, the Core i5's has 80 execution units, while the Core i7's has 96 execution units. The Intel Iris Xe GPU can handle simple tasks like web browsing and video playback, but it isn't powerful enough for demanding workloads like video editing or 3D animation. You can play some light, well-optimized games, though you'll have to play with low graphical settings or at a lower resolution to get smooth gameplay. The Core i7 will only perform slightly better, not enough to make much difference.

You can configure this laptop with 8, 12, or 16GB of memory. They aren't user-upgradeable, so you need to choose the best configuration for your needs upfront. 8GB is enough for a light workload of text formatting and web browsing, but it's better to get 12GB or 16GB if you tend to have multiple tabs or applications opened simultaneously.

You can configure this laptop with a 256GB, 512GB, or 1TB M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD. The SSD is user-replaceable, meaning you can swap it out later on for a larger or faster drive.

The Lenovo Yoga 7i scores well in Geekbench 5. The posted numbers are scores obtained in the default power profile, which helps extend battery life at the cost of some performance loss. The Performance mode, which you can activate through Lenovo's Vantage software, increases overall performance, particularly in multi-thread and GPU compute workloads. However, this comes at the cost of higher CPU and GPU temperatures and louder fan noise. These are the Performance mode scores:

• CPU Single-Thread: 1,410 points
• CPU Multi-Thread: 5,333 points
• GPU Compute: 15,258 points

The Intel Core i5 has outstanding single-thread performance, among the best for x86 CPUs of its generation. Its multi-thread performance is good and more than enough for general productivity tasks. However, if you plan on running heavily multi-threaded applications, there are CPUs with more cores and threads that perform better, like AMD Ryzen CPUs or Apple's M1 and M2 SoCs. Overall, the Core i5-1135G7 provides a smooth experience in light to moderately heavy workloads, like text formatting, web browsing, video playback, or even some light photo editing. The Core i7-1165G7 will perform better, but it'll likely throttle more. As for the GPU compute score, the Core i5's Intel Iris Xe Graphics scores poorly, and the Core i7's will only be slightly better; neither are ideal for demanding tasks like video editing or 3D animation.

The Lenovo Yoga 7i has a great score in Cinebench R23. Like the Geekbench 5 benchmarks, the Core i5-1135G7's single-thread performance is outstanding, and its multi-thread performance is good but lags behind other CPUs with more cores and threads. The Performance mode gives better results, though only slightly:

• Single-Thread: 1,371 points
• Multi-Thread: 5,412 points

The Core i7-1165G7 will perform better, in the same ballpark as the ASUS VivoBook 15 OLED K513 (2021).

The performance in Blender is sub-par. It takes a while to render the simple bmw27 scene, which isn't ideal for professionals working on a deadline. Blender doesn't support the Intel Core i5's Iris Xe Graphics, though it'll likely take longer than the CPU to render the same scene. The render time is the same in Performance mode because Blender scales better with more cores than higher clock speeds. The Core i7-1165G7 will be faster but still not good enough for professional use. If you need a laptop that can complete 3D renders faster, check out the HP Victus 16 (2021).

The Lenovo Yoga 7i performs poorly in the Basemark GPU benchmark. The posted number is the score obtained in the default power profile; it scores 15,949 in Performance mode. It's a good score for an integrated GPU; however, it's still a relatively low number compared to even an entry-level dedicated GPU like the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 in the HP Pavilion Gaming Laptop 15 (2021). In short, the core i5's Iris Xe is a low-power GPU that can only handle simple games, not graphically-intensive AAA titles. You can play some well-optimized mainstream games, but you'll almost always have to play at low graphical settings to get smooth gameplay. The Core i7 will perform only slightly better, not enough to make much difference in most games.

The storage drive performance is outstanding. Its fast read speeds let the system boot up and launch apps very quickly. It doesn't have the fastest sequential write speed for a PCIe NVMe SSD, so transferring a large file or installing a large app can take a while, but it's fast enough for most people using this laptop for light productivity tasks. The speed of the SSD may vary depending on the size, as larger SSDs tend to perform better.

The Lenovo Yoga 7i has outstanding battery life. You can easily get through a typical 8-hour workday of light productivity on a full charge. You can even extend it to two full days if you have a very light workload or take active measures to extend battery life, like turning on battery saver mode. Video playback consumes more power, but it still lasts long enough to get you through multiple full-length movies, which is great for long flights. Battery life while gaming is very short but better than most gaming laptops with a dedicated GPU. The Core i7 model will likely have slightly shorter battery life. Battery life varies greatly depending on usage.

Borderlands 3 isn't playable on the Lenovo Yoga 7i with an Intel Core i5-1135G7 and integrated Iris Xe Graphics. The game is extremely choppy even at the lowest graphical settings, which isn't ideal for an FPS game. The Core i7 will perform a little better, but not enough to make the game playable.

Civilization VI runs poorly. The game is very choppy at high settings due to low frame rates, and the turn time is long. The average frame rate doesn't quite reach 60 fps at low settings, but it's playable because Civilization VI is a turn-based game that doesn't require fast reaction time. The Core i7 will perform better and get you a more stable 60 fps provided that you turn some settings down, but the turn time will still be long.

The performance in CS:GO is mediocre. The average frame rate gets close to 60fps at high graphical settings, but it frequently drops into the low 30s and 20s, causing noticeable stutters. That said, you can get much smoother gameplay if you turn the settings down to near minimum. The Core i7 will get you a more stable 60fps at high settings, but you'll still get regular stutters.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider runs terribly on the Lenovo Yoga 7i. The game is too choppy even at the lowest graphical settings. The Core i7 will only perform slightly better, not enough to make it playable.

The Lenovo Yoga 7i has excellent thermal and noise handling. The keyboard is cool when idle and only gets slightly warm under load, not enough to cause discomfort. The fan is noticeable under load, but it isn't annoying as it's mostly the sound of heavy airflow rather than a high-pitch whine. It's worth noting that the posted numbers are measurements taken in the default Balanced power profile. The keyboard deck gets to 43°C (109.4°F) in Performance mode, which is noticeably hotter but still not uncomfortable, and fan noise increases only slightly, up to 45.5 dBA.

The Lenovo Yoga 7i has great performance over time. The CPU gets hot and throttles under load. The performance loss isn't noticeable when performing light productivity tasks; it's only noticeable when performing a demanding task for an extended period. The Intel Core i7 will likely throttle more.

The Lenovo Yoga 7i has a few pre-installed software applications, including:

• Lenovo Vantage: This app helps keep the drivers and BIOS up to date. It also lets you view the system's status and warranty information as well as access various settings, like power and audio profiles.
• Lenovo Utility: Technical support app that contains system information and logs.
• McAfee LiveSafe: Antivirus software.

The Lenovo Yoga 7i 2-in-1 14 has a fingerprint sensor on the keyboard deck below the right arrow key. It lets you log into Windows quickly, authorize purchases in the Windows Store, and auto-fill passwords on supported websites. The display supports pen input, but depending on the model and region, you may have to buy the stylus separately. Lenovo sells one, though any Wacom AES stylus will work.