Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 7 unboxing and first impressions By Neowin

Hey guys I'm Richard Neil, and today we're unboxing the Lenovo IdeaPad slim 7. , so everywhere else in the world, it's called the yoga slim 7. , that's a common thing with Lenovo the international branding for all premium. PCs is yoga, and it used to be IdeaPad in the United States. It's still ideal and that's for clamshells. By the way, now, slim 7 is the successor to the s740.

It's um. This is another thing that Lenovo changed up all its branding this year and this is I'd, say mostly about think pads, because they ran out of numbers where it was. You know like the t480 t490 and then what comes after 90. Um, but they did it for the whole lineup. So instead, like they did uh s720 s7 30 noes.

Well, I think it was just the 720. They've changed their branding a lot over the last couple of years. But anyway you know now it's just being called the seven so and then there's the intel. Flavored ones are called the 7i, which is fascinating to me, because intel is the variant. I don't think we've ever seen it where, where intel is the know, not the normal one, so let's get this open.

This was actually sent to me by AMD. Now I have. I review a lot of Lenovo laptops, as you probably know, but those all come from Lenovo. This one is coming from AMD, see the charger we got in here. I bet it's a 65 watt, USB type-c charger, 65 watt USB type-c, it's a new design by the way it's yeah, it's its curved, like the old ones that we've seen from Lenovo are um rectangular like a rectangular brick, so you can see that they put a little more thought into the design of the charger, and it looks a little prettier, which is always nice.

Now, let's get this open. This thing should have an AMD Ryzen 7 4 800. U now that's exciting to me, because I get excited about things I haven't tried. Yet now I've reviewed the uh dozen 5 4500? U, which is a explore uh CPU with six threads now the thing about intel processors is that all intel mobile processors are hyper. Threaded, so you get a quad-core processor as a thread.

This has been a thing for a while, because remember up until just a couple of years ago, the best you could do in a laptop was dual-core just a couple of years ago, that was the best of the intel. The best anybody could do in a laptop at least an Ultrabook and the u series was all dual-core, so, so just kind of get more out of that into that hyper threading, and that would give you four threads, which is like four virtual cores. Instead of just two and so um intel is still like the best they could do on um. An Ultrabook form factor is six cores with comet lake that has 12 threads, but then everything else is just quad-core. You know that, like the ice lake, core i7, quad-core, the other comet like core i7, quad-core, all core i's quad-core, now um AMD jacked it up because in that like in that and that dozen five that I just mentioned, six cores and the dozen seven eight cores you know, eight cores is way more than what intel is doing and what was interesting to me about that dozen 5.

That I reviewed is that when I ran the benchmarks- and then I started you know like, I didn't compare it to anything else. Until I wrote the review and I started putting them side by side, and I think I did dozen 5. , I did um, probably just a no. I didn't. I did an ice lake i5, because the dozen 5 should be comparable to an i5 right uh.

Furthermore, I did a comet lake i5. Furthermore, I did a nice lake i7. Furthermore, I did a comet lake i7 and I put them all next to each other and out of the four benchmarks that I ran, the dozen 5 was the best in two of them, which was really impressive. Remember I was comparing them to the two most modern core i's as well, and then the ice lake i7 barely inched it out on two of them. So that was fascinating to me, because if dozen 5 matches or exceeds the best of what intel has, then what does a dozen seven? Do you know what I mean so I've I've actually gotten a few rises? Seven since then, and they're really impressive.

Now this one um like this is the other thing I was going to say remember. I said it has six chords and six threads in that dozen five um 4500u. They also have ones that have AMD's flavor of hyper threading, so that would be the 4600. U, which has six scores of 12 threads and then, if you get the dozen, 7, 4, 4700u, eight cores and eight threads and then the dozen 7 4800u, which is what we've gotten here. Eight cores 16 threats, let's open this up, this is supposed to be a very pretty laptop.

It comes in colors, but we still have to. We still have another barrier, all right, all right. Let's take a look. It should be oh it did, they didn't send me the pretty color. That's that's in all the pictures that they sent.

I am so disappointed right now, because all the pictures in the reviewer's guide that they sent were like this maroon color, and I'm like. Finally, a laptop that's just kind of pretty and like it reminded me of the surface, laptop and just like actual nice colors that so many companies neglect to do on laptops like hp is perfect, with design um dell's getting there at least on their premium. But I mean Lenora like it's just gray. I hate this color, and I've always hated it. I've always said that when I review Lenovo PC's, like just that that very bland gray look all right here, it is.

It's just got that Lenovo branding over in the corner there we would have yoga branding, but they are not calling this yoga in the United States, so we don't get that branding now on the side we have ports, USB type-c, two of them they're, not thunderbolt, because this is an AMD machine that just doesn't happen.3.5 millimeter audio jack HDMI. Let's see what we got on the other side, two USB type, a ports and micro SD, which is your know, fine um, like I said, no thunderbolt, that's fine for most people, um! I if I said you couldn't do it on an AMD PC. A lot of people would remind me that you can but um I've. Just I've still just never seen it. So you know I it just seems like you could do it in theory, all right on the inside.

Here you have the pretty standard keyboard if you've ever used a yoga or an IdeaPad before this is Lenovo's uh, consumer, consumer keyboard, they're, all they're, all pretty similar, and they're all pretty good. I quite like it and I, but it's its it's a little shallower. One thing you'll notice is that it's very it's its completely flush with the body which is cool it. It's just kind of unnecessary. But it's that's! That's something you don't see all the time, but it's there, um Dolby Atmos speakers right next to the keyboard.

There, that's always nice. So you get a nice premium, audio experience. I won't criticize it for not having speakers on the bottom, because, honestly, you don't need them on a clamshell. Remember this thing only goes back to 180 degrees. This is not a 360 degree clamshell, otherwise it wouldn't be called IdeaPad.

It would be called um. I don't know flex. I don't know that, like Lenovo has a US brand for that or something it's just not um like that. They have like yoga is the brand. What it's supposed to be? It's funny.

I actually just had to change the default wallpaper, which is always fun because Lenovo PCs do this really annoying thing where they'll, they'll, you'll set up a new PC, and it comes with the stock wallpaper and then that stock wallpaper syncs to all your existing PCs, and it's really annoying, because what you would think is that the wallpaper you have synced for your existing PCs would just come down to the new PC, but no, no, that's not how it works with Lenovo PCs. That stock wallpaper goes to your piece, and then you have to go and set it again, and sometimes it fights you on it very annoying. I actually just had to change it because I set up another Lenovo PC the other day and that one came with like it's two cancerous wallpapers fighting against each other. It's amazing anyway, um so Lenovo packs a bunch of sensors into the little reverse notch up here. The reverse notch made that made debut on um the s 940, and it's its become a design standard for Lenovo, but in the good ones, they're, actually putting sensors up there so like it can tell if you're, if you're, looking at it, if you're sitting in front of your PC stuff, like that they're calling it AI features and then of course you got an IR camera up there, webcam stuff like that, so but it, but you know in some PCs like, for instance, you'll see that on their gaming laptops as well.

Just that notch it just but on the gaming laptops, all it means is just it's just a design thing: it's Lenovo's design thing you'll, see it says seven series at the top. You know um for on the s9 940. It said uh, nine series, of course- and I believe if it was yoga, it would say yoga 7 series, but that's neither here no there, because this is not officially a yoga. This has a full HD display. You know 1080p regular, probably touch screen, not touchscreen.

Interestingly enough, let's just take a look at these. These specs, oh McAfee, antivirus. I got to make sure to uninstall that because that's something that nobody wants, like, I said- dozen 7, 4 800- u, which is probably the best 15 watt processor, on the market right now, 16 gigs of ram storage, I'm guessing 512, that's the common configuration yeah, 512. Um and then the display. Let's check that out, that's going to be yeah, 1080p turn down that scaling.

While we're here. You know, because that's how I roll uh but yeah McAfee is there you want to get rid of that any antivirus by the way glanced by parametric is the uh. The thing that that works with all these sensors on top see what it says. Uh glance uses your attention to make your mouse and keyboard smarter. If we explore it, customize glance and settings see what glance sees um yeah the color would be great if you disabled glance by yeah.

This is basic stuff snap windows from screen to screen. This is an interesting one, and I don't know about that. It's just honestly! If I'm looking away from the window, I'm going to try this app, because this is the way I review laptops is I plug them into multiple monitors, so, so just kind of moving it like that would be interesting um. I don't know, I don't know if I would want that, though because I mean, I feel like you would just look at another screen. Naturally displays you are not paying attention.

The screen will blur. Oh, that's right! Okay, so that's why I kept blurring while, while okay, so if I look away and yeah that okay now, if I look back it's its back, see but yeah, so you notice it's still because my eyes just wander, and then it goes and tries to blur my screen. I don't. I don't think I care for this, but I don't know I it's its one of those things we'll see, we'll see all right. What else we got like, I said: Lenovo advantage, that's what you use to um, update all your drivers and such uh and, like I said, McAfee's in there, which we'll, we'll get rid of as soon as I finish this video and that's about it, not much in the way of bloatware on this PC update looks like this is actually a 25 watt CPU according to the spec sheet that AMD sent me, which is, is interesting.

So there should be a lot of power under the hood here, which is pretty cool. I am just disappointed that they sent me this gray color, like all the pictures in the reviewer's guide, were of this beautiful burgundy colored model, and it was just um it's like. If you put that color in the reviewer's guide, you know it's the prettier one, and we're going to be taking pictures of it like. Wouldn't you's also like I reviewed so many Lenovo consumer laptops? I've seen this color across my desk, like dozens of times like it's, it's its like the same thing over and over with the designs of some of these laptops. You know, but um yeah, it's pretty cool, I'm excited AMD, dozen 4000 is killing it.

You know and- and the best example of that I can provide is when I reviewed that dozen 5, and I found that it's more comparable to an i7 than an i5, but also I mean AMD's at seven nanometers. Now, just like the rest of the market, um TSMC, apple, Qualcomm, Samsung, everybody, they're, they're, seven nanometers now intel is not. It tells this can't get down to seven nanometers and that's that's, and by the way you know. If you want to talk about the real seven nanometers or whatever intel can't get down to seven nanometers and so um, they can barely get down to 10. Iceland is 10, nanometers isolate comes in.

U series which is 15 watts and y series, which is, I think, is 9 watts and I don't think I've actually seen uh ice lake y ship at all in a product but anyway or maybe in MacBook Air uh, it's possible. But anyway I say quiet ice league, you that's it and so the like they could barely do. They couldn't make enough of them. So that's why they did comet lake. U comet like you is also the only business variant.

So if you go v pro any business laptop has to be commonly, because it's the only pro variant, um, h, series, comet lake desktop comet lake, so that's all 14, nanometers still and so going into 11th gen they're still going to be on 10th gen, 10 nanometers, with hopefully an expanded lineup with tiger lake. I don't really know we'll see because that's coming in September, but the point is that AMD is just miles ahead right now and it seems like they're going to stay ahead for a while, because intel has already delayed. Seven nanometers like intel's 10 nanometers, was supposed to arrive in like 2015 2016, and it just didn't like they kept delaying it for years like a few years so now, 7 energy is already delayed from intel and AMD is already there. So they're, crushing it and the performance is crushing it too. So uh, that's that's pretty cool.

So that's it guys I'll review. In a few weeks, I'm rich from neon have a great night.

Source : Neowin