Lenovo Yoga 7i unboxing and first impressions By Neowin

Hey guys I'm Richard Edwin, and today we're unboxing the Lenovo yoga 7i 15. , so um this thing's, pretty cool um Lenovo reached out asking. If I wanted to review it and um I accepted it mainly because it has uh intel tiger lake processors, which um it's new and exciting. To me still, even though this will be my third tiger lake machine um, the only thing like holding me back from accepting this, because I'm already currently reviewing the yoga 9i, which is like the flagship they're, both convertibles, so they're, both pretty similar they're. Both the 15.6 inch models so um, but they're different, though right, because the 9i15 that I'm reviewing uh has a 45 watt, intel, processor and dedicated graphics in that convertible form factor. This one, on the other hand, has a tiger lake, which I believe is 28 watts um it can.

It can vary with that, uh, u, series processor, but anyway it's got a core i7 1165 g7. So it's got the iris BC graphics. Another nice thing about 11th, gen processors is that it means it has faster memory. It has thunderbolt 4, so there's some good stuff here. So let's get this open now, there's a couple other things that are we'll say missing: uh when compared to the 9 series.

For example, the yoga 9 series has a Dolby Atmos sound bar, a rotating sound bar in the hinge, which is awesome. This also has Dolby Atmos speakers uh. It has two watt Dolby Atmos speakers, but it just doesn't have that rotating soundbar on the hinge. Okay, I believe it also doesn't have the pen garage, yep, yeah, there's no pen garage, so it um, it probably doesn't actually come with a pen. Most of the seven series stuff does not that's um.

You know the seven series is meant to be more mainstream um, so one way that you can cut costs a little in a mainstream laptop is to just not ship it with the pen oops- and this comes with actually a 65 watt processor, which is uh somewhat rare on a 15.6 inch device and that that's just because 15.6 inch devices tend to have more powerful internals. They tend to get those dedicated graphics. You tend to get that 45 watt CPU um, but we don't have that here, which it is sort of what interests me? Um, a? U series CPU and a 15-inch device. So this is kind of a different target audience for um. Then, then perhaps say an um.

You know a yoga 9 series or a Dell XPS 15 or a Lenovo ThinkPad x1 extreme right, so Lenovo does have a new yoga wallpaper, that's completely new. They used to have a different one, and now that I'm seeing this, that means that it's going to show up on all my computers, which is super annoying. It's a Lenovo thing, and you know I've asked some about this. They don't even seem to know about it, but whatever, whenever that it comes with the stock wallpaper, it syncs to your settings to the rest of your PC, so that stock wallpaper shows up on all your PCs rather than the one you that you have synced showing up on your brand new Lenovo PC. Alright.

So, like I said we do have those Dolby Atmos speakers up here. It's not the Dolby Atmos rotating sound bar that you would see on the yoga.9 series like I said, and how does that affect you well I'll, show you when you're using it as a tablet. Those speakers are now pointing away from you, whereas with the 9 series, you would still get those speakers on the bottom because there's a rotating sound bar in the hinge. So that's the key difference with the speakers there, all right and um. You know on some laptops like hp's.

They would actually put speakers on the bottom, so you always have speakers pointed at you. There are different ways of doing it, but um you know they're Dolby, Atmos they're, it's their both two watt speakers. So it's actually gonna sound pretty good anyway, but just I guess not as good as if you had that by the way that rotating sound bar is freaking amazing, so um, it is a little of a difference. There um 71 watt hour battery. This is not uh like a thin and light PC like we would see.

You know. I've had some um lg grams like there are some 15 watts. I mean 15-inch laptops that use an u series, processor and um. You know they have they. They tend to be thin and light to um compensate for not having that the powerful internals like you know that, like that's one of the benefits of having stuff, that's not quite as powerful, so let's get that sticker off there.

We do have a privacy guard on the display, so we can just on the webcam. So we can just cover it up like that. Although for windows, hello, we do have a fingerprint sensor over here. The color is called dark moss by the way um. So let's also take a look at what we've got.

We have two thunderbolt 4 processors now ports, I should say- and a 3.5 millimeter audio jack. So what's different about thunderbolt 4, you might be wondering um, it's basically the full spec of thunderbolt 3. , so um. I reviewed a lot of PCs uh last year that were supposed to have thunderbolt, 3 and thunder ball.3 intel would boast that you can power a two 4k displays or one 5k display off of a single port, and it was awesome- and that was true for a lot of them, but not all of them, because the minimum spec only uh required that you um it only used two lanes, so you could only power one 4k display, and it was 20 gigabits per second instead of 40 gigabits per second. So now, with thunderbolt 4, we've actually got it's.

The full spec is now the minimum spec. So this either of these ports will be able to power. Two 4k displays or support 40 gigabits per second data transfer speeds all the good stuff that you just didn't know if you were getting with thunderbolt 3. So that's all there. If you got tiger lake, you got thunderbolt 4, most likely at least right now.

On the other side, two USB 3.2 gen2 type, a port, and that's always nice- that's 10 gigabits per second and that's kind of a rarity um with today's um ports, you're still seeing a lot of USB 3.2 gen1, which is five gigabits per second. So that is something that's definitely nice to see. Um I have to say I'm not a huge fan of the design of Lenovo's yoga laptops. I don't love that yoga logo that it's just off to the side, but one thing I like is that this is more of a green color, whereas uh, it's usually just that dull gray, so I feel like this is a little more stylish. I like it.

Furthermore, I think this is a good look. Okay, um and I mean that's that's mostly it. The keyboard doesn't really change. Lenovo uses great keyboards, whether you get a think pit or a consumer laptop um. It's a little shallower.

It's a kind of lot shallower on a consumer laptop like this, though, compared to a ThinkPad and that's fine, um and then yeah, and then we have our 15.6 inch display it's its 1080p, I believe. That's all they offer is 1080p on this model, uh that there 's are two configurations, though there's the 250 knit regular one, and then there is um the Dolby Vision. HDR 401 goes up to 500 nits, so um yeah cool stuff. Let's see they didn't, actually they weren't very clear about the specs that they sent me. I'm guessing.

This is also going to have uh. You know 16 gigs of ram alongside oh 12, 12 gigs of ram right. They did tell me that um then, of course, like I said core i7 1165 g7, which is the uh tiger lake SKU uh. So that's the thing that I'm most excited about. Although the general features of the laptop are pretty cool, I got to give them some credit here.

Uh. It is made of all aluminum and the body weighs in at 4.19 pounds so, like I said it's about the same thickness and weight as, if you had that 45 watt processor and dedicated graphics uh. So we could also just check how much storage we've got, and I think that's 512. It is 512. , so cool all right, so that is the yoga 7i, and I'm just going to leave it like this, because I quite like the color- and you know I say that the biggest thing I'm excited about is tiger lake.

I'm kind of more excited about the color um Lenovo usually sends me these yoga that are just you know that, like it's usually called like gunmetal gray, or something like that, it's its just a really dull color. So I'm really excited to see something a little different. You know um. Obviously I am excited about tiger lake as well, because that's intel's new thing right that that's um, 11th gen processors are just hitting the market now in new products. Um, it's intel's second generation 10, nanometer, uh product and the graphics have been bumped up again: um iris Xe.

It's called and um yeah. So, like I've used a little, you can play some games on it. You can play some. Do some 1080p gaming, if you're hardcore into gaming, I'd, I'd still recommend getting some dedicated graphics. You know um, but you can also you can edit a video on it.

It's its good stuff, it's a good product! So um you now and then of course we. This is a convertible form factor and then the pen, it does seem to be sold separately so anyway, guys. That's it, so I'll have a review on this in about a month. I have a lot of stuff in them in the pipe so stay tuned. I'm Richard Edwin have a great night.

Source : Neowin