Lenovo Yoga Pro 7i (2024) review: Excess and success

Buying a new laptop involves picking your battles and choosing the right compromises for your situation. Want a smoother relationship between your iPhone and your PC? A MacBook might be the way to go. Prefer the raw power and prowess of a content creation station like the ASUS Vivobook Pro? You're going to have to make sacrifices when it comes to portability and you're going to have to pay more up-front.

For some though, the spotlight on these bespoke scenarios and edge cases is to miss the forest for the trees. If you aren't coming to the table with specific asks beyond a traditional clamshell form factor, better than entry-level grade performance and a price that won't cost you an arm and a leg, it can be hard to know where to start let alone where to go if you want just a little bit more without going overboard.

Finding the right laptop usually involves learning to speak the language, but the Lenovo Yoga Pro 7i is something of a Rosetta stone.

In Australia, pricing for the Yoga Pro 7i starts at $2549.

There are several variants available, with the cheapest shipping with an Intel Core Ultra 5 125H and 16GB of memory. The most expensive model comes with an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H, 32GB of memory, an OLED screen and an Nvidia RTX 4060. The middle-of-the-road model has 32GB of RAM but has an OLED screen and a faster processor.

As usual, there are still ways to save money if you know where to look. To lock in the best bargain Australia's retailers offer when it comes to the Lenovo Yoga Pro 7i, check out the table below.

Before you make a decision, be sure to read our recommendation for the specs.

Every good laptop is built around a good screen and the Yoga Pro 7i is no different in that regard. The machine features a 14-inch PureSight Pro Display with 100% DCI-P3 colour, 3K resolution and a 120Hz refresh rate. Our review unit was a special variant of the device that featured a 2.8K OLED screen, which is also available.

Looking past the headline act here, this year's Yoga Pro 7i looks a lot like last year's model. It's got a larger (and quieter) trackpad, a keyboard with 1.5mm of press, a 1080p camera,  a quartet of Dolby Atmos-optimised speakers and microphones, plus a privacy shutter and MIL-STD 810H durability (though the usual caveats apply).

As far as premium laptops go, the Yoga Pro 7i errs on the side of slimness but doesn't go so lightweight as to rob you of the satisfaction of flipping the lid open with a single finger.

There's a similar line balance between essentialism and excess when it comes to the ports on the portable PC. The left-most edge is host to a pair of USB-C ports and a HDMI output. The right is where you'll find an old-school USB-A port, a headphone jack and the power key.

Lenovo hasn't exactly reinvented the wheel when it comes to this year's Yoga Pro 7i but that's not to say they aren't on a roll here.

Under the hood, the Yoga Pro 7i is kitted out with Intel's latest Ultra processors, up to 32GB of RAM and up to 1TB of SSD storage. The model I reviewed featured 32GB of RAM, 1TB of RAM and an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H processor, which is pretty much as powerful as this device gets.

Unless you opt for the OLED model, the one missing piece of the puzzle here is a GPU. That's something you're not necessarily going to miss if all you're using this for is answering emails and editing the occasional image in Lightroom. However, if you are looking to use this for more than the odd game of Hearthstone or Minecraft then that's an upgrade that's going to be worth the expense.

If you do pay for that more expensive model, you don't just get a better screen. You also score an Nvidia RTX 4050. This addition makes a huge difference in terms of what you can realistically do with the Yoga Pro 7i. This thing can run Cyberpunk 2077 at a playable framerate in a pinch.

In terms of how we'd rate it, the Yoga Pro 7i fits neatly into the Enthusiast category so long as you're sticking with the model that has a discrete GPU. That variant of the device is more than capable enough for everyday tasks and power users who want to get the most out of its multiple displays, but the absence of advanced cooling tech means that it won't suit situations where those inclusions are more necessary than nice-to-have.

Across our usual gauntlet of benchmarks, the performance of the Yoga Pro 7i was varied enough that it verged on scattershot. It lagged well behind the likes of the HP Spectre X360 14 2-in-1 and Microsoft's new Copilot Plus Surface Laptop when it came to Geekbench but lapped both when it came to GPU performance.

The RTX 4050 might be far from Nvidia's most beastly bit of hardware but it's a huge step up on the graphical grunt available to devices still relying on an integrated setup. Those gains were more or less mirrored when it came to Novabench and Cinebench, though its lead on single-core performance was not nearly as impressive on that particular front. 

In terms of more anecdotal performance, the Yoga Pro 7i proved to be more than suitable for my needs. The inclusion of a discrete GPU and OLED screen here is the big X factor that elevates the accomplished design into a new middle ground between portable powerhouses and more modest mobility machines.

Battery life was also relatively impressive, with it taking about 8 hours and 19 minutes to run the Lenovo Yoga Pro 7i down from 100% to zero. That's a better result than many of the other Windows laptops we've tested but well short of the long battery life you can expect from ARM-based devices like the MacBook or Microsoft's new Copilot Plus PCs.

For the money, there's little to fault about this year's Yoga Pro 7i. However, that praise does come with a pretty big catch.

Having only spent serious hands-on time with the version of the device that features an OLED screen and dedicated GPU, it's tricky to extend the same goodwill towards the variants that feature neither. While the similarity in design and features suggests that the overall experience across the Yoga Pro 7i roster shouldn't deviate too widely, the reality is that this "Goldilocks model" comes with those two specific inclusions that put it in a different league to its siblings.

If the baseline version of this device dropped the OLED but kept the GPU, it'd be a different matter. As it is, my time with the latest Lenovo Yoga Pro 7i left me with little doubt that it's one of the better Windows laptops you can buy right now but that feat doesn't come cheap.

Not every incarnation of the Lenovo Yoga Pro 7i is born equal. If you pay a little more, you'll get a lot more when it comes to performance. For a sense of how the minimum spec for the laptop compares to our recommended spec for it, check out the table below.