Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i 15 Aura Edition First Impressions

The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i 15 Aura Edition marks my first hands-on experience with an Intel Core Ultra Series 2 “Lunar Lake” chipset and I couldn’t be more excited. Helping matters, it’s a gorgeous thin and light laptop with a large 15.3-inch display, a terrific keyboard, and a surprisingly reasonable price tag.

Yes, I have high hopes for this one. Despite my mixed experiences with previous-generation “Meteor Lake” Core Ultra chips, it appears that Intel hit a home run with the Series 2, assuming the goal was dramatically better graphics, NPU performance, battery life, and efficiency. And, to be clear, yes, that was the goal.

But we’ll see. For now, what we have here is a new kind of Yoga, one with a gorgeous Surface Laptop-like look and feel from the basic form factor itself to the alluring plastic keycaps on the keyboard, which are soft, quiet, and nicely contoured. And, better still, there’s no numeric keypad: Instead, Lenovo was wisely centered the keyboard between two large speakers, which is precisely the design I prefer.

Beyond the curiously different keyboard, Lenovo fans will appreciate the familiar premium aluminum build quality, the PC’s curved edges, the stately Lenovo and Yoga branding, and the lay-flat display with its minimalistic bezels. That display hits the sweet spot, too: In addition to being a large, 15.3-inch IPS panel with a 2.8K (2880 x 1800) resolution and a 16:10 aspect ratio, it offers a dynamic 30 Hz to 120 Hz refresh rate and should prove ideal for both productivity work and entertainment.

The hybrid work story is solid but not exceptional, with a Full HD webcam (with Windows Hello Enhanced Sign-In Security facial recognition) and a quad-microphone array. Plus there are four stereo speakers, two upward facing, two downward, and Dolby Atmos sound. Connectivity is modern with Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4.

Expansion is a solid mix of modern and legacy ports–a full-sized HDMI port and a Thunderbolt 4/USB4 Type-C port on the left, along with a combo microphone/headphone jack, plus a full-sized USB Type-A (5 Gbps) port and a second Thunderbolt 4/USB4 Type-C port on the right–and I like that there’s a USB-C port on both sides of the machine.

There’s also a power button and a hardware switch for the webcam on the right.

But you want to know about the processor. I do too. But for now, all I can say is that you can configure the Yoga Slim 7i with an Intel Core Ultra 7 256V or 258V processor, and that the review unit comes with the former. It has 4 Performance cores and 4 Low-Power Efficient cores, runs at a base wattage of 17 watts with a maximum turbo boost to 37 watts, and is a 3 nm design that, yes, was built primarily by TSMC. It also features Intel Arc Graphics 140V and an Intel AI Boost NPU that’s rated at 47 TOPs of hardware accelerated AI performance.

You can configure this PC with 16 GB or 32 GB of LPDDR5x-8533 RAM, but it’s soldered into the system on a chip (SoC), so you have to choose at purchase time and can’t upgrade it later. It supports one M.2 storage slot and can be configured with up to a 1 TB 2242 SSD. The review unit has 16 GB of RAM and 1 TB of storage.

The Aura Edition bit refers to a unique partnership with Intel that gives Aura-branded PCs additional capabilities over and above whatever one gets with Windows 11 and Copilot+ PC (the latter of which is coming in November). These include tap-to-connect Smart Share capabilities for Android phones and iPhones (via Intel Unison), Smart Modes, and Smart Care 24/7 tech support. I haven’t had a chance to dig into any of that, but I saw some interesting Aura demos at IFA in September, and the Smart Share functionality is particularly interesting.

Prices start at about $1280, which is quite reasonable for the quality and components I see here. And a fully loaded model is still under $1500, also reasonable.

I can’t wait to get started with this one. More soon.