Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x 11-Gen First Impressions: The X2 Era Begins

We just got back from a long weekend in Cuernavaca, Mexico and I was delighted to discover two Snapdragon X2-based laptops waiting for me. Today, I—and now you—will take a quick look at the first of the two, the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x, a 14-inch premium notebook with some impressive specifications.

So let’s cut right to the chase: The Yoga Slim 7x is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 Elite X2E-88-100 processor with 18 cores (12 prime and 6 performance), a clock speed of up to 4.7 GHz with single- and dual-core boost, 53 MB of cache, a 1.7 GHz Adreno X2-90 GPU, and an 80 TOPS Hexagon NPU. The review unit includes 32 GB of LPDDR5X-9523 RAM, and 1 TB of M.2 2242 PCIe 4 NVMe SSD storage.

I’m still familiarizing myself with the Snapdragon X2 lineup, but the high-level view is that Qualcomm offers Snapdragon X2 Plus, X2 Elite, and X2 Elite Extreme processor model families. The X2 Elite X2E-88-100 is the second highest-end model in the Elite range, just behind the X2E-90-100; the only difference between the two is that the X2E-90-100 runs at a slightly higher clock speed of 5 GHz. By comparison, the Surface Laptop 7 I love so much has a first-generation Snapdragon X Elite X1-E80-100 processor with 12 cores, a 3.4 GHz clock speed, 42 MB of cache, an Adreno X1-85 GPU, and a 45 TOPS Hexagon NPU. I’m excited to compare the two when I get back to Pennsylvania in mid-May.

The display is impressive. Lenovo offers customers four OLED panel choices with Full HD+ (1920 x 1200) and 2.8K (2880 x 12800) and non-touch and touch options. The review unit has a multitouch Full HD+ panel with an anti-fingerprint coating, 100 percent DCI-P3 and sRGB color gamut coverage, a 60 Hz refresh rate, and Eyesafe, Dolby Vision, Flicker Free, and DisplayHDR True Black 500 capabilities that emits 400 nits of brightness or 600 nits for HDR content.

The form factor is classic Yoga Slim, a thin and light but incredibly durable aluminum construction in Cosmic Blue. It weighs just 2.73 pounds, excellent for a 14-inch laptop, and is just 0.55 inches thin.

It has a full-sized keyboard with familiar Lenovo scalloped keys and automatic backlighting and a large glass buttonless touchpad.

Expansion is modern and on point, with two 40 Gbps USB4 Type-C ports on the left and a third 40 Gbps USB4 Type-C port on the right.

The power button and an e-shutter switch for the webcam can be found on the right as well. But there’s no combo headphone/microphone jack.

Connectivity is likewise modern, with Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4.

The audio setup seems impressive, with four speakers—two 2-watt bottom-firing woofers on the sides and two 2-watt top-firing tweeters straddling the keyboard—a smart amplifier and Dolby Atmos sound. There’s a quad-microphone array for work calls, too, and the webcam delivers an impressive 9.2 MP of resolution plus Windows Hello ESS sign-in security.

Power comes from a 70-watt-hour battery that supports Rapid Charge Express via the bundled 65-watt charger and wall wart. This lets you add 3 hours of uptime with just 15 minutes of charging.

The Yoga Slim 7x is, of course, a Copilot+ PC, which is fantastic, and it comes with Windows 11 Home version 26H1, which remains a curiosity.

More soon.