Lenovo's sub-$1,000 option for students and workers can do a lot, but it's hard to find one major selling point.
Whether the 16-inch Lenovo Yoga 7i 2-in-1 laptop appeals to you depends on your budget.
Starting at $900, Lenovo’s large hybrid laptop can do a lot for the price. Its convertible display can exist in four different configurations of varying usefulness. Plus, its storage options are good enough for the majority of people who don’t work in high-intensity fields. And finally, its fully adorned keyboard gives it a leg up over something like a MacBook.
But thanks to a decidedly not-so-slender profile and awkward trackpad placement, you may be better off spending a little more money (or less) to get something more convenient for everyday use. (Maybe take a look at our best laptops page for some inspiration.)
The review unit I tested costs $899 on Best Buy and has the following specs:
Intel Core Ultra 5 125U processor
512GB storage
16GB RAM
Intel Iris Xe graphics
16-inch display with 1920 x 1200-pixel resolution and 60Hz refresh rate
There aren't a ton of variations on those specs for consumers to choose from. You can optionally get an Intel Core Ultra 7 processor with 1TB of storage, but that brings the price up to $1,049.
While the display, processor, and GPU specs aren’t necessarily anything to write home about, the storage and RAM figures are worth highlighting here. A minimum of 512GB internal storage (with a more expensive 1TB option) and 16GB RAM will help ensure that people can keep their data around and work with several programs or tabs open at once.
Considering that this is priced as a somewhat low-level school or work laptop, those memory and storage specs aren’t bad. You might want more storage if you do longform video editing, though.
While there's very little about the Yoga 7i that I would call "remarkable," there's still plenty to like. Between its audiovisual presentation and convenient privacy features, Lenovo packed a decent number of bells and whistles into this laptop.
As a daily MacBook Air user, the thing about the Yoga 7i that hit me the hardest was just how big and versatile the display is, if you want it to be.
Sixteen inches and a slightly-higher-than 1080p resolution are both pretty solid figures for the price, even if it’s just a lowly LCD display rather than the fancier OLED ones found in Lenovo’s more expensive products. In my testing, I found the Yoga 7i was best used for streaming. I used it extensively as a second monitor during an incredibly busy weekend of watching both the NBA playoffs and NFL draft at the same time.
I know — I’m really cool, but that’s not the point here.
Of course, this isn’t just a normal laptop, hence the “2-in-1” part of the product name. The Yoga 7i’s display can be bent backwards into a few different configurations: one that uses the keyboard as a base, one that props the device up like a tent, and one that just turns it into a giant tablet.
None of these are new in the world of hybrid laptops, but they are all presented and accounted for here. It’s hard to say how the hinge would hold up after years of bending the screen back, but in my limited testing, it felt sturdy enough to withstand everyday use.
While I appreciate Lenovo including both a fingerprint reader and a physical webcam cover, these features are becoming increasingly standard on laptops, even some of the best cheap laptops. Therefore, I'm hesitant to give them too much credit for the inclusion.
That said, the substantially more expensive MacBook Air that I work on every day doesn’t have a webcam cover, so clearly, the rest of the industry still has some catching up to do. Good on Lenovo for including both of these features, even if they aren’t novel.
I feel pretty strongly that if you’re going to watch something on a laptop, you should most definitely use headphones. Laptop speakers, by and large, exist for utility; they’re on the device because they have to be, but it’s never an ideal way to experience audio.
Still, Lenovo’s Yoga 7i speakers are pretty thunderous by laptop standards. I was able to hear what I was watching from across the room at less than half volume, while pumping it up all the way produced a sound that was loud enough to put me in danger of pissing off my neighbors. That didn’t happen, thankfully, but it’s good to know that a $900 laptop can do that.
All that really needs to be said is that the Lenovo Yoga 7i’s keyboard has both a full function row and a full number pad. There you go! What more do you need?
But seriously, it’s a solid enough laptop keyboard that wins on features, if not especially on feel. Having all of those buttons is great and enables all the different keyboard shortcuts one could hope to use in a work environment.
It’s a double-edged sword, though. Including a number pad on the right side means that everything else is just a little squished together. While the Yoga 7i’s device footprint is a bit wider than my MacBook Air, the non-number-pad part of the keyboard is actually a bit narrower. It’s certainly something you’d get used to after using the laptop every day, but the process of getting used to it wasn’t great. Still, the keys are pretty substantial regardless and the amount of key travel is satisfying enough.
Of course, nothing is perfect, but also not every imperfection is worth raking a device over the coals about. When it came to the ports and one aspect of the Yoga 7i's display, I wasn't head-over-heels for the laptop.
When it comes to port selection, the Yoga 7i is competitive with others in its class. Between a single HDMI port and two USB-C Thunderbolt connectors, you’ve got a plethora of options for external displays, even if one of those USB-C ports should be left open for charging purposes. There are also two USB type-A ports and a headphone jack.
That’s all well and good, but I don’t love the port placement here. The left side contains the HDMI port and both Thunderbolt connectors, as well as the headphone jack. The right side, meanwhile, contains two USB type-A ports and an SD card slot.
Personally, I would’ve preferred more symmetry. Relegating both USB-C ports to one side means you can only charge the Yoga 7i from one side. Similarly, if you use a standard USB mouse, you better be right-handed.
As I’ve mentioned a few times, the Yoga 7i isn’t exactly priced as a premium product, so some concessions are expected. One of those is that the display, for all its size and resolution, only comes with a 60Hz refresh rate.
To be fair, the Yoga 7i isn’t necessarily meant as a high-end gaming laptop, so frame rates higher than 60 fps don’t really have a place here. But for basic web browsing and scrolling, even a 90Hz refresh rate would’ve made the laptop feel a bit more premium and responsive.
It’s not a big deal, but something worth noting.
Unfortunately, the physical design of the Yoga 7i leaves a bit to be desired. Put simply, it's heavy and the trackpad isn't real fun to use.
Laptops are supposed to be portable, right? The whole point is that you can carry it with you from place-to-place without really noticing it. This is one area where the Yoga 7i falls a little short.
Its 4.63 pound weight is quite noticeable. Picking up the Yoga 7i with just one hand to move it around feels slightly treacherous, especially since the center of gravity resides where the keyboard and display meet. It always feels a little like it’s about to fall out of your hand when you first lift it up. I don’t love that.
Yoga 7i’s weight, combined with the necessary width of a 16-inch display, means this might be a difficult device to use on an airplane, unless you pay for first class. That’s far from the only thing that matters about a laptop, but we can’t pretend like it’s not important.
The Yoga 7i keyboard is mostly pretty good, as discussed previously. The trackpad is another story.
Lenovo annoyingly decided to go with a left-of-center alignment for the trackpad. This means that while I’m resting my hands on the keyboard, my wrist is almost always touching the trackpad, leading to a lot of unintended mouse clicks that got in the way of my daily routine.
Another rather bothersome result of the trackpad’s placement is that finger taps that feel like they should be left clicks instead register as right clicks too often. At least, that happened way too often for me, a person who primarily navigates the trackpad with his right hand.
Lenovo’s Yoga 7i, packed with an Intel Core Ultra 5 processor, delivered a 9,121 multi-core score in our CPU testing, courtesy of the benchmarking software Geekbench (which tests for CPU performance).
Going beyond the numerical score, I never had any serious performance quibbles with the Yoga 7i. As long as you use it for what it was designed for (everyday web browsing and work), it operates smoothly.
This is one area where Lenovo can chalk up a big ol’ W for itself.
I tested the Yoga 7i’s battery life by looping a 1080p video in full screen from a 100 percent charge until the device died. That process took a whopping 10 hours and 33 minutes.
By comparison, the dual-screen Yoga Book 9i only achieved seven hours under the same circumstances, at more than twice the price. And since everyday work tasks generally don’t require that you loop an HD video for nearly 11 hours straight, you can certainly expect to get through a full work day on one charge.
The Yoga 7i isn’t necessarily a budget laptop, but the parts of it that you use for video calls aren’t really anything to write home about.
As you can see from the image, the 1080p webcam produces results that are a little fuzzy and washed out — and that’s before video call compression enters the picture. It’s fine for a weekly check-in with your boss, but you wouldn’t want to film a movie with it.
As for the built-in microphone, it, well, sounds like a laptop microphone. Testing produced audio that was a little tinny, but fully intelligible. Again, these features are meant for work calls and not professional recordings. If you want better results, get a real webcam and a real microphone.
This is a tough question to answer because it really depends on what you want and need from a laptop.
Gamers can and should look elsewhere, given the specs. People who need to do intense video editing or 3D modeling can probably do better, as well. The Yoga 7i is specced and priced for people who work on the computer but don’t work like that on the computer, if you catch my drift.
If you need a bulky, sturdy machine for streaming things and answering emails, you can certainly do worse. The versatility and size of the display helps matters, as the Yoga 7i can (in a pinch) be an entertainment machine, too. But it’s not especially portable or remarkable in any other way.
Still, it’s not as expensive as a MacBook and has a way more functional keyboard, if nothing else.
