First Look: Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 Carbon notebook

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Note: This feature was first published on 5 October 2021.

Lenovo has announced the Yoga Slim 7 Carbon. It comes with a top cover constructed from aero-grade strength carbon fibre for additional durability, while the rest of the notebook's chassis is crafted from Lenovo’s lightest carbon fibre. At 1,077g, Lenovo boasts the Yoga Slim 7 Carbon as the "world's lightest 14-inch OLED noteook".

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Lenovo sent over a Yoga 7 Slim Carbon engineering sample and I've had a couple of hours to fiddle around with it, and my immediate impression of it is how incredibly light and slim the notebook is. The photos here don't do it justice. What impressed me most is the rigidity of the notebook with no noticeable screen flex. It is also capable of surviving the unexpected tumbles as it's built to MIL-STD 810H military-grade standard.

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All that slimness also meant that compromises have to be made as far as connectivity is concerned: the Yoga Slim 7 Carbon only comes with three USB Type-C ports and one Audio Combo jack. No SD slot is available and, tough luck, if some of your important accessories (a wireless mouse, for example) requires a USB Type-A port.

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But ports aside, I want to share more about the notebook's build quality - which is second to none. I've mentioned earlier how carbon fibre was used, which allowed Lenovo to keep the Yoga 7 Slim Carbon very lightweight. Then there's also the corrosion-resistant, precision die-casted magnesium - itself a durable and lightweight material - that wraps the keyboard and the notebook's vital components, protecting the device from everyday elements.

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The Yoga Slim 7 Carbon's display is wrapped by a border that's just 3.9mm on three sides, which offers a 91% active area ratio in 16:10 proportions. 16:10 is the more practical aspect ratio these days, as it affords more vertical content shown as compared to the wider but shorter 16:9 aspect ratio. The 14-inch QHD+ (2880 x 1800px) display is dazzling to say the least, and is powered by Samsung's latest E4 OLED panel.

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The keyboard cover includes a front-facing speaker grill that is perforated on a slope, which Lenovo claims allows for auditory realism with directional sound towards you. I haven't had the chance to test that. The keyboard, which Lenovo is calling it "TrueStrike", has a good ergonomically comfort to it and while the 1.3mm key travel is common with notebooks of this ilk, I find the key pitch to be one of the better ones,  producing a nice "bouncier" typing experience.

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The Yoga Slim 7 Carbon is powered by an AMD Ryzen 7 5800U mobile processor,  and16GB of memory. As this was an engineering sample, Lenovo has requested that no benchmarking be performed on it so I couldn't assess the notebook's performance yet - the few hours of light work that I did on the notebook didn't kick the notebook into overdrive mode either. Lenovo has revamped the cooling system, which comes with new turbo fan blades that vents hot air out from the notebook's rear as seen here.

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And the notebook has to draw in cool air from somewhere. The Yoga Slim 7 Carbon comes with two air inlets, one on each ends of the notebook, that sucks in air from the new high-performance, low-profile dual 0.1mm turbo fan blades, to cool the notebook's dual heat pipes.

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Oh, and the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 Carbon comes pre-installed with the new Windows 11 Pro. It is also the first consumer notebook to be launched with Microsoft's latest operating system. Windows 11 really looks swanky and the new GUI looks neat but you will have to spend a fair bit of time getting used to navigating your way around the OS.

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This is only just a first look, so stay tuned to our Yoga Slim 7 Carbon review soon. Meanwhile, the notebook is available at Lenovo official stores and authorised online resellers at the retail price of S$1,999.