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Lenovo Slim 7 Pro X review: thin and really fast

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September 25, 2022

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Lenovo Slim 7 Pro X review: thin and really fast

MSRP $1,600.00

“The Lenovo Slim 7 Pro X leverages a quick AMD CPU and a discrete GPU to supply surprising performance in a skinny and lightweight machine.”

Pros

• Excellent productivity performance
• Great creative performance for a skinny and lightweight laptop
• Attractive, solid construct
• Superior IPS display
• Extensive privacy features

Cons

• Barely expensive
• Fans could be loud

A recent breed of 14-inch laptops mates thin and lightweight chassis with potent components. We’re talking laptops which might be 0.7 inches or slimmer and running 35-watt and 45-watt CPUs and discrete GPUs. Such parts were once reserved for 15-inch and bigger machines which might be greater and thicker, providing higher airflow to maintain things cool.

The performance results with these 14-inch laptops have been decidedly mixed. But that doesn’t stop recent machines from being released, including Lenovo’s Slim 7 Pro X that packs in a 35-watt AMD Ryzen 9 6900HS processor and an Nvidia RTX 3050 discrete GPU. That performance combined with the attractive design makes the Slim 7 Pro X one other winner in Lenovo’s lineup.

Specs

Thin can still be fast and long-lasting

Mark Coppock/Digital Trends

The Slim 7 Pro X is just 0.63 inches thick. That doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for thermals, although the laptop advantages a bit from its larger 14.5-inch 16:10 display and, subsequently, a rather larger chassis. Another laptops within the comparison group below also feature fast, full-power CPUs and are a bit thicker. The Acer Swift 3 OLED is one example, with its 45-watt Core i7-12700H and 0.70-inch thickness — not an infinite difference but enough to afford higher airflow. The Dell Inspiron 14 Plus is a model with the identical Intel CPU that’s as thick as 0.75 inches.

Packed contained in the Slim 7 Pro X is an AMD Ryzen 9 6900HS, a 35-watt 8-core/16-thread CPU that’s a quick multi-threaded performer, together with a discrete Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 GPU. My $1,600 Costco review configuration was well-stocked with 32GB of LPDDR5 RAM and a 1TB PCIe Gen4 SSD. You’ll avoid wasting money by selecting a Ryzen 7 6800HS CPU, 16GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD, a configuration that costs $1,430 on Lenovo’s website.

The Slim 7 Pro X is a really strong performer for a laptop of its size.

While the chip didn’t do well in Geekbench 5 within the Slim 7 Pro X, it was faster in our Handbrake test that encodes a 420MB video as H.265 and in Cinebench R23 multi-core. It also did extremely well within the PCMark 10 Complete benchmark that measures a combination of productivity, multimedia, and creativity tasks.

Perhaps most significantly, the Slim 7 Pro X did well within the PugetBench Premiere Pro benchmark that runs in a live version of Adobe Premiere Pro and utilizes each the CPU and GPU, scoring 548 in balanced mode. The benchmark wouldn’t run once I used Lenovo’s utility to change to performance mode (I’ve reported each leads to the opposite benchmarks), which is a bummer. But its rating was barely behind the Dell Inspiron 14 Plus that hit 569 in balanced mode. Each laptops featured the RTX 3050 GPU, so the difference likely comes all the way down to Intel optimizations that speed up Adobe’s playback performance.

Overall, the Slim 7 Pro X is a powerful performer and might handle essentially the most demanding productivity workflows and fairly heavy creative tasks. That’s impressive for a skinny laptop. There was some throttling, as expected, with the CPU heating as much as around 95 degrees C and reducing frequencies, but that didn’t significantly impact the Slim 7 Pro X’s overall performance.

Lenovo ships the Slim 7 Pro X with Nvidia’s Studio drivers, that are optimized for fast and reliable performance in applications like Adobe’s Creative Suite and AutoCAD fairly than gaming. Even so, the laptop performed well for an RTX 3050. It scored 4,057 within the 3DMark Time Spy test, which jumped to 4,910 in performance mode, and it managed 46 frames per second (fps) in Fortnite at 1200p and epic graphics (58 fps in performance mode). These are solid showings for the GPU and promise competent 1080p gaming at reasonable graphics settings in modern titles.

The skinny chassis also tends to limit battery capability, although Lenovo managed to suit a good 70 watt-hours into the Slim 7 Pro X. Due to the superior efficiency of the Ryzen 9 CPU in comparison with Intel 45-watt chips, the Slim 7 Pro X was a pacesetter in battery life amongst our comparison group in all but our video test. Even then, it was the 28-watt Core i7-1280P that beat it.

It’s not guaranteed that you simply’ll get a full day’s work out of the Slim 7 Pro X, but you’ll come closer than with many other high-powered 14-inch laptops.

Performance isn’t every little thing

Mark Coppock/Digital Trends

The Slim 7 Pro X isn’t just a skinny chassis wrapped around fast components. In reality, even when it weren’t such a quick performer, it might still be a compelling machine (albeit a bit expensive). I’ve mentioned how thin it’s, nevertheless it’s also light at 3.02 kilos. The Storm Gray aluminum chassis is rigid with no bending, flexing, or twisting, making it nearly equal to the exquisitely designed Lenovo Slim 9i. Its chassis edges are rounded, although not as comprehensively because the Slim 9i’s, while the perimeters along the display are also rounded. The Slim 7i Pro X is a sexy laptop that’s also unusually comfortable in hand.

Not every little thing is ideal with the Slim 7 Pro X design. For instance, the hinge wasn’t as smooth as some, binding up because the lid was opened to about three-quarters and requiring a second hand to complete the movement. And the fans spun up and were louder than you’ll find on many similar laptops. These are minor nitpicks, though.

The keyboard is spacious with large, sculpted keycaps. I discovered the mechanism barely higher than the Slim 9i’s, with what felt like deeper travel and a crisper bottoming motion. Usually, I discovered it more comfortable than the Slim 9i’s, although still not in the identical class as HP’s Spectre or Dell’s XPS keyboards. The touchpad was large, took up a lot of the palm rest space, and was precise with confident, quiet button clicks. The touch display on my review unit was nice to see.

For such a skinny laptop, the Slim 7 Pro X manages to supply solid connectivity. There are two USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 ports (without Thunderbolt 4 support becauseto the AMD chipset), two USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 ports, a full-size HDMI 2.0 port, and a 3.5mm audio jack. Creators will miss an SD card reader, which is a major omission. Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.1 are a step behind, again attributable to AMD.

I’ve noticed a formidable uptick in display quality across a lot of the laptops I’ve reviewed during the last yr, a trend that I noted at the top of 2021 and that’s only accelerated since then. While technologies like OLED have made an amazing impact, the standard IPS display has also seen an across-the-board improvement that’s been impressive to observe unfold. The Slim 7 Pro X offers only one display option in the mean time, a 14.5-inch 16:10 3K (3,072 x 1,920) IPS panel running at a brisk 120Hz that makes the Windows 11 user interface quite a bit more fluid.

Mark Coppock/Digital Trends

The panel’s overall quality was impressive, with loads of brightness, incredible contrast for an IPS display, and barely higher than average color width. Color accuracy was a little bit off, nevertheless it was still adequate for all but skilled creative work.

Privacy and videoconferencing are strengths

Suppose you’re a heavy user of videoconferencing tools like Zoom and Skype. In that case, you’ll appreciate the Slim 7 Pro X’s 1080p webcam with an electronic privacy shutter activated by a turn on the best side. The webcam offers a high-resolution image with excellent lowlight support and lots of detail. The Lenovo lacks a number of the more advanced videoconferencing features like automatic centering and such which might be offered on another machines, but the standard is nearly as good as you’ll find.

Mark Coppock/Digital Trends

There’s also an infrared camera that permits Windows 11 Hello passwordless login support, which was fast and reliable in my testing. Lenovo also included its intelligent sensing functionality, including Zero Touch Lock that turns off the display when the user leaves the world and puts the laptop to sleep, and Zero Touch Login that wakes it up and robotically logs in when the user returns. This sort of functionality is becoming more common on premium laptops, and it not only affords higher privacy, nevertheless it also helps save battery life. As usual, the features worked so well that I needed to turn them off to conduct our suite of battery tests.

I’ll also mention some additional convenience features that fall under the “intelligent” label. Special gestures are built into the touchpad, including the flexibility to regulate display brightness and system volume while scrolling up and down on either side of the touchpad. A set of touchscreen gestures perform similar functions. These are small touches, but they assist make the Slim 7 Pro X more usable.

Yet one more solid 14-inch alternative

The Lenovo Slim 7 Pro X is an admirable performer with surprisingly good battery life and a solid construct. While it’s not quite as refined because the dearer Lenovo Slim 9i, it’s a thinner high-performance option than laptops just like the Dell Inspiron 14 Plus and the Acer Swift 3 OLED. And it has a more inspired design than each of those machines offer.

At the identical time, you’re actually paying a premium price for the Slim 7 Pro X. When you don’t need the additional performance the GPU provides though, you may spend tons of less and get equally compelling but slower laptops. But as at all times, it’s great to have so many decisions on this planet of Windows laptops, and the Slim 7 Pro X fills is a solid addition.

Editors’ Recommendations