Lenovo Yoga Pro 7i Gen 11 Aura Edition review: A 15-inch OLED creator powerhouse with little to no compromises

This is a laptop that's designed for creators who are on the go. The 15-inch screen is big enough to give you enough workspace to do what you need on the go, without being so cumbersome that it won't fit in a standard laptop backpack. 15 inches is usually the sweet spot that makes or breaks whether it fits in a standard bag.

While this may not have full 4K, it has a crisp, color-accurate display, making it fantastic for those who need absolute perfection in color profiles. It is also powerful enough to handle almost anything you throw at it. While it's not designed for the average business user, those who dabble in creative work but still need to get business done can do so with ease on this laptop.

It has enough dedicated GPU to carve through video, enough RAM to run several lines at once, a beautiful enough screen to edit photos without a problem, and a solid enough machine to handle everything else, all in one device.

In short, if you want to get this kind of work done while still on the go, this is the machine for you. If you plan to park it at a desk or workstation most of the time, the 9i may be a better fit. Either way, this is for the creator.

Lenovo Yoga Pro 7i: Price and Availability

The Lenovo Pro 7i Gen 11 Aura Edition is available direct from Lenovo in the US, in the UK, and other territories. Prices start at $2,599.99 / £2,430 for the base configuration.

My review unit, however, had a slight upgrade and was sitting around $2,700. The Yoga Pro 7 could be configured up to a Core Ultra 9 with an RTX 570, 64 GB of RAM, and 2 TB of SSD.

Compared to the Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i Gen 11 Aura Edition I just reviewed, which sits around $3,000 for the same configuration, the Pro 7i saves about $250 for the same CPU, GPU, RAM, and SSD storage.

That means it is up to you whether it's worth saving $250 for giving up an inch of screen, or perhaps gaining an inch of screen for portability, depending on which camp you're in

Lenovo Yoga Pro 7i: Unboxing and First Impressions

I'll admit it, life has gotten crazy. I've had this laptop in my queue, sitting on my testing desk or in testing, for 178 days.

I've used it for: numerous meetings, a few days in my life to see how it operates, several articles have been written on it, a lot of testing, some benchmarking, thrown in the backpack a couple of times, used it as my main machine while in my home office for a couple of days

All around, this machine runs fantastic. The Luna Gray color is fantastic. It boots quickly, and it runs fast. The 15-inch OLED touchscreen is spectacular and accurate. The colors are incredible, and the ports are great. Overall, it's a laptop most people would dream of having.

I even prefer the 15-inch over the larger 16-inch 9i I just finished testing, though it is still a tad large for my liking. 14-inch seems to be my sweet spot. The 15-inch is still manageable and fits in most full-size laptop backpacks. For example, it fits well in my Nomatic Navigator and my Nomatic backpack.

Lenovo Yoga Pro 7i: Design and Build Quality

As expected, the keyboard and trackpad are spectacular. Like the 9i variant, the trackpad also doubles as a drawing surface for the Yoga Pen. Since I adjusted on the 9i, it was much easier for me to get used to it. However, as I said in the 9i review, if this is your first time using a drawing surface like this, it will take a second to get used to. It's not quite as seamless as drawing on the screen, but it becomes fairly intuitive after a little use.

The 15-inch 2.5K display is hard to recognize as only 2.5K. It looks significantly nicer than that. It could be because of the colors and the 165 Hz refresh rate, but this display (HDR True Black 1000, 100% sRGB, P3, Adobe RGB, 1,100 nits peak brightness, and PureSight) makes this OLED panel look absolutely spectacular. Unless you know for a fact you need a 4K display, you can use this for creative content pretty easily.

The last thing I'll mention is that the port layout is also what I would hope for. I've never been a fan of laptops that shove ports on the back and make it seem like they're meant to stay stationary on a desk. Even though I love the thinner laptops, I've never been a fan of the laptops that only have USB-C. I get it, and I get what they're going for, but in the professional space, that's really hard to justify.

For ultrabooks, that makes sense, but for professional business laptops or even creative laptops like this one, having only a USB-C means that you are guaranteed to need a dongle. This laptop, though, has a good range of ports for its intended use, and it's designed for that use case, which is ultimately what a laptop should be tested against anyway.

Lenovo Yoga Pro 7i: In use

I've been able to do some light photo editing and some video editing, and more, on this machine. While creating, I actually did a lot of content approval on this laptop during my testing. My roles in other companies have shifted. For now, I review content my team makes daily, so I appreciate this screen more and more.

The OLED is absolutely spectacular and has made me want an OLED panel for pretty much everything that I have. 165 Hz is also buttery smooth. The RTX 5060 is absurdly powerful. I tested it by running 22 lines of a security system I was setting up for a client without any issues. It barely taxed the memory, and I ran all 22 lines at full speed without any issues.

Of course, because even creatives still need to write some things out, I tested the keyboard thoroughly as well. It's a comfortable keyboard, just as I expected from Lenovo. It's comfortable to use for days on end, hours each day, and you won't need a different laptop keyboard unless you want one purely for aesthetic or ergonomic purposes.

Lenovo Yoga Pro 7i: Final verdict

The question that we land on is: should you buy this laptop? If you want a more portable but powerful creator workstation that isn't difficult to carry around in a backpack, then yes, you probably should buy this. It does everything mobile photo and video editors will need it to do.

However, if you need the extra screen space afforded by the 9i, I can see why that'd make sense for many deskbound creatives.

Either way, either laptop is a spectacular buy if you're in the creative space and don't need a true 4K display, because the screen itself, with its color accuracy, visuals, and refresh rate, is absolutely gorgeous. You get the reliability and dependability of the Lenovo family, all in a machine designed for creators to do exactly that: create.

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