One big feature that I’ve come to love on modern laptops are OLED displays. Compared to LCD, these types of panels bring content to life and make for a much more immersive multimedia and web browsing experience Usually, though, OLED is reserved for high-end laptops, which is why I’m happy to see an OLED screen as the standard option with this year’s Lenovo Slim 7i Gen 9, that starts at $1,100.
After using the Slim 7i for a few weeks, I did love its glorious OLED display, even if it doesn’t pack as high a resolution as I hoped. The design also won me over, as this 14-inch laptop is ultra-portable and pretty sleek in a world of boring clamshells. Combine that with the latest Core Ultra CPUs, and I think this little laptop can do a lot for you, even down to basic gaming.
Specs
| Product | Lenovo Slim 7i Gen 9 |
| Processor | Intel Core Ultra 7 155H |
| OS | Windows 11 Home |
| Graphics | Intel Arc graphics |
| Memory | 32GB (soldered) |
| Display | 14.0-inch OLED 16:10 FHD+ (1920 x 1200) touch, 60Hz |
| Storage | 1TB SSD |
| WLAN & Bluetooth | WiFi 6E Bluetooth 5.3 |
| Ports | 2 x USB-C with Thunderbolt 4 USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 HDMI 2.1 3.5mm audio jack |
| Camera | 1080p with infrared camera for Windows 11 Hello |
| Keyboard | Backlit Luna Gray |
| Audio | 4 x speakers Dolby Atmos Audio 4 Voice ID microphones |
| Security | Webcam privacy e-shutter Windows Hello with IR camera |
| Battery | 65Whr |
| Dimensions/ Weight | As thin as 14.9mm x 312mm x 221mm / 0.59″ x 12.28″ x 8.7″ 3.15lbs |
| Materials | Alumiumn |
Pricing
You can buy the Lenovo Slim 7i Gen 9 today. Lenovo.com currently has my review unit listed starting at $1,099. That’s how my unit comes configured. With the Intel Core Ultra 5 125H CPU, 16GB RAM, and a 1TB SSD. All units come with a 1920×1200 resolution OLED display.
Design
The design of the Lenovo Slim 7i is pretty straight and simple but still sleek. It’s an all-aluminum laptop, and Lenovo doesn’t make it as striking as the Yoga 9i, but it sure does take some inspiration from it. The corners are rounded and soft, which makes it easy to hold. The Luna Gray colorway is pretty clean, too. At a time when most clamshell laptops are wedge-shaped, having that sleeker rounded look sure is nice. Even the Lenovo branding on the lid is clean, sitting in the corner.
Some people might find the notch in the top of the lid annoying, but this has been a signature feature on most Lenovo laptops. It houses the webcam and the microphones. And it helps in making the laptop easy to open with one hand.
Inside the laptop, meanwhile, are two speaker grills to the side of the darker gray-colored keyboard. I like the dark gray keyboard color as it adds some contrasting effects to the overall design. There are also additional speakers on the underside of the laptop. The speakers are alright, but I’ve heard louder and clearer. It could get muffled at times at high volumes.
In terms of weight and dimensions, this laptop comes in at about 0.59 inches in thickness and weighs 3.15 pounds. The MacBook Air is well under that at 0.44 inches, with a 2.7-pound weight, but that laptop is in a class of its own. Don’t let the dimensions fool you, though. I held this thing in my hand, and it felt incredibly light and so easy to walk around with.
Ports
The connectivity onboard the Lenovo Slim 7i is really good. For a laptop that feels this thin and light, it’s surprising to see a lot of ports onboard. The left side has an HDMI port, and two USB-C ports, supporting Thunderbolt 4. The right side has a USB-A port and a headphone jack. You’ll be able to leave the dongles at home with this laptop.
Keyboard and Trackpad
Lenovo advertises that the Slim 7i has a 1.5mm key travel distance. I find that true, and I do like the way this keyboard types. The keycaps have a solid feel to them and go into the chassis with even pressure. It’s not too soft, or too hard. The keyboard is backlit, too, which is important for typing at night.
This laptop also has a Copilot key on the keyboard. I never used Copilot much, so I don’t find it useful. But it is there if you find yourself using Microsoft’s AI assistant a lot. It’s super convenient, rather than having to click to the side of the desktop to trigger the assistant.
The touchpad, which is smack in the middle of the chassis, is decent. it doesn’t feel quite as sturdy as I hoped. It has a thin feeling and is pretty mushy. The top of the trackpad, though, is smooth, which helps when I was gliding my fingers across it for web browsing.
Display and webcam
Now, I get to the highlight of this review, the display. This Slim 7i comes with a 14-inch FHD+ OLED screen, which is 1920 x 1200 resolution. This display has some slim bezels and gets pretty bright. When I watched Disney’s Hailey’s On It on this laptop, I was impressed with how vibrant Hailey’s hair, and glasses looked. The display brought out all the colors in my favorite Disney Cartoon.
When I used my colorimeter, I recorded about 390 nits of brightness, and 100% of sRGB, 95% of AdobeRGB gamuts. Those numbers are impressive for an OLED screen.
What’s not as impressive, however, is the screen resolution. 1920 x 1200 does seem a bit low for a 14-inch screen. When web browsing, I noticed that some images weren’t quite as crisp as I hoped. I also had to adjust the scaling, so I could multitask and stack windows side by side without running out of room. I would have liked to see Lenovo bump the resolution up to 2K, but I understand a lower resolution helps with the price point.
Atop the display is a standard 1080p webcam. The webcam supports Windows Hello. There’s a privacy slider to the right side that you can use to turn the webcam on and off.
Performance and Battery life
My review unit comes with the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H CPU under the hood. This is a 28W processor. As Intel’s latest laptop chip, it does help this laptop perform fairly well, especially when paired with the 32GB RAM. My usual workflow of 15+ tabs in Microsoft Edge, all worked fine, along with Teams and Office work. The 16-core CPU packs a punch. You can see some scoring below.
| Test | Geekbench 6 (Single/Multi) | Geekbench 5 (Single/ Multi) | PCMark10 (Power) | 3DMark: Time Spy | Crossmark Overall | Cinebech R23 (Single/Multi) | Cinebench R24 |
| Result | 2,377, 11,930 | 1,539,10,100 | 6,557 | 3,907 | 1,721 | 1,688/11,785 | 101/658 |
The Geekbench numbers on this laptop are pretty strong and are up there with the latest 15-inch M3 MacBook Air, which comes in at about 12,000 scoring. Thanks to Intel’s advancements with Arc Graphics, the 3D Mark scores are pretty decent for a laptop without a dedicated GPU, as well. I punched out some solid gaming with Civilization VI and Project Cars 2 in 1080p, running at about 41 FPS on low settings. Light creativity tasks should be strong on this laptop, too, as Cinebench scoring has this laptop with an 11,785 multicore result, which is above the 7,938 of the M2 MacBook Air.
The only bad part of the performance is the hit it adds to battery life. In standard office work, the laptop’s battery only lasted me about five hours. OLED screens are power-hungry, and this seems to be the main culprit.
Should you buy?
The Slim 7i is a pretty good laptop. It is hard to not suggest buying. The design makes it quite portable, and the OLED screen is sure to light up your world. Even port selection is great since you can avoid a dongle. The performance is solid also, for pretty much any task you’ll want to throw at it for a productivity laptop. Just keep in mind, you won’t get the best battery life.
