I’ve been so worried about the next generation of Windows laptops that I reluctantly bought a MacBook Air earlier this year because I thought my next Windows upgrade would be expensive. After spending some time with Lenovo’s latest batch of Snapdragon X2-powered Windows laptops, I wish I’d waited – RAMageddon notwithstanding, Lenovo is delivering some solid machines here at sensible prices.
In 2024, Qualcomm changed the game on Windows laptops with Snapdragon X chipsets, and I’ve been using a Microsoft Surface Laptop with an Elite ever since. But this first-generation effort felt its age with the launch of the Snapdragon X2 laptops.
Lenovo is one of the first brands out of the gate with new hardware, and I spent some time with the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x to see how Qualcomm’s offering improves.
And the most important thing for me here is that chip.
Lenovo sent me a fully loaded Yoga Slim 7x – it’s a 4.70GHz Snapdragon X2 Elite, 32GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD. It’s a wild setup and you can feel it right away. This laptop is noticeably faster than the Surface as Windows menus fly and Google Chrome is also fast. In battery-focused power mode, the fans rarely come on, but they come to life when you plug in or switch to performance mode. Not a big deal by any means, but it shows how much horsepower the power saving modes save. If you let this machine fully unleash, you can give more.
As mentioned earlier, I switched to a MacBook Air (M5) earlier this year. Unfortunately, I don’t like macOS and generally prefer Windows. What really sold me on the exchange was my first time using Adobe Premiere Pro on a Mac, because after two years of watching 1 minute videos that take 10-15 minutes to export, the almost instant Mac export was breathtaking.
So how did the Yoga stack up against the Snapdragon X2 Elite?
no excellenthowever much better than the first generation. Exporting a 1-minute video (with transitions, speed adjustments, etc.) in “Balanced” power mode took about 3 minutes on battery life. Totally acceptable in my book, but still room for improvement.
As for battery life, it’s great. It’s a comfortable all-day machine and the standby time is fantastic. Sitting asleep for a full week drains the battery by about 15%.
Rounding things out on the Yoga Slim 7x, I adore the display. The 14-inch OLED panel is vibrant and bright, and everything I wish MacBook Air I recommend, especially the 120Hz refresh rate. Sure, you can get that at Apple’s Pro level, but Lenovo has really packed it into a machine that’s not that much bigger than the Air, and certainly not more compact than the Pro.
Amid the ongoing frenzy of RAMageddon, the biggest struggle Windows laptops face is worth it, but Lenovo puts up a pretty good fight here.
Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x Starting at $1,199and you get a Snapdragon X2 Plus chip for that price, along with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. It’s comparable to the base MacBook Air for about $100 more, and honestly, you’re getting a pretty comparable machine. The MacBook’s M5 chip wins on paper and in certain applications like video export, but day-to-day use is pretty comparable. But I think Lenovo wins on the hardware, especially the screen. My only major gripe is that the Slim 7x still uses a “diving board” style trackpad – which is fine, of course, but after two years on the Surface and some time on MacBooks, I’m now a big fan of haptic trackpads. A smaller thing on the hardware front is the speaker setup. Lenovo’s drivers look up, but still sound a little muddy.
But one of my biggest questions was about the base model.
Snapdragon X2 Elite is the most powerful version of this chip and it costs a lot. The Slim 7x configuration I’m using costs $1,799 – not cheap, but not outrageous in today’s market. But Lenovo also shipped its latest IdeaPad Slim 5x, which packs the same basic Snapdragon X2 Plus and 16GB of RAM as the basic Yoga Slim 7x.
Although I haven’t spent nearly as much time with this car, first impressions are good. Windows is fast overall, and my Premiere Pro test went pretty well. Similar videos were exported at about the same time – at least in these about 3x the video length to be exported small samples I was editing and exporting.
Together they showed me that yes, there there is There are still some good values in the Windows world.
compared to the latest Samsung Galaxy Book on the new Snapdragon X2 chipYoga Slim 7x a sharply better value, especially since Lenovo is hosting sales. Currently Snapdragon X2 Elite + 32 GB RAM + 1 TB SSD version The Yoga Slim 7x is under $1,500. Between “RAMageddon”, that’s a pretty good thing in my book.
The IdeaPad Slim 5x, meanwhile, It costs $849overall a pretty good deal for a laptop that checks a lot of the same boxes for battery life and quality.
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