Yoga Pro 7i Review: One of 2026’s BEST Laptops, With One Catch

[00:02] fully redesigned Yoga Pro 7i and I have to say guys, I really like it. This year it's got a larger screen, you got an Nvidia GPU up to a 5060, you got Intel's an ideal laptop for say a student,

[00:15] than what a regular student laptop gives you or a programmer who wants a powerful laptop that's portable, has premium creature comforts that you can also game on the side on. I feel Lenovo has just really nailed the sweet spot with this

[00:28] one. It does perform very well for its size and weight. It has minimal heat and fan noise without sacrificing too much performance. It also can give you long enough, you got a really great OLED

[00:40] super comfortable, the best keyboard of any laptop, and a very accurate trackpad. But, there are some issues here that Lenovo just really need to BIOS to actually get that best battery life, which is obviously annoying. And

[00:56] the laptop on its highest performance mode for a sustained period of time, the battery will drain even when the laptop's plugged in using the included This being said, I still really like this laptop, guys. It's definitely one

[01:11] of the best ones we've tested of 2026. So, if you want to just save yourself 15 buy. I've placed a link to it down below. Or, you can just head over to our website bestlaptop.deals. Over there, we do track prices right

[01:25] across retailers, so you know where to go to get the best price. We also show know if a sales price is actually a good one and not a bogus one. Now, in the past, the Pro 7i had a 14.5-in display. This year, it's been bumped up to a

[01:40] 15.3, which I really like. You see, it's more useful for professional applications and gaming, which this laptop is fully capable of. Now, slightly more than the 14, but it's a good amount lighter than the 16. It does

[01:53] look thinner than it is though. You see, just like dating apps, photos, they can be deceiving. The size of the laptop tapers in and it's thicker in the center. It also slopes up a little and is thicker towards the rear. Now, given

[02:05] how raised it is, I did feel the front edge just biting into my wrist a little. uncomfortable, but it was just a little bit annoying. By the way, you may think the edge is curved, but again, that's also a little bit of an illusion. It's

[02:18] still a bit sharp. And when you compare it to gaming laptops like Lenovo's own 15-in Legion 5i, this Yoga Pro 7i, it is thinner, lighter, and more portable. When it comes to build quality, the Pro 7i is built well enough. It has minimal

[02:31] keyboard deck flex, almost no lid flex, and its hinge it is pretty stiff. In my shake test, the screen didn't flop back. The lid is easy to open with one hand as there is just a nice lip for your finger to catch onto. It falls back to almost

[02:44] 180° and even though this laptop is well-built, it's not at the same level as say a MacBook Pro or a Razer Blade. If you run your hand along the bottom, you can clearly feel that the back panel it just isn't flush with the rest of the

[02:56] chassis. On those other laptops, it is. Also, while we're comparing the Pro 7i to them, this one just looks pretty dull. Guys, it's a gray-looking laptop. What's not dull though is the display. It looks fantastic. It is a stunning

[03:10] OLED panel with near-perfect color coverage. It's resolution of 2560 by 1600, it's ideal on a 15.3-in panel. High enough for small text, it looks nice and crisp and sharp, but not too high that it drains your battery with no

[03:23] additional benefit of image clarity. The screen refreshes at 165 Hz and it does get very bright at over 500 nits of SDR, but there is a catch. It's a very glossy panel. Normally, 500 nits is bright enough to combat reflections so

[03:38] long as you're not outdoors, but not in this case. If you plan to use the laptop you, the reflections, they could be distracting. I think the reason it's glossy is because it's a touchscreen. It

[03:50] doesn't support pen input though. Now, rounding out the display, I didn't see a good. We did detect slight PWM flickering, though, even at full didn't have an issue with it in my actual use. All right, the keyboard.

[04:05] Lenovo is known as the industry leader for keyboards, and this one does not disappoint. It has ample key travel, a satisfying click. The keys also have just makes the typing experience feel so premium. Now, the keyboard isn't quite

[04:20] to type on, but I definitely would not call it a loud one. The layout is standard, yay, so no mispressing the wrong key. The keys are also separated which really helps. There is no number pad, which I like as my hands are

[04:34] centered on the laptop. My only negative is really its backlight. A ton of light blinds you from seeing which key is which. Lenovo really need to improve that. Okay, onto the trackpad. It is mechanical, but straight up, it is the

[04:48] best mechanical trackpad I've ever used. Tracking, it is insanely accurate, guys. I got the highest mouse accuracy score I've ever achieved on a laptop on this when you click down in the bottom corners, you don't lose accuracy like

[05:02] you do on many other mechanical ones. I have to admit it, I think I like this trackpad better than the haptic one in the more expensive Yoga Pro 9i. Most haptic trackpads on Windows laptops, including that one, they have dreadful

[05:15] here. Okay, as you look around the laptop, you'll notice that the power it doesn't engage it. You do have to hold it for some time. But, if you're you're holding the laptop with its screen open, that could actually happen.

[05:30] this. This has been an issue for some time now on these Yoga laptops. All port layout. You've got two USB A ports on the right side, and two USB C ports on the left. I'd really like to have had one on each side. I just don't like

[05:45] running cables around the back of my laptop. It can get in the way. On this beast specifically, both USB-C ports are Thunderbolt 4, the HDMI is 2.1, the audio combo jack is an audio combo jack, the SD card reader that does

[05:58] support fast UHS-II speeds. I have no idea why I'm reading this out. It's on screen right now. All right, the Yoga Pro 7i, it is charged by a 140 W USB-C one of the two ports available for charging, but it also means you can get

[06:12] one of those nice clean setups. One cable charging the laptop, running an external monitor, keyboard, and mouse. The way this laptop is charged is really one of the biggest differences between it and the bigger Yoga Pro 9i. That

[06:24] comes with Lenovo's proprietary 245 W charger. But, the big question should be, does the 140 W limit the performance of this laptop? Well, let's start with pure CPU performance, and then we'll get into the GPU. In Geekbench, which tests

[06:38] a variety of common performance tasks like unzipping a file, the Yoga Pro 7i category of laptop. The only processor that's massively ahead is, of course, Apple's M5 Pro. Now, we are currently reviewing

[06:51] lot of coverage coming on them, so get subscribed with the notification bell on, so you don't miss those videos. All right, in Cinebench, which tests the laptop when it's under a max CPU load, here you can see that the Yoga Pro 7i

[07:04] It keeps up with other Windows laptops point, you can find laptops with Intel's more powerful HX chips, but those they tend to be in larger gaming ones. Compared with processors in other

[07:17] laptops around this price point, Apple's M5 Pro chip, it is much faster, but their base M5 is slower. Compared with what AMD has on offer, Strix Halo, it is faster, but Ryzen 7 is slower. All right, let's dig in a little deeper just

[07:30] thermally. That's during an extended 10-minute Cinebench stress test. Even dedicated GPU, people like programmers for laptops like these, and their applications are mostly using the CPU.

[07:44] Here you can see the Yoga Pro 7i can burst at 76 W and sustain 55. This is very good. It's 10 W less than the larger Yoga Pro 9i, and as I showed you, these two perform around the same. So, the Yoga Pro 7i, it's more that sweet

[07:59] spot of how much power one of these new Ultra 9 H chips should be fed. The only laptop that's more power efficient here is, of course, Apple's MacBooks. The MacBook Pro with the M5 Pro chip, it draws significantly less power for much

[08:11] better performance. Now, during this time, CPU core temperatures were really good, peaked at 96°C, but averaged only 73. The temperatures you feel, though, on the surface, they matter more. And I am delighted, guys, to report that the

[08:24] Yoga Pro 7i, it feels barely warm when under load. Anything under, say, 40°C, it's ideal. The MacBook Pro 14s, they feel much hotter to the touch, particularly the M5 Pro. Now, fan noise, also pretty decent, 50 dB, not bad at

[08:39] all for a laptop like this. So, all of this looks really good, but how does it do when we engage the GPU? Time Spy is the quintessential gaming benchmark. Here you can see that the Pro 7i, it has an 85 W 5060. That's the sacrifice that

[08:54] Lenovo has made to keep this laptop to 140 W of power. This specific GPU is capable of 115 W, which is what gaming laptops tend to feed it. Compared to those, you lose about 14% of GPU performance for that

[09:07] 26% drop in power draw. In still Nomad Light, which runs natively on both macOS using Metal and Windows using DirectX, you'll see that even at 85 W, the Pro 7i performs better than the M5 Pro 16-core GPU, at least for gaming.

[09:23] In Marvel Rivals, which is a modern AAA title, the Yoga Pro 7i delivers a playable experience at its native 2560 by 1600, that's at high settings. It averages 65 frames per second with 1% lows at 49. We are using upscaling here.

[09:37] You could certainly lower the resolution or drop the quality settings if you want more frames. Compared to the lock and the Legion with a full power 5060s, that's a 22% drop in performance. In Cyberpunk, which is an older title, the

[09:50] Pro 7i delivers a playable experience at its native resolution even on ultra settings. Same goes for Forza. Once again, playable experience. That's at resolution. This time without any upscaling or frame gen, but Forza, at

[10:05] older title now. Oh, and I didn't mention this earlier, but there are no gaming bells and whistles here like say G-Sync or a MUX switch. Now, if you're doing 3D rendering, say using Blender, there is a very noticeable drop in

[10:17] performance, obviously because of this laptop's lower power GPU. The Yoga Pro 9i with the same GPU, it does much better here, as does the Legion 5i. If you plan to use the laptop for video editing in Puget's latest Premiere Pro

[10:29] test, it does really well. Here, the lower wattage 5060, it doesn't seem to have an impact. The only laptop that substantially beats it is the MacBook Pro 14 with the M5 Pro chip. The Yoga Pro 7i also did very well in a pure

[10:42] video export. Now, if you're using DaVinci Resolve, again, no real loss of performance due to this laptop's limited power draw. I guess the 2025 Legion 5i does a little better here, probably because it has that more powerful Intel

[10:54] HX chip. Now, you might have noticed that in video editing, this little laptop consistently performs better than the larger Yoga Pro 9i, which supposedly feeds its GPU more power. Well, this one actually has a creator mode, which we

[11:06] used here. That other laptop doesn't. And this is where things are going to get a bit confusing. You see, this laptop, it essentially has four performance modes. In its extreme mode, the CPU gets 25 watts and the GPU gets

[11:18] around 60, but there is a toggle within that mode to turn on the creator mode. That bumps up the wattage to 30 to the CPU and 70 to the GPU. These are averages, by the way. We don't normally see any of the laptops we test hit their

[11:31] max GPU wattage here, which in this case, as I said, is 85. Now, you may be confused as to why the creator mode actually performed worse in Forza a game, even though it's feeding this laptop more power. We certainly were.

[11:44] Well, we retested and we got the same results. It seems to do worse in better in shorter running benchmarks like, say, Still Nomad and creative apps like Premiere Pro. For example, on the extreme mode, with

[11:57] that creator toggle off, it's got 81,000 in Puget's test, but with it on, it went up to 86,000. That's a 7% lift if you hit that creator toggle. But, if you're doing something that really pushes the laptop hard for a long period of time,

[12:11] like, say, gaming or exporting a video, the battery actually drains even when the laptop is plugged in with the included charger. It drains fast on creator mode, 2% of the battery every 10 minutes. If you do turn that toggle off,

[12:24] it drains much more slowly, less than half a percent every 10 minutes. However, if you use a third-party charger, this gets worse. You see, to get the 140 watts that Lenovo's proprietary charger is sending to the

[12:37] laptop, it's going at 20 volts at 7 amps. This is actually out of spec for USB-C power delivery. Our UGREEN 140-watt charger is 28 volts at 5 amps, which is correct to the spec. So, this kind of defeats the purpose of this Yoga

[12:52] Pro 7i being completely charged with USB-C. You can't really buy other doing something intensive on this laptop. They do work, but only to a max of 100 watts, which drains the battery faster if you're doing those kind of

[13:06] Now, if you're just sticking to something bursting, like, say, most doing, say, light tasks like browsing the web or office documents, guys, this is a completely non-issue. But, if you are gaming or video editing on it, I

[13:20] adaptive mode and really only doing these tasks when you're plugged in using the laptop's included charger. You will have to deal with getting slightly less performance, but it is what it is, unfortunately. Now, if you thought this

[13:33] is the only oddity with this laptop, it isn't. All right, let's talk battery guys. There is a massive issue with the Yoga Pro 7i and the 9i right now. If you just pull out that power cable, you'll get 4 hours and 25 minutes. That's for

[13:47] office tasks, and that is atrocious, especially given this laptop's components and its battery size. We immediately thought the dedicated GPU just must not be going to sleep. That's when it's not in use. Unlike other

[13:59] laptops, there is no easy option to manually turn it off. You actually have to go into the BIOS. But, who wants to do that? When we did it, battery life it skyrocketed. Now we got 10 hours, and that is great for a laptop like this.

[14:12] But, the big question is, why is it running the dedicated GPU when unplugged on hybrid mode and not doing anything that should be hitting the Nvidia GPU? we noticed the Procyon, our actual test software, was occasionally hitting it.

[14:27] So, in Nvidia's control panel, we forced that application to use the integrated one. Now we got 6 hours and 14 minutes, so clearly better than the 4 hours of before. But, something else is keeping this GPU awake. Firstly, can we get a

[14:40] round of applause for Seth? I mean, seriously, he spent so much time testing out. I mean, all these kinks, should I say. And secondly, this really model of Windows laptops right now. I mean, having so many cooks in the

[14:55] kitchen that all have to work together, Lenovo, Microsoft, and Nvidia, I mean, it's just not really working. At a minimum, Lenovo have to give you an option of disabling the dedicated GPU without having to go into the BIOS.

[15:07] Guys, they do it on their gaming laptops, they should be doing it here. speakers are mid. They sound a bit flat, they lack bass, and they don't get that least you won't lose volume if you use the laptop on your lap. The speakers on

[15:21] the larger Yoga Pro 9i, they're much better. Anyway, just take a listen. better. Anyway, just take a listen. >> [music]

[15:41] webcam looks like, here I am on the Yoga Pro 7i's 1440 webcam. Now, there is a privacy shutter on the side, and I think I look pretty decent. If you are using actually turned off our studio lights, and I'm just using our dimmer house

[15:54] lights. It's still not that bad. Inside the laptop, Wi-Fi and memory is soldered. The battery and the SSD is replaceable. There are actually two SSD the shorter ones. Then, if you do want to upgrade, there is that full-size slot

[16:08] available to you. When it comes to Linux, we booted up Fedora 43. The appear to work, but they didn't actually change to the screen's brightness. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, that also didn't work with a Wi-Fi adapter not found error.

[16:21] webcam, but we couldn't record video. The app just crashed out, so perhaps there is something wrong with the mic drivers. Look, everything else worked, compatibility improves with the latest version of Fedora, which should be out

[16:34] about the same time as this video. By the way, big thanks to our patron and YouTube members who are directly supporting our Linux testing. You guys rock. Finally, I could not live with myself if I didn't mention this. This

[16:47] laptop comes pre-infected with McAfee antivirus. It constantly has these giant pop-ups that try to scare you into buying a subscription. They also make it appear impossible to dismiss those pop-ups unless you agree to their

[17:00] they can pester you further. And if you think turning off Windows notifications solves this, it doesn't. McAfee ignores that. Guys, Windows comes with antivirus. If you keep your wits about you while you're browsing the

[17:15] internet, you just don't need this. McAfee, they are literally doing the same thing as the scammers that they claim that they're protecting you against. It really pisses me off, as you can hear, that Lenovo has this garbage

[17:27] pre-installed. Delete it. All right, let's wrap it up. Right now, the Ultra 7 version with an RTX 5050, it comes in at 2150. And the version we have is $2400. actually pretty good, especially when you think about how good the Yoga Pro 7i

[17:43] is. I think it does compete very well with the MacBook Pro 14 with the M5 Pro 15 core. That laptop has distinct advantages, like better raw CPU performance. It lasts longer on battery, especially when you're doing performance

[17:56] in creative apps, and the laptop, it just works as it should. You don't need to enter the BIOS to change settings. But the Yoga, it has advantages, too. It is much better at gaming, and it has a much better keyboard. Given its 85-watt

[18:10] GPU power limit, though, I actually think the 5050 model is probably the one to get. I'd set a price drop notification over at bestlaptop.deals on this laptop for $400 off. Just click the notification bell. That is the amount

[18:23] on sale for. As Seth said, if this one drops under As Seth said, if this one drops under $2000, it becomes an incredible buy. But price, which is rare for a Windows laptop these days. I want to end by

[18:37] giving Lenovo a really big slap on the wrist here. You got to fix your issues, especially around charging and battery. We've called these kind of issues out addressed them. Get your act together. Fixing these

[18:50] things would elevate this laptop from very good to outright fantastic. And if they do fix either of them, I'll post a comment down below. Till next time, go do something awesome with your day, and I will catch you later.