Lenovo Refreshes Slim 7 Laptops With AMD Ryzen, Chromebook Duet Rocks OLED Display Upgrade
As the launch of Windows 11 draws near, hardware makers are readying new designs and product refreshes that will come with OS right out of the gate. Lenovo is one of them. The company announced a couple of new Windows 11 laptops, the Yoga Slim 7 Carbon and Yoga Slim 7 Pro, and also a Chromebook with an OLED display, the IdeaPad Duet 5.
Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 Carbon With AMD Inside (Also Called IdeaPad Slim 7 Carbon)
Lenovo is pitching its Yoga Slim 7 Carbon as the world's lightest 14-inch laptop with an OLED screen. It weighs just 1kg (2.37 pounds) and is a scant 14.9mm (0.59 inches) thin. And of course it boasts a flexible form factor, which is a hallmark of the Yoga series—it bends all the back in a way that would break old fogies like myself.
The 14-inch OLED panel (2880x1800) is sourced from Samsung. It features Dolby Vision support and is DisplayHDR True Black 500 certified. Lenovo also says it is factory calibrated to Delta E <2 for accurate color performance, with 100 percent coverage of the DCI-P3 color space.
"This means you’ll see colors and contrast more clearly from multiple viewing angles and enjoy less lag with a 90Hz refresh rate at 400 nits nominal brightness or up to 600 nits at peak brightness," Lenovo says.
Lenovo built this system around AMD's latest mobile processors, and says it will be available with up to a Ryzen 7 5800U. Users can also opt for discrete graphics, up to an NVIDIA GeForce MX450. Other specs include up to 16GB of LPDDR4x RAM, up to a 1TB NVMe SSD, Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) and Bluetooth 5.1 wireless connectivity, and a 61Whr battery for up to 14.5 hours of run time.
The Yoga Slim 7 Carbon (called IdeaPad Slim 7 Carbon in North America) will be available next month starting at $1,290.
Lenovo Yoga Slim Pro (IdeaPad Slim 7 Pro In North America) Specs And Features
Next up is the Yoga Slim 7 Pro (or IdeaPad Slim 7 Pro in North America). This is an ultra-slim 16-inch laptop measuring just 17.4mm (0.69 inches) thick and weighing 4.6 pounds. The added size and weight compared to the Yoga Slim 7 Carbon translate to more powerful components in certain areas, as well as some other notable differences.
It's built around an LCD panel with QHD resolution and even faster 120Hz refresh rate. It features touch support and offers 100 percent coverage of the sRGB color space, with Dolby Vision support for HDR content.
This one's also built around AMD's latest processors—in this case, up to a Ryzen 7 5800H processor, paired with up to a GeForce RTX 3050 GPU. It can also be configured with up to 16GB of RAM and up to 1TB of NVMe SSD storage.
According to Lenovo, the 75Whr battery is good for up to 12.5 hours of battery life, though obviously your mileage will vary. The discrete GPU gives this thin and light laptop a gaming punch, which is sure to cut into the battery life at a faster rate than, say, surfing the web or knocking out a TPS report.
This one will be available next month as well, starting at $1,449.
Lenovo Duet 5 Chromebook With OLED Display
Finally, Lenovo also unveiled a Chrome OS laptop, the IdeaPad Duet 5 Chromebook. It gets its Duet moniker from being a detachable 2-in-1 design. The screen portion consists of a 13.3-inch OLED display, also made by Samsung, with 100 percent coverage of the DCI-P3 color gamut.
It's another thin and light system, measuring 7.24mm (0.29 inches) and weighing 1.5 pounds, though those metrics are undoubtedly for the tablet portion alone. Powering the system is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 7c Gen 2 SoC and up to 8GB of LPDDR4x RAM. It also features up to 256GB of built-in eMMC storage (Lenovo notes it supports SSD storage too).
The IdeaPad Duet 5 Chromebook will be available in October starting at $430.
