At its core, the Lenovo Yoga lineup is made up of convertibles that can serve as your tablet , laptop , and everything in between. If you don't need a convertible, you can turn to other Lenovo product lines. However, after using the company's new Yoga 7 2-in-1 laptop for over a week, I'm not sure why you would. Using the Lenovo Yoga 7 as a traditional laptop reveals few, if any, downsides that come from the convertible form factor. It works just like the normal laptop you're used to, and it only happens to have a 360-degree hinge that can morph the Yoga 7 into a tablet or stand. Plus, you get all this for under $1,000, and that's important to remember.

The Lenovo Yoga 7 won't replace your gaming or workstation-grade laptop, but this great convertible laptop did replace the M3 MacBook Air and Lenovo Yoga Book 9i in my workflow without any limitations. It handled photo editing in Affinity Photo 2 just fine, as well as my web-based content creation and productivity tasks. Generally, I'd expect most people in the market for a convertible like the Yoga 7 to have performance needs similar to mine, which this laptop crushes. The real hiccup is the Yoga 7's display, and the gap between configurations is massive. The Yoga 7 that I reviewed has an IPS display with pretty terrible color accuracy and brightness, but I presume the OLED version will do much better. To make it easy for you: I'd buy this laptop to meet my needs if I was on a sub-$1,000 budget.

About this review: Lenovo loaned us a Yoga 7 2-in-1 for review. The company did not have input in this article, and did not see this article's contents before publishing.

Pricing and availability

Lenovo announced the Yoga 7 2-in-1 at CES 2024, and it will become available for purchase sometime this month for $900. There are a number of configuration options available, starting with the processor. This laptop uses the AMD Ryzen 8040 mobile platform, and features either the Ryzen 5 or Ryzen 7 processor. You can also choose between an IPS or OLED display panel, with the latter option being brighter and more color-accurate. Our review unit featured the Ryzen 7 chip and IPS display. More information about the Yoga 7's pricing and availability will be revealed later in April 2024.

Design and ports

A solid selection of ports, but I wish there was USB-C on both sides

While Lenovo has some work to do with its naming conventions, it figured out a design and brand for the Yoga lineup. The Lenovo Yoga 7 looks a lot like other recent Yoga laptops, such as the Yoga Book 9i, which serves as my Windows daily-driver. That's certainly not a bad thing, because this laptop looks high-quality and professional despite its midrange price. In fact, the Yoga 7 appears more premium than it feels in some areas. You can easily flex the display and top half of the laptop, as well as the keyboard and deck. It's made of aluminum, not plastic, but it still could be sturdier. This is where you'll notice the difference between the Yoga 7 and a more premium laptop, like the Lenovo Yoga 9i or Slim Pro 9i.

This laptop looks high-quality and professional despite its midrange price.

Since the Yoga 7 is a convertible laptop, the design offers an abundance of flexibility. The 360-degree hinge is sturdy and easier to adjust, but it doesn't double as a speaker bar on this midrange laptop. I found myself using the touchscreen on the Yoga 7 quite often, and noticed that the glass didn't pick up fingerprints as easily as even my non-touch computers. I can't say that I used tablet mode, tent mode, or display mode all that often, but the flexibility was nice to have. Most importantly, I didn't feel like the 2-in-1 design took anything away from the Yoga 7's functionality when used as a traditional laptop.

The port selection on the Yoga 7 is fantastic overall, although I wish it had USB-C ports on both sides. Instead, the two USB-C ports are both on the left, along with an HDMI port and a 3.5mm headphone and microphone jack. On the right, you'll find a microSD card slot and a USB-A port. Another minor annoyance is that the two USB-C ports have different specifications, with no markings to distinguish them. The USB-C port closest to the HDMI port supports USB 3.2 Gen 2, while the other supports full USB 4.

Keyboard and touchpad

The same great keyboard and touchpad from Lenovo is still here

One of the great things about Lenovo laptops is that their keyboards and touchpads offer an incredibly consistent experience between models. Before using the Lenovo Yoga 7, I reviewed the Lenovo LOQ 15 (a gaming laptop), and the typing experience felt nearly identical. The Yoga 7's keyboard has a good layout with the perfect amount of key travel for this form factor, and the layout leaves just enough space for stereo Dolby Atmos speakers on its sides. There's also a Copilot key on the right side of the keyboard, but it might not be usable right now. I was able to use it during testing, but general availability can depend on region and your Microsoft account. If Copilot is unavailable, the dedicated key will fall back to Windows Search instead.

The touchpad was decent to use as well, but I always miss the MacBook trackpad when using Windows laptops. To the right of the touchpad, there's a fingerprint sensor for convenience. While in 2-in-1 mode, Lenovo software will try to detect the Yoga 7's positional changes and turn off the keyboard and touchpad's input as needed. This isn't perfect, but it works pretty well. When using the Yoga 7 as a tablet, an on-screen keyboard will pop up while inside text fields, although its default size is rather large.

Display

The resolution is good enough, but brightness and color are lacking

As I mentioned earlier, the Yoga 7's display should have a big asterisk next to it, because quality will largely depend on whether you get the IPS or OLED panel. The 1920x1200 resolution and 60Hz refresh rate is the same across the two display types, as well as the Dolby Vision certification. However, many of the other things that matter are different between the IPS and OLED versions of the Yoga 7. The one you'll notice is the low brightness of the IPS display, which tops out at around 300 nits, and my review unit measured around 220 nits. Color accuracy is also poor on the IPS model as well, as shown by our independent display tests:

I can't say I've personally had a laptop score this low in SpyderX color accuracy tests, with the Yoga 7 and its IPS display covering just 65% of the sRGB color gamut. These results aren't abnormal, either, because my review unit covered 46% of the NTSC color gamut, and Lenovo says the Yoga 7 is rated for 45% coverage. If you do any kind of color-accurate work, this makes the IPS version of the Yoga 7 a no-go. I presume the OLED version is better, and Lenovo claims that it covers 100% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, meets the DisplayHDR True Black 500 spec, and has an additional 100 nits of brightness. However, I can only speak to my review unit, which had an IPS display.

The Yoga 7's display should have a big asterisk next to it, because quality will largely depend on whether you get the IPS or OLED panel.

Is this a dealbreaker? Not necessarily. If you mostly do basic productivity work that isn't dependent on color accuracy, you may not even notice these Yoga 7 pitfalls. In my case, the low brightness levels were much more noticeable in daily use than the poor color accuracy. Regardless, it's absolutely clear that you can get a better display from a higher-end Lenovo laptop, such as the OLED screen on the Yoga 9i.

Performance

It handled my full productivity workflow with ease, with solid benchmarks

The Lenovo Yoga 7 is far from a performance powerhouse, but it performs in line with or better than many of the best thin-and-light laptops we've tested. It features AMD's Ryzen 7 chipset with integrated AMD Radeon graphics, and this processor can keep up with the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H chip or beat it. In daily use, the Yoga 7 met my needs perfectly fine, handling tasks like photo editing and web-based content creation with no problems. Graphics-heavy tasks might start to show the Yoga 7's weak spot, but this laptop still doesn't perform that badly.

The Lenovo Yoga 7 is far from a performance powerhouse, but it performs in line with or better than many of the best thin-and-light laptops we've tested.

This isn't a gaming laptop, but the Yoga 7 was able to run Grand Theft Auto V at full resolution with frame rates hovering around 30 FPS. GTA V is an old game, but 30 FPS is certainly playable. However, newer and more demanding titles won't run as well on the Yoga 7, since the synthetic 3DMark Time Spy benchmark stressed the Ryzen 7 chip and its integrated graphics. Frame rates averaged around 15 FPS during the test, and the final score finished well behind Intel Core Ultra systems with integrated Intel Arc graphics.

Overall, the Lenovo Yoga 7 and its Ryzen 7 chip performed much better than I expected. In our testing, the Yoga 7 beat out the Intel Core Ultra 7 in both the Lenovo Slim 7i 14 and the HP Spectre x360 14 in the PCMark 10 benchmark. The laptop scored pretty far behind the M3 chip in the latest MacBook Air in single-core Geekbench 6 tests, but was much closer in Crossmark. Although the Lenovo Yoga 7 costs less than every laptop we put it up against in the above tests, it performed respectably in all of them.

Battery life is another reason you might want to pick up the Lenovo Yoga 7, because I was able to get around four to five hours of nonstop usage on a single charge. The laptop uses a 71Wh battery, and supports a quick recharge that can give you up to three hours of additional battery life from 15 minutes of charging. It is powered through the USB-C ports, includes a charging indicator light, and comes with a 65W power adapter.

Should you buy the Lenovo Yoga 7 2-in-1?

You should buy the Lenovo Yoga 7 2-in-1 if:

• You want a solid convertible for under $1,000
• You need a quality and powerful laptop for a basic productivity workflow
• You want a versatile laptop with a variety of ports and connectivity options

You should NOT buy the Lenovo Yoga 7 2-in-1 if:

• You need a color-accurate display for photo editing, video editing, or design work
• You want a bright display or a matte finish option
• You have the money or the need for the jump to the 9i series

The quality of laptops under $1,000 continues to amaze reviewers like myself, and the Lenovo Yoga 7 performs better than its price would suggest. It won't be the best performer all the time, but the Yoga 7 and its Ryzen 7 processor can hang with the best mobile chipsets available in 2024, such as Intel's Core Ultra and Apple's M3. Plus, the convertible form factor doesn't detract from the laptop's usability, as it still features a great keyboard, touchpad, hinge, and design. To sum it up, if you asked me to spend my own money on a 2-in-1 laptop under $1,000, the Lenovo Yoga 7 is the one I'd buy.