In terms of skinny and light-weight notebooks, Lenovo’s ThinkPad Carbon line is iconic, however the ones carbon-fiber ultraportable laptops had been limited to enterprise customers. The Lenovo Narrow 7i Carbon ($1,119 as examined) brings that narrow, ultralight building to a compact shopper device. A 13.3-inch cousin to the 14-inch, AMD-based Lenovo IdeaPad Narrow 7 Carbon, the Narrow 7i gives Intel Core i7-powered efficiency, luxurious options like a factory-calibrated show (regardless that no longer the deluxe OLED display screen of the Narrow 7 Carbon), or even a USB-C hub to provide the further ports you could be lacking on different methods. It would use some extra polish in spaces reminiscent of a greater webcam or longer battery lifestyles, however general, it is a solid-effort ultraportable, if no longer within the higher tier.
Client Carbon: Ultralight Design
Contents
The Narrow 7i Carbon examined right here includes a twelfth Technology Core i7-1260P processor (4 Efficiency cores, 8 Environment friendly cores, 16 threads), 16GB of LPDDR5 reminiscence, a 512GB solid-state pressure, and Intel Iris Xe built-in graphics. Our $1,119 take a look at style is to be had from Walmart (in addition to different outlets, at most likely various costs); Lenovo does not be offering a large number of configuration possible choices for the Narrow 7i Carbon if you purchase it without delay from Lenovo.com. There, regardless that, you can get it with a 1TB SSD for $100 extra.
(Credit score: Kyle Cobian)
The Narrow 7i Carbon will get its title from the fabric that makes up its lid, accompanied by means of aerospace-grade magnesium-aluminum alloy for the chassis. It is one of the vital lightest ultraportables you can in finding at simply 2.17 kilos, in spite of its dimensions of 0.58 by means of 11.9 by means of 8.1 inches (HWD). A number one competitor, the Apple MacBook Air M2, is in a similar way sized however just about part a pound heavier.
The 13.3-inch Lenovo PureSight contact display screen combines 2,560-by-1,600-pixel answer with a couple of extras you will not in finding in maximum shopper compacts. It comes factory-calibrated for prime colour accuracy proper out of the field and boasts a 90Hz fairly than the standard 60Hz refresh fee. Different options are extra commonplace, just like the an increasing number of common 16:10 side ratio and the qualified low-blue-light emissions.
(Credit score: Kyle Cobian)
As discussed, the Narrow 7i makes use of an IPS panel as an alternative of the ultra-high-contrast OLED era of Lenovo’s 14-inch IdeaPad Narrow 7 Carbon. Whilst that is hardly ever a deal-breaker, it is an enchanting selection given the upward push of OLED shows in high-end ultraportables just like the Dell XPS 13 Plus and the HP Spectre x360 13.5.
The Narrow 7i Carbon has a tight keyboard, which is a minimum of you would be expecting from Lenovo, regardless that in comparison side-by-side with, say, the Lenovo ThinkPad Z13, the shopper device feels moderately common. The touchpad and 720p webcam hit the similar notes—completely ok, however no longer as spectacular as chances are you’ll be expecting given the pc’s lineage and price ticket.
Slimmed-Down Port Variety
In terms of the Lenovo’s onboard ports, there is no longer a lot to inform. At the device’s proper facet is a unmarried USB 3.2 Sort-C port, together with the facility button and a webcam privateness shutter transfer.
(Credit score: Kyle Cobian)
At the left, there is a unmarried USB-C/Thunderbolt 4 port. If you wish to have further connections, reminiscent of for an HDMI display screen or a USB Sort-A garage instrument, you can desire a hub or docking station.
(Credit score: Kyle Cobian)
Fortunately, Lenovo supplies a four-port USB-C hub that will provide you with a couple of further connections together with HDMI, USB 3.0 Sort-A, an audio jack, and (wonder, wonder) VGA. I might have most popular one thing like an Ethernet port, however I assume that is a win for the antique-monitor creditors within the target market, or denizens of convention rooms that may wish a tech replace.
As for wi-fi connections, the Narrow 7i Carbon is equipped with Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.1.
Checking out the Lenovo Narrow 7i Carbon: Extremely Transportable Energy
For our benchmark comparisons, we pitted the Lenovo Narrow 7i Carbon towards different ultraportables discussed above, together with most sensible performers just like the Apple MacBook Air M2, the Dell XPS 13 Plus, and the HP Spectre x360 13.5 convertible.
(Credit score: Kyle Cobian)
The final spot went to the AMD-based Lenovo IdeaPad Narrow 7 Carbon we examined early this yr. Despite the fact that the IdeaPad has a fairly greater display screen, the Lenovo duo’s general designs and specs are identical, making this a just right take a look at to decide which processor circle of relatives plays higher.
Productiveness Checks
The principle benchmark of UL’s PCMark 10 simulates quite a lot of real-world productiveness and content-creation workflows to measure general efficiency for office-centric duties reminiscent of phrase processing, spreadsheeting, internet surfing, and videoconferencing. We additionally run PCMark 10’s Complete Device Power take a look at to evaluate the burden time and throughput of a pc’s garage.
3 benchmarks focal point at the CPU, the usage of all to be had cores and threads, to fee a PC’s suitability for processor-intensive workloads. Maxon’s Cinebench R23 makes use of that corporate’s Cinema 4D engine to render a posh scene, whilst Primate Labs’ Geekbench 5.4 Professional simulates common apps starting from PDF rendering and speech reputation to system studying. After all, we use the open-source video transcoder HandBrake 1.4 to transform a 12-minute video clip from 4K to 1080p answer (decrease occasions are higher).
Our ultimate productiveness take a look at is Puget Programs’ PugetBench for Photoshop, which makes use of the Ingenious Cloud model 22 of Adobe’s well-known symbol editor to fee a PC’s efficiency for content material introduction and multimedia packages. It is an automatic extension that executes quite a lot of basic and GPU-accelerated Photoshop duties starting from opening, rotating, resizing, and saving a picture to making use of mask, gradient fills, and filters.
The Narrow 7i Carbon stored tempo with the most productive ultraportables we now have noticed, hanging up related ratings in PCMark 10 and Cinebench and simply seconds off the tempo in HandBrake. It even claimed the silver medal in Geekbench. The result’s a system that is greater than succesful sufficient for workplace productiveness and basic house use or even gentle media-creation and -editing workloads.
Graphics Checks
We take a look at Home windows PCs’ graphics with two DirectX 12 gaming simulations from UL’s 3DMark take a look at suite: Night time Raid (extra modest, appropriate for laptops with built-in graphics), and Time Undercover agent (extra hard, appropriate for gaming rigs with discrete GPUs).
We additionally run two exams from the cross-platform GPU benchmark GFXBench 5, which stresses each low-level routines like texturing and high-level, game-like symbol rendering. The 1440p Aztec Ruins and 1080p Automotive Chase exams, rendered offscreen to house other show resolutions, workout graphics and compute shaders the usage of the OpenGL programming interface and {hardware} tessellation respectively. The extra frames in step with 2nd (fps), the easier.
The Narrow 7i Carbon kind of matched the opposite laptops with Intel Iris Xe built-in graphics, however there have been some notable variations when in comparison to the Apple M2 and AMD Radeon graphics of the MacBook Air and IdeaPad Narrow 7 respectively. The most important distinction used to be in GFXBench, the place the Apple led the pack by means of a large margin, regardless that none of those productivity-focused portables will fulfill hardcore players.
Battery and Show Checks
We take a look at laptops’ battery lifestyles by means of taking part in a in the neighborhood saved 720p video document (the open-source Blender film Tears of Metal) with show brightness at 50% and audio quantity at 100%. We ensure the battery is totally charged ahead of the take a look at, with Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting grew to become off.
We additionally use a Datacolor SpyderX Elite display screen calibration sensor and instrument to measure a pc display screen’s colour saturation—what share of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 colour gamuts or palettes the show can display—and its 50% and top brightness in nits (candelas in step with sq. meter).
The Narrow 7i Carbon would possibly excel in some spaces, however battery lifestyles is not one. The ultraportable cleared the eight-hour mark and narrowly outlasted the XPS 13 Plus however fell hours at the back of maximum related machines. In case you are making plans to make use of the narrow pc for paintings or faculty, you can most likely need to convey alongside the facility adapter. Its show may be moderately pedestrian in colour protection and brightness; we did not be expecting it to outperform the dazzling OLED panels of the Dell, HP, and Narrow 7 Carbon, however it additionally fell wanting the IPS-based MacBook Air.
That stated, the display screen does boast hardware-calibrated colour accuracy and a higher-than-average 90Hz refresh fee for clean playback. If the ones specifics enchantment to you to be used in virtual content material introduction or video viewing, it is value making an allowance for.
(Credit score: Kyle Cobian)
The Verdict: Robust and Top rate
Lenovo’s Narrow 7i Carbon combines the most productive of business-class design with strong efficiency and interesting options like a factory-calibrated 90Hz show. It helps to keep up with the most productive ultraportables in the marketplace and does it with understated taste. We are a bit of jealous that it lacks an OLED display screen and we want it had longer battery lifestyles, however the compact Carbon’s gentle weight and strong capacity make it a great addition to the ultraportable enviornment.
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The Backside Line
The Lenovo Narrow 7i Carbon brings a nifty carbon-fiber chassis to a client ultraportable, however the device is gentle on top rate options, in spite of its tough efficiency.
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