Lenovo Yoga 7 2-in-1 Gen 10 (Krackan Point | Radeon 860M) Laptop Review

TweakTown Rating: 91%

Our Verdict

The 10th-Gen Lenovo Yoga 7 2-in-1 is a(nother) high-quality, 14-inch, consumer-grade, convertible tablet with no real weak points. It's one of the better laptops in a 'business & productivity' market segment that's packed with high-quality rivals, but if you can find it at the right price, it's the one to choose.

Pros

• Excellent 120Hz HDR OLED touchscreen
• Punchy Krackan Point APU
• Solid construction
• Great value

Cons

• Glossy screen can be reflective
• Keyboard is slightly stiff
• Rivals are lighter with better battery life

Should you buy it?

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Introduction, Specifications, and Pricing

The 10th-Gen Lenovo Yoga 7 2-in-1 is a high-end, consumer-grade, 14-inch, ultraportable (convertible) laptop that transforms into a tablet with a (2,880 x 1,800) OLED screen. It's in a crowded 'business & productivity' market where many high-quality rivals, siblings, and ancestors take turns in leading the field according to oft-changing sale prices and subsequent value propositions.

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Lenovo offers a few SKUs of the Yoga 7 2-in-1, but my review unit wielded AMD's 'Krackan Point' Ryzen AI 7 350M processor, which is based upon its Zen 5 architecture. It has eight cores (with Multithreading) that operate between 2GHz and 3.5GHz with a maximum boost speed of 5GHz. It's got integrated Radeon 860M octa-core graphics, which run at 3GHz, and is partnered by an XDNA 2 NPU (capable of 50 TOPS), which makes it Microsoft CoPilot+ compatible. This was all flanked by 32GB of LPDDR5-7500 RAM and a 1TB NVMe SSD.

AMD-based SKUs vary around the world, but the USA's Gen 10 AMD options are currently limited to the above spec with 16GB of RAM for around $1,000. Other versions in other countries can be configured to arrive with different amounts of memory and storage (and lesser screens), while more expensive, Intel-based Gen 10 variants (called Lenovo Yoga 7i 2-in-1) come with Intel Core Ultra Series 2 (Lunar Lake) processors. I was fortunate to have the latter in the lab at the same time, allowing me to offer some performance comparisons throughout this review.

Features, Details, and Design

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The Gen 10 Yoga 7's bright (1,100-nit peak!) 2,880 x 1,800 OLED screen offers plenty of Desktop real estate for work and inherently excellent colour vibrancy, true-black performance, and contrast for multimedia. What's more, if you dial down the brightness and fiddle with the display settings, its HDR-augmentation will simultaneously display details in both dark and bright areas to an outstanding degree (HDR also makes for smooth chromatic and monochromatic transitions).

The 120Hz refresh rate also facilitates some fast-and-frantic gaming (on graphically undemanding, low-end titles). However, being an OLED, its glossy and reflective surface can transform it into a black mirror when viewing dark content or you're using it in a bright environment.

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The touchscreen is responsive to 10 points of touch, but a stylus is an optional extra.

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Lenovo has squeezed four 2-Watt speakers inside the Yoga 7 2-in-1's chassis. They deliver some loud, well-rounded, punchy audio, but there's not a huge amount of bass.

Further Standard Laptops Reading – Our Latest Reviews

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The Keyboard's lozenge-shaped keys are on the firm side of well-weighted (which is common for convertible tablets), but only full-time typists might get sore fingers. It's comfortable and accurate for most general users. The trackpad is smooth, has well-weighted button actuation, and feels accurate.

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Above the screen is a 1,440p webcam (with hardware privacy shutter) which captures a sharp image, even in low light. The partnering quad-microphone array records impressively clear audio in noisy environments. Next to it is an IR webcam for Windows Hello facial-recognition log-on. A fingerprint reader, on the palm-rest, does likewise.

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My review unit arrived with multiple, matching optional extras, including a functional Bluetooth mouse, a protective sleeve, and some half-decent earbuds. They all push up the price, though, and there are plenty of superior alternatives on the market that you may already own. If you want your tech to colour-match, though, go for it.

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Other extras revolve around Lenovo's unfortunate recent dabbling with bloatware. Fortunately, for the most part, it's easy to ignore and unobtrusive.

I/O

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On the left of the Gen 10 Yoga 7 2-in-1 is an HDMI 2.1 port, a USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 port, and a 3.5mm audio jack.

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On the right is a microSD card reader, another USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 port, and a USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 port.

Inside, there's Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 4. That's a mostly impressive connectivity complement, but I'd like to see Thunderbolt ports present (as they are on the Intel version).

Portability

The Yoga 7 2-in-1's 'Luna Grey' chassis looks more business-like than glitzy, but it's very stiff and robust (it's not quite MIL-STD-810H military grade certified, but it's past 21 of the tests, apparently) and has very good hinges. It hasn't undergone all the torture testing of a business-class laptop, but it's one of the toughest consumer models I've seen.

At 1.4KG it's light for a laptop but in the bulkier range for a 14-inch ultraportable. Fortunately, the lightweight, phone-style, USB-C charger means there aren't many cables to carry around.

It has a 70Wh battery, and this ran our PCMark 10 Modern Office test for 17 hours. That's impressive for any AMD-based laptop, but it's some way behind the performance of Lunar Lake and SnapDragon-powered alternatives (the Intel Core Ultra 258V equivalent lasted 11 hours 20 minutes longer!)

Benchmarks

I ran a selection of ultraportable laptop benchmarks to see how the Krackan Point-powered Lenovo Yoga 7 2-in-1 performed (and compared the results to its Intel Core Ultra 258V-powered, non-identical twin sibling). The Intel APU has four Performance cores and four Low Power Efficient cores (with no Hyperthreading) that operate between 2.2 and 4.8GHz. It also has 32GB of integrated LPDDR5 RAM.

CrystalDiskMark

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In the CrystalDiskMark benchmark, the Yoga 7's M.2 2242 PCIe 4.0 SSD hit 1,445MB/s write speeds. That's somewhat lower than rival laptops, but I never found it to be unresponsive when performing general computing tasks. The Intel rival, meanwhile, managed a very impressive 5,813MB/s.

CineBench

A casualty of TweakTown's recent coverage-overhaul of business and productivity laptops means that the Cinebench r24 processor-based rendering test wasn't run while this laptop was in our labs. However, the similar Cinebench r23 version was...

Here, the Krackan Point processor (with its Multithreading technology) scored 14,902, which is very fast for any ultraportable (that isn't powered by its even-better, workstation-grade AMD Strix Halo sibling APU). It's also 50 per cent faster than its Hyperthreading-less Lunar Lake sibling, which scored 9,901 in the same test. So, the AMD CPU wins big for rendering.

3DMark Speed Way + Steel Nomad

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I'm usually impressed if an ultraportable can even run the difficult 3DMark Speed Way test, which establishes how well hardcore gaming PCs handle complex ray-tracing-enabled games at 1,440p resolutions. Still, the Gen 10 Yoga 7 2-in-1's integrated Radeon 860M GPU only managed to score 131, which is an average of just 1.3fps.

Conversely, the Yoga 7i's octa-core Xe2 GPU (which runs at 1.95GHz) scored 469, which is almost 5fps. We could say it's more than 4x better, but that might be misleading.

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Steel Nomad checks the 4K gaming prowess of hardened gaming beasts. Not surprisingly, both Yoga 2-in-1s struggled here again, with the AMD-powered Yoga 7 2-in-1 scoring just 386 (average 3.9fps) and its Intel-powered rival scoring 832 (average 8.3fps).

TL;DR: This laptop can't play the latest and greatest, eye-candy-rich games.

3DMark Solar Bay + Night Raid

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In the Solar Bay test, which utilises less-demanding ray-tracing at 1,440p, the Yoga 7 2-in-1 managed 10,743, which is a smooth average of 40.3fps. The Intel rival managed 16,342, which represents an average of 62fps - that's a legit 50 per cent increase and a significant win for Intel's integrated graphics.

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In the much easier, old-school 3DMark Night Raid benchmark, which checks for Full HD gaming potency, both laptops performed much better. Here, the AMD-powered Yoga 7 2-in-1 scored 27,926, which is an average framerate of 157fps. However, the Intel rival scored 35,345, which is an average framerate of 227fps.

That's another big win for Intel's GPU, but AMD can still be counted on to play plenty of casual and competitive games - and they'll look good on the 14-inch, 120Hz screen.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6

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I find that the Blops 6 built-in benchmark is a good gauge for FPS gaming, and I ran it on both machines. At default settings, which let the game decide on image quality at native resolution, the Yoga 7 2-in-1 averaged 73fps with a 1% low of 54 FPS. That's very playable, just note that the rendered resolution was 37% of what was actually displayed! The Intel-based Yoga 7i 2-in-1 managed 78fps with a 1% Low of 45fps. So, that's a slightly higher average frame rate but a lower 1% Low score, which suggests the game prefers a beefier CPU (at higher resolutions).

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Dropping the resolution to Full HD and setting the Settings to Minimum (as many CoD players will do), the Yoga 7 2-in-1 averaged 80fps with a 1% Low of 54fps while the Intel-equivalent managed 95fps with a 1% Low of 70fps. That's a significant win for Intel and suggests the lower resolution (and detail settings) might remove some bottlenecking from the CPU.

It's fair to say that both laptops can play competitive CoD, though.

NPU Testing

For the sake of comparison, I'll add some NPU testing results, which are based upon the UL Procyon Ai Vision benchmark (Windows, CPU, Float32 settings). Here, the Krackan Point APU scored 106 while the Lunar Lake APU scored 87, which is 19 less. If any reader can tell me what real-world difference this disparity makes, please let me know.

Cooling

Having a punchy processor in a 15mm chassis is always going to cause some thermal issues, and the Yoga 7 -2-in-1 does get mildly warm under general usage. Under load, the fans can ramp up to a low, robust whoosh, and it gets significantly warmer, but it's not quite enough to toast your unmentionables. It's worth noting that when we ran the 30-minute version of Cinebench, the score got higher(!) So, there are no thermal throttling issues at play.

Note that the Intel equivalent ran slightly cooler and quieter throughout testing.

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Final Thoughts

In a sea of high-quality 14-inch laptops, both Yoga 2-in-1s can be found at the top of the pile. This Yoga 7 2-in-1 offers a bit more processing grunt thanks to its Multithreading and more-powerful NPU, while the Lunar Lake-based Yoga 7i 2-in-1 offers a slightly better GPU and superior battery life.

The Intel version is also available with many more options (in most markets), but it costs an enormous amount more. But both models can be frequently found at massive discounts in Lenovo's regular sales, and this can dramatically boost the 7i's value proposition. When that happens, the 7i takes first place in our business and productivity rankings. For the rest of the time, it's this AMD-powered Yoga 7 2-in-1 that sits atop the pile.