The launch of Windows 11 next month means PC vendors will roll out their fall lineup of Windows 11-compatible notebook and desktop PCs, and Lenovo this week announced at its annual Lenovo Tech World showcase event an eye-catching several of its own Windows 11 PCs, including the surprisingly light IdeaPad with OLED display.
According to Lenovo, the new 2021 IdeaPad Slim 7 Carbon weighs just 2.37 pounds, about half a pound lighter than the already lightweight MacBook Air M1.
Lenovo has long had a reputation for making incredibly light laptops, most notably the 2-pound Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano, and the current IdeaPad Slim 7 Carbon weighs just over 2 pounds. What's new, however, is the 14-inch OLED display that will debut on the 2021 IdeaPad Slim 7 Carbon, which Lenovo calls "the world's lightest 14-inch OLED laptop," a Windows 11 compatible ultra with a gorgeous screen If you're looking for portable, you'll be hard pressed to find anything lighter than this.
Here's what we know so far about the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 7 Carbon.
The 14-inch Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 7 Carbon will be available in October starting at $1,289. It will be available from Lenovo's website and may also be available at select third-party retailers.
Outside of North America, it will be sold under a slightly different name, the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 Carbon, due to some hesitation in the way Lenovo brands its products in different regions.
The IdeaPad Slim 7 Carbon is one of Lenovo's thinnest and lightest laptops, and the 2021 OLED refresh looks little changed. Full specs will not be known until the laptop hits the market, but we already know that the 2021 IdeaPad Slim 7 Carbon will be 0.59 inches at its thinnest point and weigh 2.37 pounds.
If this proves to be true, it would mean that the laptop would be as thin as Apple's 2020 MacBook Air M1 and about half a pound lighter, making the IdeaPad Slim 7 Carbon one of the thinnest and lightest OLED-powered laptops on the market.
The star of the show is the IdeaPad Slim 7 Carbon's new 14-inch QHD+ OLED display, courtesy of Samsung; OLED displays are still rare in laptops, and generally more vibrantly colored, ink-like black than non-OLED screens, sharp contrast, and have become a major topic of discussion.
The IdeaPad Slim 7 Carbon's panel should be easy on the eyes, with a 16:10 display ratio (2,880 x1,800 pixels) and a 90 Hz refresh rate. Lenovo has achieved 100% DCI-P3 color gamut and 400 to 600 nits They claim that it is calibrated to achieve brightness of 400-600 nits.
The new 2021 IdeaPad Slim 7 Carbon has a fairly sparse port selection, a common limitation in ultraportables, especially those designed to be very thin and light.
It has to be content with two USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 ports that support Power Deliver 3.0 and DisplayPort 1.4. There is also a simpler USB 3.2 Gen 2 port and an audio/headphone combo jack.
The new IdeaPad Slim 7 Carbon can be configured with up to an AMD Ryzen 7 5800U mobile CPU, up to 16GB of RAM, and up to 1TB of PCIe M.2 SSD for storage, so it should provide respectable performance at work and after work hours.
While not intended for serious gaming or video editing, the Slim 7 Carbon should be able to do a bit of both by taking advantage of the fact that it can also be configured with an Nvidia GeForce MX450 discrete laptop graphics card. The MX450 is configured all up and not powerful enough to play Cyberpunk 2077, but it should give you enough muscle to play a huge variety of PC games at frame rates from there to great.
The IdeaPad Slim 7 Carbon is powered by a 61 WHr battery that Lenovo claims will provide up to 14.5 hours of performance on a single charge. While this seems optimistic for an OLED laptop, the company plans to conduct its own net-surfing battery tests to see how well this system holds up.
As we prepare for the release of the next generation of Windows, it is exciting that Lenovo has embarked on including a potentially attractive OLED display in one of its thinnest and lightest laptops.
Starting at $1,289, the IdeaPad Slim 7 Carbon will compete with OLED OLED-based ultra-portable notebooks such as the Asus ZenBook 13 OLED ($899) and Samsung Galaxy Book Pro 360 ($1,299).
So far, 2021 looks to be the year OLED laptops really take off, and Lenovo's Slim 7 Carbon looks to be the thinnest and lightest to date. We can only wait until October to get our hands on a trial unit and see for ourselves how well it holds up to daily use.
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