(the verge) Lenovo has announced its new Slim line, the most premium consumer laptops it will sell in 2023. This batch includes a refreshed 14.5-inch Slim Pro 7 and 14-inch Slim 7i — the ones I expect to recommend that most people buy — and a more expensive Slim Pro 9i with 14.5-inch and 16-inch options.
I generally don’t have too many complaints about Slim devices. They tend to be some of the best built consumer devices you can get but are also somewhat unexciting. This year, Lenovo appears to be pushing them for an audience of mobile creative professionals (who might otherwise go for an M2 MacBook) using various collections of features with fancy names.
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For example, the new Slim Pro models come with an updated version of what Lenovo calls the “X Power” suite. This software, Lenovo says, will significantly increase video editing speed, with “drastically sped-up software preview, rendering, and exports” and a very specific 62.5 percent increase in thermal capacity over previous generations. (Lenovo’s release doesn’t provide details about how it achieved such a large increase.)
The new Slim Pros also come with a new “Premium Suite,” which is — and I am quoting this directly — “a set of new and updated hardware features designed to enhance the user experience.” This includes what is, as far as I can tell, a random smattering of things, including new 1.5mm dish cap keyboard keys, a larger trackpad, an infrared camera, a privacy shutter, a time of flight sensor, and a four-microphone setup.
Elsewhere, the Slim Pro 9i (targeted toward what Lenovo calls the “consummate creator”) comes with 13th Gen Intel Core processors and up to an Nvidia RTX 4070 GPU alongside up to a 3.2K, 165Hz display. The more affordable AMD Ryzen-powered Slim 7i (targeting “multitasking content creators”) pairs up to an RTX 3050 with a 3K 120Hz screen. The Slim 7i (for “on-the-go creators”) will stick with Intel’s integrated graphics.
The Slim Pro 7 and Slim 7i are both expected in North America in April and will start at $1,199.99 and $1,179.99, respectively. The Slim Pro 9i is coming in May. The 14.5-inch models start at $1,699.99, and the 16-inch models start at $1,799.99.
