Lenovo Yoga AIO 7 (27in AMD) review: An almost-perfect all-in-one PC
A no-holds-barred all-in-one PC that exudes quality in all the right places, but it’s not quite perfect
Pros
- Lightning quick
- Excellent display
- Slick screen pivoting
Cons
- Pricey
- Primitive OSD
- No height or tilt adjustments
Lenovo is never afraid to experiment with new form factors, and this Yoga all-in-one is one of its most lavish creations. Imagine a long list of desirable features, including a 4K screen, and few will go unticked.
What about gaming? Most all-in-ones make do with the integrated graphics built into their processor, but Lenovo adds a discrete mobile Nvidia RTX 2060 chip. At 1080p and the toughest Mein Leben settings, the Yoga ran Wolfenstein with RTX and DLSS enabled at 96fps. Sticking to 1080p, Shadow of the Tomb Raider returned 73fps and Metro Exodus 58fps. Lenovo sensibly complements the speedy 512GB NVMe SSD with a 1TB hard disk for all the extra storage you’ll need for these games.
If you want to play at 4K, you’ll have to make do with older titles. For example, Dirt: Showdown averaged 100fps and Metro: Last Light Redux 53fps, but Metro Exodus dropped to 25fps at High quality.
It’s even faster outside of games, with Lenovo partnering AMD’s Ryzen 7 4800H with 16GB of DDR4 memory. An overall result of 303 in our benchmarks is the fastest I’ve seen from an all-in-one Windows PC by a distance, and a multicore result of 9,757 in Cinebench R23 is another display of power. Don’t imagine noisy fans keeping it cool, either: even when pushed hard, the AIO 7 only emits a dignified low hum.
Lenovo packs in a top-quality, sharp 27in IPS display. While the onscreen display is primitive, relying on three buttons tucked awkwardly on the right of the PC’s frame, it’s great to have three calibrated presets: DCI-P3, sRGB and Adobe RGB all proved accurate in our testing. The only thing this panel doesn’t offer is support for HDR (it peaks at 324cd/m²) or any gaming pretensions, with a 60Hz vertical refresh rate.
Its other limitation is that the panel sits rigidly to attention, with no height or tilt adjustment. I also kept on touching the panel, forgetting that it wasn’t touch-sensitive. As its Yoga name indicates, the monitor does have one trick: you can pivot it 90°. This is a beautifully slick manoeuvre, with Windows automatically rotating your view, but a 16:9 aspect ratio means the top of the screen sits above eye level.
A bundled webcam slots into a connector at the top of the screen where it can record 1080p video at 30fps. It’s no match for dedicated units seen in our roundup of the best webcams, with too much noise in low light and oversaturated colours, but is a step up from the webcams built into most laptops.
The 5W speakers are solid – more than good enough to play music during a working day – but think Echo Dot rather than full-blown Echo. Listen to a favourite track and you’ll notice they lack the depth and subtlety of a dedicated pair of speakers.
Lenovo supplies a wireless keyboard and mouse, with the latter running on a single AA battery and the keyboard rechargeable via a USB-C port. Both are light on features when you consider the AIO 7’s price, with no backlight on the keyboard for instance, but the keys offer enough travel and feedback to make it satisfying to type on.
The RF dongle fills one of the two USB-A 2 ports on the rear of the machine, where it’s kept company by two high-speed USB-A 3.2 ports, a Gigabit Ethernet connector and the DC input for the external power brick. This is a meaty unit, so you’ll want to tuck it out of view.
All these ports are a pain to reach, which is why Lenovo places one USB-A 3.2 port and one USB-C 3.2 port on the left side. Look closely and you’ll also spot a button that lets you switch between base mode, cast mode and link mode. The cast mode supports wireless projection from Android and iOS devices, while the link mode means you can use the 27in 4K panel from another PC via the USB-C port.
The problem here is the price: asking £1,700 for an all-in-one PC is a challenge, even when it’s this fast and this slick. I also think it’s a mistake to sacrifice screen adjustability just so people can pivot it; I spent much of my time with the Lenovo AIO 7 wanting to move the screen upwards and push it back by a few degrees. It remains one of the very best all-in-one PCs you can buy, but beware the highlighted irritations before you buy.