Lenovo IdeaPad vs. Yoga vs. Slim vs. ThinkPad vs. ThinkBook

Lenovo has one of the widest ranges of laptops around, rivaling Dell and HP in everything from budget machines to exotic gaming laptops. Choosing from such a variety can be a challenge, with a great deal of overlap between lines that can blur the distinction between individual models. To help make your decision easier, we’ve broken down Lenovo’s lineup including everything from the budget and midrange IdeaPad to the business-oriented ThinkPad and the Legion gaming series.

Chances are, you can find what you’re looking for from one of these lines.

IdeaPad

Mark Coppock/Digital Trends

The IdeaPad is Lenovo’s budget and midrange consumer line, offering a wide variety of affordable and well-built laptops to fit the needs of most users. The line ranges from the £230 IdeaPad Flex 3 with an 11.6-inch 16:9 Full HD (1920 x 1080) IPS display and an AMD Athlon Silver 3050e CPU up to the £1,450 IdeaPad Slim 7 Pro with a 16-inch 16:10 WQXGA (2560 x 1600) IPS display and an AMD Ryzen 7 5800H CPU. Intel’s 12th-generation CPU lineup is available as you move up in price, and AMD’s Ryzen 6000 lineup also makes an appearance.

You’ll also find discrete GPUs up to the Nvidia RTX 3050 Ti. IdeaPad construction ranges from an all-plastic to an all-metal chassis, with a variety of color schemes and aesthetic designs. The IdeaPad line includes clamshell laptops like the IdeaPad 5 Pro, 360-degree convertible 2-in-1s where the display flips all the way around, such as the IdeaPad Flex 5i, and entry-level gaming laptops like the IdeaPad Gaming 3i.

Shop carefully and you can find high-quality displays with solid colors, brightness, and contrast, plus build quality, keyboards, and touchpads that rival premium laptops. The IdeaPad line overlaps a bit with the premium Yoga lineup below while providing attractive budget options at the very low end.

Yoga

Lenovo Yoga 9i 14 Gen 7 laptop sits on a small desk folded like a tent.Mark Coppock/Digital Trends

The Yoga is Lenovo’s premium consumer convertible 2-in-1 lineup, meaning these are laptops with 360-degree hinges and touchscreens. Currently, they’re comprised of several models including the Yoga 6, the Yoga 7i, and the Yoga 9i.

Each model plays a particular role within the line. The Yoga 6 is the smallest with 13.3-inch displays, and it’s the least expensive. It’s also AMD-only, currently offering the AMD Ryzen 5000 series, specifically the Ryzen 5 5500U and the Ryzen 7 5700U.

You get Radeon graphics, up to 16GB of RAM, up to a 1TB solid-state drive (SSD), and a 13.3-inch 16:10 WUXGA (1920 x 1200) IPS touch display. The Yoga 6 features an all-metal chassis with an optional fabric top cover, coming in at 0.68 inches thick and weighing 3.02 pounds. It’s priced from £675 to £1,100 depending on the configuration.

The Yoga 7i sits in the middle of the Yoga line. It offers a high-quality build and, with the 14-inch and 16-inch models, a gorgeous new aesthetic with rounded edges that makes it one of the best-designed convertible 2-in-1s around. You can get a Yoga 7i in one of three sizes — 14 inches, 15 inches, and 16 inches — with the 15-inch model being a generation behind.

The Yoga 9i sits at the top of the lineup, offering a unique 2-in-1 design with a soundbar integral to the 360-degree hinge that blasts audio in whatever the laptop’s orientation. It’s incredibly well-built and offers a stunning 14-inch 16:10 OLED display at WQHD+ (2880 x 1800) resolution. It competes strongly with the best 2-in-1s on the market.

The Yoga line offers Lenovo’s best consumer build quality and innovation. You’ll find lovely designs, excellent performance and battery life, and class-leading privacy and security features in Lenovo Yoga machines.

Slim

Lenovo Slim 9i Gen 7 front view.

The Slim is Lenovo’s premium line of clamshell laptops. It’s a little confusing because you’ll find models labeled as “IdeaPad Slim.” We’re talking here about the Slim 7 and Slim 9 that serve the same audience as the Yoga line, only without the 2-in-1 flexibility.

The Slim 7 comes in a few flavors, including Intel and AMD versions and 13.3-inch, 14-inch, and 16-inch varieties. The lowest price you’ll find is the £1,300 Slim 7i Carbon with a Core i7-1260P and a 13.3-inch WQXGA IPS display. At the high end is the £1,640 Slim 7i 16, with a 45-watt Intel Core i7-12700H, an Intel Arc A370M GPU, and a 16-inch 2.5K (2560 x 1600) IPS 120Hz display.

The Slim 9 is the highest-end Slim laptop, with the same rounded design as the £2,070 Yoga 9i Gen 7. It sports an Intel Core i7-1280P CPU and a 14-inch WQUXGA (3840 x 2400) OLED display, with 32GB of RAM and either a 512GB or 1GB SSD.

ThinkPad

Mark Coppock/Digital Trends

The ThinkPad line was inherited from IBM, and Lenovo has maintained the line’s iconic look and feel, sturdy design, and business features. It’s also a massive lineup with 347 models currently listed at Lenovo.com, ranging from the £569 ThinkPad E15 (AMD) at the low end to the £4,175 ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 5 at the high end.

The ThinkPad line is full of excellent machines, many of which have shown up on our best business laptops list. The ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 10, for example, is an excellent 14-inch business laptop that offers a sturdy, thin, and light chassis with solid performance and battery life. The ThinkPad X13s is a recent laptop that leverages Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 ARM CPU for great battery life in a diminutive chassis.

The ThinkPad is known for its all-black chassis with red accents, excellent keyboard, touchpad, and TrackPoint, and solid business features. Fortunately, the ThinkPad line is broken up into easily digested pieces:

  • C Series: ThinkPads running Google’s Chrome OS, specifically the £1,019 Thinkpad C14 Chromebook Enterprise.
  • L Series: These are entry-level business machines. Prices range from the £571 ThinkPad L13 Gen 3 (AMD) to the £2,010 ThinkPad Yoga L13 Gen 3 with Intel inside.
  • X Series: These are the smallest ThinkPads, including machines like the ThinkPad X12 Detachable and the ThinkPad X13s.
  • T Series: With workhorse laptops with simpler designs and high performance, the T Series has a wide range of machines, starting with the £755 ThinkPad T14 Gen 2 up to the £3,999 ThinkPad T15g.
  • Z Series: This is the newest ThinkPad line that’s aimed at sustainability via recyclable materials.

    The Z Series has two models, the ThinkPad Z13 starting at £1,355 and the ThinkPad Z16 starting at £1,975.

  • E Series: As ThinkPad’s more affordable lineup, it starts with the ThinkPad E15 Gen 4 (AMD) mentioned above, which is the least expensive ThinkPad, and ranges up to the £1,000 ThinkPad E15 Gen 4 Intel version.
  • P Series: This is ThinkPad’s workstation lineup aimed at scientific, engineering, and creative users. The P Series utilizes the fastest Intel 12th-gen 45-watt Core CPUs like the Core i9-12900HX and professional-level GPUs like the Nvidia RTX A5500. The entry-level ThinkPad workstation is the ThinkPad P16s (AMD) at £1,319 and the line tops out at the £5,059 ThinkPad P1 Gen 5.
  • X1 Series: The ThinkPad’s ultra-premium lineup with both clamshell and 2-in-1 form factors has standout machines that include the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 10 mentioned above and the ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 7.

    ThinkPad X1 prices start at £949 for the ThinkPad X1 Tablet Gen 3 and max out at the £2,513 ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 10.

Navigating your way through the ThinkPad lineup can be a challenge, but suffice it to say that if you do your research, you’ll find a business-class laptop that will accomplish every possible objective. There are few manufacturers that offer a business laptop lineup that’s so diverse.

ThinkBook

The e-ink display on the Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 2.Mark Coppock/Digital Trends

The ThinkBook line is Lenovo’s nod to the small business. It offers features that businesspeople will appreciate, like solid build qualities, privacy and security, and innovative features.

Speaking of the latter, the ThinkBook platform hosts a couple of unique models in the ThinkBook Plus Gen 2 with an e-ink screen on the lid and the ThinkBook Plus Gen 3 with a large second screen to the right of the keyboard. Otherwise, ThinkBooks are well-designed laptops with top performance and battery life and outstanding connectivity. The line ranges in price from the £842 ThinkBook 15 Gen 4 to the £2,609 ThinkBook Plus Gen 2.

You can choose between Intel 12th-gen and AMD Ryzen 6000 CPUs, and display options range from Full HD up to UHD+. Most ThinkBook models are clamshell laptops, but the line does include a couple of convertible 2-in-1s. The ThinkBook Plus Gen 2 is one, of course, and the other is the £1,400 ThinkBook 14s Yoga Gen 2.

If you’re a business person who wants the right business features but doesn’t need enterprise security and management, then the ThinkBook line is a great option.

Legion

The Lenovo Legion 5i Pro sitting at an angle.Mark Coppock/Digital Trends

Finally, Lenovo has its Legion line of gaming laptops. The company’s least expensive gaming machines fall in the IdeaPad line, and so Legion starts at midrange and goes up from there. The line is a mix of conservatively designed, thin, and light gaming laptops and machines with more of a gaming aesthetic — although Lenovo avoids creating the kind of extravagant designs as some other gaming laptop makers.

The entry-level is represented by the £1,100 Legion 5 Gen 6 with an AMD Ryzen 5 CPU and RTX 3050 GPU, which is equipped to run modern titles at 1080p and medium graphics. At the high end is the £4,120 Legion 7i Gen 7 with an Intel Core i9-12900HX and an RTX 3080 Ti that’s more than capable of running games at 4K resolutions and high graphics. Mixed in the lineup is the full range of Intel and AMD CPUs and Nvidia GPUs, with displays sporting high refresh rates at 165Hz and higher.

We’ve found Lenovo’s Legion lineup of gaming laptops to be quite competitive with the rest of the field.

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