Lenovo Yoga 9i Review: The 2-in-1 all-rounder

The Lenovo Yoga 9i is an all-rounder 2-in-1 which offers good performance across the board. They've made some design changes over the previous Yoga laptops which actually makes it more comfortable to hold nowand it should have no trouble with just about everything you throw at it, other than gaming.

Lenovo have been in the 2-in-1 game for a long time, and have been refining their design over the years. The Yoga lineup is easily one of the best when it comes to 2-in-1 laptops, and the Yoga 9i that we recieved aims to top whatever Lenovo has done so far. How good is the new Lenovo Yoga 9i? Let's dive into the review to find out.

Lenovo Yoga 9i Build and design

The Lenovo Yoga 9i is constructed out of matte aluminium, including the lid, and the body. This naturally makes the Yoga 9i feel quite robust and sturdy. There's little to no flex when folding the display, as it should be considering this is Lenovo's flagship 2-in-1. The colour looks like a mix between champaign and rose gold, Lenovo are calling it Oatmeal.

The sides on the Yoga 9i are rounded, which makes it a lot more comfortable to hold when compared to flatter sides, especially when using it in tablet mode. A small gripe on our side is that they made the sides glossy, as opposed to matte finish featured on the rest of the laptop. This same glossy finish is also present on the speaker bar, which doubles as the hinge for the laptop. It feels like a bit of a mismatch but this is just a personal nitpick though.

The touchpad size is just large enough that it doesn't get in the way of typing and the keyboard, well, we're not fans of chiclet keyboards because they're not satisfying to type on. This applies to the Yoga 9i as well, with the travel distance and actuation force needed being very less. At least it's backlit, which is nice.

The Yoga 9i comes with a 1080p webcam, which should more than suffice for all your video calling needs. It might struggle a bit in low lighting, but it works great otherwise. It supports Windows Hello (so you can unlock the device with your face). Plus, you've got the physical shutter to close the lid on the webcam when it's not in use for added security. There’s an included fingerprint reader at the bottom right of the laptop keyboard as well.

The Lenovo Yoga 9i also comes with a stylus, the Lenovo E-color Pen, which is pretty cool. However, you have to carry the stylus around separately as there's no place to store it on the laptop itself. If you're prone to misplacing stuff, this could be a pain. Fortunately, you can stash both the laptop and the stylus in the travel sleeve that comes with the laptop. The stylus itself comes with built-in USB-C for charging.

I/O ports

For the ports, we were pleasantly surprised to find plenty of options. You’ve got one USB-A 3.2 port, one USB-C 3.2 which also supports power delivery 3.0, data transfer and DisplayPort 1.4. And finally you’ve got two Thunderbolt 4 ports which also support data transfer, Power Delivery 3.0, and DisplayPort 1.4.

The overall build quality on the Yoga 9i is great, like we mentioned, there's little to no flex across the body.

Lenovo Yoga 9i Display and audio

The Yoga 9i features a 14-inch 10-point multitouch display, and the model we got features a 4K OLED display. That's a resolution of 3840x2400. It comes with an advertised brightness of 400 nits, and it scored pretty close to that in our tests, at 373 nits. It also comes with an advertised 100% DCI-P3 coverage; the laptop scored 99.1% in our tests. The display is VESA DisplayHDR 500 certified, so blacks look great. Overall, visuals on the Yoga 9i are rich, crisp, and vivid. Everything pops, and we really have no complaints about the display on the Lenovo Yoga 9i.

The Yoga 9i features a speaker bar hinge; a design that ensures the speaker is pointed towards the user regardless of the mode the laptop is in. Unless you decide to place it facedown of course. The audio quality is actually pretty decent, however, you'll probably end up using earphones to consume most media either way. Still, it's nice that you're not relegated to earphones because of poor laptop audio performance.

The laptop features a 3.5mm headphone / microphone combo jack, so that should cover most of your audio needs.

Lenovo Yoga 9i Performance

The Lenovo Yoga 9i comes packed with some pretty serious specs, including a 12th gen Intel Core i7-1280P CPU with 14 cores and 20 threads, and a max boost clock of 4.8 GHz, 16 GB of LPDDR5 RAM clocked at 5200 Mhz and a speedy 1 TB M.2 2280 SSD from Samsung.

The benchmark scores speak for themselves, as you can see in the PCMark10, R20, and R23 scores.

However, the Yoga 9i does not have a dedicated GPU; instead you've got the integrated Intel Iris Xe. While not as good as a dedicated GPU, it's still pretty solid, good enough to comfortably play older titles as can be seen with the 3DMark benchmarks. However, we would still advise against using the Yoga 9i for heavy photo or video editing work.

The M.2 2280 SSD also works as advertised, with our tests getting us close to the advertised read and write speeds of 7000 and 5100 MB/s.

Lenovo Yoga 9i Battery

Finally we come to the battery. The Lenovo Yoga 9i comes with an integrated 75Wh battery. This comes with an advertised battery life of 10 to 14 hours, depending on the kind of content being consumed. At maximum brightness the Yoga 9i was able to last around 8-9 hours on the PCMark 10 battery benchmark, so it's safe to say that the battery performance is as advertised, which is great.

As a plus, the laptop comes with a 65W USB-C power adapter. The benefit of USB-C is that you should have no trouble finding a charger in case you've forgotten the laptop's charger at home.

Lenovo Yoga 9i Verdict

The Lenovo Yoga 9i is an all-rounder 2-in-1 which offers good performance across the board. They've made some design changes over the previous Yoga laptops which actually makes it more comfortable to hold now, however we still prefer the older versions in terms of aesthetics. Of course it's not the complete package, since you don't get a dedicated GPU, however you're not buying this laptop to play games. It should have no trouble with just about everything else you throw at it. The Lenovo Yoga 9i starts at 1.3 lakhs, but the model we have with the 4K display will set you back by Rs 179,990. That's pretty pricey, but keep in mind that you're probably getting the best 2-in-1 laptop in the market for that price.

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ASUS Expertbook B1400 Review: The Everyday Knight

The ASUS Expertbook B1400 is a thin and light laptop that has high versatility and a lot of features. It is very portable and has a solid build quality that can easily withstand daily wear and tear. The laptop also has a good selection of I/O ports, a decently capable processor, a great keyboard, and a lot more. However, the ASUS Expertbook B1400 does have a few chinks in its armour but they aren’t severe enough to stop it from getting our recommendation.

I am not fond of thin and light laptops. Their restricted footprint leaves little room for performance. However, I am proven wrong more often than not because such laptops continue to surprise me with their capabilities. By design, it is a kind of office laptop, but thanks to the latest revolution in CPU technology, these laptops are capable of a lot more. The ASUS Expertbook B1400 is one such capable laptop I recently tested and here’s my opinion on whether you should buy it or not.

ASUS Expertbook B1400 Review: Specs

Processor: Intel 11th Gen Core i5-1135G7 CPU 4-core 8-thread with 2.40GHz base frequency and 4.20GHz Max Turbo frequency Graphics Card: Intel Iris Xe graphics card running at 1.30GHz frequency Memory: 8GB DDR4 RAM Storage: 512GB SSD Display: 14-inch 1080p IPS LCD display Weight: 1.45kg 

ASUS Expertbook B1400 Review: Benchmark And Performance

The ASUS Expertbook B1400 is a thin and light laptop primarily designed for office use. In terms of performance, it has an Intel 11th Gen Core i5-1135G7 CPU featuring 4-cores and 8-threads. The CPU has a 28W TDP and also packs in the Intel Iris Xe discrete graphics chip. 

A thin and light laptop needs to be power efficient so that’s how I began the testing. The quad-core Intel CPU uses the most power during photo editing, gaming, rendering and visualisation. Under normal usage which includes opening and closing different applications, the CPU power usage remains at around 15W. However, during web browsing, it shoots up to 35W. In terms of the PC Mark 10 synthetic benchmark, the laptop scored 3545. Compared to some other Intel 11th Gen Core i5 powered laptops, here’s how the ASUS Exepertbook B1400 performed. 

As you can see it is almost in line with the other Core i5 laptops but lies on the lower to middle end of the spectrum when it comes to overall performance. I also ran the Cinebench R20 and R23 benchmarks to test the laptop’s CPU performance. Here’s how it performed to some other laptops in this price range. 

In real-life scenarios, the laptop handles all the basic tasks like photo editing in Vectr, video editing in Filmora and web browsing in Chrome very well. It does not lag and also comes with a dedicated high-performance mode. 

In terms of CPU thermal performance, the laptop managed to mostly stay between 75 to 45 °C while web browsing, running apps, editing documents and spreadsheets. The temperature did shoot up briefly during rendering and visualisation, a processing heavy workload. However, for the most part, the laptop remains relatively cool.

I tested some games like Shadow of the Tomb Raider and it scored about 29 FPS. Meanwhile, titles like Valorant and Fornite ran easily at around 90 to 60 FPS respectively at low settings in 1080p resolution. In conclusion, the ASUS Expertbook B1400 performs well in daily productivity tasks and is also capable of some light gaming. 

ASUS Expertbook B1400 Review: Keyboard, Trackpad, and Speakers

The ASUS Expertbook B1400 has good build quality. It features an aluminium lid on top and a steel support bracket for the keyboard. The ASUS laptop has a solid hinge and its screen has minimal flex. The laptop's base which accommodates the keyboard also feels very sturdy and on its surface has a matte-absorbent coating, which makes typing on it for long hours very easy. With an overall weight of 1.45 kg, the laptop is quite portable and thanks to high build quality, can easily handle the wear and tear associated with daily travel. 

The Expertbook’s keyboard has a 1.5mm key travel. Several laptops come with 1mm of key travel and typing on them don’t feel as good. The 1.5mm key travel is ideal for most use cases making the Expertbook's keyboard worthy of praise. The ASUS laptop also has an ergo lift design that pushes the keyboard up thus making it easier to type. 

The trackpad on the other hand is also decent. The Expert Book B1400 laptop series also features an ASUS Numberpad 2.0, a secondary digital touchpad. However, my particular unit came with a normal trackpad and it works fine. The left-click on the trackpad is positioned slightly above the right click. Naturally, people use left click more than the right-click, so such a change feels welcome. However, it could just be a build quality anomaly and not an intended feature as the laptop spec sheet mentions no such thing.

ASUS has imbued the Expertbook B1400 with a webcam lid and fingerprint sensor over the power button. Both of them work as intended. The laptop also has an onboard mic with an AI noise-cancelling feature that filters background noise. I tested it and found that it lowered my voice’s volume as well. It did filter out a good chunk of background noise from the fan and AC at the apartment so it's a decent feature to have. 

The laptop has two downwards facing speaker vents and the audio is not good. I recently tested the Infinix INBook X1 and it had far superior speakers in this price range. Lastly, in terms of I/O, the ASUS Expertbook B1400 comes with USB Type-C with Display-out and power delivery support, Two USB 3.2 Type-A ports and one USB 2.0 Type-A port. The laptop also features a D-SUB port for connecting to external monitors in addition to USB Type-C. Furthermore, the laptop also has an HDMI out slot and an RJ-45 LAN port. 

ASUS Expertbook B1400 Review: Display Performance

The display is one area where the Expertbook B1400 laptop lets you down. It comes with a 14-inch 1080p display with just 232 nits of brightness. Ideally, the screen should have at least 300 nits brightness. 

The laptop’s screen has a 178° viewing angle but some portions of the screen, especially its top section, becomes darker when you view it sideways. The laptop's screen covers 64.7% sRGB and 47.7%DCI-P3 colour spectrum. However, some laptops at the Rs 50,000 to 60,000 price come equipped with a much higher specification display. During the Colorchecker analysis, I also found that the laptop's screen is not colour accurate.

ASUS Expertbook B1400 Review: Battery Life Performance

I tested the laptop's battery life two times. In the first test, I put the laptop in performance mode, the screen’s colour set to “vivid” and brightness to 100%. Naturally, the laptop managed a battery life of 4h and 21 minutes. 

In my second attempt, I put the laptop in balanced mode, changed the screen’s colour setting to “Normal” and reduced the brightness to 80%. Now, the laptop returned a battery life of 7h and 28 minutes. Therefore, I’d put this laptop’s battery life somewhere around 7 hours in real-world usage, which is pretty good. The laptop has a 45Wh battery which is a bit smaller than the 55Wh unit the Infinix INBook X1 comes with. 

ASUS Expertbook B1400 Review: In Conclusion

The ASUS Expertbook B1400 is a well-built laptop with decent performance and high portability. Its small size and high build quality make it a good daily driver and its impeccable keyboard makes working on it for hours a bliss. The laptop’s low-brightness screen is a letdown. However, its decent battery life, good I/O port selection and high build quality make up for it.

Personally, I’d connect an external monitor, a mouse and a keyboard to this laptop and use it as a work PC thanks to its great I/O port selection. The laptop has an approximate price of Rs 55,000 and for that it's a good choice for office work. You can also check out Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5i or Acer Aspire 5 as some other viable options.

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ASUS Vivobook 17 Review: Size Above All

The ASUS VivoBook 17 is a laptop capable of performing daily productivity tasks and some light gaming. Its 17.3-inch FHD display combined with a loudspeaker system will fit well in your workflow and can offer a great viewing experience as well. However, the laptop's underutilized keypad real estate and weight can be a problem for some users. Further, if you're willing to settle for a smaller screen, you can also find a similarly specced laptop at a more affordable price.

I like laptops with big screens. They give you the feeling of working on a traditional desktop, but with the added benefits of portability. The presence of a big screen also paves way for a big and wide chassis which, at least theoretically, leads to better airflow and performance. So when the ASUS VivoBook 17 landed on my desk, I had the same expectations from it that I usually have with a big-screen laptop. Needless to say, I was pretty excited. And after using this laptop for over a week, and testing every bit of its functionality, here’s what I think about it. 

ASUS VivoBook 17 Specs

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5500U 6-Core 12-Thread CPU with 2.1GHz base clock, 4.0GHz boost clock and 15W TDP GPU: AMD Radeon Graphics Processor with 7 Graphic Core and 1800MHz graphics frequency RAM: 16GB DDR4 RAM Storage: 512GB SSD Storage Display: 17.3-inch FHD display Weight: 2.3kg Battery Size: 65Wh

ASUS VivoBook 17 Performance Review

The ASUS VivoBook 17 packs in an AMD Ryzen 5 5500U APU, which stands for Accelerated Processing Unit. It packs the CPU and the GPU on the same die. The CPU is a 6-core/12-thread unit (which we’ll talk about in a minute) and the GPU is a low-powered Radeon Graphics processor with 7 Graphics Core. The CPU has a Max. Operating temperature (Tjmax) of 105 °C and an 8MB superfast L3 cache. 

With the introduction aside, let’s take a look at the actual performance. The Hexa-core CPU belongs to AMD Ryzen’s “U” series processors, which are power-efficient. And it certainly is one, in around 20 minutes of YouTube video watching and web browsing the battery only drops by 5%. 

In the PC Mark 10 Extended benchmark, the laptop scored 4293. It scored high in “Essentials” and “Productivity” but had decent numbers in “digital content creation” and “gaming.” 

The AMD Ryzen 5 5500U chip scored 2362 in Cinebench R20 and 1161 and 3743 in single and multicore performance in Cinebench R23 respectively. These are pretty good numbers and translate to similar real-world performance as well. When using Wondershare Filmora video editing software, the chip can render a 10-minute long 4K file at 60FPS with H.254 encoder and a bit rate of 80000 in around 39:39 minutes.

Furthermore, the laptop struggled when editing photos in the online photo editing app Vectr. I tried a number of tasks including resizing, cropping and the laptop struggled to keep up. 

In terms of GPU performance and gaming, the AMD Ryzen 5 5500U took me by surprise. I ran the chip through 3d Mark’s TimeSpy and FireStrike and it scored pretty decently. I tested games like Valorant and Shadow of the Tomb Raider. The GPU delivered between 90-95 FPS in low settings at 1080p resolution in Valorant and 30 FPS at lowest setting while running Shadow of the Tomb Raider. 

The ASUS VivoBook 17 is not built to play Cyberpunk 2077, but you can definitely enjoy some light gaming on it. Considering the kind of purpose it’s mostly built for - productivity and daily usage - the kind of performance it delivers in games is quite good. 

My ASUS VivoBook 17 review came with 16GB DDR4 RAM and under most conditions with a few tabs open and another two or three apps running in the background, its usage stays at around 50%. Considering the kind of performance, the 16GB memory should make this laptop quite future proof. 

ASUS VivoBook 17 Display Performance

As mentioned the ASUS VivoBook 17 comes with a 17.3-inch FHD display with a 16:9 aspect ratio. In our display testing, we found that the laptop comes with 269 nits of peak brightness. Additionally, the laptop’s screen has 63.9% sRGB coverage and 47.4% DCI P3 coverage. Furthermore, the FHD display has an 861:1 contrast ratio, which is kind of expected from an entry-level LCD panel.

The RGB balance of the screen is towards a bluish tint and the Average colour palette temperature is also 7228K, which showcases cooler colours. We also tested the laptop’s screen for colour accuracy and during the ColorChecker analysis, we found an average DeltaE value of 5.4 and a max DeltaE value of 19.7, meaning that the display is not colour accurate. 

Overall, the ASUS VivoBook 17’s display is big in size, but not so big on features. It is a fairly average and serviceable display that’s usually found on most laptops. The screen has a matte finish that prevents reflections as much as possible, which is a nice feature. 

ASUS VivoBook Battery Life

The ASUS VivoBook 17 comes with a 65Wh battery, according to official information. The battery size is pretty big for a laptop in this category. I tried running the standard PC Mark 10 Battery life benchmark, but for some reason, it kept crashing on this laptop. After three tries, I tried to manually test the battery life. 

I kept the laptop at 100% screen brightness and its battery in performance mode before removing the charger. After streaming a YouTube video with several Chrome tabs opened in the background, the laptop’s battery discharged around 4%, which is pretty great. In my real-world testing, I found that the laptop easily lasted eight hours during continuous usage.

ASUS VivoBook 17 Keyboard, Trackpad, Build Quality And Design

The ASUS VivoBook 17 is a big laptop in terms of length and height. Its 17-inch display towers in front of you. However, its huge deck area seems underutilised. You can find plenty of real estate near the keys, which remain under-utilised. The keyboard feels adequate for its size but the trackpad could have been bigger. 

The keys have good travel and the laptop’s chassis is quite sturdy. There's also a very small amount of flex, which you can easily ignore. Overall the build quality of the laptop is very good and the device feels like a heavy-duty machine. 

The ASUS VivoBook 17 comes with two speakers placed underneath the laptop. They are loud, but sound hollow and lack bass. I’d suggest using earphones if you’re planning to watch some content on this laptop. You get no manual control over the laptop fans, but they turn on whenever you’re playing a game or running a resource-heavy application. 

ASUS VivoBook 17 Review: Verdict

From these tests, it is clear that the ASUS VivoBook 17 is a jack of all trades and a master of none. It features a power-efficient yet capable entry-level APU, a decent amount of storage, good battery life and a big screen. It can play games, but not at the highest graphical preset, you can watch videos on it for hours but not in 4K resolution and its keyboard is great but the trackpad could have been bigger. 

If you’re looking to buy a general-purpose laptop for a big screen for Rs 61,990, then the ASUS VivoBook 17 is a decent choice. But if you’re willing to opt for a smaller screen then you can get pretty much a similarly performing laptop for much cheaper.

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Acer Nitro 5 2021: Gaming and performance Review

The Acer Nitro series is famous for offering great performance at a value for money price. The Acer Nitro 5 gaming laptops are available in multiple variants. The specific model we’re talking about today comes with an 11th Gen Intel Core i7-11800H CPU and an Nvidia RTX 3050 GPU. We picked this configuration in order to check how good the octa-core Intel chip performs in tandem with the latest Nvidia 3000 series GPUs and whether it’s a good option for content creation and gaming as well.

Acer Nitro 5 Specs

CPU: 11th Gen Intel Core i7-11800H 8-core/16-Thread processor with 2.30Ghz base clock, 4.60Ghz boost clock with 35W TDP GPU: Nvidia RTX 3050 GPU 4GB GDDR6 VRAM Memory: 8GB GDDR6  Storage: 256GB SSD and 1TB HDD Display: TFT LCD display with 1920 X 1080 resolution  Storage: 57.5Wh Weight: 2.4kg

Acer Nitro 5 Synthetic Benchmarks Review

The Acer Nitro 5 stands tall thanks to its 11th Gen Intel Core i7-11800H processor. It is an 8-core / 16-thread processor capable of delivering amazing performance in computational workloads. While testing synthetic benchmarks we also got to see the same result. In PC Mark 10, which tests a PC’s overall performance, the Acer Nitro 5 scored 6264. You can see in the chart how the chip compares to similarly priced laptops.

However, in CPU focused tests like Cinebench R23, the Octa-core Intel chip really stretched its legs. Intel is known for delivering high single-core performance and we saw the same during the test. The 11th Gen Intel Core i7-11800H processor scored 1501 in single-core performance, beating the Ryzen 7 5800H we recently tested in HP Victus 16. In multicore performance as well the Intel processor scored 12547, which is pretty neck to neck to its equivalent AMD chip.

In Cinebench R20 as well, the 11th Gen Intel Core-i7 11800H scored noticeably higher than the AMD Ryzen 5800H, putting itself ahead of the competition. 

The Acer Nitro 5 we tested comes with an Nvidia RTX 3050 GPU with 4GB GDDR6 VRAM. In 3d Mark’s Timespy, the GPU scored 5252, which makes it out to be a better performer than the GTX 1650ti. In 3d Mark’s Firestrike, the RTX 3050 packed in the Acer Nitro 5 scored 11986 putting it considerably above the GTX 1650ti but a tad bit less than the RTX 3050ti.

From these benchmarks, we can conclude that the Acer Nitro 5 has a pretty powerful processor and its GPU is adequately powerful. Thanks to an octa-core processor the laptop can easily handle a much more powerful GPU without any bottlenecking issues as well.

Acer Nitro 5 Thermal Performance

Acer Nitro 5 comes with two vents on the side, two vents on the back and multiple vents underneath the laptop. The laptop comes with manual fan control, which is great, however, the dual fans are very loud and can become irritating if you’re using them at maximum speed all the time.

In terms of performance, here’s how effective the fans can manage the cooling of the laptop.

We tested the thermal performance of the CPU and the GPU while benchmarking a demanding AAA title, Assassins Creed: Valhalla at 1920 X 1080 pixel resolution and high graphical preset. As you can see, the CPU temperature consistently remained between 60 to 80 °C during the entire operation, which is pretty impressive. 

Moreover, the GPU temperature also rose to 68 °C during the start of the test but quickly came down and then slowly climbed back up again to 67 °C. 

Overall, the Acer Nitro 5 delivers great cooling performance thanks to a pair of ultra-loud fans.

Acer Nitro 5 Display Performance

The Acer Nitro 5 gaming laptop comes with a 1080p TFT LCD display which supports a 144Hz of maximum refresh rate. The display is pretty average in terms of colour accuracy and has a maximum brightness of 285 nits. The FHD+ display also covers 66% RGB and 47% DCI P3 colour spaces. These figures are in line with the most laptops that you’d see in this price category.

During the colour Checker analysis, we found that the display is not very colour accurate. However, it is to be expected for a sort of mid-range gaming machine whose main purpose deliver high cooling, faster frame rates and generally satisfactory performance in most areas.

Acer Nitro 5 Gaming Performance

Considering how efficiently this laptop manages heat, I was expecting some good numbers from this laptop. Needless to say, I wasn’t disappointed. Considering that the RTX 3050 is a tad bit powerful than the 1650ti, it was nice to see the GPU achieve 100+ FPS in games like Valorant and GTA V. 

Furthermore, the GPU held its own in games like Metro Exodus, Gears 5, Civilization VI and Dirt 5, the laptop performed really well and delivered great results. However, while testing AC Valhalla, the GPU struggled to run the game at high settings. Majorly due to a small amount of VRAM. If this card came with 6GB VRAM instead of 4GB, THE RTX 3050 could’ve been one of the best budget cards out there.

Acer Nitro 5 Verdict

With a price tag of Rs 89,499 on Amazon, the Acer Nitro 5 powered by the 11th Gen Intel Core i7-11800H and RTX 3050 delivers great performance in terms of productivity and adequate performance in gaming. In terms of specs, the laptop is only limited by the small amount of visual memory available with the discreet GPU. 

However, if you only play games at medium settings at 1080p resolution, then the RTX 3050 with its 4GB of GDDR6 memory will prove plenty. In case you’re looking for extra graphical power, you can opt for the version with an RTX 3060 which has 6GB GDDR6 VRAM. You can also read our review of the HP Victus 16 laptop in case you’re looking for a Ryzen powered machine instead

You can also check out our review of the Acer Nitro 5 9th Gen Intel Core i5 Gaming Laptop below:

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Realme Book Slim Review: Off To A Great Start

The Realme Book (Slim) is arguably one of the best laptops in this price range. If you have a budget of RS 45,000 and you are not looking to bother with any resource-intensive workloads, then look no further. It's also going to be my go-to recommendation for professionals looking to buy a reliable machine for office work. Xiaomi's Mi NoteBook Pro/ Ultra comes close and it should be on your list too if you are willing to extend the budget. This is a fantastic start for Realme in the laptop space and I can't wait to see more laptops from them in the future.

Realme has made a huge splash with the launch of its first laptop, the Realme Book (Slim). Starting at Rs 44,999, the Realme Book (Slim) offers a bevvy of features that were unheard of in this price range. We're talking about things like a thin and light form factor, a 14-inch 2K panel with a 3:2 aspect ratio, and more.

It is, however, worth pointing out that the starting price of Rs 44,999 is also for the base variant of the laptop that comes with a dual-core Intel Core i3 processor. Well, I have been using the base variant of the laptop for the better part of the month now and I think I am ready to share my verdict. Let's get started with the specifications first - 

Realme Book (Slim) Specifications

The Realme Book (Slim) comes in two variants, both of which are powered by Intel's 11th generation Core processors. In addition to the processor, there are some other differences between the two like a different integrated GPU, support for WiFi 6, a faster memory, and more. So you might want to check out the detailed specs sheet before picking up a unit. For now, let's take a look at the specifications of the base variant that was sent for review - 

Processor: 11th Gen Intel Core i3-1115G4 dual-core processor with 3.0GHz base clock and up to 4.1GHz turbo boost, 28W TDP Graphics: Intel UHD graphics with 48EUs RAM: 8GB DDR4 3733MHz Storage: Samsung 256GB NVMe SSD Display: 14-inch IPS 3:2 2160x1440 panel with 100% sRGB

Realme Book (Slim) Performance

Realme is using the Core i3-1115G4, a dual-core unit with 4 threads based on the 10 nm SuperFin process tech. The processor has a base clock of 3.0GHz at 28W TDP and all cores can turbo up to 4.1GHz. The Core i3-1115G4 idles at 1.7GHz with 12W TDP to save energy. I was a little sceptical about Realme going for a dual-core processor for its first laptop. Yes, it is for the base variant of the machine but it is still an unusual decision in such a specs-heavy market, especially when Xiaomi is so hell-bent at using an H-series processor in its laptops.

So, should you even bother looking at the Intel Core i3 variant of the laptop? Well, it depends on what you plan on using this laptop for, but the Intel Core i3 variant is perfectly serviceable. Core clock speeds won't paint the full picture but the Core i3-1115G4 running at 28W is more powerful than most other processors that go into the laptops in this price range.

In certain use-cases, this dual-core processor can lock-horns with the Intel Core i7-10510U that's powering the Mi NoteBook 14 Horizon Edition from last year. In PCMark 10, the Realme Book (Slim) managed to score slightly higher than the Mi NoteBook 14 Horizon Edition powered by the i7-10510U. I got similar observations going against the i7-10510U in single-core tests.

This is exactly why the base variant of the Realme Book (Slim) is great for most use cases for people shopping for laptops in this price range. In real-world usage, I had absolutely no issues working on a dozen Chrome tabs with a handful of other apps running in the background. Having good quality storage also helps and the NVMe drive from Samsung managed to beat almost every other laptop's SSD score when I ran the CrystalDiskMark test.

The Intel UHD integrated graphics is obviously not the fastest unit, so your gaming performance is going to be very limited, to say the least. You can run some esports titles like Valorant and Dota 2 at low graphics settings, but don't expect anything crazy. This isn't a gaming laptop by any means, so there's no point trying to push the limits.

Without getting into too many details, I can also confirm that the Realme Book can be used for creative workloads like photo and video editing, but get ready to make some compromises. Rending our usual set of test files in Adobe Lightroom took longer than usual but it worked. The same goes for video editing using Davinci Resolve too. I highly recommend using a proxy for video editing to save time before the final render.

Thermal Performance

The Realme Book (Slim). despite its petite form factor has two fans inside the chassis for cooling. The copper heat sink also helps to keep this thing cool under heavy loads. While running Cinebench R23, the CPU package temperature didn't exceed 80°C. I didn't see any abnormal behaviour from the processor too while running the test. Cinebench R23 kept the core clock count high at 4.1GHz throughout the test except for a few drops down to 3.5GHz.

I was surprised to see that the processor didn't throttle during a test that usually brings other CPUs down to their knees. Even the iGPU load wasn't anything out of the ordinary and the package temperature continued to stay under 80°C while I was running 3DMark's Timespy test on loop.

I am really curious to see how the Core i5-1135G7 performs in this chassis, but the Core i3-1115G4 seems like a solid choice, especially for not-so resource-intensive workloads.  

Realme Book (Slim) Display

The Realme Book (Slim) sports a 14-inch 2K display which I think is the highlight of this laptop. It has a 3:2 aspect ratio that's not very commonly seen in most laptops. I encourage you to watch this detailed comparison video I managed to put together, comparing the Realme Book's display to the Mi NoteBook Ultra 3.2K panel. Here, check it out - 

The video dives deep into various aspects like the resolution, colour accuracy, aspect ratio, and more. It should also help you understand exactly how good the display on the Realme Book really is.

Realme Book (Slim) Keyboard, Trackpad & IO

The Realme Book (Slim), in my opinion, has the best keyboard and trackpad I've used on a laptop in this price range. The keyboard and the trackpad on the Realme Book, honestly, make even some premium laptops look bad. You are looking at a 3-level Backlit keyboard with keys that have a 1.3mm key travel. If you like using the keyboard on the MacBooks then you'll simply enjoy this one. The experience is almost the same and I personally love it.

The trackpad is also much better than even the one on the Mi NoteBook Ultra that I recently reviewed. It's a multi-touch trackpad with a 123.8 × 78.2mm surface with support for Windows Precision drivers. Only the bottom half of the trackpad is clickable but it works very well and doesn't feel cheap.

The port selection, however, could have been better. You only get 2 USB Type C 3.2 gen 2 ports, a USB Type-A 3.1 Gen 1 port, and a 3.5mm headphone jack on the Core i3 variant. The Thunderbolt 4 port is limited to the Core i5 variant. This isn't a deal-breaker since there's a USB Type-A port at least, but it leaves me wanting more.

Realme Book (Slim) Design & Build Quality

Having used Realme's smartphones in the past, I was expecting nothing but the best from the company when I heard they were making a laptop. And honestly, they delivered. The Realme Book is absolutely stunning and it's arguably one of the best-looking laptops you can buy in this price range. Some people might call it a MacBook Air clone and to them, I say there's nothing wrong with it. I'd take a stunningly thin and light chassis over the dozen other laptops for which design seems like an afterthought.

The Realme Book (Slim) has a high-quality aluminium body that weighs approx. 1.38 kg. I wouldn't say it's built like a tank but the construction is definitely sturdy and feels super premium to use. It also doesn't have the best weight distribution which is also why you can't open the laptop's lid with one finger. Again, not a deal-breaker in this price range.

I also love the fact that Realme has added a fingerprint scanner that's embedded on the power button. There's also a 720p webcam making it better than a lot of laptops on the market, including more premium ones. I also want to mention the dual HARMAN Speakers with support for Stereo Surround Sound by DTS. I compared the Realme Book's speakers with the Mi NoteBook Ultra's dual speakers and it's not even close.

Realme Book (Slim) Battery Life

Realme Book's 54Whr battery is rated to last for 11 hours on a single charge. I'd say it's good for about 8-9 hours of usage on a daily basis. That's enough to get an entire day's worth of usage out of the machine. I'd assume the Core i5 variant might last a little less considering it's a more powerful processor which also means it'll dissipate more heat that needs to be cooled with the fans. The Realme Book's battery can be charged via a 65W USB-C power adapter. 

Realme Book (Slim) Verdict

The Realme Book (Slim), as I mentioned earlier, is priced at Rs 44,999 in India for the base variant that we reviewed. For that price, you are getting a fantastic machine with a 2K display, a beautifully thin and light form-factor, a great keyboard and trackpad combo, and reliable performance for day-to-day workloads thanks to the 11th Gen Intel Core i3-1115G4 processor.

The Realme Book (Slim) is arguably one of the best laptops in this price range. If you have a budget of RS 45,000 and you are not looking to bother with any resource-intensive workloads, then look no further. It's also going to be my go-to recommendation for professionals looking to buy a reliable machine for office work. Xiaomi's Mi NoteBook Pro/ Ultra comes close and they should be on your list too if you are willing to extend the budget. This is a fantastic start for Realme in the laptop space and I can't wait to see more laptops from them in the future.

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