Lenovo Yoga Air 14s Snapdragon AI Yuanqi Edition Review: Lightweight, Long Battery Life, AI-Powered and Smarter

Lenovo Yoga Air 14s Snapdragon AI Yuanqi Edition Review: Lightweight, Long Battery Life, AI-Powered and SmarterAfter being released for half a year, notebooks equipped with Snapdragon XElite series processors are finally being released one after another. The entire Windows market has felt a "billion" tremors from Qualcomm Snapdragon

Lenovo Yoga Air 14s Snapdragon AI Yuanqi Edition Review: Lightweight, Long Battery Life, AI-Powered and Smarter

After being released for half a year, notebooks equipped with Snapdragon XElite series processors are finally being released one after another. The entire Windows market has felt a "billion" tremors from Qualcomm Snapdragon. This is not the first time Qualcomm has released a Snapdragon processor for PCs, but the Snapdragon XElite is different from previous Snapdragon processors. It's more powerful, more efficient, and supports the latest AI features. A few days ago, Lei Technology just reviewed the Surface Laptop 7 equipped with Snapdragon XPlus/Elite series processors and gave it high praise. At that time, Lei said that in the next three months, a large number of AIPC products equipped with Qualcomm Snapdragon XElite chips will be gradually launched. You see, Lei now has the Lenovo Yoga Air 14s Snapdragon AI Yuanqi Edition (referred to as Yoga Air 14s later) equipped with Snapdragon XElite. As a leading product in the high-end thin and light notebook market, what kind of performance will the Yoga Air 14s have with the blessing of Snapdragon XElite? Can battery life really rival MacBook?

Elegant at First Glance

I have to admit that the design of the Yoga Air 14s is very recognizable. Anyone who sees this product for the first time will be attracted by its A-side design, after all, the clever bulge makes it different from most laptops. While it may seem like just a design highlight, it actually has many considerations related to practicality behind it.

When you experience various thin and light notebooks, you will find that if the designer does not design a small notch on the C-side (keyboard side), it takes a certain amount of skill to open the computer with one hand, such as using your fingernail to pry up the screen and then gently push it open with your thumb.

On the Yoga Air 14s, this clever design allows users to easily open the computer with one hand without worrying about technique or angle, and it doesn't break the consistency of the C-side. In addition, this design also allows Lenovo to incorporate a better camera and multiple sensors at the top without affecting the screen ratio and thickness.

The Yoga Air 14s I got my hands on this time comes in a classic shallow sea beige color. Although it looks like silver at first glance, close observation reveals a hint of shell color in the metallic silver. Combined with Lenovo's silk aluminum process, it does feel like you're touching a shell, smooth and non-slip without feeling rough. Moreover, after being tortured by my "big oily hands" several times, there are almost no obvious marks on the fuselage, which is much better than most thin and light notebooks, at least it won't drive obsessive-compulsive disorder crazy.

The Yoga Air 14s adopts an all-aluminum alloy body design, and the CNC process makes the seams on the C-side directly extend to the bottom, so you can't see any seams from the front after unfolding. Combined with the rounded edges of the fuselage, the overall feel is even softer. Although it is a full metal body, thanks to Lenovo's Lingyun magnesium alloy architecture, the overall thickness is only 12.9mm, and the weight is only 1.29kg, even soft girls can easily hold it with one hand. For me, a "martial artist" who is used to gaming notebooks, it is more appropriate to describe it as light as nothing. In addition, Lenovo has designed large ventilation openings at the bottom and the hinge of the fuselage. The ventilation openings at the hinge are hidden, and the bottom has been properly raised to ensure smooth air intake.

It's worth mentioning that Lenovo equipped the Yoga Air 14s with a 65W gallium nitride charger. The weight of the charger + body is less than 1.5kg, which is very suitable for carrying around. In terms of interfaces, the Yoga Air 14s provides three full-speed USB4 interfaces, all of which support fast charging, allowing users to allocate the charger position more freely without getting in the way when using it in a small space. In addition, the power switch and camera control switch are also placed on the right side, which can be easily operated blindly.

The only downside is that in order to keep the fuselage thin in terms of perception, the Yoga Air 14s does not provide a USB-A interface, all three interfaces are USB-C. If you have related connection requirements, remember to bring a converter or docking station.

In terms of display, the Yoga Air 14s also lives up to its flagship status, with a 2.9K resolution, 90Hz refresh rate, peak brightness of up to 1000 nits OLED screen, and supports touch operation. It has also been accurately color-calibrated to achieve E1, which can easily handle design, creation and other high-color accuracy work tasks.

Overall, the Yoga Air 14s has exceeded my expectations in terms of feel and material. I even like this more rounded and lively design language than Apple's MacBook. The screen, speakers and other configurations are also very good, and they are quite competitive even at the same price.

AI is Here

What is the biggest difference between the Yoga Air 14s Snapdragon AI Yuanqi Edition and ordinary Windows? The answer is AI. On the upper right side of the keyboard of the Snapdragon AI Yuanqi Edition, there is a dedicated AI key "insert", which can open Lenovo Xiaot ian by clicking. As Lenovo's AI assistant, it can provide users with various help.

In AISpace, you can see that in addition to the common applications of article summarization, questioning, etc., it also offers AIPPT, AI painter, Hi-talk mode and other functions. If you want to try more functions, you can also choose applications provided by third parties to meet more diversified needs.

As the Snapdragon version of the Yoga Air 14s, its biggest advantage is that it can complete summarization and other tasks without using cloud-based AI. This means that even in environments with poor network conditions, you can use AI to enhance work efficiency. In addition, the AI leakage problem that everyone is generally concerned about can also be avoided by using local AI models. All data is calculated locally without going through the cloud, which naturally makes it more secure.

In the test, I used the local AI model of Lenovo Xiaot ian's personal knowledge base to summarize an article from Zhihu. You can see that it basically summarizes the main points, core and main content of the article. If you have further questions, you can continue asking, and AI will further improve the answer or retrieve the corresponding content.

This capability is mainly due to the powerful local AI computing power of the Snapdragon XElite, which is something that current Intel and AMD processors cannot provide. Moreover, the Snapdragon XElite can deliver optimal performance even in the off state, so the computing efficiency of the local AI large model is not affected by the operating environment. However, some functions that require higher AI computing power cannot be implemented in the local AI state, such as AI drawing, which requires an online state to use.

Besides drawing, article summarization and other common functions, Lenovo's Hi-talk mode experience also surprised me. It is a voice dialogue model made with the help of a large AI model. It can not only query various information and materials for you, but also really accompany you to chat. For example, when you are unhappy, you can ask it to sing a song for you.

The existence of AI has made the Yoga Air 14s a truly different device from traditional PCs. It is smarter and more efficient, not just a tool, but a personal intelligent assistant.

Long-Lasting Battery Life

What is the biggest difference between Snapdragon XElite and traditional x86 processors? Two words can answer: battery life. Lenovo's official data shows that in a real office simulation environment, battery life can reach 12.3 hours, and local video playback battery life can reach 24 hours, directly crushing a host of traditional thin and light notebooks. More importantly, this battery life does not require sacrificing too much performance and experience.

In the video playback test, with 50% brightness, B station online video playback for half an hour only dropped by 5%. The estimated online video battery life is up to 10 hours, which surprised me.

Although there are thin and light notebooks that have achieved similar results in previous tests, they are mostly tested at 30% brightness, with the overall picture being darker. The Yoga Air 14s, however, is tested at 50% normal use brightness, meaning that during normal use, the battery life experience you get will not be significantly different from my test results.

In actual tests, I conducted half an hour of office tests (browsing the web, editing documents) in both "Best Power Efficiency" and "Balanced" modes. When using the Best Power Efficiency mode, the power only dropped by 4%. Based on this calculation, the actual battery life is very close to the 12.3 hours of office battery life given by Lenovo. This means that if you need to do mobile office work for a whole day, the battery life of the Yoga Air 14s can also meet your needs from morning to night.

Powerful Performance

Does such a long battery life mean that the Yoga Air