The MacBook Air is held up as a bastion of creative productivity, the only habitable world in the Goldilocks zone between budget laptops that are too puny for creative work, and the giants of the workstation zone that cost too much money for any normal person to ever seriously consider, apart from the very occasional, very elusive big discount on Prime Day.
However, the Lenovo Slim 7i Aura Edition is only one of several thriving ecosystems in this analogy I'm already starting to labour too heavily.
In just the last few years, thanks to chipset advances from Intel, Qualcomm and Nvidia, we are now awash with viable MacBook Air alternatives that offer excellent battery life, sustained performance for general creative work and attractive portability. ASUS, MSI, Acer, HP, Dell and LG all have lightweight performers in this class, but the best Prime Day offer I've spotted so far is from Lenovo.
While even at a 10% discount, the MacBook Air 15-inch with 16GB of unified memory and 1TB SSD storage will set you back $1,349, the Lenovo Slim 7i Aura Edition with the same amount of RAM and storage is only $999.99 for Prime Day. That's a 13% discount from its usual, strangely specific price of $1,155.64.
This model is closely related to the Yoga Slim Aura Edition we reviewed last year, but while that model had the super-efficient Snapdragon X processor that's still being brought up to compatibility with many everyday creative applications, this Slim is powered by an Intel Core Ultra 7 processor that has no such issues.
Yes, graphic prowess isn't fantastic, due to the onboard Intel Arc graphics, but the same applies to the MacBook Air, even though that one may look a little more attractively designed. The MacBook Air does have the Lenovo beat on display specs, though, as while the Lenovo maxes out at FHD, the Air offers superior resolution at 2880 x 1864.
These two laptops are largely compatible otherwise and will cover largely the same weight of workloads, but when one is $350 cheaper than the other, it's a no-brainer for me.
