Verdict
A beautiful , flexible , transmutable laptop that defecate a great all - rounder . Performance and barrage life history are n’t outstanding , but it ’s systematically a joy to apply .
Pros
Cons
Key Features
Introduction
The Lenovo Yoga 9i 2 - in-1 is a slimline 14 - inch convertible security aimed at creatives – or at least place exploiter with originative inspiration . It seems to be a mature mart these day , with producer keen to show that they can acquire little , lightweight devices that still deliver excellent carrying into action for video , photograph - redaction and other arty applications .
However , Lenovo ’s Yoga sub - trade name has been doing it longer than most , and premature interlingual rendition of the 9i 2 - in-1 have been consistently impressive , albeit with some minor flaws . Plus , while it does n’t have every feature you might like for – for illustration , there ’s no dedicated GPU – it ’s a relatively affordable auto with a powerful specification and a superb OLED screen . If you want a quiet , lightweight laptop for serious use , it might be precisely what you ’re after .
I ’ve spent a big glob of the last week place the Yoga 9i 2 - in-1 through its tempo , so here ’s what I call back .
Design and keyboard
Lenovo ’s latest Yoga 9i design is n’t as ostentatious as its 2021 effort ; there ’s no leather chapeau to be found here . Instead , it ’s simple and graceful , with a lovely obscure - aristocratical cultivation that Lenovo line as Cosmic Blue , and a whippy Al shape that ’s just 15.3 mm thick and 1.35Kg in weight .
The thick cardinal flexible joint grant you to use it in a collapsible shelter or tablet configuration , as well as the stock grapple musical mode , and it also houses the speaker organization , making sure you get full sound however you ’ve posed the twist . The Yoga 9i is a little too large to wreak effectively as a tablet , but it ’s great for sketching categorical on the desk or observe Netflix while in tent way , and this versatility does n’t occur at any cost when you ’re just trying to use the Yoga as a laptop .
It also feels reassuringly tough . The hinge has a smooth action but is pie-eyed enough to provide sizeable CRT screen financial support , while there ’s minimal flex in the physical structure and barely any in the lid .
The thin stature of the bod come at a price , and it ’s connectivity . You get two Thunderbolt 4 ports on the left - hand side and a single USB 3.2 Gen 1 . On the right you have a USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type - C and the 3.5 mm audio frequency socket . That ’s it . However , establish foresight Lenovo has bundled in a compact USB - C pier , with an extra Type - A port wine and HDMI and old - school day VGA outputs . You wo n’t have to occupy about web either as the Yoga has Wi - Fi 6E build - in .
I ’m not sure that the Yoga 9i ’s keyboard is equal to that of the brand ’s good ThinkPad keyboards , but it ’s as close as you ’re going to get on a gadget this slim . The keys have Lenovo ’s typical rounded bottoms and are ever - so - slightly concave . The result is that your fingers just seem to find oneself them and descend onto them naturally .
The 1.5 millimeter of travel makes for satisfying feedback , there ’s a soft click as you typewrite , and the overall flavor is fast and lite . My only grumble is that Lenovo has placed a column of function keys running down the right - hand side , which I ca n’t stop murder when I reach for the Return , right - shift or backspace key , sometimes switching the screen to the yellow-bellied - tinct eyecare mode inadvertently . I also had to keep remind myself that the Yoga 9i has a fingermark scanner , as it ’s weirdly integrated into a fake winder at the bottom of this column .
The touchpad is significantly wider than it is tall , at 13.3 by 7.8 cm , but it ’s sleek smooth and pretty flawless in its tracking , work as well for detailed adjustments in an image - editor program as for straightforward connection browsing and navigate Windows . Again , though , I had an odd trouble where two - fingered scrolling gestures were sometimes misinterpreted as three - feel gesture , and the Windows desktop switcher launched . This happened enough to be mildly plaguey .
Lenovo supply the Yoga 9i with an active Slim Pen stylus which attaches magnetically to the display case . I ’m not much of an artist , but I found it great for speedy scrabble , notes and annotations , while adding to the Yoga ’s originative potential .
Screen
Much as I sleep with the overall design of the Yoga 9i , the screen might be the best affair about it . It ’s a pretty stunning 14 - inch OLED panel with the now trendy ( and squarer ) 16:10 aspect proportion and a 2880 x 1800 resolution and a 243ppi pixel denseness , which I think is as far as you need to go on a screen door this size . It ’s not ludicrously hopeful ; I measured SDR cleverness at 393 nit , which was still ok for working next to a windowpane on a bright summer ’s day . However , clarity is fantabulous , blacks are perfectly dark and colours bold and vibrant . It ’s a superb show for productiveness – a little more well-situated than the 13 to 13.6 - inch screens appearing on thebest ultrabooks – but also brilliant for amusement and more originative work . see picture just to gauge barrage sprightliness , I base it voiceless to get behind my eyes away from the screen .
My subjective opinions are punt up by the test results . The Yoga 9i ’s screen traverse 100 % of the sRGB colour gamut with a volume of 173 % , and 99.9 % of the DCI - P3 gamut with a intensity of 123 % . It even handles nearly all of the tricky Adobe RGB gamut , with 97.3 % coverage and 119.5 % loudness . Even creative pros wo n’t have any issue with color reproduction or accuracy – the Average Delta E I record was just 1 .
I was n’t certain what variety of audio system you could house within a hinge , but the output is amazingly full - bodied and powerful , so I did n’t have to reach for earpiece when view movies or TV . There ’s just enough bass to make you feel that you ’re not missing the low remnant , and there ’s even a becoming stereophony feast . Plus , as I ’ve already said , it process as well in tent or tablet mood as in the received clamshell configuration , so there ’s no downside to using those for entertainment .
I was slightly disappointed by the webcam ’s performance . Images are bright , but it seems to struggle with one - sided inflammation and I ’ve catch more particular and definition elsewhere , despite a maximum 1440p/30fps resolution . Still , it ’s dead adequate for video recording calls and meeting , where the onboard mic array works well to conquer light and intelligible auditory sensation .
Performance
The Yoga 9i uses Intel ’s Core Ultra 7 155H CPU ; a bit we ’ve seen a lot this yr in execution - oriented thin - and - light laptops . It ’s teamed with 16 GB of DDR5 RAM in our run sampling , though you may slop out extra on a configuration with 32 GB . Performance is pretty much what we ’d gestate from this spec . The Core Ultra 7 has more than enough power for productivity and originative applications , even if you ’re working on monolithic superimposed files in Photoshop or compositing with multiple 4 chiliad television stream . The incorporated Intel Arc nontextual matter ca n’t do the same work as a decent consecrated GPU , but they ’re firm enough to speed up rendering tasks or plow some lightweight gaming , though you ’ll need to keep the result to 1080p or dispirited and the graphic scene to Low or Medium . Even then , you ’re looking at a quarry 30fps in more demanding games .
In our exam , the Yoga 9i systematically scored higher than theMSI Prestige 14 AI Evo C1 M , where our test role model used the Core 5 Ultra 125H , not to mention the LG Gram Pro 16 , which has the same Core Ultra 7 CPU but double the RAM . It delivered similar outcome to theAcer Swift Go 14 , which has a nearly selfsame specification . The Acer was faster in the Cinebench R23 bench mark , while the Gram Pro 16 ’s dedicated GPU give it the edge in 3DMark , but any other focal ratio differences derive down more to size and cooling systems , where the Acer ’s prominent build and sports fan give it an reward . The Yoga 9i is n’t silent all the time , but you’re able to only hear the fans kick in when it ’s being pushed .
It ’s tricky to make apples to apple comparisons with the Modern Qualcomm Snapdragon - powered CoPilot+ PCs when they do n’t currently run our full suite of bench mark . What I can tell you though is that the young Surface Laptop 7 with the Snapdragon X Elite is slower than the Yoga 9i in Geekbench ’s single - nub tests but quicker in the multi - core test . Provided your most - used apps will all operate on ARM hardware , theSurface Laptop 7or Surface Pro 11 might also be serious competition .
Confusingly , our review model came with a 1 TB SSD , now only usable with the more expensive 32 GB variation of this laptop computer if you buy in the UK . The 16 GB version has a small 512 GB drive unless you upgrade yourself with Lenovo ’s Build Your Own contour tools . It ’s fast , with consecutive read / write speeds of 6188MB / sec and 4702MB / sec , so it ’s not going to slow you down in video or graphics applications where speedy entrepot is a must .
Software
Lenovo has been quite restrained with software program on the Yoga 9i . There ’s a pre - installed promotion for Dropbox , a trial version of McAfee and a Dolby Access utility to tweak the audio , but that ’s about it for third - party stuff . Lenovo , meanwhile , provides organisation tools and updates through its well - established Vantage app .
Cheerfully , this does n’t launch on jump - up by default option , so it ’s not always running unless you want it to , and it allow for useful information on your laptop , the barrage fire and warrantee , plus some more or less annoying prompts to buy additional warrant and services . The dick included cover simple optimisation routine , modes for different activities and sound and comment option , but not much in the way of serious performance tweaking .
Battery life
A year ago I ’d have been praise the Yoga 9i for its all - twenty-four hour period battery life sentence . In fact , the 11 hour and two minutes it last in PC Mark 10 ’s Modern Office benchmark is still perfectly healthy . However , the Modern breed of CoPilot+ PC have moved the goalpost moderately – the Surface Laptop 7 will keep on rain buckets video for 22 hours – and even some of the fresh AMD Strix Point laptops are post respectable figures , though we ’ve yet to reexamine any here yet . You ’ll get a day ’s work done without a recharge and then some , but you ’ll still need to stop up it in when you start work for the next Clarence Shepard Day Jr. .
Left to stream Netflix at full brightness for an 60 minutes sees the Yoga 9i ’s battery waste pipe by 16 % , so you might desire to keep a charger handy if you ’re looking to satiate through your downloads on a long journeying .
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Should you buy it?
The Yoga 9i 2 - in-1 looks and feels marvellous , with an excellent keyboard , a superb display and impressive sound . The flexible form factor makes it hugely versatile , but without any compromise that get in the way of using it as a laptop .
If you ’re not fussed with the translatable design , we ’re see other thin - and - light laptops that will give you more carrying out , while the Modern CoPilot+ microcomputer have the Yoga beaten on multi - core speeds and bombardment life .
Final Thoughts
There are areas where the Yoga 9i does n’t surpass . It ’s performance is heavy across all mainstream apps , but nothing particularly special . It ’s bombardment life is good , but a few hour short of stellar . Yet there ’s something about the 2 - in-1 purpose , the screen and the keyboard that create this a with child laptop for everyday use , both at household and on the go . It ’s beautifully constructed and mythical to look at , while being tight enough for anything except gambling and the most demanding originative tasks . What ’s more , when you look at the toll ticket , it ’s great time value to kick .
For those seeking out more magnate , give the newMicrosoft Surface Laptop 7a see , as well as theMSI Prestige 14 AI Evo C1M.
Trusted Score
How we test
Every laptop we go over go through a series of uniform stoppage designed to guess fundamental factors , including habitus character , performance , screen quality and shelling aliveness .
These include formal synthetic benchmarks and scripted trial , plus a series of existent - public checks , such as how well it runs democratic apps .
FAQs
you could get away with some light gambling at 30fps on the Lenovo Yoga 9i 2 - in-1 ( 2024 ) , but do n’t expect to drive it further than that .
Full Specs
