Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i 16 (2024) review: A powerful laptop for creators

Starting at under $1,500, the Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i seems to check the right boxes as the perfect laptop for creators. It has the most powerful Intel Core Ultra processor that there is, it’s paired with RTX graphics, and it has a mini-LED display option.

It’s made of all metal, coming in the gunmetal gray color we’ve seen on many Lenovo laptops. The bad news is that while the Yoga Pro 9i really doesn’t get you the battery life and performance combination that you’d get from something like a MacBook Pro.

That said, I do love the product. It’s got a phenomenal keyboard, a beautiful display, and enough power for most things that you can throw at it.

Lenovo provided XDA with the Yoga Pro 9i for review. It did not have any input on the contents of this article.

Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i pricing and availability

The Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i is available now, and the base model includes an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050, 16GB RAM, and a 512GB SSD for $1,482. However, you can boost that up to a Core Ultra 9 185H with 32GB RAM and 1TB SSD for $1,699, so that’s a pretty substantial upgrade.

The latter is what Lenovo sent me for review; however, while all models have a 3200×2000 display, these configurations are not Mini-LED. That adds on a $200 premium.

Design

Gunmetal gray that blends in

The Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i comes in Luna Grey, and yes, Lenovo spells gray with an ‘e’. It’s the dull, uninspired gunmetal gray color we’ve seen on so many laptops over the years, and to be clear, that’s fine. One thing I’ve learned about this market over the years is that basic colors are in high demand; but if you want pretty and flashy, this is not it.

Branding on the lid is traditional for a Lenovo yoga, with the small company logo on one corner and the larger Yoga logo on the opposite one. The reverse notch sticks out at the top, and it’s thicker than the rest of the lid to make room for the webcam and IR camera.

As for ports, the left side has Lenovo’s proprietary charging port, which it uses for laptops that need over 100W of juice. You’ll also find HDMI 2.0, Thunderbolt 4, USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C, and a 3.5mm audio jack.

That’s right; only one of the USB Type-C ports is Thunderbolt, a confusing and disappointing choice for a product that bears Lenovo’s premium ‘9i’ branding. The Yoga Pro 9i competes squarely with the MacBook Pro, so it’s strange to have such a limitation.

On the right side, there are two USB Type-A ports, along with a full-size SD card reader, a welcome addition and a rarity in consumer laptops.

Display and keyboard

It’s pretty good

The Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i comes with a 16-inch 3200×2000 165Hz screen, but while one of the selling points is its Mini-LED display, that’s not included on the unit that was sent for review, unfortunately. The resolution and refresh rate are the same for both screen technologies.

That said, the display is solid, with vibrant colors, deep blacks for an IPS screen, and most importantly, rounded corners.

In my testing, the screen supported 100% sRGB, 85% NTSC, 87% Adobe RGB, and 96% P3, which is really good for something that isn’t OLED. This is an excellent display.

Brightness came in at 414.1, which is fine but not great for outdoor use. I don’t think this is the type of machine you’d use outdoors either way. Contrast ratio maxed out at 970:1, which isn’t terrific, and I assume you’d see a better ratio with the Mini-LED panel.

Above the display is a 5MP webcam, an improvement over the 1080p sensors I’ve been seeing from Lenovo for the last couple of years. This provides some room for auto reframing, which you’ll find in certain software, although the Yoga Pro 9i doesn’t have Windows Studio Effects for some reason. Honestly, I find Windows Studio Effects to be useless enough that it’s not worth investigating why it’s not there when Core Ultra comes with an NPU. Any meeting app can blur my background and reduce background noise, and most of the time, it’s better at it than Windows is at processing it on-device.

As usual, Lenovo produced an excellent keyboard, with 1.5mm key travel. It has a number pad to the right, so make sure that you’re into that sort of thing.

The touchpad is massive, taking advantage of most of the available real estate. While I love big touchpads, I wish it was haptic, or at least better-mapped. Being so big, I quite often found myself right-clicking when I meant to left-click. Still, bigger is better when it comes to touchpads.

Performance and battery life

Or lack of battery life

I’ve been using the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x for some time now, along with other Snapdragon laptops like the Surface Laptop 7, Surface Pro 11, and HP EliteBook Ultra, and frankly, those things are so good that it’s hard to take current-gen Intel laptops seriously. The Yoga Pro 9i is easily more powerful, but it’s not snappy, and yes, there’s a difference between powerful and fast.

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It does most things right

Also, battery life just doesn’t compare. In most cases, you’re looking at four to seven hours. It’s not surprising, but it’s notable because we’re in a new era of computing. Apple’s MacBook Pro will get you this much power without the compromise on battery life, and according to Intel, so will its upcoming Lunar Lake chips, which are promised to be as efficient as Arm and offer a 50% increase in integrated graphics performance.

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The Yoga Pro 9i is great. Like I said, it’s powerful for photo and video editing, and even a bit of gaming. It’s just that looking at the rest of the market and knowing what’s coming in just a couple of months, I’m not sure I’d go and spend $1,500 for this kind of performance and battery life.

Note that PCMark 10 doesn’t run on Snapdragon X Elite, and Time Spy and CrossMark are x86 benchmarks running in emulation.

I added scores for the Yoga 9i because I still think that’s one of the best laptops on the market, but that has integrated graphics, so while it’s good for productivity and photo editing, you’ll want dedicated graphics for video editing and gaming.

I included the Surface Laptop 7 because the future of laptops is something that you have to consider at this point. Whether it’s Arm or Lunar Lake, there’s a major shift on the horizon.

Like I said, battery life isn’t what I’d consider disappointing. It’s exactly what I’d expect from a laptop with a powerful CPU and dedicated graphics. Don’t plan to take the Yoga Pro 9i on the road without a charger.

Should you buy the Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i?

You should buy the Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i if:

• You need a new laptop right now
• You edit photos and videos on your PC
• You play games

You should NOT buy the Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i if:

• You need long battery life
• You want a product that’s fun and flashy

The Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i is a solid and powerful laptop. Like I’ve said, it’s just hard to live with some of the cons knowing that’s available from Qualcomm and coming from Intel. It’s also just generally boring, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I suspect that if Lenovo sent the Mini-LED display option, I’d have been dazzled a bit more.

The key thing you need to decide is what you’re going to do with your laptop. If you need power, the Yoga Pro 9i is a great choice. If you’re fine with integrated graphics, I’m still in love with the regular Yoga 9i.

Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i (2024)

The Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i (2024) is a new creator laptop from Lenovo. It sports the latest Intel Core Ultra CPUs, and sports lots of AI features that make your laptop run faster under heavy loads thanks to the Intel NPU, the Lenovo AI Core Chip, and Lenovo X Power.