Lenovo Yoga 9i laptop review: Beauty and the beast

Performance-wise, the Lenovo Yoga 9i is capable of handling anything that you throw at it, which adds to the overall allure of this device.

The Lenovo Yoga 9i has plenty to keep you occupied. Right from its bright yet balanced display to its lightweight design to its stylus that hides in plain sight to its flexible body that moulds itself as you place it. (Shweta Ganjoo/HT Tech)

Rating

4 out of 5

Price

INR 169,990/-

Product Name

Yoga 9i laptop

Brand Name

Lenovo

Pros

• Stunning display
• Long battery life
• Keyboard with flexible keys
• Premium finish
• Lightweight design
• Stylus

Cons

• Fingerprint reader is hard to discover
• Mouse buttons are difficult to use

Specifications

• Processor
  11th Gen Intel Core i7 processor, Intel Xe Graphics
• Space
  Up to 16GB of RAM, Up to 1TB of PCLe storage
• Display
  14-inch UHD (3840 x 2160) IPS display, 500 nits of peak brightness, 1MP webcam
• Audio
  Rotating soundbar with Dolby Atmos speaker system, 4 speakers
• Battery
  60Whr lithium-ion polymer battery

Laptops have become an extension of our digital lives of late. While they were always an important aspect of our lives both at our workplaces and at our homes, now they have become something more personal -- a place that was earlier reserved just for smartphones. Now, they are not just catering to the work-related bulk load that can be overly demanding sometimes due to extended work hours but they are also handling the personal workload, which many-a-times includes binge-watching shows at a stretch or having video calls for hours together with friends and family members. In the pre-covid era, this bulk load was handled by two separate machines, but amid the changed circumstances, all of this is handled by a single PC. Now, arduous circumstances like the ones right now require a machine that is both flexible yet incredibly enduring so as it is able to handle the computational workload and demands posed by the two opposing environments. Keeping in view the growing demands for advanced laptops and PCs, Lenovo launched the Lenovo Yoga 9i laptop in India earlier this year.

The Lenovo Yoga 9i is a part of the company's Yoga series of laptops and it succeeds the Lenovo Yoga 6 laptop that was launched at the beginning of this year. It features Intel's 11th-generation Core i7 laptop that is coupled with Intel Xe graphics, up to 16GB of RAM, up to 1TB of PCle storage with four Dolby Atmos powered speakers and a 60 Whr Li-ion battery. These heavyweight specifications are coupled with a metallic chassis and a leather top. This leather top gives this laptop an ultra-premium finish, something that exudes class and confidence.

Specifications and features aside, the Lenovo Yoga 9i has plenty to keep you occupied. Right from its bright yet balanced display to its lightweight design to its stylus that hides in plain sight to its flexible body that moulds itself as you place it. If that's not enough, there is a powerful speaker system for your weekend movie marathons.

The Lenovo Yoga 9i laptop looks good on paper. But the real question here is if it performs just as well. We will try to answer that and more in the review below.

The Lenovo Yoga 9i comes with a 14-inch display that is encased inside a metallic chassis with a leather top. (Shweta Ganjoo/HT Tech)

The Lenovo Yoga 9i comes with a 14-inch display that is encased inside a metallic chassis with a leather top. (Shweta Ganjoo/HT Tech)

Lenovo Yoga 9i: Design

The Lenovo Yoga 9i comes with a 14-inch display that is encased inside a metallic chassis with a leather top. This metallic chassis under normal circumstances should make the laptop heavy. However, in this case, it doesn't let you feel the weight of the machine, which otherwise weighs 1.4Kgs. The display and the rest of the body of the laptop is attached to a rotating speaker bar that makes it possible for you to fold it inside and outside just like a notebook. On folding it inside, it resembles a conventional laptop and when you fold it the other way around, it turns into a tablet with the orientation rotating with the display. The top of the laptop is covered in leather with the Lenovo logo on top. This logo gives the Lenovo Yoga 9i a premium finish. It also leaves less room for smudges and fingerprint marks to spoil the look and feel of this laptop.

Beyond the leather top, the Lenovo Yoga 9i has a backlit keyboard with some very useful keys such as print screen, airplane mode, and calculator among others. This keyboard is extremely comfortable to use, especially if you are someone whose work involves a lot of typing like me. In fact, the keyboard of Lenovo Yoga 9i is easily one of the most comfortable keyboards that I have worked on.

Besides the keyboard, it has a fairly large trackpad. While this trackpad is fairly sensitive to work with, it's the mouse buttons that I faced a constant issue with. They aren't as comfortable to work with, which dampens the overall experience, especially the parts that involve selecting a piece of content on the screen and then taking an action on it using the mouse buttons. The Lenovo Yoga 9i laptop also has a fingerprint scanner that is placed towards the right side of the trackpad. The design of this fingerprint scanner is such that it unifies with the rest of the laptop, which makes it incredibly hard to detect and to use.

Overall, the Lenovo Yoga 9i looks premium and is extremely flexible to use.

Lenovo Yoga 9i: Display

Next is the display. The Lenovo Yoga 9i features a 14-inch UHD touchscreen IPS display with a resolution of 3840 x 2160 pixels. It offers 500 nits of brightness and it features support for Dolby Vision technology.

Technical details aside, the display is one of the best things about the Lenovo Yoga 9i laptop. In practice, the display of this laptop is bright and well lit and it is comfortable to use, especially when using it for prolonged periods of time. While it offers ‘just' 500 nits of brightness, it is adequate whether you are using it in the indoor light during the day or during the night. The display of the Lenovo Yoga 9i apart from being well suited to be used anywhere also produces on pointe colours that are bright while not being harsh on the eyes. This is a particularly helpful feature for people like me who spend hours and hours staring at their laptop screens.

As far as the touchscreen aspect of the Lenovo Yoga 9i's display is concerned, it works flawlessly, especially when the laptop is being used in tablet mode. You can sift through pages worth of information, read a book or even type a document especially when you are on the go, which is much more convenient and comfortable than typing on a laptop. There is a 1MP webcam on the top that captures picture-perfect images and helps Windows Hello do its job well even if the fingerprint sensor fails.

Overall, the display of the Lenovo Yoga 9i is definitely one of the best screens that I have used so far.

The Lenovo Yoga 9i laptop is powered by up to 11th gen Intel Core i7 processor that is coupled with the Intel Iris Xe graphics. (Shweta Ganjoo/HT Tech)

The Lenovo Yoga 9i laptop is powered by up to 11th gen Intel Core i7 processor that is coupled with the Intel Iris Xe graphics. (Shweta Ganjoo/HT Tech)

Lenovo Yoga 9i: Performance

Now the most important aspect of this review: performance.

The Lenovo Yoga 9i laptop is powered by up to 11th gen Intel Core i7 processor that is coupled with the Intel Iris Xe graphics. This combination is coupled with up to 16GB of RAM and up to 1TB of SSD PCle storage space.

Specifications aside, the Lenovo Yoga 9i is a power performer when it comes to handling the daily grunt day in and day out. I have used this laptop for quite a while testing it amid a diverse set of circumstances. Be it the daily work-related pressure or home entertainment needs over the weekends, which mostly involves binge-watching media series like Grey's Anatomy and The Resident on Disney+ Hotstar and occasionally Christmas rom-com on Netflix (you can judge me on that one later!) or a mix of both when the weekend kicks in, the Lenovo Yoga 9i handles everything that you throw at it with grace and ease.

Aside from its computational prowess, which makes it ideal to be used for both work-related and personal purposes, it also features support for the Intel Evo Platform along with tons of security features that make it ideal for business use cases as well.

Lenovo Yoga 9i: Battery

Now comes the battery. The Lenovo Yoga 9i comes with a 60Whr lithium-ion polymer battery, which according to Lenovo offers up to 11 hours of video playback time when using the screen in UHD mode and up to 18 hours of video playback time when used in FHD mode. In practice, the Lenovo Yoga 9i consistently lasted for almost 8-8.5 hours on a busy workday and around 9-9.5 hours on a slow day or on a day I focussed on watching shows and movies with a bit of work.

Talking about the charging capabilities, it takes the laptop about 2-2.5 hours to charge completely.

Lenovo Yoga 9i: Conclusion

Now the most important question: should you buy the Lenovo Yoga 9i or not?

In a nutshell, yes, if you have the pockets for it. The Lenovo Yoga 9i costs over INR 1.5 Lakhs, which brings it in the league of premium laptops like the Apple MacBook Pro and the Microsoft Surface Pro. While that price, INR 1,74,990, might seem like a lot, especially for a Windows laptop but in my experience, it deserves every bit of the spotlight that it is asking for. It's a colour-balanced and well-lit touchscreen display that works flawlessly whether you are using it in laptop mode or in tablet mode. The fact that it has a rotating soundbar and a notebook-like foldable design makes it a tad bit more alluring. It also gives it an edge over the existing premium laptops in the market right now. Performance-wise, it is capable of handling anything that you throw at it, which adds to the overall allure of this device.

Sure, the fingerprint sensor is a buzzkill and the mouse buttons could be improved upon to make them as flexible as the keyboard, but other than that the Lenovo Yoga 9i has no visible flaws.