Lenovo yoga 9i Pro - 2 Week Later Review

So I have been using the Yoga 9i Pro Gen 8 or in some regions the Slim Pro 9i and for the short time I’ve spent with it, it’s made me release more and more, laptops are taking charge and bringing the fight to desktop PCs, especially when it comes to productivity. Almost 2 weeks later, here’s my initial experience and impressions with it.

Design And Build Quality

the design and build quality and I’ve got to state the obvious thing that stood out to me the most was the unusually shaped and yet very functional design of the 9i because it has such a curved nature to the build, especially when closed and considering the matte finish to the casing which the color have here which is the Tidal Teal and the weight of the laptop coming in at around 2 Kilograms, with a fairly nice and slim profile at around 18mm, for what’s packed inside, it’s very impressive.

Now I stated the design is unusually functional because of the reverse notch design at the top of the design lid. Functionality wise it makes it easier to open the laptop, which thanks to the smooth and solid hinge design, allows you to do so with one hand, it also prevents the laptop display design from having an inner notch on the screen like you would see on a Macbook Pro.

Considering this laptop uses an RTX 40 series based GPU, having a HDMI 2.1 port with 4K 120Hz output would have been great. Apart from that the ports selection is very good and having the power button and camera shutter on the right is very clutch and make a lot of sense if you plan to use the laptop in clam-shell mode as a desktop replacement, meaning you don’t need to open it to access the power button. Overall the build quality and design is excellent on the 9i.

IO

Ports wise, this is a strong area for the 9i. On the left side we have 2 USB-A ports with 3.2 Gen 1 speeds, a full size HDMI 2.0, a Thunderbolt 4 port in the shape of USB-C and a 3.5mm audio combo port. On the right side see’s another USB-A port with 3.2 Gen 1 speeds, a full size SD Card reader at UHS-II speeds and although the others are not ports, you have a power button and a camera shutter for the webcam for added privacy.

I am not sure if this is down to the housing of the front camera and IR sensor for Windows Hello, taking up more space than expected for this to be a design solution, but that is one area that actually sticks out, which I am 50/50 about.

Specs

For the specs and performance I’ve got the pleasure of having the absolute top model powered by Intel’s 13th Gen 13-905H, 64GB of LPDDR5x RAM, 1TB of NVMe SSD storage and the Nvidia RTX 4070 GPU with a TGP rating of 100w. 

I wouldn’t call this spec cheap by any means as it does sit around the £2849 mark which is around the same in US dollars, I will say for what you’re getting, there is an element of value here that could easily be well over 3 grand for such a specced out laptop. 

For the performance and software experience, this is of course running on Windows 11 using the Home edition and at this time I’ve not done any gaming on it, personally as much as it can game thanks to  RTX 4070 at 100w and the H series Intel chip at 45w, I see this more for content creation and for someone like myself who spends a lot of time in using Premiere Pro and doing intensive 4K videos, I care more about the performance I’ll get from that when plugged in and also unplugged.

Battery

Battery wise, the 9i is rated using a 75 whr 4-cell battery which comes with an included 230w charger, which is nice and compact. You do have the option to charge over the USB-C port, but remember to get the maximum performance plugged in and fastest charging times you will have to use the 230w charger.  So far my battery life experience has been around 6-7 hours, which makes sense as this is a very high end specced laptop and I’m sure depending on your use case.

For a price range starting from just under £1800/$1800 up to just under £3000/$3000, the Lenovo Yoga 9i Pro so far hits the mark for what is an all around solid premium Windows laptop for productivity and some gaming.