Lenovo Yoga 9i 14 Gen 9 (2024) Review (2024)

Just as its ThinkPad X1 Carbon is locked in eternal combat with Dell's XPS 13 for the ultraportable crown, Lenovo's 14-inch Yoga 9i slugs it out with the HP Spectre x360 as the best consumer convertible. The Yoga 9i 14 Gen 9 ($1,449.99 as tested) refreshes the premium 2-in-1 with Intel's first round of AI-enhanced Core Ultra silicon inside and Microsoft's AI-hyped Copilot key on the keyboard. It earns Editors' Choice honors as a terrific and versatile productivity partner, but if you're not eager to join the AI craze we feel obligated to say its equally fine Gen 8 predecessor is still available for $200 or $300 less.

Configuration and Design: A Best Buy Bargain

Our Yoga 9i (model 83AC0001US) is a $1,449.99 Best Buy configuration with an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H processor, 16GB of RAM, a 1TB NVMe solid-state drive, Windows 11 Home, and a 2,880-by-1,800-pixel OLED touch screen backed by Intel Arc integrated graphics. It comes with a Lenovo Slim Pen stylus and a carrying sleeve in the same Cosmic Blue hue as the laptop.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

The convertible is a bit more costly at Lenovo.com, starting at $1,477 with only a 512GB SSD, but the website sells a sharper 3,840-by-2,400-pixel OLED display—albeit limited to a vanilla 60Hz refresh rate instead of our system's smoother 120Hz—as an $80 option.

This aluminum-clad Yoga measures 0.64 by 12.4 by 8.6 inches and limbos under the ultraportable line at 2.98 pounds; its HP Spectre x360 14 nemesis is virtually the same size (0.67 by 12.4 by 8.7 inches) but a fraction heavier at 3.19 pounds.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

Slim bezels surround the laptop's 16:10 aspect ratio display; a slight ridge at the top holds the webcam with a sliding privacy shutter and makes it easier to open the laptop one-handed. The camera features IR face recognition, which joins a fingerprint reader at the bottom right of the keyboard for two ways to skip typing passwords with Windows Hello. As on past models, the near-full-width screen hinge not only lets you flip and fold the Yoga into tablet, tent, and kiosk modes but serves as a soundbar for the laptop's quad speakers (two 2-watt tweets and two 2-watt woofers).

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

The laptop's rounded left edge holds two USB-C Thunderbolt 4 ports and one USB 3.2 Type-A port. The power button, an audio jack, and a Type-C USB4 port are on the right. Regrettably, you'll need a USB-C DisplayPort adapter since this laptop has no HDMI port for an external monitor. Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth are available standard.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

Using the Lenovo Yoga 9i 14 Gen 9: Mysteriously Placed Magnets

The flattened, 5-inch Lenovo Slim Pen clings magnetically not to the Yoga's side but to the left edge of its lid or either edge of its bottom, which is better than nothing but not as convenient as convertibles with a slot or garage for stashing the stylus. The pressure-sensitive pen kept up with my fastest swipes and scribbles with decent palm rejection on the touch screen. A cap, which once removed is impossible to put back on—I swear, I've tried a hundred times—covers the USB-C charging port at the end.

Lenovo's 5-megapixel webcam surpasses 1080p (or, yuck, 720p) hardware by capturing crisp 2,560-by-1,440-pixel (16:9) or 2,592-by-1,944-pixel (4:3) images and videos. Oddly, the Windows Camera app doesn't include the recently added AI auto-framing and background-blur options, but the webcam's images are bright and colorful with no noise or static. It also provides presence detection to lock the system when you leave and unlock it when you return.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

The backlit keyboard has a column of four custom keys at the right that cycle through power modes; music, movie, and game audio presets; normal or a yellowish anti-blue-light screen setting; and launch a favorite website or application. The keys would be perfect for Home, End, Page Up, and Page Down, but those functions are relegated to the Fn key and cursor arrow keys, the latter arranged in a clumsy row instead of inverted T that I invariably curse in HP laptops.

That sin aside, the keyboard has a shallow and flat but reasonably snappy typing feel. Meanwhile, the laptop's decent-sized buttonless touchpad glides and taps smoothly and takes just the right amount of pressure for a quiet click.

Affordable OLED displays are the best thing to happen to laptops in the last five years. The Yoga 9i's VESA DisplayHDR 500 panel is vividly colorful with deep contrast and ample brightness. White backgrounds are pure as the driven snow and fine details are ultra-sharp, with no pixelation around the edges of letters. Photos and videos are a pleasure to look at, with richly saturated hues and wide viewing angles (though the touch glass catches reflections at extreme angles).

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

The Yoga's Bowers & Wilkins speakers produce exceptional sound, with plenty of volume and a surprising amount of bass. Even with the volume cranked up, you'll hear overlapping tracks loud and clear without tinny distortion or harshness. Dolby Atmos software lets you fine-tune the audio presets or tinker with an equalizer.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

Lenovo preinstalls a McAfee security trial and Lenovo Vantage software on the Yoga 9i. This software centralizes system updates, various settings, and Wi-Fi security. It also provides ads for identity protection, lock-and-locate device security, and proactive performance tuning subscriptions.

Testing the Lenovo Yoga 9i 14 Gen 9: Ready for (Almost) Anything

The Yoga 9i's archrival HP Spectre x360 14 is an obvious choice for our benchmark comparisons, as are two more costly business-oriented convertibles, the Dell Latitude 9440 2-in-1 and the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 8, an Editors' Choice award winner in its own right. The final 14-inch competitor is a non-convertible, the Asus Zenbook 14X OLED (Q420), priced at around $1,000 with the Intel CPU and 2,880-by-1,800-pixel screen absent from its $850 sibling, the Asus Zenbook 14 OLED Touch.

Productivity Tests

We run the same general productivity benchmarks across both mobile and desktop systems. Our first test is UL's PCMark 10, which simulates a variety of real-world productivity and office workflows to measure overall system performance and also includes a storage subtest for the primary drive.

Three other benchmarks focus on the CPU, using all available cores and threads, to rate a PC's suitability for processor-intensive workloads. Maxon's Cinebench R23 uses that company's Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene, while Geekbench 5.5 Pro from Primate Labs simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning. We also use the open-source video transcoder HandBrake 1.4 to convert a 12-minute video clip from 4K to 1080p resolution (lower times are better).

Finally, we run PugetBench for Photoshop by workstation maker Puget Systems, which uses the Creative Cloud version 22 of Adobe's famous image editor to rate a PC's performance for content creation and multimedia applications. It's an automated extension that executes a variety of general and GPU-accelerated Photoshop tasks ranging from opening, rotating, resizing, and saving an image to applying masks, gradient fills, and filters.

The Yoga 9i narrowly won in PCMark 10, though all five laptops easily cleared the 4,000 points that indicate excellent everyday productivity for apps like Word and Excel. The Spectre x360 edged the Lenovo in our CPU and Photoshop tests, though you won't find a bad performer in the bunch.Expect this laptop to handle all of today's basic-to-mid-level workloads as well as some AI tasks. However, know before you buy that this is not a Copilot+ PC, and therefore lacks Microsoft's newest AI features in Windows 11.

Graphics Tests

We test each Windows PC's graphics with two DirectX 12 gaming simulations from UL's 3DMark, Night Raid (more modest, suitable for laptops with integrated graphics) and Time Spy (more demanding, suitable for gaming rigs with discrete GPUs).

Additionally, we run two tests from the cross-platform GPU benchmark GFXBench 5, which stresses both low-level routines like texturing and high-level, game-like image rendering. The 1440p Aztec Ruins and 1080p Car Chase tests, rendered offscreen to accommodate different display resolutions, exercise graphics and compute shaders using the OpenGL programming interface and hardware tessellation respectively. The more frames per second (fps), the better.

Again, the HP and Yoga 9i 14 led the way, though none of these systems' integrated graphics holds a candle to the discrete GPUs of serious gaming laptops and workstations. They're fine for streaming video and casual gaming, but not built for demanding 3D rendering or action games.If you're looking for something to play games or handle content creation, look for a laptop with a dedicated graphics chip.

Battery and Display Tests

We test each laptop's battery life by playing a locally stored 720p video file (the open-source Blender movie Tears of Steel) with display brightness at 50% and audio volume at 100%. We make sure the battery is fully charged before the test, with Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting turned off.

To test displays, we also use a Datacolor SpyderX Elite monitor calibration sensor and its Windows software to measure a laptop screen's color saturation—what percentage of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 color gamuts or palettes the display can show—and its 50% and peak brightness in nits (candelas per square meter).

Even the last-place Zenbook's battery life proved more than enough for a full day's work, while the Yoga 9i and Spectre both delivered about 18 hours off the socket. The three laptops with OLED displays predictably produced unbeatable color coverage and ample brightness (OLED's sky-high contrast keeps us satisfied with a tad less than the 400-plus nits we like to see from IPS screens). With Intel Core Ultra widely available, you can expect to see battery life figures hit closer to the 24-hour mark more consistently as we continue to test new models. Likewise, with OLED growing increasingly popular, expect generally more vibrant screens to become a norm sooner rather than later.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

Verdict: Well Worth a Slight Premium

The Lenovo Yoga 9i 14 Gen 8 has topped our 2-in-1 laptop roundup recommendations for a year, and the Gen 9 model is a worthy successor with a splendid screen, faultless performance and battery life, and sensational sound. The Yoga is a bit more expensive but slightly lighter than HP's Spectre x360 14, so it stands next to it as an Editors' Choice award holder, matching it spec-for-spec otherwise. You really can't go wrong with either—or the previous Yoga to save cash—if you're seeking a versatile 2-in-1 for anything short of demanding games or workstation apps. Like its utmost rival from HP, the Lenovo Yoga 9i 14 Gen 9 earns our Editors' Choice award in high-end 2-in-1 laptops as an alternative to a similar computing experience.