Lenovo’s Yoga 9i Pro is said to be a Windows machine that’s aimed to cater to both work and play users. It’s part of a somewhat crowded portfolio of product offerings from the company, and may not necessarily have distinct features, but then it might not be a bad performer on any count either, so let’s try and see where it excels and where it might not.
Design: I tried the laptop in Tidal teal colour (also comes in Storm Grey) and really liked its sober look and feel made of recycled aluminium and plastic. It follows a somewhat matte finish throughout the body and doesn’t catch many fingerprints and smudge that quickly. On the right side, you get the power key with an LED indicator, two USb type A ports, 3.5mm audio jack and camera shutter key; while the left side houses the HDMi port (can run an 8K display at 60Hz), two USB type C ports with power delivery and Displayport 1.4 and an SD card slot. The laptop has good build quality with no creeks or bends. The lid, hinge and palm rest are all well-built with no complaints. The only complaint I could see was the bottom panel with the fan vents that appears to be slightly wonky in design compared to other parts of the hardware. Measuring about 1.65kg and 0.67 inches in thickness, it’s not the most portable laptop in the Yoga series but it’s still not massive enough to be a huge burden for carrying it around every now and then.
Display: The laptop comes in different display sizes 16-inch and 14.5-inch (3072x1920) display (which is the one I tried) in Mini LED and LCD options, up to 165Hz. The Mini LED is really punchy in colours and good contrast levels with peak brightness of about 1,200nits, providing decent output for HDR content, which a lot of laptops tend to struggle with. The 10-bit display panel here seems to be of good enough quality that you can edit your images and videos keeping colour correctness in mind. It’s probably the best part about this Lenovo laptop, though it doesn’t go full 360 degrees and only goes flat 180 degrees despite being a touchscreen.
Performance: the device runs on Windows 11 Pro and comes Intel’s 13 th Gen. i9 (13905H) chip (clocked at up to 3Ghz along with nVidia’s 4070 GPU with 8GB VRAM, all this to go with whopping 64GB of LPDDRX5 RAM, 1 TB of m.2 SSD. It’s a filled package with a lot of high-end hardware up its sleeve. I found the laptop to handle smooth graphics and gameplay, make sure you have enabled 165Hz from settings along with HDR. It does tend to get hot near fan vents. You can expect to play AAA titles at highest settings for pretty much any Windows game here without the feeling your hardware requires extra headroom. For editing videos, too, provided you have placed the laptop on a flat surface so there’s sufficient space for cooling at the bottom, you can edit a 4K video while having your
Web browser open and some Microsoft Office app open, too. There are a couple of Lenovo apps that come pre-installed though I am not sure either of them really added anything valuable, perhaps battery stats and performance mode from the Lenovo Vantage app, but that’s about it. Also, it does wake up from sleep quicker than the Yoga 9i, but it could still be further improved despite having performance mode enabled (and battery saver off).
Keyboard: You get a full-sized and backlit keyboard with no numpad. The keys have sufficient travel and are tactile and comfortable to use for longer durations, not even once during my usage I found anything that I would perhaps like to change with the keyboard in any major way. The trackpad is plenty big and works smoothly with the usual Windows gestures and doesn’t miss a beat when scrolling, pinching or using multiple fingers gestures.
Battery life: The laptop features a 75Wh battery unit that lasted around 6-7 hours on a stretech with screen brightness at 40%, WiFi always on, watching an hour of video, having Web browser always open with a Microsoft Office app in the background.
Since I didn't have a compatible charger for the notebook that is compatible with Indian plugs, I couldn't test the charging speed with the bundled charger. However, I want to mention that both USB Type-C ports on the notebook can be used for charging.
Verdict: All in all, the Yoga Pro 9i seems like a good enough but not too great a choice for a gaming laptop and even less than that for working considering the price tag of Rs. 2,06,100. It has a great display and keyboard, but an okay battery life and it also shows heating issues every now and then under heavy loads including gaming.