Lenovo Yoga Book 9i review (2023) the most exciting laptop

The 2023 Lenovo Yoga Book 9i is just a simple upgrade, with Intel 13th-generation processors added. The good news is that when we reviewed the 2022 model, we said it was the best laptop on the market, and it has stayed at the top of our list of best laptops ever since. If you remember only one thing from this review, you should remember that this laptops will replace its predecessor at the top of many of our best lists. It really is that good.

Lenovo Yoga Book 9i: Description

Lenovo’s Yoga 9i series (which used to be called the 900 series) has always been good, but we always been a fan of HP Spectre. HP was good at design, and its laptops had looks that would make them stand out in a coffee shop. Lenovo lost that title when it changed the look of the Spectre and made it less flashy. This was the first time Lenovo really tried to make a laptop. Of course, it’s not just pretty. Lenovo puts a rotatable soundbar in the hinge for great Dolby Atmos sound. You can choose between a 2.8K 90Hz OLED or a 4K 60Hz OLED screen.

It also has a few other bells and whistles, but the most important thing is that we couldn’t think of many bad things about it. This is a high-quality convertible laptop with a 14-inch 16:10 OLED screen, good inputs and outputs, and a powerful Intel Core P hardware implementation. This is made possible by a complex thermal module with two fans and two radiators. Only a few other devices, like the Asus ZenBook 14X OLED or the Dell XPS 13 Plus, have something similar.

Lenovo Yoga Book 9i: Pros and Cons

Specification Table

Lenovo Yoga Book 9i: Design

The Yoga Book 9i has a design with two screens that makes it stand out. This laptop, which is 11.78 x 8.03 x 0.63 inches, is on the thick side. It’s also a bit heavy at 3.04 pounds. Some people might not like this, but we thought the size and weight of the Yoga Book 9i made it feel like a high-quality product. The laptop feels high-end because it is made of a single piece of aluminum and is Tidal Teal in color. It has a smooth, easy-to-hold surface. Because it was well-made, we didn’t mind carrying it around closed, whether in my bookbag or around the office.

The only thing on the Yoga Book 9i that is not plain is an etched Yoga logo and a Lenovo stamp on the lid. The simple design is attractive. The small lip on the lid made it easy for me to open the laptop. When opening and closing the device, the hinge is a bit stiff, but not too much so. It’s also easy to flip the laptop’s lid back to use it as a tablet. Even though the hinge is stiff, it opens and closes smoothly and without creaking.

When we moved the laptop from dual landscape to dual portrait mode, the strong hinge kept the lid from closing by accident. You can read digital books on either screen. That makes sense in theory, but it doesn’t work out so well in real life. Even though the Yoga Book 9i isn’t too heavy, it’s too big to be a good e-reader. You should get one of the best Kindles. Still, I think it’s great that Lenovo has this option because it uses the two-screen design.

Lenovo Yoga Book 9i: Display

Think of the Yoga Book 9i in terms of a regular laptop. But of course, there’s a lot more to it than that, thanks to the second screen, which makes it a very different laptop to use in real life. First, let’s think about it like a normal clamshell. On its own, it gives you a vertical and a horizontal display. The User Center App that comes with the machine gives you a lot of ways to use the second screen, such as merging it with the top screen to make more vertical space. So, if you’re just browsing the web, you could open a webpage, drag it down into the second display, and see a lot more of it at once. Moving windows to the second screen is also easy.

Most of the time, though, you’ll want to type text, which you can do in two ways. The bottom screen has a virtual keyboard that you can use by tapping with eight fingers. By default, the keyboard opens at the top, and below it is a “virtual touchpad.” The display has haptic feedback that works OK, but not perfectly. The virtual clicks are just loud enough to let you know when you press a key, but if you type too quickly, the haptics fall behind.

Lenovo Yoga Book 9i: Sound Quality

Bowers & Wilkins speakers are built into the hinge of the Yoga Book 9i. This includes two 2-watt tweeters in the soundbar and two 2-watt woofers on the bottom corners. The speakers, which are optimized for Dolby Atmos, make a lot of noise for a laptop. The above Transformers trailer sounded great, with all of its explosions, shouting, and metal hitting metal. Not only was everything clear, but there was also a lot of bass, which made everything sound more powerful.

Music sounds great, too. “Welcome to the Empire” by Firewind is a loud song with a lot going on. It has a lot of guitar solos, high vocals, and double bass drums. Every part was clear, especially the solos by guitarist Gus G. The Yoga Book 9i’s speakers sound great, whether you’re listening to music or watching a video.

Lenovo Yoga Book 9i: Performance

The Yoga Book 9i has an Intel Core i7 from the 13th generation, 16 GB of DDR5X RAM, Intel Iris X graphics built in, and a 1 TB SSD. There is one Thunderbolt 4 port on the left and two on the right, as well as Bluetooth 5.1 and Wi-Fi 6E for connecting to other devices. The two OLED screens have 2.8K resolution, HDR support, a maximum brightness of 400 nits, and refresh rates of 60Hz. Even though it doesn’t have the most impressive specs on paper compared to some of the newest Ultrabook, the Yoga Book works well enough for most people. It’s a fast machine that feels fast and nimble, and it can handle Photoshop and Lightroom flows with little trouble.

we didn’t use it for video editing, so your experience may be different, but it’s a great workhorse for anyone who mostly uses Office/Google’s work suite, email, and light media. Both screens are great for watching videos, and the second screen gives you built-in ways to do more than one thing at once. For example, you can browse the web or use Twitter while watching something, or you can draw or paint on the lower screen while looking at a reference on the top screen. The Lenovo Yoga Book 9i is successful not only because of how well its parts work, but also because of how well it makes use of its unique shape.

As you might expect, there are some drawbacks to using a notebook with two screens instead of just one screen with a keyboard and trackpad built in. Lenovo has actually done a great job of fixing most of these problems. It has multitouch gestures that make it easy to bring up the software keyboard and trackpad when you need them right away, and it has a clever magnet-based docking mechanism for the included hardware keyboard that makes it easy to put it in place when you need to get down to business and type quickly. The fact that the stand works so well and also serves as a case for the pen and keyboard makes the pen, keyboard, and computer very easy to carry.

Lenovo Yoga Book 9i: Battery Life

Even though the Yoga Book 9i has two OLED screens, we was pleasantly surprised by how long it lasted on our battery test. The Yoga Book 9i worked for 9 hours and 18 minutes while we used it to surf the web, stream videos, and run simple graphics tests. When we turned off one screen, it jumped to 12:13. This is what would happen in tablet mode, where one screen is turned off. That’s longer than the Asus Zenbook 17 Fold OLED, which only ran for 7:56. But the regular Yoga 9i (10:38) and the MacBook Air (14:06) showed that laptops with only one screen still last the longest.

Final Words

The Lenovo Yoga Book 9i is a one-of-a-kind device that gives mobile users the benefit of more screen space. There are smart features to help support those screens, but you really need a desk to get the most out of it, so people who work on their laps might find it a bit limiting. The stand is clever, though, and it can be used in a lot of different ways, so how it is used may only be limited by the user’s imagination.

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