Lenovo Yoga 9i 14 Gen 9 review: Punchy sound and stunning OLED

The audio is truly sensational!

Sometimes you get a laptop that exceeds your expectations in surprising ways. The Lenovo Yoga 9i 14 Gen 9 (just Yoga 9i from here on out) does exactly that. Look at it and you might think it’s just another 2-in-1 laptop folds around to tablet mode. But this laptop has a party trick that I absolutely love.

That isn’t to say the Yoga 9i is perfect, of course. What you have, as is the case with every laptop, is a bundle of compromises. A device that asks: What’s most important to you? If it’s gaming, you give up battery life. If it’s productivity, you give up fun. And if it’s sleek portability, like the Yoga 9i, you give up ports and spacious keyboard.

Lenovo Yoga 9i 14 Gen 9: Specs

If you’re going to spend $1,500 on a laptop, you definitely want to get something good for your money, and overall the Yoga does deliver that. An Intel Core Ultra 7 155H processor powers this guy, which by now is a familiar entry in this era of the laptop world. Unlike the Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i, a suspiciously similarly named laptop, this actually is a 2-in-1, which means you can fold the display all the way back.

The fact that you get a decently high-resolution OLED display with a fast refresh rate is a boost to the 2-in-1 feature. A tablet mode is pretty pointless with a subpar screen after all. At this price you’ll get 16 GB of RAM, but if you want to spend more you can bump that up to 32 GB and max the display resolution out at 3840×2400. You do get a couple of bonuses as well, a slim pen that charges over USB-C and a sleeve. The pen will magnetically attach (but not charge) to the lid, and the sleeve includes a pen loop. The pen does the job, but without internal storage, I’m certain I’d lose it in short order.

Lenovo Yoga 9i 14 Gen 9: Build quality and looks

Lenovo ThinkPads have a (deserved) reputation for a bland business look. The Yoga line, however, tends to be a bit more fun without taking too many risks. And that’s the case here.

You’ll find some familiar details like the same webcam jut-out found on practically all of Lenovo’s laptops. And some interesting tidbits like that speaker grill hidden in the hinge. But that grill is the very first sign that this is a laptop for more play than work and it shines. I like the Cosmic Blue colorway, but you can go with a more traditional Luna Grey if that’s your jam. The blue is much darker than photos might suggest, but it shimmers a bit as you lean left and right with a metallic sheen that adds just a touch of whimsey.

I appreciate that there are no creaks or squeaks as I use the device, everything feels very sturdily put together. That’s sometimes not the case with 2-in-1 laptops that feature a 360 hinge, but even that’s pretty strong. As I type, the display barely bounces (if at all), and when I do fold the thing to tent or table mode, it feels natural with just the right amount of resistance.

Lenovo Yoga 9i 14 Gen 9: Keyboard, trackpad, and pen

The keyboard, however, leaves a little to be desired. Namely, more room. Lenovo places a column of buttons on the right edge to give you theoretically handy little features, like a quick sound profile, a favorite app button, a way to quickly switch between audio profiles, and a fingerprint reader But that means everything else shifts to the left and shrinks to make room for the extra buttons. Likewise the cursors are scrunched and squeezed together.

Key travel is fine all things considered, but typing is still a bit of a pain. I have to hold my thumbs just so to avoid bumping them together, which isn’t great for long term ergonomics. And similarly the arrow keys, particularly up and down, are small and thus harder to use.

The trackpad itself is fine, and perhaps because of the somewhat awkward position I hold my hands in to use the keyboard, I didn’t find myself accidentally brushing it. Since this is a Yoga series laptop, you won’t find the Red dot in the keyboard or extra buttons at the top of the trackpad, or any dedicated buttons at all really. The corners do click though, and in a satisfying way.

This Yoga also comes with a Lenovo Slim Pen, which can be handy if you prefer handwriting in tablet mode or want to draw occasionally. It has 4,096 levels of pressure sensitivity, which is good enough to do some sketching. I’m no artist, but I did find myself wishing for a bit more control when I tried the pen out in drawing apps. The pen charges over USB-C, which is mildly inconvenient and seems to drain whether or not you’re using it.

You won’t find a storage slot in the laptop either, instead it will magnetically “clip” to the laptop lid. That’s better than nothing, but not the most secure option. I can see myself losing the pen quickly.

It’s probably worth mentioning the Yoga also comes with a sleeve. It’s fine for a sleeve. I do appreciate that it has a pen loop, so that’ll help with stylus storage. But while I don’t mind included accessories, I’m not sure I’d personally depend on a sleeve to protect my laptop.

Lenovo Yoga 9i 14 Gen 9: Speakers and display

Usually about now I’d offer the usual advice that generally laptop speakers are terrible, and it’s almost bad that they are included. But the Yoga… the Yoga is so different. These speakers are, dare I say it, good! Like very good! The Yoga not only gets impressively loud, but also sounds good at those louder levels.

Somehow there’s bass and treble, and songs sound like what you’d expect to hear. I didn’t feel the need to break out headphones for once, and even movies had some unexpected punch. The Yoga is primarily intended as a media device and thank goodness it has the speaker system that stands up to that promise. It’s probably because Lenovo essentially buried a sound bar in the hinge, which you could argue detracts from the clean look, but I say is worth it for sound like this.

These speakers are, dare I say it, good! Like very good! The Yoga not only gets impressively loud, but also sounds good at those louder levels.

This Yoga also includes an OLED display and it looks great. Blacks are inky and dark, which makes movies look all the better considering it seems like dark scenes are the norm these days. The display gets decently bright too, though not as bright as other non-OLED displays. With its 120hz refresh rate, it’s a smooth display that would make it good enough for gaming if this device had a dedicated graphics card. Alas it doesn’t, but you can always do some casual gaming thanks to modern day integrated graphics.

Lenovo Yoga 9i 14 Gen 9: Webcam, microphone, biometric options

Along the top edge of the display you’ll find the Yoga’s webcam, with an integrated privacy shutter. I like that it’s a hardware shutter with a bright red color to that cover so you know for sure the webcam is blocked. As for the webcam itself, it’s nothing special. The angle from this camera is particularly “up the nose” even more so than other laptops I’ve worked with lately.

The colors are washed out, and the detail is just good enough to be passable. Essentially, it’ll serve its purpose for a Zoom call, but it won’t make you look that flattering along the way. It’s an IR camera though, so it works with Windows Hello to log you into your profile.

The microphone, also, isn’t the best or the worst. It gets the job done and nothing more. If you’re in video calls every day, you may want to get an external microphone that do a better job of noise cancelling and reproducing the full quality of your voice. But this isn’t really a work productivity device, and generally microphones work better with headphones on, so that’s something to keep in mind. If you’re occasionally in video calls, the hardware will do the job overall. Just maybe lift the laptop up to eye level for a more flattering look.

As I mentioned above, you can log in with your face using the camera, but if you’d rather use a fingerprint reader that’s an option as well. It works well enough, although in my experience my face unlock is a little faster. More options is usually better, though I don’t love that the dedicated extra button row to the side, which includes the finger print reader. This leads to a squashed keyboard layout. The upshot to that choice is the fingerprint reader is a nice sized button.

Lenovo Yoga 9i 14 Gen 9: Ports and connectivity

The Yoga’s port situation is a bit of an odd duck. On the one hand, there’s the USB-C ports which make me happy. You have three of them, two Thunderbolt 4 ports and one 3.2 Gen 2 PD 3.0 DP 1.4 port. Even better, they’re not all on the same side. The USB-C ports double as power, so it’s a pet peeve of mine when they’re all on left side of the laptop. Here you have choices when you decide to plug in your laptop and that’s great.

The singular USB-A port would be nice too, considering it’s a fast 10Gbps port, but it’s very oddly placed. It’s as close to the hinge as you can get. Everything technically works there, but it feels and looks odd. When I go to blindly insert a flash drive, I never quite get to the right spot and end up having to look.

I’m sure with time I’d get use to it. I’d probably default to a different USB-A port, but that simply isn’t an option. You only get the one. And you won’t find any HDMI, SD Card, or Ethernet ports either, so I hope you don’t need those. I know I’ve mentioned this is a media PC and so I’ve given passes here and there, but it’s harder here to overlook in this case. Just be aware going in that if you want to use an external monitor, you’ll want something that works with Thunderbolt ports.

You do get Wi-Fi 6E, which isn’t bleeding edge, but is futureproof enough for more homes. If you don’t have a Wi-Fi 6E router, you’ll want one to get the most out of this laptop and modern smartphones. Bluetooth 5.3 is as new as it gets, which is a nice bonus if you decide to go with wireless headphones.

Lenovo Yoga 9i 14 Gen 9: Performance

The Lenovo Yoga 9i 14 Gen 9i packs an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H processor. We’re pretty familiar with this processor by now, but that doesn’t automatically mean we can guarantee good performance out of every machine. Cooling makes a major difference, and we’ve seen some laptops from Lenovo throttle early. You can usually expect pretty great battery life out from the latest Core Ultra 7 laptops, but we’ll have to make a special note concerning this model.

The Yoga 9i starts off strong in our overall PCMark test, coming in second only to the ThinkPad Carbon, which isn’t too shocking. PCMark gives us a general idea of overall performance and the results would suggest a strong showing. Real life usage matches up to that as well. While I never tried to game with it, in my everyday usage it never slowed down or struggled to keep up.

The Yoga puts another strong showing in our Cinebench 23 test, actually topping the list this time. Cinebench 23 is a heavily multithreaded test that runs pretty quickly, and that can sometimes give an advantage to CPUs with more cores an advantage. We’re running Cinebench 24 on new laptops as well, but don’t have enough results yet for good comparisons. Overall, this is a strong result and likely because Lenovo is tuning this device for its intended purpose: playing media.

Finally, with the Handbrake test, we start to see the limits of this Yoga and its focus on content consumption versus productivity. The Handbrake tests consists of encoding a large file over a long period of time, which taxes the system. The Yoga drops all the way to the bottom of the list in our comparison chart, and again that’s no surprise. You don’t buy a 2-in-1 like this hoping to create movies. You buy it to watch movies.

To get a good idea of graphical capabilities, we run Time Spy and here again the Yoga shines. Against the other integrated graphics laptops in this list, it shoots straight to the top. Keep in mind though that even with modern integrated graphics, you can’t expect too much out of these systems. Some light Photoshop is certainly possible and maybe even basic movie editing, but trying to play a triple-A game on max settings or creating a complicated Adobe Premier project would be a lesson in frustration. It’s in many ways impressive how far integrated graphics have come, but they still don’t hold a candle to dedicated GPUs.

Lenovo Yoga 9i 14 Gen 9: Battery life

A note of transparency before we get into the full battery life results for our Yoga. The first review unit I received had serious issues in testing. We loop a locally stored copy of Tears of Steal at half brightness until the laptop dies. We’ll do this two to three times to doublecheck consistency and that’s where the first model they sent me fell down.

I’d get as long as 18 hours of playback or as little as two and everything between. After a bunch of troubleshooting, Lenovo sent me a new one under the shared assumption that I had a defective unit.

The review unit I’m testing now doesn’t exhibit any of the same issues, but I mention this because I did see one unit with odd results. The Yoga in my hands now provided reliable consistent tests. At an average of 803 minutes, the Yoga is middle of the road at best for out slate of laptops with a similar processor. That could be down to the OLED touch display, the 75 watt battery, or just inefficient cooling. I’d blame the crazy speakers, but for my own sanity after so many tests, I had headphones plugged in during these loops.

But set aside comparisons for a moment and it’s kind of a strange world we live in how where 13 hours of playback is considered middle of the road. And that’s assuming you play a video non-stop for 13 hours. You’ll definitely get through the average plane flight in the US and even some international trips. In every day use, I easily made it through an entire work day with plenty of juice to spare. Standby time was equally longer than I’d realistically need. Could it be better? Yes, clearly. Is it bad? Not really.

Lenovo Yoga 9i 14 Gen 9: Conclusion

Anytime you buy a laptop or any gadget really, you should start with a simple question: What do I want this for? Because not every laptop is for the same purpose. If you want to play games, you need something heavy, loud, and with the strongest GPU you can afford. If you want a productivity machine, you can probably skip the touchscreen and 2-in-1 form factor. But laptops don’t have to be for gaming or work, sometimes they’re the thing we use to unwind and enjoy a good movie.

That’s the Yoga 9i in a nutshell. Are you looking for something to serve as a music player, a movie watcher, and an internet browser that’s more powerful than an iPad but still capable of being used like a tablet? Then you’ve found your laptop. For the speakers alone, I have to give this particular 2-in-1 the thumbs up for media consumption. Everyone in my home was shocked the first time we fired up music. The Yoga 9i isn’t perfect by any means, especially that lack of ports and odd USB-A placement. But for its intended purpose, it’s a very good entry and worthy of your consideration.