Pros & Cons
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- On-point productivity performance
- Gorgeous, sturdy 2-in-1 build
- Spectacular OLED display
- Excellent battery life
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- Click-button touchpad
- A little expensive for the component mix
Lenovo Yoga 9i Gen 10 Specs
| Boot Drive Capacity (as Tested) | 1 |
| Boot Drive Type | SSD |
| Class | Convertible 2-in-1 |
| Dimensions (HWD) | 0.63 by 12.4 by 8.7 inches |
| Graphics Processor | Intel Arc Graphics 140V |
| Native Display Resolution | 2880 by 1800 |
| Operating System | Windows 11 Home |
| Panel Technology | OLED |
| Processor | Intel Core Ultra 7 258V |
| RAM (as Tested) | 32 |
| Screen Refresh Rate | 120 |
| Screen Size | 14 |
| Tested Battery Life (Hours:Minutes) | 21:56 |
| Touch Screen | |
| Variable Refresh Support | None |
| Weight | 2.91 |
| Wireless Networking | Bluetooth 5.4 |
| Wireless Networking | Wi-Fi 7 |
Lenovo's flagship Yoga 9i 2-in-1 (starting at $1,439.99; $1,799.99 as tested) laptop is now 10 generations old, having transitioned a few years ago into one of the most elegant and well-designed 360-degree convertibles available. It looks appealing and it’s well-built, plus it offers a lovely OLED touch display and a unique, effective sound system that works well no matter how you position the screen. In its new Aura Edition, the Yoga 9i 2-in-1 benefits from an Intel AI-ready "Lunar Lake" processor that combines decent productivity performance with excellent efficiency. Add in a fast neural processing unit (NPU) for on-device AI tasks and almost 22 hours of battery life, and the Lenovo Yoga 9i Gen 10 Aura Edition makes for a consummate all-around productivity machine. For that, we give it our Editors' Choice award for high-end 2-in-1 laptops.
Configurations: A Truly Premium Convertible
The Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Gen 10 is part of Lenovo’s Aura Edition series, which refers to the company’s suite of AI-enhanced utilities on top of the Microsoft Copilot tools in Windows 11. The Yoga brand is a premium lineup, and the Yoga 9i 2-in-1 has served as the flagship machine for several generations. You can select from a few preset configurations at the Lenovo web store or use the configurator to build your own.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)Going the latter route, the Yoga 9i 2-in-1 starts at $1,439.99, including an Intel Core Ultra 7 256V processor, 16GB of memory, and a 512GB solid-state drive. That also includes a 14-inch 2,880 by 1,800 OLED display refreshing at 120Hz. Upgrading to a Core Ultra 7 268V and 32GB of RAM adds $80, and a 1TB SSD is an additional $50. That option also unlocks an OLED 4K+ (3,840-by-2,400-pixel) 60Hz display at an extra $100.
I reviewed a $1,799.99 pre-built configuration with the Core Ultra 7 258V, 32GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD, and the 1800p OLED panel.
Design: A Gem of a 2-in-1
The Yoga 9i 2-in-1 builds on a remarkably elegant and attractive design that’s both gorgeous and functional. To begin with, it's entirely aluminum, with zero bending, flexing, or twisting in the lid, keyboard deck, or base plate. The hinge holds the display firmly in its various modes—clamshell, tent, media, and tablet—and allows you to open the lid using just one hand. That’s unusual for a convertible 2-in-1 laptop.
At the same time, the dark blue color on my review unit is cohesive, and the rounded chrome edges look slick and make the laptop comfortable to hold in tablet mode. It’s thin at 0.63 inch and light for a 14-inch machine at 2.91 pounds—although that’s still a lot heavier than slates like the Microsoft Surface Pro. The display bezels are super thin at the top and on both sides, with Lenovo’s protruding upper-edge notch housing the webcam and other electronics. The bottom chin is larger, as is usually the case with a 360-degree hinge.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)The HP OmniBook Ultra Flip 14 is probably the closest competitor among modern convertible 2-in-1s, and the HP is slightly thinner and around the same weight. However, thanks to the rounded edges, I think the Yoga 9i is a bit more comfortable to hold.
Keyboard, Touch, and Webcam: Better-Than-Average Inputs
As a fan of light, snappy keyboards with just enough travel, I like the Yoga 9i’s offering well enough. The full-width setup uses all the space on the keyboard deck, with large, sculpted keycaps that have plenty of spacing and attractive three-level backlighting. The switches are precise, with lots of bounce, and I hit full typing speed without an adjustment. It was comfortable throughout while writing this review, with zero fatigue.
I’m not as fond of the touchpad. It's large enough and flush with the top and bottom edges, but it’s mechanical. Many premium laptops have moved to haptic versions, which provide more customization and allow clicking anywhere on their surfaces (since they don't rely on physical click buttons underneath but rather respond to pressure). Haptics also avoid the loud button clicks you'll get with the Yoga 9i’s touchpad.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)The touch-enabled display works well, and the Yoga 9i comes with Lenovo's Linear Pen for writing and drawing on the screen. The pen—probably the leading reason to get a convertible laptop—charges via USB-C and magnetically attaches to the top cover.
The high-resolution 5MP (2.5K) webcam includes an infrared camera for Windows 11 Hello facial recognition to go with a fingerprint reader on the keyboard. Lenovo’s Zero Touch features also utilize that IR sensor, which can turn off the display when you walk away and then turn it back on—and log you back in—when you return. I find the webcam produces clear pictures with decent low-light performance, and of course, it supports the Studio Effects features in the Copilot+ AI suite.
Display and Audio: Superior Sights and Sounds
I love a colorful OLED display, and the Yoga 9i Gen 10 delivers. Lenovo provides two OLED options, 1800p and 2400p; I reviewed the former, which is sharp enough at 14 inches and saves a bit on battery life while still capturing OLED’s dynamic colors, inky blacks, and gorgeous high dynamic range (HDR) performance. Speaking of HDR, the laptop supports the excellent DisplayHDR True Black 1000 standard and runs at up to 120Hz, so the Windows 11 interface looks super slick.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)For audio, Lenovo built in its 360-degree rotating soundbar. Unique to the Yoga 2-in-1 series, the bar is embedded in the hinge and keeps the two 2-watt (W) tweeters aimed directly at the user, no matter which mode it’s in. A pair of 2W woofers fires downward from the front bottom corners. The system, which also supports Dolby Atmos, sounds full, with plenty of distortion-free volume, clear mids and highs, and more bass than usual.
Ports: Almost Everything You Need
Like many modern 14-inch ultraportables, the Yoga 9i 2-in-1 has limited connections: one USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A port that runs at up to 10Gbps and provides always-on power; one USB4 connection running at up to 20Gbps; and two 40Gbps USB Type-C ports with Thunderbolt 4. One of the USB-C ports is used for charging. Lenovo kept the 3.5mm audio jack but unfortunately left out an SD card reader that creators would appreciate.
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(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)The laptop's wireless connectivity is fully current, at Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4. Overall, that makes it slightly better than Apple’s MacBook Air, which has just two Thunderbolt 4 ports with a proprietary MagSafe 3 power connector and older Wi-Fi 6E.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)Performance Testing: Plenty Fast for Productivity
The laptops most comparable with the Yoga 9i 2-in-1 are other convertible 2-in-1s, such as the HP OmniBook Ultra Flip 14 ($1,899.99 as tested), along with laptops running some of the first Microsoft Copilot+-ready chips: Intel's Lunar Lake and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X. To represent those platforms, we've included the Acer Aspire 14 AI ($879.99 as tested), the Dell Inspiron 14 Plus ($999.99 as tested), and the Asus Zenbook A14 ($999 as tested). (We didn't include our other high-end 2-in-1 Editors' Choice award winner, the content-creation-focused Asus ProArt PX13, because its discrete GeForce RTX graphics would have unfairly skewed many of the test-result comparisons.)
Productivity and Content Creation Tests
Our primary overall benchmark, UL's PCMark 10, puts a system through its paces in productivity apps ranging from web browsing to word processing and spreadsheet work. Its Full System Drive subtest measures a PC's storage throughput. Three further tests we rely on are CPU-centric or processor-intensive: Maxon's Cinebench 2024 uses that company's Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene; Primate Labs' Geekbench 6.3 Pro simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning; and we see how long it takes the video transcoder HandBrake 1.8 to convert a 12-minute clip from 4K to 1080p resolution.
Finally, workstation maker Puget Systems' PugetBench for Creators rates a PC's image editing prowess with a variety of automated operations in Adobe's seminal image editor, Photoshop 25. (The Intel-based Aspire 14 AI could not complete this benchmark during testing due to software issues; the Snapdragon X laptops missing from this test simply don't support the test utility due to their Arm-based processors.)
In PCMark 10, the Yoga 9i 2-in-1 blew past the 4,000-point baseline indicating how well a laptop can power through typical productivity work, and finished well above the Aspire 14 AI running the slower Core Ultra 5 226V. (Note that this benchmark, too, doesn’t run on Arm-based processors like Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X.)
The Yoga 9i 2-in-1 placed second in Cinebench and fourth in Geekbench, two synthetic benchmarks that test CPU performance. The Inspiron 14 Plus benefited from the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus chipset, which proved faster than Intel’s Core Ultra 7. In our HandBrake test, Qualcomm was again quicker, while the Intel laptops each performed at close to the same level. Although it didn't top the charts, the Lenovo is more than fast enough for demanding productivity users.
Graphics Tests
We challenge each reviewed system’s graphics with a quintet of animations or gaming simulations from UL's 3DMark test suite. The first two, Wild Life (1440p) and Wild Life Extreme (4K), use the Vulkan graphics API to measure GPU speeds. The next pair, Steel Nomad's regular (4K) and Light (1440p) subtests, focuses on APIs more commonly used for game development to assess gaming geometry and particle effects. A fifth test, Solar Bay, emphasizes ray-tracing performance. (The HP laptop could not complete the Solar Bay test.)
With the exception of Apple's most recent M-series chips, laptop integrated graphics have never been potent enough to compete with discrete GPUs. Intel’s Arc Graphics 140V are a step up, though, meaning that you’ll be able to play some modern games, at least as long as you turn the settings way down.
The Yoga 9i 2-in-1 was a punchy competitor against other laptops in this class, taking first place in four of five tests. It will power through media productivity and video streaming needs without breaking a sweat—just don't expect much gaming oomph.
Battery Life and Display Tests
We test each laptop and tablet'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 gauge display performance, we 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).
The Yoga's 75-watt-hour battery—generous for a 14-inch laptop—and energy-efficient chipset overcame the machine's power-hungry high-resolution OLED display. The Yoga managed almost 22 hours of battery life, placing second against the even more efficient Zenbook.
The display was spectacular, as OLEDs tend to be. It was extremely bright, hitting almost 500 nits at 100% brightness, and covered 100% of both sRGB and DCI-P3 color gamuts while coming close to full Adobe RGB coverage. If you want to do color-accurate visual media work, the Yoga 9i 2-in-1 delivers. The brightness also means the screen also does exceptionally well with HDR content. It's not as much brightness as a mini-LED can muster, but it combines with the deep contrast to make for a vibrant viewing experience.