Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i 16 (2024) Laptop Review

Although Lenovo brands this laptop as a 'Yoga' model, the Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i 16 isn't a 2-in-1 convertible, as it lacks the 360° hinges that let you flip the display around into tablet mode. Additionally, some display options don't even support touch input. You can get this laptop in a Luna Gray or Tidal Teal colorway. See the bottom of the laptop. 

The Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i's build quality is excellent. The chassis—a mix of aluminum and plastic—feels very sturdy, exhibiting only a small amount of flex on the lid and keyboard deck. One minor complaint is that the bottom panel doesn't align perfectly with the frame, meaning one corner protrudes a little more than the rest, but this likely won't affect everyday use or the laptop's long-term durability. The finish doesn't scratch easily, and while it picks up some fingerprints and smudges, it isn't bad enough to call it a fingerprint magnet. The feet feel solid and stick firmly to the bottom.

The Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i has an outstanding hinge. It lets you open the laptop to 180°, which can be handy when you need to show the content to someone sitting opposite you. The hinge is pretty stable; there's some wobble, but not enough to affect everyday use.

The Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i's serviceability is okay. Accessing the internals is straightforward; you only need to remove eight torque screws and release the bottom panel's clips with a prying tool. The screws are of different sizes, so it's best to keep them organized to make the reassembly easier. Both storage slots support M.2 2280 PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSDs.

See Lenovo's official hardware maintenance manual.

• 170W power adapter and cord
• Documentation

Note: Models with integrated graphics only come with a 100W USB-C power adapter.

The Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i is available with the following displays:

• 16" IPS 2560 x 1600 120Hz (matte)
• 16" IPS 3200 x 2000 165Hz (matte)
• 16" IPS 3200 x 2000 165Hz (touchscreen, glossy)
• 16" Mini LED 3200 x 2000 165Hz (matte)
• 16" Mini LED 3200 x 2000 165Hz (touchscreen, glossy)

The choice of the display depends on your preference and needs. Naturally, the lowest-end QHD+ (2560 x 1600) isn't as sharp as the other 3.2k panels on the list, but at a pixel density of 188 PPI, it's still very sharp, enough that likely won't be able to see individual pixels unless you're a few inches away from the screen. All five panels have a 16:10 aspect ratio, which is great for productivity, as the increased vertical space in landscape mode (compared to a 16:9 display) lets you see more information at once when reading a document.

As indicated in the Screen Specs section, there's a 120Hz panel and four 165Hz panels to choose from. The 165Hz displays will give you slightly better input responsiveness and smoother motion, though the difference isn't night and day. You can set the display to a fixed 60 refresh rate, and there's a setting that allows the display to vary the refresh rate between 60Hz and 120Hz/165Hz depending on what you're doing—both will help prolong battery life. The 165Hz IPS display has a fast response time, resulting in a clear image with minimal ghosting in fast-moving scenes. The 120Hz panel's response time is likely a tad slower. Unfortunately, none of the displays support FreeSync or G-SYNC, so you may see screen tearing when gaming.

The 165Hz IPS panel's contrast ratio is decent and within the typical range of most IPS panels. However, it's still relatively low compared to other display technologies like OLEDs. This contrast level makes blacks look gray in dim settings. The Mini LED displays can produce much deeper blacks thanks to local dimming, making them ideal for dark room viewing.

The 165Hz IPS panel gets bright enough for use in most indoor settings, but visibility might still be an issue if there are lights shining directly on the screen, as the glossy finish struggles with bright light sources. As for the other panels, the 120Hz IPS display has a slightly lower advertised brightness of 350 cd/m², while the Mini LEDs have an advertised brightness of 600 cd/m².

The 165Hz glossy IPS display mainly struggles with bright reflections, so it's best to avoid having lights shining directly on the screen. The matte displays will fare better in those situations, but like most matte finishes, it might have more haloing around bright reflections, which can be an issue as well, especially when viewing dark-color content. The other glossy panels will likely have the same reflection handling.

The Mini LED panels have local dimming, which will result in significantly better black uniformity than the edge-lit IPS panels. However, because Mini LED displays don't have the pixel-level control that OLEDs do, you may see some blooming around bright objects in dark scenes.

The 165Hz IPS display's horizontal viewing angle is decent. The image dims and washes out relatively quickly as you move to the side, so it's best to be close or directly in front of the screen if you need perfect accuracy for color-critical work. You'll likely get the same viewing angles on the other displays.

The 165Hz IPS display's vertical viewing angle is okay. Again, the image looks dimmer and more washed out from above or below. You need to look at the screen more or less straight on to see an accurate image, which can be challenging in tight spaces where you have little room to tilt the screen, like on a bus or airplane with small tray tables.

The 165Hz IPS display's out-of-the-box accuracy is superb. The only notable thing here is that the gamma is an almost flat 2.2 instead of following the curve, making dark scenes slightly too dark and bright scenes too bright.

The posted results are measurements taken in the sRGB profile. Here are the measurements in the DCI P3 profile:

• Avg. White Balance dE: 1.08
• Avg. Gamma: 2.15
• Avg. Color dE: 2.40
• Avg. Color Temperature: 6444K

The 3.2k IPS panel has an outstanding color gamut. It has full sRGB coverage, which is the color space used in most web content. It has full coverage of the wider DCI P3 color space, too, but you need to manually change the display's color profile to P3 to access it, as the display is in sRGB by default. Here are the Adobe RGB, DCI P3, and Rec 2020 measurements when using the P3 profile:

• Adobe RGB xy: 88.05
• Adobe RB uv: 93.85
• DCI P3 xy: 97.99
• DCI P3 uv: 98.79
• Rec. 2020 xy: 70.53
• Rec. 2020 uv: 72.39

Regarding the other displays, the 120Hz IPS panel only has full sRGB coverage, while the Mini LED panels have full coverage of the DCI P3 and Adobe RGB color spaces.

The other displays are likely flicker-free as well.

The Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i has a great keyboard that feels very similar to the keyboards on Lenovo's ThinkPad laptops. Its layout is fairly standard and easy to get used to. Key spacing is good for the most part, though the Numpad feels a tad cramped. The keys have a good amount of travel, require little force to actuate, and provide clear, satisfying tactile feedback. The keyboard's white backlight shines well through the legends—you can adjust the brightness using FN + Space.

The touchpad is excellent. It's large and responsive to all movements and gestures. Palm rejection works as intended, and there are no issues with actions like dragging and dropping or zooming in and out of images. This isn't a haptic touchpad, so you can only click in the bottom half of the touchpad. On the upside, clicking feels satisfyingly tactile.

The Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i's speakers get very loud with minimal compression artifacts at higher volume levels. They sound clear, relatively natural, and well-balanced, with a good amount of bass. A minor letdown is that the speakers are actually on the bottom of the laptop, near the front feet (the grills flanking the keyboard are air vents). This means the sound can change depending on the surface the laptop is on.

The Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i has a great webcam. It produces a relatively clear and detailed image, with only a small amount of noise in darker areas. The exposure and color temperature are good, though colors look a smidge washed out. The audio is great; voices sound loud and clear over the microphone, with little to no background noise.

The Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i has an outstanding port selection. Both USB-As support USB 3.2 Gen 1 data transfer speed of up to 5Gbps. The only difference is that the one closest to the power button is always on, meaning you can use it to charge a mobile device even when the laptop is in sleep mode. Except for Power Delivery 3.0 support, the two USB-Cs have different specifications: the one closest to the HDMI port supports USB 3.2 Gen 2 data transfer speed (up to 10Gbps) and DisplayPort 1.4, while the other supports Thunderbolt 4 (up to 40Gbps) and DisplayPort 2.1. Lenovo advertises the HDMI port as an HDMI 2.1; however, it can only output a max resolution of 4k @ 60Hz. As such, we consider it an HDMI 2.0.

The Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i's wireless adapter is an Intel Wi-Fi 6E AX211. Wi-Fi 6E gives access to the 6GHz band, providing faster speeds, lower latency, and less signal interference than previous Wi-Fi standards. However, you need a router that supports Wi-Fi 6E to benefit from these features. Check out our best router recommendations if you want to upgrade your home Wi-Fi but don't know which router to get.

The Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i is available with the following CPUs:

• Intel Core Ultra 7 155H (16 cores/22 threads, up to 4.8GHz, 24MB cache)
• Intel Core Ultra 9 185H (16 cores/22 threads, up to 5.1GHz, 24MB cache)

Both CPUs are high-performance processors from Intel's Meteor Lake family with the same core count and composition: six performance cores, eight efficiency cores, and two low-power efficiency cores (6P+8E+2LP-E). These CPUs can handle general productivity tasks and more intensive workloads, like programming and video editing. The only difference between these two CPUs is that the Core Ultra 9 has faster clock speeds, boosting its CPU and integrated GPU performance slightly. Both CPUs have the same NPU (Neural Processing Units) with a rated performance of up to 11 TOPS (Trillions of Operations Per Second) to handle AI-based tasks, like background-blurring on video calls and image generation in photo editing apps.

See more information about the Meteor Lake CPUs here.

The Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i is available with the following GPUs:

• Intel Arc Graphics (integrated)
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 Laptop GPU 6GB GDDR6 (discrete, 100W TGP /w Dynamic Boost)
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Laptop GPU 8GB GDDR6 (discrete, 100W TGP /w Dynamic Boost)
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Laptop GPU 8GB GDDR6 (discrete, 100W TGP /w Dynamic Boost)

The Intel Arc integrated GPU is present in all models, including ones with an NVIDIA discrete GPU. This integrated GPU is primarily for general productivity and other tasks that don't require much graphical processing power, like web browsing or programming. If you create content, want to play games, or perform any other GPU-intensive tasks, getting a model with an NVIDIA discrete GPU is best, as you'll get a much smoother experience and complete tasks faster. The available discrete GPUs range from the entry-level RTX 4050 to the mid-range RTX 4070. They all support the same features—the only difference is their raw processing power. All three run at a TGP (Total Graphics Power) of 100W with Dynamic Boost, which is at the higher end of the recommended 35-115W power spectrum. As for gaming, all three can handle demanding games at 1080p just fine, but if you want to play at 1440p or at the display's native resolution, the RTX 4070 would be the best option.

See more information about the NVIDIA 40-series Laptop GPUs on NVIDIA's specifications page. For a full list of gaming features, see NVIDIA's 40-series GPU product page.

You can configure this laptop with 16GB, 32GB, or 64GB of RAM. The memory isn't user-replaceable.

You can configure this laptop with 512GB or 1TB of storage. The storage is user-upgradeable. There are two SSD slots; both support M.2 2280 PCIe Gen 4 NVMe SSDs.

The Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i with an Intel Core Ultra 9 185H CPU scores well in the Geekbench 5 benchmarks. The Core Ultra 9's performance is more than enough for most common productivity tasks. That said, there are much faster CPUs on the market, like the Razer Blade 18 (2024)'s Intel Core i9-14900HX and the Apple MacBook Pro 16 (2024)'s M4 Max SoC. The Core Ultra 7 is only slightly slower.

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 Laptop GPU scores well, too. All three discrete GPUs can handle demanding computing workloads, so choose based on your needs and budget. The Intel Arc integrated GPU performs poorly and is only suitable for light productivity tasks.

The Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i's Intel Core Ultra 9 185H scores remarkably well in Cinebench R23. There are certainly faster CPUs on the market, but this performance level, which is just a smidge below Apple's M4 Pro SoC (12-core CPU), is more than adequate for most intensive tasks.

The Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i is outstanding for Blender work. A model with an NVIDIA discrete GPU is best; even the lowest-end NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 will render images much faster than the CPU or integrated graphics.

The Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i's NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 Laptop GPU scores well in the Basemark GPU benchmark. As mentioned in the GPU section, all three discrete GPUs can handle 1080p gaming; you just have to tweak the settings a bit more on the lower-end RTX 4050. The RTX 4060 can handle some games at 1440p, but only with relatively low graphical settings and with features like DLSS and Frame Generation enabled. The RTX 4070 will give you the smoothest gaming experience at 1440p without having to play with the settings too much.

Models with integrated graphics only will likely have a longer battery life.

Borderlands runs well at 1080p on the Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i with an Intel Core Ultra 9 185H CPU and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 Laptop GPU. The gameplay is mostly smooth; there are noticeable stutters due to frame drops, though that isn't uncommon in this game. For the most part, models with an NVIDIA discrete GPU can handle similarly demanding titles without many issues. The Intel Arc integrated GPU, on the other hand, performs poorly and will have a hard time maintaining playable frame rates.

The Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i has no problem handling games like Civilization VI and other similar strategy titles, even on models with integrated graphics only.

Counter-Strike 2 runs very smoothly, with only some minor, occasional stutters. The Intel Arc integrated GPU can push over 60 fps, but you'll have to dial down the settings to get there.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider runs very smoothly at 1080p on this Intel Core Ultra 9 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 Laptop GPU configuration. Models with an NVIDIA discrete GPU won't have any problems running this and other similarly demanding games. The Intel Arc integrated GPU will have a much harder time maintaining smooth gameplay, even with the lowest graphical settings.

The keyboard is only mildly warm under load, but the bottom of the laptop gets much hotter, reaching 50.9°C (123.6 °F) near the vents at the back of the device, so you'll have to be careful when using the device on your lap. Regarding fan noise, while the sound itself isn't annoying (it's mostly the sound of heavy airflow), it's quite loud and noticeable. The Lenovo Vantage app has a few performance modes, but these performance modes only control how quickly the fans reach full speed. There are no settings to directly control the fans.

The Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i has many pre-installed applications; see this video for the full list.

The Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i has a Windows Hello IR facial recognition camera. You can use it to log in quickly, authorize purchases in the Windows Store, and auto-fill saved passwords on supported websites.