Verdict
The mixture of high-end energy and a shocking show makes the Lenovo Yoga Professional 9i 16 a supremely versatile and extremely fascinating laptop computer.
Professionals
- Shiny Mini LED touch-enabled 165Hz IPS show
- Highly effective sound system
- Straightforward so as to add extra storage
- Sturdy inventive and gaming efficiency
Cons
- Poor battery life
- Just one USB-C port
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Shiny touch-enabled show3.2K Mini LED show is super-bright, as sharp as a tack and has nice HDR help -
Able to intensive inventive and gaming calls forThe RTX 40-series GPU makes this an ideal gaming laptop computer and a potent inventive device
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Class-leading audio-qualitySix-speaker speaker sound system
Introduction
The brand new Lenovo Yoga Professional 9i 16 has however one life process: to be higher than the 16-inch Apple MacBook Professional. Each are high-end 16-inch machines focused at creatives and anybody needing critical efficiency, and each include Mini LED screens with excessive pixel densities.
Each machines may also be specified with varied processing, graphics, storage and reminiscence choices. Within the case of the brand new Yoga Professional 9i 16, three GPU choices, RTX4050, 4060 or 4070 (or 4 when you embrace no discrete GPU), two CPUs, Intel Core i7-13705 or Core i9-13905H, and three 3.2K IPS shows, one with a contact Mini LED backlight array and one normal LED, the second additionally accessible with no contact interface.
Each laptops are of comparable measurement and weight, and each have been designed with a eager eye on the type of buyer who needs a laptop computer that appears pretty much as good because it performs. This ought to be fairly a scrap.
Design and Keyboard
- Compact and lightweight for a 16-inch laptop computer
- Wonderful keyboard
- Just one Thunderbolt 4 port
An all-aluminium affair constructed round a unibody body, the Yoga Professional 9i 16 is a classy and strong laptop computer. It’s sturdy, too, with a MIL-STD 810H certification, so it ought to shrug off shocks, vibration and moisture or particle ingress. The lid is hooked up by a sturdy one-piece hinge that lets the display tilt all the best way again to 180 levels.
The graceful and rounded edges make it really feel somewhat extra dainty than the numbers recommend, not that 362.4 x 244.8 x 18.2mm is dangerous for a 16-inch laptop computer, neither is the burden at 2.23Kg (the usual IPS mannequin is barely lighter at 2.06Kg). That makes it barely heavier than the MacBook Professional 6 however thinner.
Aesthetically the Yoga Professional i9 16 is an undoubted winner, smooth, smark and altogether very trendy. Two colourways can be found, Tidal Teal and Storm Gray. Each look the enterprise, and each have a matte end that’s efficient at resisting fingerprints.Â
The collection of I/O ports is nice somewhat than excellent, with single Thunderbolt 4, USB-A 3.2 Gen 2, HDMI 1.4 and three.5mm audio ports on the left and an SD slot and a second USB-A on the proper. The suitable aspect additionally homes a webcam kill change and the facility button.Â
Given the Yoga Professional 9i 16’s inventive pretentions, a second Thunderbolt 4 port somewhat than wouldn’t have gone amiss, and the HDMI port actually ought to be capable to do higher than 4K at 30Hz. The placement of the facility button is lower than excellent, however you may set the Yoga Professional 9i as well up once you open the lid so it’s not the adverse it will in any other case have been.
Keyboards are usually a Lenovo robust level, and so it proves with the Yoga Professional 9i. The deck itself is strong, the keys have a really clean 1.5mm of journey and a superbly damped end-stop. The marginally concave keycaps are very good to kind on. The keycap graphics are a mannequin of readability, and the two-stage white backlight has a helpful auto mode.
The numeric keypad makes use of 2/3 width keys, however that’s hardly unusual, and the area is properly used to accommodate the upward-firing audio system that bracket the keyboard. So far as keyboard layouts go, it’s massively extra space-efficient than the MacBook Professional.
The 150 x 95mm glass touchpad doesn’t let the aspect down, being completely clean and that includes a superbly calibrated mechanical click-action somewhat than a haptic effort.
The Yoga Professional 9i makes use of 50% post-consumer recycled plastic within the keyboard and 50% recycled aluminium within the backside cowl. It additionally has an EPEAT Gold, which suggests it meets probably the most demanding set of standards for sustainability in electronics. The packaging is made predominantly from cardboard, however there are a few thick styrofoam clamps that maintain the primary field securely in place, which dents the recycling credentials.
Show and Sound
- Excessive-quality 3.2K Mini LED IPS touchscreen
- Spectacular HDR functionality
- Wonderful audio efficiency
The 16in 3,200 x 2,000 IPS has a couple of tips up its sleeve. First, it refreshes at 165Hz to the huge benefit of video games. Secondly, it has a Mini LED divided into 1,536 zones that permits for FALD or Full Space Native Dimming, which emulates OLED-like ranges of darkness although this solely works in HDR mode.
Whether or not in SDR or HDR mode, the display is brilliant, by my measurements peaking at 594nits within the former and a searing 1048nits within the latter with respective distinction ratios of 3059:1 and infinite. There’s loads of color accessible with gamut coverages of 99.6% sRGB, 97.2% DCI-P3 and 95.2% Adobe RGB.Â
Color accuracy is nice, too, with a mean Delta E variance of 1.1 measured in opposition to the sRGB profile and solely barely extra adrift in opposition to the DCI-P3 and Adobe RGB color profiles that you would be able to choose within the Lenovo Vantage management panel.
These numbers are on par with the 16-inch MacBook Professional, which additionally makes use of a Mini LED panel however with 2,554 lighting zones and the next pixel density of 254dpi to 236dpi. To the bare eye, the Yoga Professional 9i 16’s show is each bit as vibrant and vibrant because the Apple various.Â
Even supposing Home windows 11 doesn’t deal with HDR in addition to MacOS, you may nonetheless go away the Yoga Professional 9i 16 in HDR mode on a regular basis with out affected by any brightness or color points. That’s a significant feather within the Lenovo machine’s cap.
The Yoga 9i is just not primarily a gaming laptop computer, however movement constancy continues to be glorious, with hardly any ghosting to be seen within the Blurbusters check. Taking part in Returnal in HDR on the Yoga Professional 9i 16 is a most spectacular expertise.
The sound system is rated at 10W, options 6 audio system (4 x 2W woofers and a pair of x 1W tweeters), and could be very spectacular. It might not be absolutely the loudest system I’ve encountered, with a most output of 76dB(A), however there’s loads of bass, and the sound is fantastically balanced and spacious, with crisp element on the larger finish. It doesn’t matter what you select to hearken to on the Yoga Professional 9i 16, you’ll benefit from the expertise.
The 1440p webcam is a really achieved affair producing brilliant and crisp video feeds even in lower than good lighting circumstances. A raft of picture enhancement options can be found via the Lenovo Good Look app, and right here’s a handbook digital camera kill change on the proper aspect of the physique.
The digital camera helps Home windows Hi there IR facial recognition and one thing Lenovo calls Clever Sensing, which might pause media playback or dim the show and lock the pc if the digital camera notices that you simply’ve gone for a brew.
Efficiency
- Sturdy productiveness and gaming efficiency
- No thermal or noise points below pressure
- Quick SSD
Together with a Core i9-13905H processor and RTX 4070 GPU, my evaluation machine additionally got here loaded with the total 64GB of 6400MHz dual-channel RAM, which doesn’t appear to be a retail choice within the UK.
The Yoga Professional 9i can’t fairly match the likes of extra gaming-focused rivals or the MacBook Professional in CPU efficiency however up in opposition to related all-rounders on the Home windows aspect of issues, just like the Samsung Galaxy E book 3 Extremely and Asus Zenbook Professional 14 OLED, it goes toe-to-toe.
The RTX 4070 GPU has a most TGP of 100W, so gaming efficiency is just not on par with the likes of the Alienware M16, which runs the identical GPU at 140W, however it isn’t far off. The mixture of even a down-tuned RTX 4070 and a 14-core Raptor Lake CPU continues to be fairly potent, as you may see from the PCMark 10 rating of seven,501 in addition to the in-game FPS scores under.
It might not be primarily a gaming machine, however it nonetheless runs AAA video games like a real thoroughbred. Operating at 1,920 x 1,080 on the highest element settings with no ray tracing and no upscaling, Cyberpunk 2077 ran at 97fps and Returnal at 84fps.Â
Metro Exodus, operating with ray tracing within the Excessive setting with DLSS set to balanced, ran at 67fps which is an efficient consequence by any normal.
Essentially the most spectacular function of the Yoga Professional 9i 16’s efficiency is the dearth of fuss it makes. The followers solely make a reasonable whooshing noise even when operating at full velocity, and even after extended stress testing, the casing by no means acquired above 34°C.
The 1TB SSD in my evaluation machine carried out admirably, averaging learn and write speeds of seven,045MB/s and 4,262MB/s, respectively, which is amongst the easiest I’ve seen from a laptop computer.
Software program
- Lenovo Vantage management panel presents a bunch of choices
- Good Look app provides options to the superb webcam
- The Vantage app is just not wholly secure
Most system administration is dealt with by way of the Lenovo Vantage app, which helps you to change such settings as the popular color profile for the show, efficiency ranges and audio settings. The Vantage CP additionally comes with its personal desktop and taskbar widgets.Â
The management panel has a few glitches:Â Everytime you open the Show and Digital camera web page, the display adjustments from HDR to SDR mode and on some events, opening the Superior Setting web page causes the system to reboot.
The big selection of webcam settings is dealt with by the Good Look app, which helps you to blur or substitute backgrounds, alter your look, and have the digital camera observe your head to maintain you within the centre of the body. The Face Form function does a surprisingly good job of creating it appear to be you’ve dropped a couple of kilos.
The compulsory McAfee anti-virus bundle apart, the one different pre-loaded bloat was the Spotify app, which might be the preloaded app individuals object to the least.
Battery Life
- Sub-optimal battery life
- Helps DC-in and Sort-C charging
The Yoga Professional 9i packs a 75Wh battery which isn’t a lot contemplating it’s operating a 100W TGP graphics card. One thing else curious is that my check machine got here with a 65W Sort-C charger although the laptop computer itself has a sq. DC-in cost port. This was a packing error at Lenovo’s PR firm, which despatched me a 170W DC charger in the end.
Battery life was not nice, lasting simply six hours and eleven minutes within the PCMark10 Workplace endurance benchmark. And that was in SDR mode with the show locked to 60Hz. In HDR 165Hz mode, it solely simply reached the 5:30 mark. That type of run time can be acceptable for a gaming laptop computer, however it’s hardly excellent for a machine focused at inventive and productive customers. A MacBook Professional 16 can run twice the time on a cost with out hassle.
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Must you purchase it?
If you need a really versatile laptop computer
The Yoga Professional 9i actually can do the whole lot and do it properly. Efficiency is spectacular whether or not you might be enjoying AAA video games or modifying 4K video whereas the show, keyboard and sound system are up with the perfect at school. And it’s all wrapped up in a well-made, trendy and sturdy bundle.
If you need a protracted battery life
The poor battery life is more likely to show a difficulty when you usually end up away from an influence socket, and I can’t persuade myself that only one Thunderbolt 4 port is sufficient for a laptop computer with the lofty ambitions of the Yoga Professional 9i.
Closing Ideas
Is the Lenovo Yoga Professional 9i higher than the MacBook Professional? Powerful query. The Lenovo has a sooner display with a contact interface, an Nvidia GPU that makes it higher suited to gaming and, in my opinion, a superior keyboard. The Apple laptop computer counters with far longer battery life, higher HDR efficiency (however that’s a MacOS vs Home windows challenge) and higher connectivity.Â
Like-for-like, the MacBook Professional is significantly costlier. My evaluation system has the Mini LED show, Core i9 CPU and RTX 4070 graphics, however I can’t discover that actual mannequin on sale within the UK. The in any other case similar RTX 4060 mannequin is, nonetheless, available for £2,299, and for the reason that efficiency drop-off between the RTX 4070 and RTX 4060 is just not that dramatic, I’ve based mostly my value-for-money conclusions on that.
What may be mentioned although is that the Lenovo Yoga Professional 9i 16 is likely one of the best MacBook Professional rivals but, topping the HP Omen Transcend 16 and Samsung Galaxy E book 3 Extremely by way of graphical and audio efficiency, even when it equally falls foul in battery life. For a extra compact choice with an OLED show, the Asus Zenbook Professional 14 OLED stays a succesful choose as properly.
How we check
Each laptop computer we evaluation goes via a collection of uniform checks designed to gauge key issues, together with construct high quality, efficiency, display high quality and battery life.
These embrace formal artificial benchmarks, scripted checks, and real-world checks.
We used as our predominant laptop computer for no less than every week.
Examined the efficiency by way of each benchmark checks and real-world use.
We examined the display with a colorimeter and real-world use.
We examined the battery with a benchmark check and real-world use.
FAQs
No. If you need a stylus, you’ll want to purchase one individually.
Home windows customers will say sure, MacOS customers no. All of it comes all the way down to your most popular working system.
Trusted Opinions check knowledge
Lenovo Yoga Professional 9i Check Knowledge
PCMark 10
Cinebench R23 multi core
Cinebench R23 single core
Geekbench 5 single core
Geekbench 5 multi core
Geekbench 6 single core
Geekbench 6 multi core
3DMark Time Spy
CrystalDiskMark Learn velocity
CrystalDiskMark Write Pace
Brightness (SDR)
Brightness (HDR)
Black stage
Distinction ratio
White Visible Color Temperature
sRGB
Adobe RGB
DCI-P3
PCMark Battery (workplace)
Horizon Zero Daybreak body fee (Quad HD)
Horizon Zero Daybreak body fee (Full HD)
Cyberpunk 2077 (Quad HD)
Cyberpunk 2077 (Full HD)
Cyberpunk 2077 (Full HD + RT)
Cyberpunk 2077 (Full HD + Supersampling)
Returnal (Quad HD)
Returnal (Full HD)
F1 22 (Quad HD)
F1 22 (Full HD)
Fan noise below stress
Temperature below stress
Full specs
Lenovo Yoga Professional 9i Specs
UK RRP
CPU
Producer
Display Measurement
Storage Capability
Entrance Digital camera
Battery
Battery Hours
Measurement (Dimensions)
Weight
Working System
Launch Date
First Reviewed Date
Mannequin Quantity
Decision
HDR
Refresh Charge
Ports
Audio (Energy output)
GPU
RAM
Connectivity
Colors
Show Know-how
Display Know-how
Contact Display
Convertible?
Jargon buster
SSD
Often known as Strong State Drive, this can be a sooner type of a reminiscence than a regular laborious drive. Ends in sooner loading occasions and extra formidable video games.
IPS panel
IPS stands for In-Aircraft Switching and presents constant, correct colors at large viewing angles, in addition to fast response time
Ethernet
The usual for wired networking. Ethernet can run at completely different speeds with Gigabit Ethernet (1000Mbps) and 10/100Mbps the preferred.
USB-C
The trendy USB connector you’ll discover on most Android telephones, new laptops, cameras and video games consoles. It’s reversible and used for charging together with data-transfer.
