The New YOGA Pro 9i!
Recall That last year we looked at the Lenovo Slim Pro 9i and we gave it the best Windows-based productivity laptop for 2023 because it just had everything that you could possibly look for in a premium Windows laptop a great display great form facture, minimalistic design and it also had some amazing gaming performance in a thin
Lenovo is rebranding things!
Light-form factor this year Lov was going through a bit of a Rebrand so if you recall with previous generation laptops there was a bit of confusion between the North American skes and the global
So globally it was called The Yoga series whereas in North America it was called The Slim series which was just confusing in general so in 2024 they just decided to stick to yoga everywhere which is definitely a welcoming change So this right here is the brand new Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i that’s been announced at CES this year and they’ve packed some incredible Hardware underneath the hood in fact
they refined a lot of the things that we loved about the previous generation slim Pro 9i and tweaked a few things to just make it a little bit better so we’ve partnered with them to Showcase with this new laptop brings to the table
Now from a high-level perspective, the Yoga Pro 9i comes with Intel’s brand new Meteor Lake core Ultra CPUs, along with more power allocated towards the RTX 40 series graphics cards they’ve also upgraded the cooling system underneath the chassis to improve thermal performance for both the CPU and the GPU and this year they’re only going to be offering a single 16-in skew so they’ve taken away the 14-in model for 2024.
and it also comes with some AI capabilities baked in, which again is something that we should be expecting for a lot of these laptops in 2024
Look at how THIN it is!
So let’s start with some of the biggest changes added to this year’s laptop.
The first thing is of course the ability to spec this with an RTX 470 that can run up to 100 watts and the cool thing is they managed to keep the same form factor so it still is 71 in thin and it weighs less than 5 lbs which is pretty impressive considering this is a 16-inch laptop.
Upgraded Cooling System
Now how do they cram all that performance into this th form factor well if we actually take a look underneath the hood you’ll notice that they’ve upgraded the fans so the first thing is that they’ve added an fan outlet that directs cool air towards the PCB
and they’ve also integrated new air flow guides so these are essentially a foam or rubber-type based materials and this is a few things a it increases airflow to where fresh air is needed and it decreases the circulation of hot air within the chassis they’ve also added an exhaust Grill at the back to dispute the heat even faster
But it doesn’t stop there because along with some Hardware improvements to the chassis they’ve also done some software improvements to enhance the overall user experience. So the first thing is that they have integrated la3 AI cord chip so this is sort of like a hardware accelerator that’s supposed to tune the CPU and the GPU based on your scenario or workload
Now this all happens behind the scenes with no cloud-based involvement so it creates its own profile and it just knows how the component would behave based on the application that you’re using which is pretty neat
Gaming Performance Improvements vs Last-gen
but with all the cooling enhancements. designed to the newer Hardware, how does it actually translate to real-world use
So we decided to put this 2024 model and compared to the previous generation 2023 slim Pro 9i and the results are pretty interesting so the first thing to take into account is that meteor Lake takes efficiency and performance to a whole new level
when compared to Raptor Lake now on a full-core Autodesk my workload the CPU temperatures remain mostly identical but the biggest Improvement is the noise levels have improved significantly now when it comes to GPU temperatures during gaming the averages across all Benchmark games shows a drop from 72.3 de C to a cool 68° C
on the newer Yoga Pro 9i so overall thermal performance has improved quite a bit with the newer design. Now if you dive a little bit into gaming performance this year’s Yoga Pro 9i steps up its game showcasing a commendable five to even 18% improvement over its pressor especially in games like csgo 2 and Doom
Eternal the real game changer lies in the 1% lows where the newer Yoga Pro 9i shines these improvements translate to a more consistent.
CPU Improvements
And enjoy enjoyable gaming experience so last gen’s Slim Pro 9i featured Intel’s Raptor Lake H series core I9 3905 processor whereas this year’s Yoga Pro 9i is using Intel’s new core Ultra 9 185h this is actually our first experience with the highest-end core Ultra processor and we have a lot more testing to do so definitely stay tuned for that but just running a few preliminary tests
we found out that the new Ultra chips bring some generous improvements of the table especially with rendering apps like Blender and Houdini now as you can see we are testing both balance and performance mode on both last year’s Slim Pro 9i and this year’s Yoga pro 9i video editing performance remains mostly the same
I mean you shaved a few seconds here and there I should also mention that this is a pre-production sample which is why we weren’t able to completely evaluate this laptop in fact what the new core Ultra 9 CPUs can bring to the table in terms of performance
so I think this as a preview in fact Lenovo still has to B in some more optimizations to squeeze a little bit more performance out of this laptop
so when we get the production sample later in the studio I will definitely make sure to update you guys on his performance.
A HUGE Surprise!
So stay tuned for a full review later this year that being said there’s one big surprise that the Yoga Pro 99 brings to the table this year and that is the battery life improvements you see Lenovo was not only able to just improve the cooling system with this year’s yoga Pro 9i they were actually able to increase the battery size
So we’re going from 75 W hours on the Slim Pro 9i to 84 w hours which is a pretty big upgrade and that alone brings some substantial improvements this year because when you pair the bigger battery with the efficiency gains that Intel baked into the core Ultra processors.
You’re guaranteed to get really good battery life with this laptop so we went from getting around 6 hours with light load use to over 9 hours on the Yoga Pro 9 which is pretty impressive.
Now mind you this thing is packed with an RTX 470 running at 100 Watts so keep in mind that when you’re running this thing on battery mode the power gets cut down pretty significantly
But just the fact that you have a laptop with a 4070 being able to push up out over 9 hours of battery life is pretty impressive in my opinion.
Design Overview
Now, if you look at the exterior design of the Yoga Pro 99 not a lot has changed compared to the previous generation Slim Pro 9i so for the most part you’re still getting a very clean and simple minimalistic design with the Yoga logo that’s tucked right over here
I’ve got the spec here in Luna Gray but you can also get it in Tidal teal which is also one of my other favorite colors it’s very different compared to every other laptop that’s out there you still get the Comfort Edge feature around the sides which helps with everyday handling
it’s not super sharp it’s very comfortable to type with you’re not going to end up with wrist marks I really appreciate that about these yoga laptops and while the chassis is made out of recycled aluminum and post-consumer recycled plastic materials Leno hasn’t compromised on the overall build quality of the pro 9i this thing
still feels awesome The hinge doesn’t wobble that much for a 16-in laptop. This is probably one of the best premium-made laptops that you can find on the market very similar to the Slim Pro 9i so I love the fact that they’re continuing with those premium features.
More ports!
Now if you look at the the port situation this year even though from a form factor standpoint this thing remains pretty much the same compared to the slim Pro 9i Lenovo was still able to add more ports to the 2024 model so we get an extra USB type-c port and an extra USB type a port on the right-hand side
which is really thoughtful again I can’t say no to more ports I love having more ports on a fairly thin laptop and you also get a full-size SD card slot unfortunately this isn’t UHS 2 compliant
So for creators that might be a bit of a downside but yeah at least it’s there and I appreciate it and just like every other yoga laptop this year’s Pro 9i features the physical webcam kill switch which just gives you an added peace of mind when you’re using this laptop uh in terms of the webcam you’re getting a 5-megapixel 1080p sensor which still looks great it sounds great again great for meetings and all that kind of stuff.
Best Keyboard?
Now when you look at the Interior Space you’re still getting a full-size keyboard with some of the best switches that you can find for a laptop in general so it still features 1.8 mm of key travel so it’s very similar to last year’s slim Pro 9
I guess the one minor change you’re going to notice with this layout is the dedicated Windows co-pilot button which is used to summon the suite of AI tools provided by Microsoft and you still get the massive Precision Glass trackpad for smoother navigation front-facing speakers which still sound great.
Now my favorite feature about the Yoga Pro 9i is certainly the display because if you know me I’m a sucker for something that has higher brightness levels higher color accuracy faster refresh rate and something that’s really massive within bezels I’m a happy guy
So Lenovo’s continuing to push the boundaries when it comes to display technology and they started this with the Slim Pro last year by offering many LED options which was just insane.
DAT Display!
so the base model is going to come with a Quad HD Plus 120HZ IPS display that has a matte texture so it’s not glass and it does not feature touch support the next here is a 3.2k 165hz IPS panel that also comes in both mat or glass variants with to support
and the option that I have right over here is the cream of the crop 3.2k mini LED display with 165 HZ refresh rate and it’s got touch support so you know that’s really nice when it comes to editing photos if you’re using
Lightroom it’s super intuitive and it works really well this display is such gorgeous. I mean look at this Ren Sport pora that I have over here it’s it’s cool.
Specs & Pricing
So the last thing to cover here is specs and pricing for the Yoga Pro 9i So this thing starts with a Core Ultra 5 CPU but you can get a Core Ultra 9 processor uh like the one that I have right over here and it comes with 16 GB of dual Chann memory as base running at insanely High memory speeds and you can get this with
a 1 TB SSD the graphics can be configured with Intel Arc or an RT 4050 4060, or 4070 and the starting price for this thing is going to be $16.99 which is pretty insane considering all the premium features that this thing packs
Leno was also pretty generous to include two months of Adobe’s Creative Cloud Subscription Service which is I guess a complimentary value add-on for those creators who just want to hop into content creation and stuff like that.
Conclusion
So that’s the Yoga Pro 9i from Lenovo let us know what you guys think about this laptop is there anything that you’re excited about it and if you guys have any questions regarding the Pro 9i that you want us to cover in the full performance review.