Lenovo Yoga 9i 15 Review: A Powerful Convertible Laptop

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Lenovo Yoga 9i 15: At First Glance

Without doubts, Lenovo is one of the most popular laptop manufacturing brands globally. The Chinese multinational brand has mastered the art of delivering laptops with astonishing design and the right amount of specs.

This in turn made them have a lot of customers and a huge fanbase across the globe. So, in August 2020, to do what they know how to do best, Lenovo released the Yoga 9i 15.

The Lenovo Yoga 9i 15 is a 2-in-1 convertible laptop that offers a powerful Intel Core i9 processor and a dedicated graphics card. However, laptops that feature these kinds of specifications don’t come cheap and this Lenovo laptop isn’t an exception.

Specifically, when I wrote this review article in February 2022, the Lenovo Yoga 9i 15 had a starting price of $1,499.98. “Does the laptop deserve this hefty price tag?” I’m sure that’s what you are thinking right now.

What about you read on to find out?

Lenovo Yoga 9i 15: Design, Dimension, and Weight

The Lenovo Yoga 9i 15 features a simple, strong, and clean design that screams “premium”. To give more details, the entire body of this laptop is made of aluminum with a slate grey texture.

Thus, due to the aluminum build of the laptop, it should be very sturdy and able to withstand rough handling. That aside, the lid of this Lenovo laptop features a sleek-looking silver “Yoga” inscription at the top left corner.

However, unlike most Lenovo laptops, the Yoga 9i 15’s lid doesn’t have a “Lenovo” logo anywhere around its surface. Instead, you will find this logo on the front side of the laptop’s hinge.

Speaking of which, due to the fact that the Lenovo Yoga 9i 15 is a convertible laptop, its hinge can rotate a full 360-degree. Therefore, you will be able to use the laptop in four modes.

These modes include stand mode, tent mode, tablet mode, and the conventional laptop mode. Moreover, because the laptop’s hinge is sturdy, it holds the display in place when the Lenovo Yoga 9i 15 is used in any of these modes.

Talking of the display, as one would expect from a convertible laptop, the Lenovo Yoga 9i 15 features a 15.6-inch touchscreen display. Performance-wise, this touchscreen display responds to touches seamlessly and accurately.

Also, the touchscreen display works well with the included stylus pen. Impressively, Lenovo offers two resolution options for this laptop’s touchscreen display.

These resolution options include FHD (1920 x 1080) and 4K UHD (3840 x 2160). With either resolution option, the Lenovo Yoga 9i 15’s display offers decent picture quality for casual viewing and web browsing.

However, with the 4K UHD resolution option, the display’s picture quality is better and colors are much more realistic. Therefore, if you are a graphics designer, I suggest purchasing the Lenovo Yoga 9i 15 with a 4K UHD resolution display.

In addition to its impressive resolution options, this laptop’s 15.6-inch touchscreen display is made with an IPS panel. Hence, the display offers wide viewing angles.

As a result, when viewing the Lenovo Yoga 9i 15 off-center, its display’s picture quality and color accuracy will remain intact.

Aside from its impressive viewing angles, the Lenovo Yoga 9i 15’s display also offers a maximum brightness of 500 nits. Thus, this Lenovo laptop is ideal for outdoor usage.

To make things better, the Lenovo Yoga 9i 15’s display is surrounded by thin bezels. Moreover, on the top bezel, you will find an HD webcam with a privacy shutter that prevents web spying.

In terms of performance, this webcam offers adequate performance for video calls and taking selfies.

Moving on, the Lenovo Yoga 9i 15 features a chiclet-type keyboard with a full numeric pad. Furthermore, this keyboard is backlit, meaning you will be able to type comfortably with the laptop at night or in dark areas.

Speaking of comfortability, this laptop’s keyboard should offer a comfortable typing experience due to its well-spaced keys with decent key travel. In case you are curious, key travel is the distance between a key’s resting point to full depression.

Beneath this laptop’s keyboard, you’ll find a Microsoft precision touchpad with two integrated click buttons. This touchpad features a glass surface that is very smooth and responsive.

Moreover, on the right side of the touchpad, there is a fingerprint sensor. This sensor is for biometric login via Windows Hello.

Sadly, the Lenovo Yoga 9i 15 offers a limited number of ports. To be more specific, on the left side of the laptop, there are two Thunderbolt 3 ports, a 3.5mm audio jack, and an AC power port.

Meanwhile, on the right side, there is one USB Type-A port, the power button, and a stylus pen slot.

Moving on to dimensions and weight, the Lenovo Yoga 9i 15 measures 238.5 x 355.5 x 17.5 – 19.7 mm (W x D x H) and weighs 2000 g. In comparison, this laptop weighs more than most of its competitors.

For example, the ASUS VivoBook 15 and Dell XPS 15 2-in-1 weighs 1700 g and 1950.45 g respectively.

In conclusion, the Lenovo Yoga 9i 15 has a premium design with an aluminum body. Moreover, this laptop offers two impressive resolution options for its touchscreen display.

However, the laptop is heavier than most of its competitors and it features a limited number of ports. Therefore, I will rate the Lenovo Yoga 9i 15 an eight out of ten in this design review section.

Lenovo Yoga 9i 15: Processor (CPU) Performance

For the processor, the Lenovo Yoga 9i 15 comes with a 9th generation Intel Core i9-10980HK processor. This processor is an 8-core processor that features a cache memory of 16 MB.

In addition to its cache memory, this processor has a base frequency of 2.40 GHz. Also, the processor has a maximum frequency of 5.3 GHz.

In terms of performance, the Intel Core i9-10980HK processor is a powerful high-end CPU that can handle any computing task. Therefore, with this processor, the Lenovo Yoga 9i 15 will be able to handle demanding tasks like video editing and heavy multitasking.

In order to prove all these, I will now be discussing the Lenovo Yoga 9i 15’s result on a Cinebench R20 test. Briefly, the Cinebench R20 test is a benchmark test that evaluates the processer of a computer by measuring when its cores are in use.

Therefore, this benchmark test is divided into two tests which are the multi-core test and the single-core test. For clarity, the multi-core test measures a computer’s processor performance when all of its cores are being utilized.

On the other hand, the single-core test measures the processor performance when one of its cores is in use. An important thing to note about these tests is that the higher the scores, the better the processor performance.

Thus, according to the Cinebench R20 test results, the Lenovo Yoga 9i 15 scored 4487 points on the multi-core test. However, on the single-core test, the laptop delivered a score of 507 points.

In comparison, the Lenovo Yoga 9i 15 has a better processor performance than the Dell XPS 17 9700 which uses an Intel Core i9-10885H CPU. Specifically, on the Cinebench R20 single-core and multi-core tests, the Dell XPS 17 9700 scored 487 points and 3400 points respectively.     

Thus, to wrap up this processor review section, I will rate the Lenovo Yoga 9i 15 a nine out of ten.

Lenovo Yoga 9i 15: Memory (RAM) Performance

The Lenovo Yoga 9i 15 features a standard memory of 12 GB DDR4-2933
on its single memory slot. Sadly, this laptop’s memory is onboard, meaning it is soldered directly on the motherboard.

Therefore, the memory of the laptop can neither be upgraded nor removed. However, you can purchase another model of the Lenovo Yoga 9i 15 that comes with 16 GB RAM DDR4-2933.

Nonetheless, I doubt if that would be necessary because the laptop’s 12 GB standard RAM is enough for handling most computing tasks. As a matter of fact, with 12 GB RAM, this laptop will be able to handle heavy multitasking effectively.

Speaking of multitasking, the Yoga 9i 15 with 12 GB RAM should be able to run 35 Chrome tabs simultaneously without lagging. Moreover, while these Chrome tabs are running, you can stream YouTube videos on the laptop and it still won’t lag or slow down.

To further prove the Yoga 9i 15’s performance with 12 GB RAM, we will now be discussing its result on a PCMark 10 test. If you are wondering, PCMark 10 is a benchmark test that evaluates a computer’s memory performance when handling office-related workloads like word processing.

Furthermore, a high score on this test means a good memory performance. So, according to the PCMark 10 test result, the Lenovo Yoga 9i 15 scored 7809 points.

Impressively, this laptop performed better than all the laptops in its class. For example, the Dell Inspiron 13 7373 scored 5170 points on the PCMark 10 benchmark test.

In conclusion, even though the Lenovo Yoga 9i 15’s memory is onboard, it offers sufficient standard memory. Hence, I will rate the laptop a nine out of ten in this memory review section.

Lenovo Yoga 9i 15: Storage Options and Performance

As expected from a $1000+ laptop, the Lenovo Yoga 9i 15 comes with a PCIe SSD (Solid State Drive) for storage. This storage drive supports a maximum capacity of 2 TB.

Hence, even though the laptop lacks an SD card reader for storage expansion, 2 TB of storage space should meet most users’ storage demands. In fact, due to the fact that the Yoga 9i 15 uses an SSD storage type, it should offer a fast read and write speed.

To confirm this, I will now be discussing the CrystalDiskMark test result of the laptop. For clarity, the CrystalDiskMark test is a benchmark test that evaluates the performance of a computer’s storage drive by measuring its read and write speed.

In case you are curious, read speed is the time that a storage drive takes to open a file. On the other hand, write speed is the time it takes the storage drive to save a file.

Moreover, on the CystalDiskMark test, the higher the “MBps” value, the faster the computer’s storage drive’s read and write speed. So, according to the test result, the Lenovo Yoga 9i 15 delivered a sequential read and write speed of 2059 MBps and 1873 MBps respectively.

Compared to the ASUS ZenBook 14 which also uses an SSD storage type, the Lenovo Yoga 9i 15 has a faster read and write speed. To be more specific, the ASUS ZenBook 14 delivered a sequential read speed of 1956.9 MBps on the CrystalDiskMark test.

In addition to that, this ASUS laptop also delivered a sequential write speed of 1614.5 MBps.

Therefore, based on the information provided above, I will be rating the Lenovo Yoga 9i 15 a nine out of ten in this storage review section.

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Lenovo Yoga 9i 15: Graphics Card Performance

Impressively, unlike most non-gaming laptops, the Lenovo Yoga 9i 15 features a dedicated graphics card. To be more specific, this laptop comes with an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Ti graphics card.

This graphics card offers a base frequency of 1350 MHz and a boost frequency of 1485 MHz. Also, as a dedicated GPU, the graphics card comes with a dedicated VRAM of 4 GB GDDR6.

As a result, with this graphics card, the Lenovo Yoga 9i 15 will be able to run most graphics-intensive games and applications smoothly. Speaking of games, while playing Rise of the Tomb Raider, this laptop delivered an impressive frame rate of 121 fps.

In order to further determine the graphics performance of this laptop, we will now be discussing its result on a 3DMark 11 test. Just to be clear, 3DMark 11 is a benchmark test that measures a computer’s 2D and 3D graphics rendering abilities.

Furthermore, a high score on this graphics test indicates good performance. Therefore, according to the 3DMark 11 test result, the Yoga 9i 15 scored 7256 points, which is quite impressive.

As a matter of fact, this laptop performed better than most of its competitors on this benchmark test. For example, the Dell Inspiron 5577 which uses a dedicated NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 GPU scored 5812 points.

In conclusion, the Lenovo Yoga 9i 15 offers a dedicated graphics card, which is quite impressive for a non-gaming laptop. Moreover, this laptop performed better than most of its competitors on a graphics benchmark test.

Therefore, there is nothing stopping me from rating the Lenovo Yoga 9i 15 a nine out of ten in this graphics review section.

Lenovo Yoga 9i 15 Battery Life and Performance

For battery, Lenovo equipped the Yoga 9i 15 with a 69 Wh Li-Polymer battery. According to Lenovo, this battery should be able to last up to 8 hours.

However, to validate this claim, I will now present the Lenovo Yoga 9i 15’s results on a battery rundown test. For clarity, the battery rundown test involves continuous web surfing via a WIFI connection until the laptop dies.

Thus, at the end of the test, the Lenovo Yoga 9i 15 delivered a battery life of 10 hours. Impressively, this battery life is two hours more than Lenovo’s initial 8 hours claim.

However, when compared to the Microsoft Surface Book 2, the Lenovo Yoga 9i 15 was outperformed. Specifically, on the battery rundown test, the Microsoft Surface Book 2 delivered a battery life of 13 hours.

In conclusion, even though Lenovo Yoga 9i 15 delivered a good battery life, it was outperformed by one of its closest competitors. For this reason, I will rate the laptop an eight out of ten in this battery review section.

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion

The Lenovo Yoga 9i 15 is a 2-in-1 laptop that offers a sleek aluminum design and a vast range of amazing specs. To give more details, this laptop comes with a powerful Intel Core i9 processor that can handle any computing tasks including heavy multitasking.

Furthermore, the Lenovo Yoga 9i 15 features sufficient storage space that most users would appreciate. That’s not all, the laptop also comes with a dedicated graphics card, which is quite unusual for a non-gaming laptop.

Unfortunately, this Lenovo laptop features a limited number of ports and it is quite expensive. Nevertheless, if you can afford its heavy price tag, the Lenovo Yoga 9i 15 is worth buying.

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