Lenovo Yoga 9i (2024) review: The best you can get from Meteor Lake

For the past two generations, the Lenovo Yoga 9i has been the best laptop, or at least it's shared the crown with HP's Spectre x360. The 2024 model comes with a modest redesign and a new deep blue color, along with Intel Core Ultra processors.

With its legendary rotating soundbar and OLED display, it's the best audio/video player in the game, and on top of that, it has one of the best keyboards you'll find on a consumer laptop. As far as the hardware goes, you can't beat it.

There's only one problem. Intel started talking up its upcoming Lunar Lake portfolio of chips months ago, making it clear that first-gen Core Ultra laptops aren't the way to go. If you need a laptop right now, it's easy to recommend the 2024 Yoga 9i. But if you're willing to wait, it seems like Lunar Lake might be the way to go.

Lenovo sent us the Yoga 9i (2024) for review. It did not have any input on the contents of this article.

Lenovo Yoga 9i (2024) pricing and availability

The 2024 model of the Lenovo Yoga 9i was announced way back at CES and was released over the summer. It starts at around $1,450, with small variations depending on if you get it from Lenovo.com or Best Buy. That will get you a Core Ultra 7 155H, 16GB RAM, and a 512GB SSD. Naturally, there are options for more storage and RAM, and you can also boost the 2.8K OLED to 4K OLED if you want, but I think 2.8K is the sweet spot for 14 inches.

Design

The gold is gone

After being one of the most dull designs on the market for years, Lenovo overhauled the Yoga 9i two years ago, making it arguably the most beautiful laptop on the market. It came in a pale gold color that was inexplicably called Oatmeal, and it was wonderful.

This year's design scales it back quite a bit. What was playfully described as "bling" in the briefing from a couple of years ago is still there, with the glossy edges around the base, but it's a new Cosmic Blue color instead of pale gold. It's nice, for sure, but between HP's lineup of Dragonfly laptops, the new Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x, and some others, I feel like we're starting to see an abundance of dark blue PCs. I think it's because it allows for color while still being subtle.

While the base keeps the same design in terms of shape, the lid doesn't, which feels a bit strange to use. The lid is smaller than the base now, something you don't see much.

The Yoga 9i is lighter than ever.

The new design, still made out of all metal and now weighing in at under three pounds, is stellar. It's just not as flashy as last year's, which is either a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how you look at it.

As far as ports go, you get three USB Type-C, although only two are Thunderbolt 4 (the two on the left). I'm not a fan of having identical ports that have different capabilities, but to be fair, these aren't the USB 2 and USB 3 days. The vast majority of people won't see any kind of difference between Thunderbolt 4 and USB 3.2. And if you're the type that would see a difference, then you already know it because you're using a Thunderbolt 4 dock, an external GPU, multiple 4K monitors, or something else that takes advantage of the 40Gbps bandwidth.

Display and keyboard

It's the best you can get

Once again, the Yoga 9i comes with a 14-inch screen that gives you the option of 2.8K OLED at 120Hz or 4K OLED at 60Hz. My review unit is the 4K model, and I do think it's overkill. I really think 2.8K is the sweet spot for a 14-inch laptop, and that refresh rate makes it even better.

In my testing, it supported 100% sRGB, 95% NTSC, 97% Adobe RGB, and 100% P3, which is great. Those scores aren't unheard of on an OLED display, but it's about as good as it gets.

Brightness maxed out at 382.5 nits, which is fine for a laptop.

On top of having a gorgeous, vibrant display, Lenovo also has best-in-class audio quality with the rotating soundbar in the hinge. It comes with two 2W woofers and two 2W tweeters for superior quality, and since the soundbar rotates, it fires at you no matter the orientation of the display.

All of this adds up to a magnificent streaming experience. If you're watching a movie on a laptop, this is the one to do it on. On a side note, I'm a little disappointed that the rotating soundbar is still exclusive to the Yoga 9i series. The feature was introduced in 2018's Yoga C930; I'd have thought it would have made its way to the 7 series by now.

For streaming media, the Yoga 9i is unbeatable.

And then the keyboard, which is best-in-class. It's comfortable and accurate, and it's really just the best you'll find on a consumer laptop. If you type for a living like I do, it's a dream. There are laptops with better keyboards, such as those on ThinkPads and HP's EliteBooks, but those are business laptops. If you want a great keyboard on a consumer laptop, you go Lenovo.

The touchpad is as big as it gets, as it should be. Pretty much all available real estate is used. It's a great touchpad, but in a 2024 flagship, I'd like to have seen haptic. There are so many good ones out there from companies like Sensel, which are going in laptops like the Surface Laptop 7, Lenovo's ThinkPad X1 Carbon, and more. They need to be everywhere.

Performance and battery life

Core Ultra is still good

I've reviewed hundreds of laptops, and there comes a time in a CPU's lifecycle when I feel like all of them have had the same chip under the hood. It's getting that way with Intel Core Ultra, also known as Meteor Lake. There are no surprises left. Part of that is on me, because I've been using this laptop for months. Lenovo sent it right before Copilot+ review units arrived, so those took priority.

Still, Meteor Lake was kind of Osborned by Intel. It's hard to believe that this family of chips was announced just over eight months ago, but it was. Intel just started talking about Lunar Lake so soon that Meteor Lake got old fast. The company needs to compete with Qualcomm; I get it. It's just hard to take Meteor Lake products seriously.

Intel is still your best choice if you play games on your PC.

Don't get me wrong. The Core Ultra 7 155H that's under the hood of the Yoga 9i is great. But for most people, at this point, I'm either suggesting a Snapdragon X Elite laptop, or suggesting to wait for Lunar Lake, which is right around the corner. Intel moved really fast here.

Ultimately, performance is going to be what you want. It's great at productivity, as ultrabooks have been for years. The only really bad news is that when you're unplugged, battery life is pretty poor at best performance, and performance is relatively poor for things like photo editing at the balanced power setting.

I did all of my testing at 50% brightness, using normal apps like Google Chrome, Slack, OneNote, and some light Photoshop. With the power slider at best performance, battery life was only between three to four hours, and usually closer to three than to four.

Again, the 4K display will contribute to lesser battery life. That's expected. If you want more battery life, get the 2.8K option and set it to 60Hz.

With the power settings at balanced, battery life was almost exactly seven hours, and it was weirdly consistent. My three test runs were between 407 and 422 minutes.

Back to performance, have some benchmarks.

The Yoga 9i benchmarks pretty well. Unfortunately, Lenovo does have power settings in its Vantage app, where it likes to duplicate a lot of settings that are built into Windows, for some reason. You can draw the conclusions you want from the comparison between the Yoga 9i and the XPS 14, but the 3DMark tests show what some modest dedicated graphics can get you compared to the integrated Arc graphics.

I also included the Surface Laptop 7 because the Snapdragon X Elite is just so good. Lenovo has its own Yoga Slim 7x with the X Elite, and while it's phenomenal, it does use the lesser SKU of the chipset, so Geekbench scores are right along the same lines as Meteor Lake. The one in the Surface stands out a bit more.

While I do recommend Snapdragon for most, I don't if you intend to play any form of games on your laptop. Some games run well, but if you want to know that a game will work, you'll have to buy Intel. The Yoga 9i is far better for casual gaming.

Should you buy the Lenovo Yoga 9i (2024)?

You should buy the Lenovo Yoga 9i (2024) if:

• You need a laptop now
• You play games on your PC, even casually
• You consume videos or music on your PC

You should NOT buy the Lenovo Yoga 9i (2024) if:

• You can wait for Intel Lunar Lake to launch
• Battery life is a priority
• You don't play any casual games

There are two key factors to consider with the Lenovo Yoga 9i (2024). One is that Intel Lunar Lake is coming soon. I doubt Lenovo will refresh the Yoga 9i right away, so you might have to wait until next spring for it. Still, Lunar Lake is set to be a pretty significant improvement over Meteor Lake, with Intel already promising to "bust the myth" that Arm is more efficient than x86.

The other thing to consider is that Snapdragon X Elite is here, and it's fantastic. If it fits your work flow, it's worth looking at. Lenovo's Yoga Slim 7x has a 14.5-inch OLED display and a great keyboard like this one. The only problem is that you don't know if casual games will work for it.

The Lenovo Yoga 9i (2024) is one of the best laptops on the market. There's no doubt about that. If you're looking to pick something up right now, I highly recommend it.