Lenovo Yoga 9i (2023) review: The best laptop on the market

The 2023 Lenovo Yoga 9i is just a plain old spec bump, now including Intel 13th-gen processors. Of course, the good news is that when I reviewed the 2022 model, I called it the best laptop on the market, and it’s topped our list of best laptops ever since. If there’s one thing you need to take away from this review, it should be that this laptop will take the place of its predecessor topping many of our best guides. It’s just that good.

Lenovo’s Yoga 9i series (previously the 900 series) has always been good, but historically, I was always an HP Spectre fan. HP had the design chops, giving its laptops a look that would catch some eyeballs at your local coffee shop. The company lost that title as it toned down the Spectre’s design, and Lenovo, for the first time ever, really aimed at making a sexy laptop.

Of course, it’s not just pretty. Lenovo fits a rotating soundbar in the hinge for superb Dolby Atmos audio, and display options include 2.8K 90Hz OLED or 4K 60Hz OLED. It has a few other bells and whistles too, but importantly, all of the cons I came up with for this device are pretty negligible.

About this review: Lenovo sent us the Yoga 9i (2023) for review. The company did not have any input in its contents.

Lenovo Yoga 9i (2023)

Lenovo’s 2023 Yoga 9i has a 13th-generation Intel Core i7 processor and a stunning OLED display. It also has beautifully polished corners and a soundbar hinge down the middle.

Lenovo Yoga 9i (2023): Pricing and availability

The Lenovo Yoga 9i (2023) was available as of April 10, 2023. It was originally announced at CES. Starting price for the new laptop is $1,499. It comes in colors like Storm Grey, which is a sort of gunmetal gray, and Oatmeal, a frankly terrible name for pale gold. The big change from last year’s model is that it has Intel’s 13th-gen processors under the hood. Nothing else has changed.

Design: Lenovo goes heavy on bling

As I noted above, Lenovo has always produced quality laptops in its flagship Yoga line. It’s long been where you’d find the best audio quality in a laptop, and back in the day, it was one of few convertibles that had internal pen storage (that feature is gone now). But it was never particularly pretty. I remember when I reviewed the Yoga C930 and thought that despite how good it was, it just felt basic. There was nothing about the design that stood out; meanwhile, HP was making a bold statement with its Spectre convertibles.

The Lenovo Yoga 9i (2023) is without a doubt the sexiest laptop on the market.

That’s changed now though. The Lenovo Yoga 9i (2023) is without a doubt the sexiest laptop on the market. Last year, Lenovo revamped its entire Yoga lineup, giving it soft, curved edges. It’s a great look, but the Yoga 9i takes it a step further by polishing those edges, making them nice and shiny. It’s a really nice touch for this CNC aluminum laptop. Given that HP has really scaled back to a more subtle design on its Spectre lineup, that makes the Yoga 9i the best-looking laptop out there.

There are two colors: Storm Grey and Oatmeal. Storm Grey is a color that we’ve seen on Lenovo laptops for ages, and this is the first time it’s looked good. I can’t tell you how many of these gunmetal gray laptops I’ve called bland in my career, but there’s something about the polished edges that brings it to life. The one that Lenovo sent me for review is in the Oatmeal color though. And yes, Oatmeal might be the worst name for a product color in the history of product colors. It’s really pale gold. Of course, this tragedy of a colorway name has sold exactly zero more or fewer Yoga 9i units.

I’m a fan of the Oatmeal color (not the name, the color), but it’s more flashy than the Storm Grey. Storm Grey is visually striking while maintaining subtlety, while Oatmeal brings out the bling for pure sexiness.

On the left side of the laptop, you’ll find two Thunderbolt 4 ports, along with one USB Type-A port. The Yoga 9i doesn’t use the wedge-shaped design that most other laptops use, so it can actually fit those larger ports. I also think the uniform width gives it a unique style.

There’s a third USB Type-C port on the right side, which is disappointingly not Thunderbolt 4 / USB4. You can still use it for charging, and unless you’re using Thunderbolt-specific peripherals or connecting dual 4K displays, you probably won’t know the difference. I just get annoyed when all ports aren’t equal.

As for the overall design though, you can probably tell that I’m in love with it, just as much as I was with last year’s model. I also have a thing for pretty laptops. There’s an old Cadillac ad where Kate Walsh asked, “When you turn your car on, does it return the favor?” I ask, shouldn’t we expect that from all of our stuff? Smartphones shouldn’t be the only devices we carry that look cool.

Display: That sweet OLED never fails to impress

The unit that Lenovo sent me for review includes a 14-inch 2880×1800 OLED display, and your other option is 3840×2400 OLED. Having used both, I’m pretty confident in saying you won’t be able to tell the difference in the resolution, but if you need the extra pixels for whatever reason, you have the option for a 4K display. There’s one other big difference though, which is that the 2880×1800 panel offers a 90Hz refresh rate, giving it that extra touch of smoothness.

The screen is gorgeous, as you’d expect. It has the true blacks that you’d expect from an OLED panel, combined with the vibrant colors on top of that. The 90Hz refresh rate makes things look smooth, although it does burn through battery life.

As for testing, I found the screen supported 100% sRGB, 96% NTSC, 98% Adobe RGB, and 100% P3. That’s excellent if you have a workflow that requires color accuracy, or just a wide range of colors. It’s also more typical to get scores that high on an OLED display.

Brightness came in at 373.1 nits, just short of the 400 nits that are promised. That was a bit surprising.

The webcam is fine, although it’s nothing too exciting. It’s a standard 2.1MP 16:9 camera, so you can get 1080p video capture from it. In the age of working from home, you’ll definitely want that over a regular old HD webcam, but it’s still not as good as the 5MP sensors that have been standard across HP’s mainstream and premium portfolio, or even the 5MP cameras that are in some ThinkPads. Of course, it’s still far superior to the tiny 720p sensors that are in Dell’s entire XPS flagship lineup.

Keyboard and touchpad: Dedicated shortcut buttons are practical

There’s some good and bad with the keyboard. It’s comfortable to type on, which is nice, although I did experience some double-typing, which is always annoying.

It’s got the standard curved keys that we’re used to seeing on Lenovo laptops, and a sizable touchpad beneath them. You’ll notice, however, that there are some additional keys to the right.

There are four shortcut keys, which all have specific purposes that you can’t change. You can adjust performance, blur the camera background, adjust the color on the screen for different scenarios, or toggle between light and dark modes.

The shortcut buttons are practical for things that you’ll actually use.

The shortcut buttons are practical for things that you’ll actually use. It’s just disappointing that you can’t customize them.

For comparison, HP’s Dragonfly Pro has a similar row of shortcut keys, but the company took a totally different approach. Those keys are for things like dedicated support. There’s no key to adjust performance, because a key factor in designing the Dragonfly Pro and the AMD processor inside was that a user shouldn’t have to adjust power.

Above the keyboard, there’s a soundbar built into the hinge that has two 2W tweeters, and there are two 3W woofers built into the sides. The audio on the Yoga 9i is second to none — it’s the most powerful audio that you’ll find in a laptop.

Audio quality on the Yoga 9i is second to none.

It’s the ultimate media consumption machine. The OLED display is beautiful and smooth, and the audio is powerful and bold. Whether you’re listening to music or watching movies, the Yoga 9i is perfect for that.

Performance: Intel 13th-gen outperformed my expectations

The unit that Lenovo sent me includes a Core i7-1360P, 16GB RAM, and a 512GB SSD. It’s actually the first laptop I’ve reviewed that includes Intel’s 13th-gen mobile processors, or at least the first actual production unit that I’ve reviewed.

I had low expectations. After all, Intel’s announcement focused on its HX-series chips, which are basically scaled-down desktop parts that go in gaming laptops. For 28W CPUs in the P-series, the company was promising things like a 15% increase in productivity performance. And frankly, a productivity performance boost isn’t something that anyone was asking for.

I was pleasantly surprised. In fact, it felt like an actual improvement just from my initial impressions. The battery seemed to last longer, things seemed snappier, and everything seemed to work better. When thinking about it, that makes sense. Intel 12th-gen was the first where it used a hybrid architecture, with big and little cores for better power management. Despite having been done in Arm chips for ages, it was new and radical for x86. It makes sense that 13th-gen would be when the firm refines that technology a bit, so the improvements are greater than they should be on the surface.

I still think that this is the ultimate photo-editing machine. It has the CPU power for it, although unfortunately, 13th-gen mobile CPUs have the same Iris Xe graphics that were in 11th-gen. Still, it’s pretty great.

I still don’t understand why Intel’s 28W mobile CPUs actually exist though. Up until 12th Gen came out, most laptop chips were 15W, and it was fine. Those 15W parts still exist, and they’re still fine. As I said, I don’t think anyone was asking for more productivity performance, and without more advanced graphics, this still isn’t your video editing or gaming machine.

Lenovo Yoga 9i Core i7-1360P

1,924 / 8,225

1,810 / 7,869

1,539 / 11,480

1,629 / 10,121

Sadly, I don’t have a Geekbench 6 score for the Dell XPS 13 Plus. Geekbench 6 came out fairly recently, so it wasn’t available back then; however, it’s still one of the most relevant devices to compare it to. However, the HP EliteBook 840 G9 also packs a Core i7-1280P, and it scored 1,727 / 10,014 on that test.

As you can see, Intel’s 13th-gen improvements are significant. It’s also significantly better (when focused on the CPU and not the integrated graphics) than AMD’s current offerings, which are set to be boosted soon with Zen 4 mobile chips. But as of right now, Zen 3+ laptops are the best that are shipping.

Battery life is pretty solid, although it’s still not as good as if it had a 15W processor. On average, I found that it came just short of six hours of battery life, and I didn’t see a noticeable difference between when the screen was set to 90Hz or 60Hz. The lowest amount of use I got was 280 minutes, and the highest was 391 minutes.

Should you buy the Lenovo Yoga 9i (2023)?

You should buy the Lenovo Yoga 9i (2023) if:

You should NOT buy the Lenovo Yoga 9i (2023) if:

Most of the drawbacks to the Yoga 9i are pretty trivial. There’s no way to store the pen on the device, so you have to use the case that comes with it. There’s also no 5G connectivity option, so if you travel a lot and might end up staying somewhere with slow internet speeds, you’ll wish you could download an eSIM and connect to cellular as you can with variants of most Lenovo ThinkPads, a Microsoft Surface Pro, or an HP Spectre x360.

I think that for the vast majority, this is the perfect laptop. Everything about it is just a delight to use, so unless you have a special use case, such as where you’d need dedicated graphics for gaming or video editing, you’re good to go with the Lenovo Yoga 9i.

Lenovo Yoga 9i (2023)

Lenovo’s 2023 Yoga 9i has a 13th-generation Intel Core i7 processor and a stunning OLED display. It also has beautifully polished corners and a soundbar hinge down the middle.