When one mentions Lenovo, the mind immediately goes to laptops and workstations, the professional workstations dedicated to workers; after all, the name ThinkPad hints precisely at the devices provided to employees to carry out their tasks outside the office long before the pandemic pushed smart working, still, Lenovo is much more than that, and this Yoga Pro 9i is proof of it. Thanks to its generous technical equipment, we put the new laptop in the series dedicated mainly to creative and gaming enthusiasts under the microscope.

It is not a champion of lightness, but everything is inside to justify its 1.7 kilograms of weight. We start with a 2.60 GHz Intel Core 13th i9-13905H processor, accompanied by as much as 64 GB of RAM and a 1 TB hard drive, over 950 GB of which is available. In the background is, of course, Windows 11, with a 14-inch display, which is also a touchscreen. An Nvidia Rtx 4070 add-on card provides graphics performance with 8 GB dedicated, which justifies the configuration’s price of 2,974 euros. A cost that may seem high but is actually several hundred euros less than a similar Apple counterpart, with proprietary processors and no longer Intel.

Performance and autonomy

Nothing to say, then, about performance: with the opportunity to set everything to the maximum, you will enjoy a speed that is still excellent even during video editing that the most demanding gaming, based mostly on the Microsoft Xbox platform, which you can access to download titles to keep on your computer or to run in the cloud, stable connection permitting. Autonomy, on top settings, suffers slightly, reaching about 5 hours of use in real-world situations, between writing documents and web browsing, which inevitably drops when it comes to video games or streaming movies in high quality, with brightness exceeding 50 per cent. The Yoga’s power supply is a 170-watt brick, which is inconvenient to carry around due to its volume. However, on Lenovo’s website, it is possible to purchase smaller and slower solutions to bring the notebook to 100 per cent.

Features and artificial intelligence

The Yoga Pro 9i is equipped with a 5-megapixel and an infrared webcam. There is an electronic shutter at the camera, which completely shuts off power to the camera while preserving privacy. When the camera is not in use, simply slide the switch on the side of the device to the red position to close to any outside monitoring. Being natively Windows 11, Microsoft’s generative artificial intelligence features begin to appear on board the Yoga Pro 9i.

Starting with web browsing with Bing, which allows from the bottom bar to instantly ask the chatbot anything, such as creating images from textual directions or help with the incipit of a novel or song. The AI world in Microsoft’s home takes the name “Copilot,” which already, by the end of the year, will bring new opportunities for interaction with the group’s main apps, such as the Office suite with Word, Excel and PowerPoint, later extending as a truly intelligent assistant to the entire operating system.

Maximum customization

If the Windows 11 user experience tends to smooth out differences among manufacturers, Lenovo tries to rise among the crowd with some interesting software customizations. These include Lenovo Vantage, a kind of additional control panel for accessing product information, requesting support, and purchasing additional options, such as premium support. The modes of use are varied and allow widgets to be added to the home screen, with data such as remaining battery and choice of performance profiles, from maximum performance to battery preservation.

That the vocation of the laptop is for gaming, but also content creation is given by the presence of a Creator Centre inside the Vantage app, which offers tips on how to set individual adjustments on the Yoga to get the most out of photo-video editing software and take advantage of the notebook as the perfect companion in all possible situations.