The Lenovo Yoga 9i 14” impresses with its genuine leather cover. You get to experience yet another premium 2-in-1 laptop that offers literal flexibility relating to your preferred orientation—tent or tablet mode. With its different modes, you get the freedom to reorient your laptop in several ways that best suit your work and activities. Read more to find out the other features it has in store.
Display
This Yoga 9i boasts a 14” FHD (1920×1080) IPS touchscreen optimized by Dolby Vision and 400 nits of brightness. Further, it has relatively slim bezels so you can enjoy a fuller screen. However at the bottom of the screen, the bezel is noticeably wider. Despite it seeming out of place, I believe it will prove its usefulness in gripping your laptop when you shift it to different modes.
Its display, combined with the rotating sound bar featuring Dolby Atmos, provides an immersive viewing experience that resembles one of the many things we miss during this pandemic: movie theaters. Personally, I can count it as the next best thing to a cinematic experience. Props to Lenovo for the great visuals and audio system.
Design and build
Embodying luxury, this laptop has a metal frame with handcrafted genuine leather cover in Shadow Black. It undergoes a special process to preserve the leather and retain its natural imperfections. Thus, users can take delight in the uniqueness of each laptop.
As mentioned earlier, it features an aerospace-grade aluminum 2-in-1 chassis—it can rotate up to 360 degrees. On top of that, a garaged pen is included to unleash your creative side when sketching. You can enjoy streaming your favorite series or YouTube videos in its tent mode or draw illustrations or animations through its tablet mode. Or simply just use it for school or work like any traditional laptop.
While you can enjoy the functionality and handiness of a tablet with this device, ample consideration must be given since it’s quite hefty weighing 1.44kg with 16.5mm thickness.
An edge-to-edge glass palmrest with the Glass Sense touchpad that uses haptic feedback completed its high-end look of the leather model; although it was a bit of a struggle using the touchpad since it’s not distinguishable from the rest of the palmrest. The same is true for the Ultrasonic Fingerprint Reader, which takes time to locate. As far as I’m concerned, the struggles might be the trade off for its premium appearance and it might take some time to get used to.
My experience with the backlit keyboard was more favorable. I can work with ease and comfort even in low-light conditions. It also provides good tactile feedback and doesn’t produce loud sounds while typing.
You can locate the power on/off button on the right; while on the left are the headphone/mic combo port, two USB-C Thunderbolt 4 ports, and USB-A port. And finally, located at the top center of the screen, is the 720p HD camera—perfect for distance learning, Zoom meetings, and friendly video calls.
Under the hood
What better way to match its aesthetics with exceptional performance—the Yoga 9i 14” is powered by the Intel Evo platform delivering powerful performance and enhanced responsiveness with its 11th generation Intel Core i7-1185G7 processor and Intel Iris Xe graphics. It also has 16GB LPDDR4x memory and 1TB PCIe SSD. Given the work from home setup, having a trusted and reliable laptop has become a necessity. You can expect the Lenovo 9i 14 to deliver when you need it the most; it has far exceeded my expectations with the enjoyable and seamless user experience.
We ran the device through benchmarks and these were the results:
- Cinebench- 2,884 (Multi-core), 1026 (Single-core)
- 3D mark- 1,442 (Time Spy Score), 1,325 (Graphics score), 2,891 (CPU score)
- PC mark 10- 4,793
Battery life
It houses a 60Wh battery and is paired with a 65W USB-C adapter. You can count on a prolonged battery life brought about by its latest AI technology—Intelligent cooling feature. I’m optimistic that this will increase my productivity, and that short battery life won’t interrupt work or play and be a nuisance anymore.
Verdict
The impressive features of the Lenovo Yoga 9i 14” significantly outweigh the downsides. The discreet touchpad and fingerprint reader might pose some difficulty to the user; however, frequent use might just be the solution to this problem. In any case, you can take delight in the amazing features of the Yoga 9i 14” such as its handmade premium leather cover, 2-in-1 chassis with rotating soundbar featuring Dolby Atmos, and boosted performance with its Intel Core i7-1185G7 processor at a price point of PHP99,995.
Inside the box
- 65W USB Slim Charger
- USB-C dongle- HDMI
- Quick start guide, Warranty, Leather care guide
