The 9i offers excellent usability with slightly concave keys that have plenty of travel, a responsive touchpad, and the flexibility to rotate the screen and either put the laptop into an inverted V-tent or lay it flat for the full tablet experience. A simple stylus is included for those looking to do more detailed work. I found it very easy to write on, and nothing has changed about the design of the chassis, either, which has all rounded edges and corners, weighs 2.4 pounds, and measures 18mm thick.
Performance-wise, Intel’s latest chip is giving all kinds of laptops an edge, but as has been the case with most of the devices I’ve tested lately, power hasn’t exactly been great. My benchmark scores were mixed across the board in the general business and graphics-focused applications range, ultimately returning slightly above-average numbers compared to the rest of the similarly equipped devices.
Photo: Best Buy
Battery life is a major concern, though. While Gilbertson managed double-digits in hours of run time in 2023, my YouTube test showed the laptop shutting down after just under seven hours. This is a real disappointment for a machine of this size, so much so that I ran the test a couple of times to check I hadn’t made any mistakes. The score held up. Interestingly, the 9i is also fairly slow to boot up – it took me 38 seconds to reach a usable state, more than double the typical boot time for a 2024 laptop – and that doesn’t include the time it takes to figure out where the power button is.
The Yoga 9i 2024 is priced fairly reasonably, though I wouldn’t be opposed to suggesting you keep an eye out for a deal or two. Still, even at its list price, it remains, as Lenovo itself said, as reliable as ever.
