However, on more general tasks, Yoga didn’t work. My scores on the PCMark 10 benchmark weren’t markedly different from the scores of the first-generation Core Ultra, and performance on the industry-standard Geekbench 6 test was surprisingly low: 40 percent below a typical laptop with Snapdragon X technology and 20 percent below the average Core Ultra. 1. I didn’t notice any particularly slow performance during testing (and even booting was fast), but power users with 100 browser tabs open at once may start to feel some pain. On the plus side, since this is Intel silicon on the x86 architecture, the system doesn’t have any app compatibility issues that Snapdragon machines on the ARM architecture suffer from.
In any case, although it is impossible to draw a broad conclusion about the performance of a CPU based on a single laptop, this at least serves as a starting point.
Photography: Christopher Null
The rest of the laptop offers a solid, if not entirely remarkable, experience. The screen isn’t especially bright compared to competing laptops, but it still looks good under typical viewing conditions. The keyboard and its gently concave keys offer a smooth and responsive typing experience. The touchpad is responsive and the four speakers (with Dolby Atmos support) sound great. Please note that the fan tends to activate quickly under load and can be quite noisy.
Battery life deserves its own conversation: With just over 12 hours of run time in a full-screen YouTube playback test, the Yoga put most other Intel-based machines to shame. However, laptops with the new Snapdragon chips still have Intel clearly outmatched on this front. Fifteen hours is a common benchmark for Snapdragon Apple Silicon still has nothing to fear from Intel on the battery front.
Priced at $1,300, the Yoga Slim 9i is not a budget system, but it is well priced given its overall performance, design, and usability. It’s not yet known if Lunar Lake will be the game-changer that beleaguered Intel would love it to be, but at least it’s a step in the right direction.