Lenovo Yoga 9i Review – Intel Evo in Action
This isn’t quite the type of machine I’m used to reviewing, but man it’s interesting. This is the Lenovo Yoga 9i – this is the ‘Shadow Black’ model, with the new Intel Evo 1185G7. I’ve reviewed the Razer Blade Stealth which had the 1165G7, but those are slightly different machines with slightly different use cases. Intel ‘EVO’, for those that don’t know, is their rebranding of their low power chips meant for these ultra-thin, ultra-portable machines. They specifically labeled it as being “based on our extensive research into the pain points and unmet needs of different users”. Translating that to human-readable, it means it’s their new generation of CPUs that are faster, as you’d expect, have WiFi 6, as you’d expect, faster graphics, again, as you would expect with a new CPU line.
As for the Yoga, it’s great for artists or for office workers who travel, whereas the blade is for gamers on the go. So, lets take a look at the Yoga in more detail, and see if it’s one for you. Of course first, if you haven’t already, consider subscribing for more videos like this one every Monday, Wednesday and Friday!
So, spec wise, the Yoga is rocking that 1185G7, 16GB of soldered 4266MHz RAM, a 512GB M.2 SSD, it uses the integrated Intel Iris Xe graphics, and this model has a 4K IPS display that hits 90% of the DCI-P3 spectrum, and up to 500 nits. It’s also got a stylus built in you can slide out, and being a ‘Yoga’ device, the screen folds all the way round to make it a tablet – albeit with a keyboard on the other side, rather than the nice leather cover on the back of the display.
Since you are probably wondering what the hardware can handle, here are a few creator focused benchmarks.
As you saw, being this insanely thin, the 1185G7 throttles pretty hard, hitting 100c pretty quickly and thermal throttling down to pretty slow levels. Comparing to the blade stealth, which technically has the slower 1165G7, because it has a good cooling solution it takes almost half the time to render the Gooseberry test, and well under half for the BMW scene. The Yoga scores significantly less in Cinebench single threaded than the Blade, and is under half in multi-threaded. It’s got enough power to work your way through a basic edit in Premiere, or edit some photos in Photoshop, but not too much else. And of course because you’ve only got the integrated graphics, gaming on anything other than CSGO is gonna be a solid nope.
So, it’s not exactly the most powerful machine, but it’s not really designed to be. The foldable display and built in stylus prove this is more about having a machine to capture your inputs – however you want to give them. Sadly there wasn’t any drawing apps preinstalled, so I got Adobe Fresco running, and since I’m not artist, got my friends and family to try it out. Turns out it’s really easy to use, the pressure sensitive pen works wonders, so if you just want to make notes, or draw out whatever comes to mind, this is great.
One other thing to note is the battery life. I took this with me on my extra-short Christmas trip this year, had family draw on it, used it for watching videos, but deliberately didn’t bring the 65W USB C charger, and made it home with around 60% battery. Coming from gaming laptops, that is incredible to me. Lenovo reckons around 10 hours of life with this 60Wh battery and this spec, which in my testing looks spot on. Of course, things like screen brightness and CPU load are going to be big factors here, but for just drawing and watching videos, it works well.
As for the other input methods, the keyboard is fine. I used it to write this script, finding it easy to get used to, although the limited travel and incredibly light feel does make for some accidental key presses. The trackpad feels pretty strange, it feels like they are using a haptic motor to give you the ‘click’ sound and feel, as it doesn’t move independent of the body. It tracks well, but on a machine like this I end up using the touchscreen a lot more, only using the trackpad for precision moves and two finger scrolling.
The display is fantastic for playing back content, or getting a bit of work in. It’s more than bright enough, and incredibly vibrant too. Colours look beautiful, and true to life enough to edit photos or video pretty well. Couple that with the pressure sensitive touchscreen on top, and you’re onto a winner.
Sitting on top of the display is the webcam, with a nifty little hardware cover to block its view when not in use. That’s a nice touch, especially for a device that’s small and light enough to keep with you at all times. Quality is fine, I still don’t get why there aren’t smartphone cameras in these sorts of devices, you know, at least 1080p and reasonable quality, but anyway there it is. Microphones are decent too.
As for speakers, they are really impressive. They fire from the central bar between the display and keyboard, are surprisingly full and rich sounding. Obviously it’s no replacement for a good set of headphones or speakers, but they are definitely one of the best built-in speakers I’ve heard.
The only catch is the price. This model, even with the “e-coupon” is 1,800. That’s a lot, especially for a laptop that has relatively little power. I suppose when you put it up against the competition, the XPS 13 2 in 1 for example, which runs currently 50 more for the 1165G7, or Razer’s Book 13 or the Blade Stealth I reviewed, both are 100 more. And of course, Apple doesn’t offer a direct competitor here, you could get an iPad with a touch case I suppose, but it’s not quite the same.
For the market it’s intended for, it seems like a great option. It feels incredibly premium in the hand, and to use. The built in pen is a great touch, and while the internals aren’t exactly a supercomputer, it’s got just about enough grunt to get you through most day-to-day tasks. Oh, and excellent battery life.
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TechteamGB Score
