[00:02] channel because I was looking for the ultimate portable laptop. Strong CPU performance, strong GPU performance, and I wanted a large high-quality screen so I could get real work done. But, I wasn't prepared to compromise on
[00:14] Everything about this laptop had to be good to great. And if that's what you're looking for, this new Yoga Pro 9i should definitely be at the top of your list. lighter, which makes it more portable, even though it actually has a larger
[00:28] battery. It has a much better CPU, and it's got a haptic trackpad. And yet, it had before. You've got that stunning 16-in 10-bit display, the most comfortable keyboard on the planet. But,
[00:41] like any laptop, there are gotchas. The CPU, although powerful, it is completely outclassed by Apple's M5 Pro and Max chips. The GPU is also pretty mid and just isn't fed full power, so it doesn't compete with similarly sized gaming
[00:55] life, you do have to do a bit of configuration changes. And this laptop, it has been hit by the great Windows laptop price hike of 2026. It costs a lot more than last year's
[01:07] Keeping tabs on this, by the way, is exactly why we built bestlaptop.deals. You see, over there, we track prices right across retailers, and we tell you exactly if a laptop's price is actually a good one. We also make it easy to find
[01:21] last year's model if you can get a deal on that one, and in this case, you actually can. I'm going to go through all those alternate recommendations, how compares to the last year's model in this video, so let's just get into it,
[01:34] guys. Okay. So, the new Yoga Pro 9i is slightly more compact than last year's model, as I said. It isn't as deep nor as wide. It also slopes down a little at the front, and it's around 150 g lighter. Compared to the MacBook Pro 16,
[01:47] this new Yoga Pro 9i has almost the same footprint. It is ever so slightly thicker, though, but it's also 200 g lighter. This makes the Yoga Pro 9i just day. Build quality-wise, it is slightly
[02:01] run my hand around the back, the back panel, it does feel more flush with the rest of the chassis. This wasn't the case on last year's one. This still terms of its build quality. I'd say those are a 9 out of 10, this is
[02:15] probably an eight. Now, this year the Yoga Pro 9i, it looks more stylish. It now comes in this darker color, which I really like. I did notice though that little sharp even though it looks rounded. It's not enough to really annoy
[02:29] curved like the Alienware's are. They have a pillow front edge. The hinge on the touchscreen without falling back. And the screen, it is easy to open with one hand because of the lip to grab on to. When you do, it goes back to almost
[02:44] 180°. The power button is on the side, but you do have to hold it down for a long time for it to register. And unlike the Yoga Pro 7i, this one is indented, so it's hard to mispress. Now, one of the
[02:56] standout features of this laptop is its stunning tandem OLED display, near-perfect color coverage. It has a resolution of 3,200 by 2,000, which makes more text just look really sharp and easy to make out. It refreshes at a
[03:10] fast 120 Hz and it gets insanely bright at over 1,000 nits for SDR content. By the way, if you are comparing this panel to the mini LED that's in the MacBook Pro 16, mini LED, it does have some slight ghosting for fast-moving content.
[03:24] You don't get that here tandem OLED. But this screen is super reflective. It's actually more reflective than the glossy version of the MacBook Pro screen. This direct sunlight. In fact, using dark mode on it, it's pretty rough as
[03:38] reflections just show up all the time. I personally had to set it to light mode. That didn't bother me, I must say, and I did use it in a variety of places like in coffee stores. I didn't find it too much of an issue. Now, we We detect PWM
[03:51] we feel it isn't going to be noticeable for most people. The laptop does support advanced Optimus, but it doesn't support G-Sync. The smaller Yoga Pro 7i actually supports both. I accidentally misstated that in my review of that laptop, but we
[04:05] right, so the next standard of this laptop is the keyboard. It is very comfortable to type on. You got ample key travel with a satisfying click. The them, which actually makes the whole typing experience just feel very
[04:19] The layout is standard. No mispresses because of keys placed in odd locations. spacing between them. You have to try pretty hard to mispress a key on this laptop. Now, last year's model had a number pad. This year's doesn't, which I
[04:34] centered on the laptop. If you are type on, I wouldn't call it silent, but I also wouldn't call it loud. It's kind My only real negative here is the
[04:46] backlight. A ton of light is lost around the keys. It almost blinds you and kind of makes it harder to find which key is which in a darker environment. Razer and their keyboard's backlight. Now, this year the Pro 9i got a haptic trackpad
[04:59] that you can use a pen on. The laptop, it didn't come with a pen in the box, so we gave it a go. Writing felt natural, and so did just using the trackpad, just gliding your finger on it. But Windows laptops with haptic
[05:12] palm rejection. Your cursor just jumps to a place you don't intend. This does happen here, but it's not as bad as I've experienced on other have the palm rejection issue like I
[05:25] found that sometimes when he clicked on something, it didn't release the click himself just dragging a file or window around that he didn't intend to. there is still some tuning to be done to get it to MacBook levels.
[05:41] Pro 9i, it has the highest-end Panther Lake Core Ultra 9 Series 3 chip. What a mouthful here, guys. I mean, seriously. Anyway, that is the one with the 16 CPU cores, which places its performance firmly in our good performance category.
[05:57] programmers and people like audio engineers whose applications are CPU This being said, in this category of device, Apple's 18-core M5 Pro chip, it just annihilates it. And if you're open to a gaming laptop, you can easily find
[06:12] high-performing HX chip in this price range, like the smaller Legion 5i. One thing I do want to point out is how much more power efficient this new Intel CPU is. Under a max CPU load, this new Yoga Pro draws 15 W less than last year's
[06:27] model, yet it performs much better. So, a good step forward here for Intel, even if it's not at Apple's level, and it isn't. But, the smaller Yoga Pro 7i, that's more in the sweet spot for this CPU. You see, it draws around 10 W less,
[06:41] yet it performs around the same. So, clearly there are diminishing marginal returns of feeding this processor this much power. The Yoga Pro 7i, it kind of gets it right at 55 W. Now, if you are doing something that
[06:53] hits the CPU hard, you will be delighted to know that this laptop, it doesn't get warm to the touch at all. It is one of the coldest-feeling laptops under load, even if its CPU inside gets a little toasty. Now, its fan noise, it does get
[07:07] performance mode. It's in gaming laptop territory. But, you can use it on its default adaptive mode. If you do, fan noise is just much quieter. actually draws more power on that mode than the smaller Yoga Pro 7i, but the
[07:24] some other factors at play here to restrict how the laptop performs in that adaptive mode. You'd think it would at least get the same score as that smaller Yoga Pro 7i when it's fed more power. Anyway, if you're buying this laptop,
[07:38] you probably aren't buying it just for CPU performance. Well, the RTX 5060 that it has, it has a max of 100 watts. That is 15 watts less than what this GPU is capable of. You can see that the Yoga Pro 9i, it does fall behind gaming
[07:50] laptops with this same GPU when they feed it full power. In an actual modern AAA title like Marvel Rivals, you can expect a smooth gaming experience above 60 FPS at least most of the time, but not enough to really make use of the
[08:03] fast refresh rate display. That is of course a 2560 by 1600 on high settings with upscaling on. People often say, "Why don't we test a laptop like this at 1920?" Guys, the upscaling settings that we're using they actually render at a
[08:16] lower base resolution than even that. Upscaling is a better way of just resolution rather than just stretching an image. You can also see that you get more frames if you get a gaming laptop
[08:28] that feeds this GPU more power. On the flip side though, if you are comparing this laptop to the smaller Yoga Pro 7i, that feeds its GPU even less power, 85 performance for that. Now, in Cyberpunk, an older AAA title,
[08:42] you'll get around 60 frames per second when on ultra settings with upscaling on. If you want more frames, you can turn on frame gen, which averaged at latency. In Forza Horizon 5, which is an older
[08:55] title, 70 to 80 frames on extreme mode is what you're getting. So, you can but if it's a demanding one, you probably won't get much more than 60 frames per second unless you pretty significantly lower those settings.
[09:08] Now, I do believe a 5070 model is coming, and hopefully it is the new 12 gig of VRAM variant. I was going to hold this review off to include that one, but let's be realistic here. At 100 watts to the GPU, you probably won't be running
[09:22] that one at settings where you really need that much VRAM, and I just think going to be a complete waste of money. It's probably going to be super If you want to compare gaming across Mac and Windows, we did run Still Auto
[09:35] Light, which does use Metal on Mac and DirectX on Windows, the Yoga Pro 9i chip. But, where it doesn't beat it is in creative tasks. In the new Puget Premiere Pro benchmark, the MacBook Pro
[09:49] 16 is way ahead. And keep in mind, this is the version with the M5 Pro chip. The M5 Max config, it just widens that lead. videos on the Yoga Pro 9i, it was usable, but playback was definitely not
[10:04] as smooth as it is when I edited video on my MacBook Pro with the M5 Max chip. slower. Back on the benchmark results, there isn't any real difference between the gaming laptops with their full wattage
[10:17] 5060s and this one. In video editing, the media encoder and and all of these laptops have the same one. If you are using DaVinci Resolve, the MacBook Pro 16 still wins, but this time
[10:29] the Legion 5i with its faster HX CPU, it does close that gap a bit. rendering, that's where we do see the gaming laptops really pull ahead, especially the Legion 5i with its faster HX CPU.
[10:43] configurations of that laptop available. Not all of them come with an HX chip. I'll link the right one down below. Once again, in Blender, the MacBook Pro 16 is in the lead and by a pretty big margin. To give you a sense of heat and
[10:56] fan noise when the GPU is hit hard, we ran Forza continuously for a couple of This laptop does get warmer than when only the CPU is in use, but guys, these are very cool temperatures. This is not a hot laptop by any means. The other
[11:09] you don't lose that much performance moving down to adaptive mode, but you do see a huge reduction in fan noise, so you might want to consider that. When it comes to charging, this year Lenovo included a 245-W power brick, so there
[11:23] were no battery drain issues when the laptop was plugged in, no matter what This year, when you pull out the power cable, you'll be pleased to know that CPU performance no longer drops, which was an issue in the past. We then ran
[11:36] our new tougher battery life test. We only got 6 hours, which is really disappointing given this laptop's large battery. But, from our Yoga Pro 7i review, we know how to get better battery life out of these laptops. You
[11:49] wakes up the dedicated GPU, and on these Yogas, there's no easy-to-access iGPU-only mode, not within Windows, that is. So, we used Nvidia's control panel to force that application to use the integrated GPU only. Straight away,
[12:04] battery life improved to 7 and 1/2 hours. But, when you go into the BIOS, you can fully disable the dedicated GPU. And when you do this, you get a very respectable 10 hours, at least that's what we got.
[12:18] capable of good battery life, but Lenovo, they really need to just rush restart their laptop to get the best battery life out of it. Rounding out the laptop ports, they seem unchanged this year. I'll put them on screen right now.
[12:32] I'm just going to call out the key points. The SD card reader is UHS-II, which is decently fast. But, one thing I really don't like is that all two USB-C Thunderbolt ports, and
[12:44] left side. I just don't like this, as I often have my dock or power outlet on the right side. So, I have to run a cable around the back, which can get in my way, or just makes my setup look messy. And this
[12:56] same thing, it happens for plugging in an external monitor. All three ports that allow you to do that are on the left side. If you're wondering, the HDMI port goes directly to the dedicated GPU. The two USB-C ports, they connect via
[13:08] the iGPU. The speakers on this laptop are outstanding. I was really blown away, guys. I think easily as good as a MacBook Pro 16's. Take a listen.
[13:41] doesn't boot on a lot of these new laptops. Well, 44 did boot. We were able to use Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. We were able to change the display's brightness, But, the haptic trackpad just didn't work and neither did the speakers.
[13:56] Inside the laptop, there are two SSD slots, a smaller one, which is what the included storage uses, and then there is a larger slot for you to upgrade to. Wi-Fi also appears to be replaceable as does the battery, but memory is
[14:08] soldered. Here's how the 1440 webcam of the new Yoga Pro 9i looks and sounds. I think it's a pretty good one. I am using our excellent studio lights here and if privacy shutter on the right side. If you're just using dimmer lights, this is
[14:22] it's still pretty good. Finally, this laptop comes pre-infected with McAfee antivirus. It constantly has these giant pop-ups that try to scare you into buying a subscription. They're not that easy to dismiss and they completely
[14:36] ignore Windows notification settings. Turning off notifications, it makes no Windows comes with antivirus, folks. If you keep your wits about you while you're browsing the internet, you just don't need this. McAfee, they are
[14:49] the scammers that they claim they're protecting you against are doing. Trying to extort money out of you for something you don't need. It really pisses me off that Lenovo has this unethical app just pre-installed on this laptop. Just
[15:03] delete it. All right. Last year, I didn't recommend the Yoga Pro 9i as strongly as I had in the past. I just felt Lenovo's own Legion 7i, which is laptop, it just brought a lot more to the table.
[15:17] had a lot more refinements. It just like it a lot more. That being said, its mid-performance it but master of none. If you're primarily creating or coding,
[15:33] and you don't specifically need Windows or say Linux, the MacBook Pro 16 it's just a better buy. As I showed you, it is much faster in those applications, least you can get better battery life out of it really easily.
[15:47] If gaming is your priority, there are just a lot of good gaming options. At the high end, the new Razer Blade 16 or Zephyrus G16, they offer a much better gaming experience in a similarly sized laptop. Lenovo also has the Legion 7i
[16:00] and 5i, which both offer a better gaming experience for less. The Legion 5i in particular, that costs significantly less than this laptop. You should also consider the smaller Yoga Pro 7i, which I recently reviewed. That laptop gives
[16:13] you basically 90% of what this one does, and it's a bit cheaper, and it is more Actually, on that note, last year's Yoga Pro 9i, I'd say probably 80% of what this new one is, and you'll save a lot of money if you go for that one. Just
[16:26] buy it before it sells out. To round out, I think the Yoga Pro 9i it a bit of everything, but you don't need max performance. Yet, you still want a super premium laptop, and you don't want the cost of a Razer Blade or a ProArt
[16:41] Guys, all the laptops I just ran through, I know they were a lot. They'll down there who should buy each one. That information will also be on bestlaptop.deals. Over there, you can do additional things like set price drop
[16:55] notifications, which are pretty important right now. With that said, go have a wonderful rest of your day, and I will catch you later.