Reliability is the name of the game when it comes to this refreshed Yoga offering from Lenovo. It’s flexible in a variety of situations and the combination of hardware nuances provide it that fantastic feeling of a complete device regardless of the environment that you challenge it with. Lets talk about the experience with the Yoga 9i right from the unboxing.
You. Get the Yoga 9i in a simple enough cardboard box with a smaller box inside carrying the power brick + cable as well as the sleek silvery bluetooth mouse that shares the same colorway as the included pen. But that is not all that you get with the package as there is also a laptop sleeve that you can use to keep the device pristine and free from scratches that might befall it within another bigger container if being carried along with a host of other EDCs (everyday carries). This sleeve comes in a different shade of blue complimenting the Yoga 9i’s blue very well. It has a dedicated loop for the pen so that you don’t lose it inside of the oversized pouch and it closes with without any zippers and just some sort of embedded memory steel strips.
Of course inside the biggest box we find the Yoga 9i itself, theres two different finishes on the exterior of the device with the keyboard side being extremely shiny and the lid (screen) side being a much tamer matte. It gives the device that extra bit of character keeping itself separate from other, similarly priced competition. The device is thin enough to warrant tablet mode and usage with the pen without having it mounted or interacting with a stable surface.
Speaking of which, the pen is a flattish design with a couple of standard buttons and now has a zone in the lid where it could properly magnetically attach to keep it always on the ready – be mindful of it still because if you, by any chance strike it off from there then good luck looking for it.
Pen performance has markedly improved with the 4K display and the engineering marvel behind of it just begging for a more precise input option. Mind you, the performance of the software does vary with specific scaling values but just the same, you couldn’t be expected to work on the diminutized 4K display utiliing every bit of its pixels because the UI simply becomes too small making it unweildy despite providing a much greater breadth of information. This is probably one of the only times you would appreciate actually keeping the setting scaled up by a certain amount – just as small as you yourself would be comfortable working on – your most ideal and efficient workflow. I’ve set mine within 150% just enough to give the UI enough space for mouse interactions and legibility.
The pen has its own Lenovo Pen app which lets you know how much charge the pen still has as it still is one of the rechargeable variants. USB C is used to quickly power up the accessory and it is done so on the port situated where an eraser would have been in more traditional pen configurations.
Just as there are multiple working configurations for the Yoga, so too are the scenarios that you would find yourself interacting with the 9i – short of gaming on it naturally. For multimedia consumption, the vibrant screen and its multitudinous pixels allow for something not a lot of laptop screens can claim possible – proper 4K 60fps playback – it’s just the right amount of compactness that you’d viscerally appreciate the detail and color reproduction that the panel is able to deliver. Sound reproduction is actually incredibly immersive.
The set of speakers that can be found on the Yoga 9i is so spread out that even if you try to cover both of the obvious speaker vents on either side and bottom, the sound would still get to you with exceptional clarity. The combination of the really nice screen and the rich sound reproduction make the Yoga 9i a treat for the senses when consuming any form of content you can think of.
On the opposite side of the spectrum we have the Yoga 9i for its working chops.
Not to be outdone, device interaction without additional accessories is an equivalent treat in tactility. The keyboard is rock solid providing excellent feedback with a very satisfying actuation point – I can describe it as much as possible but once you experience typing on it, it’s like you suddenly develop a point of reference with which to measure keyboard performance, that’s how poetic it is. The trackpad is massive and you also have the touchscreen panel to help out should you be so used to smaller phone screens that you suddenly interact with the laptop screen – the Yoga 9i would let you and actually be happy doing it.
As for the window configuration within the single screen, I find that three windows together is the best utilization of this 4K screen – one tall one and two longer, more standard landscape windows for the most cross window interactions and referencing action that you might require. This actually came as a surprise to me when I was fiddling with the display settings on the Yoga 9i.
Another thing that might be different for users of the Yoga 9i are some shortcut keys that are situated in the extreme right of the “10-key less” keyboard. If you find some icon there that you are not quite familiar with (this is the star and the star with an S on it), Lenovo put a customizable button that activates a particular set of windows up or your favorite application – basically whatever you set it to. It has its own configuration software and interface that helps you define the function that you want associated with it.
The Yoga 9i has all the makings of an unparalleled productivity partner and is being sold, at the time of writing, for just around the Php95k mark. The Intel Core Ultra 7 155H with integrated Intel Arc Graphics, 16GBs of RAM and 1TB of SSD make for a compelling argument with included accessories that would otherwise cost upwards of several thousands more.
Oh and if I neglected to mention it, this one comes with software too! The Yoga 9i comes highly recommended for those who are looking to amp up their computing experience by a couple notches both in the realm of style and productivity
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