How Does the Lenovo 14 Inch Laptop Rate and What Are the Reviews on This

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Lenovo is a big player in the convertible laptop sphere, and the Yoga 9i is its pinnacle dog. A sequel to the Yoga C940, the $1,299.99-and-up fourteen-inch Yoga 9i is a capable laptop in almost every area that matters, with a comfortable keyboard, respectable bombardment life, and some of the better specs you lot tin go at its price bespeak. Just there'due south one area where it's far alee of the pack — the audio.

Yeah, yous read that correctly. There's actually a 14-inch laptop out there with very expert audio. I know. I'm shocked to exist typing that, likewise. Though information technology doesn't quite surpass the likes of HP'due south Spectre x360 and Microsoft's Surface Pro vii Plus in many other areas, the Yoga 9i's innovative speaker design keeps it very much in the premium mix as an exceptional entertainment and multimedia machine.

About this speaker organisation, to start. There are two downward-firing woofers on the bottom. But the 9i'south hugger-mugger is that the custom tweeters are housed in a rotating soundbar, which is built into the laptop'south hinge. The positioning means that the grills are e'er facing outward, regardless of whether the laptop is in clamshell, tablet, or tent mode.

I'grand not exaggerating when I say this is the all-time sound I've ever heard from a laptop of this size. Its volume more than fills a room, and it sounds great in all orientations with booming bass. The surround quality was besides superb.

The 9i comes preloaded with Dolby Atmos Speaker Arrangement software, where y'all tin bandy between presets for Flick, Music, Game, and Phonation equally well equally personalized profiles and a dynamic fashion that detects your content and adjusts the audio accordingly. These do make a difference — namely, the Music mode brings the vocals out more.

To complement the sound, the 9i has a very nice 1080p touch display with accurate details and colors. I'd take no problem watching movies and YouTube videos on information technology, and yous tin switch betwixt different flick modes (Dark, Light, and Vivid) with preloaded Dolby Vision software. The screen is quite sleeky, yet, and kicked back a frustrating corporeality of glare in brighter rooms. And information technology'south non the brightest effectually, maxing out at 290 nits in testing. I as well wish Lenovo would ditch the 16:9 aspect ratio, as it has for some of its premium models in the business space.

The terminal affair to call out nearly the chassis is its garaged stylus. Garaged styluses are sometimes a huge pain to tug in and out, but this ane was smooth to remove. The garage'south location on the correct side of the Yoga's rear edge isn't the well-nigh convenient, simply it's definitely preferable to having to store the pen yourself.

The stylus has a new "elastomer" tip that's supposed to mimic the feeling of a pen on paper. That'due south a fair description of how it feels in practice, just it likewise means it'southward not every bit smooth to write and draw with as other touchscreen styluses. (It'southward too tiny — much smaller than most existent pens.) And there are 2 (very small) buttons, which can be mapped to various tasks — erase, left click, re-create, paste, whatever y'all desire — in Lenovo'south Pen Settings software. You can cheque the pen's battery here likewise. Lenovo says it can last 40 minutes on a 15-infinitesimal charge.

In that location's non too much to say most the rest of this chassis. The backlit keyboard is acceptable and roomy, simply a bit flatter than my favorites on the marketplace. The device is fine-looking and sturdy enough, but it doesn't have the same sleek professionalism as the Spectre x360 xiv or the Surface Pro 7 Plus (and the prominent Lenovo logo on the hinge looks a bit corny to me). It's non the lightest laptop around, but it'due south still portable at 3.02 pounds. And the port selection is nigh as expert as you might wait for a laptop this thin, including a USB 3.ii Type-A Gen two, two Thunderbolt iv, and an audio combo jack.

There are some optional fancy features — an ultrasonic fingerprint reader, an edge-to-border glass palm rest, a haptic touchpad, and a leather cover — that weren't included on the model I was sent. Configurations with those extra features start around $ane,769.99, currently discounted to $1,239.99 on Lenovo'due south website.

The Yoga 9i starts at $1,299.99 ($1,449.99 as tested). The base model includes a Core i5-1135G7, 8GB of RAM (soldered), and 256GB of storage (PCIe SSD). This specific configuration comes with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage too as a Cadre i7-1185G7 (Intel's elevation chip for thin and light devices).

The Yoga 9i is verified through Intel's Evo platform, as are many of its competitors in the premium 2-in-one space. To qualify, laptops are supposed to offering a number of Intel-selected benefits, including Thunderbolt 4, Wi-Fi 6, all-solar day battery life, quick boot time, fast charging, and responsive operation on battery. In my experience, check, check, and check.

The Yoga 9i's keyboard and trackpad are adequate but zippo special.

Performance was as satisfactory equally we'd look from the meridian-notch 1185G7. The system blazed through a load of 20ish Chrome tabs and booted up noticeably faster than 10th Gen Yoga systems would. Intel'southward Iris Xe graphics are more than capable of running some games, equally long equally you lot're not expecting 60fps from anything as well demanding. Battery life was also a pleasant surprise, given the power of the processor. I averaged eight hours and 25 minutes of continuous use, with the screen around 200 nits of brightness.

As far as video calling goes, the 9i'due south webcam is a bit grainy but serviceable; it has a physical privacy shutter, though it's very tiny and tin be clumsy to move if y'all have large fingers. The camera doesn't support Windows Hello (which is a bit disappointing — other top convertibles at this cost point similar Spectres and Surfaces do have this characteristic), but there is a fingerprint sensor beneath the arrow keys that you lot tin can apply to log in. It had problem identifying my finger once or twice merely was quick and accurate otherwise.

The 9i too has two dual-assortment microphones. These are useful not just for video calling (where they picked up my vocalization only fine) but for Amazon Alexa, which comes preinstalled on the Yoga. Not just can smart home devotees give Alexa voice commands via the Yoga, but they tin also activate Amazon's Show Manner, which will change the Yoga's home screen to look like the habitation screen of an Echo smart display. Hey, don't allow me stop you.

My 1 disappointment here is bloatware. The Yoga 9i doesn't come up loaded with a ton of junk like some budget computers do, but it does force McAfee LiveSafe on you. McAfee alerts were popping up all over the place while I set the device up, and sometimes even appeared in windows in the middle of my screen and interrupted what I was doing. The program is a pain to uninstall, requiring you to shut all of your tabs and so to restart your calculator. It's not a huge issue in the thousand scheme of things, only it rubs me the incorrect way to meet this on a $1,500 laptop.

The Yoga 9i carries on Lenovo'southward heritage of convertible laptops.

Overall, though, I have very few complaints. The Yoga 9i is an excellent 2-in-1 with standout audio. But is it the all-time? To reply that, nosotros need to compare it to HP's Spectre x360 fourteen, the reigning monarch of the fourteen-inch convertible sphere.

At MSRP, the Spectre is $180 more than than the Yoga for identical specs (though it has Intel's Core i7-1165G7, a slight footstep down from the 1185G7). Its principal advantage over the Yoga is its design. The Spectre is a really cute laptop with gold accents and beveled edges; it wouldn't look out of place in a jewelry store. The Yoga 9i, while far from ugly, volition await just about similar every other laptop you lot'll run into in a given business organisation coming together or lecture hall. Some other significant advantage the Spectre has is the 3:2 aspect ratio, which is more roomy and comfortable for multitasking use than the Yoga's 16:9 panel. And the Spectre is just a fiddling chip improve in many other areas. I similar the keyboard just a bit more, there's ane additional port (a microSD slot, which can be quite valuable for actress storage), the webcam is better, it's a teensy scrap lighter, and it gave me around two more hours of battery life per accuse.

So the Yoga 9i ultimately doesn't have the Spectre's crown. Nevertheless, information technology delivers such standout audio — a realm where so many expensive laptops are flatly terrible — that I'm glad it exists as an choice for people who really value the quality of their music and pic soundtracks. And the 9i is certainly functional enough in every other surface area that if you're looking for a convertible and the Spectre is out of your price range or if standout audio and a garaged stylus are priorities for you, it's 1 to consider.

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