Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i Aura Edition
ZDNET Highlights
- Lenovo’s Yoga Pro 9i Aura Edition is now available for $1,949.
- It has a stunning tandem OLED display, which has a slim form factor and performs great in many use cases.
- It has moderate battery life and noisy fans.
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The Yoga Pro 9i (16-inch) is truly a gorgeous laptop, and it all boils down to its display. It’s the first thing you notice when you see it, and it catches your eye.
There’s something unique about it: It’s one of the few new Windows laptops with a tandem OLED, resulting in a crisp, exceptional image that’s smooth as silk and extremely bright (up to 1,000 nits).
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Although I’ve had a chance to see a 3.2K tandem OLED in person, the model I took home with me was a slightly less impressive (but still pretty good) 2.8K OLED with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5050 GPU. Yes, when compared to the tandem OLED running on the RTX 5060, it’s not as vibrant, but all things considered it’s a great display with the same 120Hz refresh rate, HDR1000 True Black, 100% DCI-P3, and sleek glass screen. Especially when compared to other devices in the same price category.
The Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i is a high-performance Windows laptop designed for professionals and creative people who also do some gaming. It comes with 32GB LPDDR5X (soldered) RAM and 1TB M.2 PCIe Gen 4 SSD. I used it as my main driver for a few weeks and love how customizable it is.
It’s a great laptop for work, with a big, crisp OLED display, tactile, full-sized keyboard, and generous I/O. This is a great machine for creative people, with one of the most powerful CPUs on the market for an ultraportable, the Intel Core Ultra 9 285H of the “Arrow Lake” series, which runs on 16 cores.
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And it’s a capable gaming machine, if not entirely committed to identity. The hardware is available for most titles with immersive visuals powered by an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5050 or 5060 GPU. However, for longer gaming sessions, other laptops in the price range are going to be more optimized for longevity and heat mitigation.
And it can definitely get hot. Even while doing daily work, the fan runs repeatedly for some time. For example, copying large files or multitasking with multiple browser tabs is enough to kick it into gear, and at full speed it’s loud enough to hear from the other room. That said, the laptop doesn’t get uncomfortably hot to the touch.
Its physical appearance is very neutral, with Lenovo’s gray on gray design that prevents fingerprints but looks corporate. The full-size keyboard is spacious and well-positioned, with ample 1.5mm key travel and a satisfying click. I just wish it had a haptic trackpad, as it would really seal the deal as a premium creative-first machine, especially when paired with the display.
There’s nothing wrong with the trackpad on the Yoga Pro 9i (though I wish it were centered), but in 2025, consumers are going to want to see these kinds of premium touches out of the package when they’re paying over $2,000 on a laptop. At least as an alternative upsell.
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Similarly, the Yoga Pro 9i 16, while neutral, doesn’t feel that premium. It’s thin, light, and well-balanced, but the Yoga lineup isn’t taking any risks with its design. That said, it has very little screen wobble, minimal flexibility of the physical frame, and at 4.4 pounds and 0.76 inches thick, couldn’t be more portable.
It is also quite organized when it comes to ports. On the left side, you have the charger port, an HDMI 2.1, two Thunderbolt 4 ports at 40Gbps that support charging, and a headphone jack.
On the right side, you get two USB-A ports at 5Gbps and an SD card reader. Just keep in mind that it’s very easy to accidentally tap the power button at the top right – especially when you’re plugged in to the charger.
So what’s the problem? You probably know where this is going. All this hardware is thirsty for power, and the Yoga Pro 9i has a few quirks when it comes to battery life. First, I should point out that the 170W charging brick it comes with is smaller than the one that came with last year’s model.
The laptop charges via the USB-C port, but if you have a low-watt charger, it won’t be able to charge. In fact, even the included 170W charger may not be enough in some cases. If Yoga is under heavy CPU and GPU load, Some users report That 170W is not enough, and it needs a 230W charger (sold separately) to stay at 100%.
During my testing, I didn’t encounter this with a 170W charger, but with a USB-C charger. Note that this only happens when the laptop is working hard, like while gaming or editing videos. I had no problems with running errands or doing everyday tasks like web surfing.
Otherwise battery life is limited as expected. I got over six hours of normal use in the office before needing to plug it in. A model with a tandem OLED display will likely fall even lower, especially if you’re talking about more intensive workflows.
Let’s come full circle and discuss performance, where the Yoga Pro 9i does not disappoint. As I mentioned earlier, part of the draw here is this laptop’s ability to handle a little bit of everything, but its performance with photo and video editing, graphic design, and animation is particularly great.
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Creative tasks like editing video in DaVinci Resolve and CapCut were fast and responsive, even with the usual lag or fast scrubbing through video from large files.
When compared to competing 16-inch laptops, the Yoga Pro 9i costs significantly less than its pricier gaming cousin, the Legion Pro 7i, which exchanges RGB lighting and better cooling for a thinner, lighter form, a better display, and more well-rounded capabilities.
ZDNET’s shopping advice
Lenovo’s Yoga Pro 9i Aura Edition is a great laptop for creative people who want a great display, plus bonus points for being a solid gaming machine. Its slim form makes it a far more portable device than other laptops with this level of hardware, and all things considered, it’s not that expensive, hovering around the $2,000 mark, depending on the hardware.
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If you want to do it all, the Tandem OLED is worth it. But it is hungry for power, especially for demanding tasks. On the other hand, if you go with the regular OLED and only use the device for productivity tasks, you’ll find that the battery lasts longer.
I recommend the Yoga Pro 9i Aura Edition to creative people who want something to do with a high-performance, portable main driver.
