Following a tried-and-true design, the Lenovo Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Gen 10 laptop delivers a conveniently lightweight, convertible build. For a 2-in-1, it packs a punch with a brilliant OLED display, excellent webcam, responsive inputs, a decent speaker system, and solid performance.

Operating System

Windows 11 Home

CPU

Intel Core Ultra 7 258V Processor (LPE-core Max 3.70 GHz, P-core Max 4.80 GHz with Turbo Boost, 8 Cores, 8 Threads, 12 MB Cache / 32 GB MOP)

GPU

Intel Arc 140V (integrated)

The Lenovo Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Aura Edition is a sleek, premium laptop with a vibrant 2.8K OLED touchscreen that delivers gorgeous graphics. Its Intel Core Ultra 7 CPU, AI features, and 32GB of RAM make it a great option for professionals looking for a convertible laptop that doubles as a tablet.

Pros & Cons

• An outstanding 2.8K OLED display with vibrant color and contrast
• Comfortable, responsive keyboard, touchpad, touchscreen, and Yoga Pen
• Crisp webcam for photos and video calls
• Convenient and lightweight 2-in-1 design

• Low CPU core and thread count limits multitasking power
• Gets quite loud and hot when using for longer periods

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Price and Availability

The Lenovo Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Gen 10 Aura Edition laptop is available to purchase now from Best Buy and Lenovo. My configuration runs for $1,750 at Best Buy, with 1TB of storage, 32GB of RAM, and the Intel Core Ultra 7 258V CPU. This same configuration on Lenovo’s website retails for a similar price, but has been seen as low as around $1,560 for the same configuration. The lower configuration is also available from Lenovo—16GB of RAM, 512GB of storage, and the Intel Core Ultra 7 256V CPU—for $1,440 ($1,600 regular price).

A Sleek, Lightweight, Convertible Design

Lenovo opted for a “Cosmic Blue” color for the Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Gen 10, and although I wish it was less navy blue and more metallic, it’s still a sleek look. In some lighting, the color appears gray or black, which is my only gripe with this dark blue. The matte aluminum alloy chassis looks cleaner than glossier builds but does tend to be a bit harder to clean. When I went to take photos of this baby, I had to buff away grease marks from my hands. So, while fingerprints won’t be a thing here, you’ll still notice hard-to-remove marks from your skin’s natural oils.

This color choice is probably the only significant design change I noticed on the Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Gen 10, as it had much the same feel as previous iterations of Yoga models, such as the Yoga 9i Gen 8 or the double-screened Yoga Book 9i. I was very disappointed with the inflexibility of the most recent Yoga I reviewed (the Yoga Slim 14 9i Gen 10), so I was thrilled to get my hands on a Yoga with tablet mode again.

Like past Yoga models, the sizable hinge is actually a soundbar that houses two speakers (the other two are located on the bottom corners of the laptop’s base). It is from this hinge that the Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Gen 10 gets its flexibility. I could easily bend the laptop to lie flat on a desk, stand it vertically or horizontally on its edges tent style, or bend its screen to meet the bottom of the base for tablet mode.

It was also deliciously lightweight and portable. It weighed a mere 2.91 pounds, and its thinnest point measured 0.65 inches, so transporting it was as easy as pie. As someone who was a bit disappointed with the latest Yoga Slim (2.76 pounds), I would recommend someone opt for the Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Gen 10, which is worth the extra 0.15 pounds.

A Few Good Ports

While the Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Gen 10 doesn’t have a lot of ports, its offerings satisfied me. The left side houses one USB-A port (thank you, Lenovo, for incorporating at least one) and two USB-C Thunderbolt 4 ports (up to 40Gbps with USB PD 3.0 and DisplayPort 2.1).

The right side of the laptop has a 3.5mm headphone/audio jack and a USB-C port (20Gbps with USB PD 3.0 and DisplayPort 1.4).

Tried-and-True Responsive Inputs

If there’s one thing I usually enjoy about Lenovo laptops, it’s their keyboards. And this one is no exception. The keyboard on the Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Gen 10 is well-designed, featuring flat chiclet-style keys with adequate spacing and a comfortable typefeel. Although the keys aren’t quite as springy as, say, a ThinkPad keyboard, I typed comfortably for hours without complaints.

The key travel felt a bit more rigid, but sometimes I prefer this because it often prevents excessive typos from my flying fingers. The keys are also pretty quiet, so if you often work in libraries or coffee shops, you won’t feel disruptive.

The keyboard also includes some functional shortcut keys. Aside from the Fn shortcuts on most Lenovos, it also has a fingerprint scanner and keys for changing Power Modes, Audio Modes, toggling on/off Eye Care Shield, and a customizable shortcut key.

The One Glass Solution touchscreen was wonderfully responsive for nearly every action I undertook, even if my fingers were slightly off-centered when tapping apps, hitting a save button, or tapping “X” in a browser window. Even though the touchpad lacked buttons, I didn’t miss them, since it recognized any click I made (and felt pretty satisfying to click down).

The touchscreen keyboard was fairly accurate as well, but slightly more difficult for my clumsy fingers. (I won’t say how many typos resulted from using it).

The glass multitouch touchpad almost made me forget that I wasn’t using a real mouse. Its location was nearly centered beneath the keyboard, and it was a sizable 3.15 by 5.31 inches. The texture was also quite nice, and I had little trouble with navigation even when my hands were sweaty.

Last but not least, the included Yoga Pen stylus was incredibly helpful for editing photos or getting a tablet-like feel from the laptop. Where apps and browser windows supported the pen, I could write instead of type. Drawing with the pen was equally pleasant, and I could easily vary the thickness of strokes, thanks to the pens’ supposed 4,096 degrees of pressure sensitivity.

A Delightful Display With Engrossing Graphics

The Lenovo Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Gen 10’s display is a major selling point for professionals who also want to enjoy streaming movies, editing photos and videos, and casually gaming. Its 14-inch 2.8K (2,880 by 1,800) OLED display provides absolutely gorgeous color and contrast and plenty of brightness. Not only did it have a responsive, integrated touchscreen, but also an extremely wide color gamut that made creating or consuming content an immersive, pleasant experience.

It offers 100% sRGB, 99% Adobe RGB, and 100%+ DCI-P3, so it’s an excellent option for someone who works with content and wants precise colors. It also had VESA-Certified Display HDR True Black 1000, so shadowy films, photos, and games looked as intended, with a stark contrast of blacks and grays rather than murky, indiscernible images.

As for the screen’s brightness, it tops out at around 500 nits, which was plenty bright for working in just about any lighting scenario, whether I was sitting in the dark or in a brightly lit office. Of course, there was a slight glare in direct sunlight, thanks to the glossy texture of the display. But the high performance was a trade-off here, so I’d take the glare any day for this display.

I watched the 2005 version of King Kong, starring Naomi Watts, and everything down to her hair color to her specific skin tone looked accurate. King Kong’s black fur was also easy to differentiate against darker scenes or action-ridden sequences, like when the giant ape fought a gang of Tyrannosaurus rexes.

Other content, like a 4K YouTube video of a frog, showcased the multitudinous shades of green, orange, and gold in its habitat, without the frog’s muted colors fading into the background.

The Intel Core Ultra 7 258V CPU

With the Intel Core Ultra 7 258V CPU, the Lenovo Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Gen 10 can handle most tasks, especially when paired with its 32GB of RAM. That said, although I found this CPU almost seamless, it had some limitations. People used to multitasking heavily may be a bit disappointed by its eight cores and eight threads, but that’s typically a trade-off for a slim laptop.

Despite this, the Lunar Lake CPU could handle most tasks, and even put up a good fight when I pushed its limits. I was able to successfully edit photo after photo in Photoshop, stream music, play some PC games, and write and research to my heart’s content. This CPU was also fairly effective for battery life, depending on what I was doing and which Power Mode I enrolled in.

As an aside, my laptop was the Aurora Edition, which also includes Microsoft Copilot and various AI features to help streamline my work and play, with most of those features housed in the Lenovo Vantage app (available on PC). Although I didn’t use these features much myself, I can understand why someone looking for a new laptop would want to get on the bandwagon, rather than opt for a non-Copilot PC.

Speedy Performance in Most Scenarios

As I mentioned, the Intel Core Ultra 7 258V CPU handled most tasks, even when I put it to the test with my multitasking skills. But I did encounter a couple of performance hiccups when I went too hard on the processor. Its eight-core/eight-thread CPU can handle a surprising load, but every processor has a limit.

Most people, however, likely wouldn’t attempt the multitasking I do, since I’m purposefully pushing the envelope. The first blip occurred while using Photoshop. I experienced a couple of seconds of delay and a short freeze. Likely, this was due to other programs running, such as ChatGPT, Adobe Cloud, and about 20 browser tabs. Again, eight threads and eight cores will make it harder to run multiple resource-heavy tasks at a time.

The worse of those two hiccups, however, was while gaming. I left over 20 browser tabs open, as well as Photoshop, the Lenovo Vantage app, the Xbox app, and the Microsoft Store. After electing to exit the game, pretty much everything came to a halt. I opened the Task Manager and tried to quit the programs, but nothing shut down. After trying for about five minutes to get the laptop to right itself, I gave it a reboot and didn’t encounter the issue again. Suffice to say, with this CPU/GPU setup, it’s best to close demanding programs before switching tasks.

I did also notice that the laptop got quite hot after using it for about an hour or so, especially if I attempted to game. Although I wouldn’t say it was terribly uncomfortable, there were times when I didn’t want to keep the laptop on my lap because of its increasing heat and loud fans. This didn’t affect performance, however, and I never saw the temperatures rise to anything unusual.

Pleasant Casual Gaming Performance

The Lenovo Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Gen 10 laptop is not a gaming laptop, and its integrated Intel ARC GPU can’t handle heavy-resource games (the CPU also comes into play here). Nonetheless, I was able to enjoy some casual gaming on some low-to-moderate resource titles, and even eked out a low-performance playthrough of A Plague Tale: Requiem for about 20 minutes until its sluggish 30fps got to me.

Since the display had an adaptive refresh rate of anywhere from 30 to 120Hz, graphics, writing, and games felt speedy, with less lag than I would expect on the ARC GPU.

Some games that performed well included titles like Atomfall, which regularly output 60fps with high graphics settings, and gave me a more impressive refresh rate of up to 120fps when I switched graphics settings to medium. I also enjoyed games like Hunt: Showdown 1896 and Blue Prince, but would never use this laptop for a competitive-style game.

High-Performing Speakers, Camera, and Microphones

While I don’t normally laud a laptop’s speakers, the Lenovo Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Gen 10 does a pretty darn good job of providing crystal clear sound at excellent volumes. Yes, it isn’t audiophile-level (laptop speakers never are), and the bass could still use some work. However, its quad speaker system delivers some pleasant sound based on other poor laptop systems.

Its four speakers include two 2W tweeters and two 2W woofers inside the rotating hinge and the bottom corners of the laptop’s base. These sounded pretty good for casual gaming, streaming, and music listening alike.

Otis Redding’s Cigarettes and Coffee, for instance, sounded fairly well-balanced, with great mids and rich vocals that came through to the forefront of the device. The speakers generally performed best at around 60-70%, but still pumped out enjoyable sound at as high as 88%. Past that volume level, the trebles were more sibilant, especially while listening to Sam Cooke’s You Send Me.

A song that really shone here was Novo Amor’s Haven, which showcased bright, rich guitar tones and a smooth, echoey falsetto with an otherworldly clarity.

These speakers fail, however, in the bass. It was really hard to hear a bassline on anything; it was completely lost. But the rest sounded so nice, it was possible to overlook it. I could also slightly adjust my sound via the Dolby Atmos audio profiles to curtail sound to specific media.

As for the 5MP IR camera, I was impressed with its clarity, whether I was using HDR for videos or not. Even in tough lighting scenarios, my image came through plainly, and the camera successfully captured details like colors and textures, my eye color, and a logo on a shirt, and the details on a small enamel pin. It was slightly fuzzy in very dim lighting, but still did the job just fine.

I have used it several times for casual video chats with family, and I would also gladly use it for work meetings.

The quad microphone array was also high performing, capturing nuanced sound in my voice while successfully blocking most background noise. In a noisy environment, the microphones kept my voice front and center, despite the audible background chatter. It slightly clipped sound toward the end of a particular phrase, but I was more than pleased with these mics for video calls and personal recordings.

Microphone Test on the Lenovo Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Gen 10 Laptop in a Noisy Environment

Microphone Test on the Lenovo Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Gen 10 Laptop in a Quiet Environment

Long-Lasting Battery Life

The Lenovo Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Gen 10’s battery life was fairly impressive (likely thanks to the EVO rating on the Lunar Lake chip). On average, it drained at 0.26% per minute, which equaled to around six hours of battery life before I needed to plug it in. This was also with the brightness at maximum most of the time, while using a combination of Balanced Mode and Performance Mode. This didn’t include battery drain while gaming, however.

The charge rate was typically speedy (with Rapid Charge turned on most of the time), supplying the laptop with 0.78% battery per minute, reaching a full charge in just over two hours.

Should You Buy the Lenovo Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Gen 10 Laptop?

After testing several Yoga laptops, I have to say that the Lenovo Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Gen 10 laptop is fairly close to perfection (and still deserves a spot on the best 2-in-1 laptops list). Its flaws are few (as long as you don’t overload the CPU), and it’s a solidly built laptop with a dependable reputation. The display, speaker system, and responsive inputs are great selling points for professionals looking for a convertible laptop capable of tablet mode. And it’s all wrapped up in a lightweight, portable package to boot.

Operating System

Windows 11 Home

CPU

Intel Core Ultra 7 258V Processor (LPE-core Max 3.70 GHz, P-core Max 4.80 GHz with Turbo Boost, 8 Cores, 8 Threads, 12 MB Cache / 32 GB MOP)

GPU

Intel Arc 140V (integrated)

The Lenovo Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Aura Edition is a sleek, premium laptop with a vibrant 2.8K OLED touchscreen that delivers gorgeous graphics. Its Intel Core Ultra 7 CPU, AI features, and 32GB of RAM make it a great option for professionals looking for a convertible laptop that doubles as a tablet.