Lenovo Yoga Book 9i (2023) Review

About the Lenovo Yoga Book 9i

Here are the specs of the laptop we tested:

• Price as configured: $2,000
• Processor: Intel Core i7-1355U, 10-core/12-thread (two performance, eight efficient), max clock speed 5.00 GHz
• Graphics: Intel Iris Xe, 96EUs (integrated)
• Memory: 16GB LPDDR5X 6400MHz
• Storage: 512GB NVMe SSD
• Display: 13.3-inch 2.8K (2880 x 1800), 60Hz OLED touchscreen with stylus compatibility
• Connectivity: 3 x Thunderbolt 4 (USB-C) with DisplayPort and charging support
• Battery: 4-cell 80Whr Lithium-ion polymer
• Weight: 2.95 pounds
• Dimensions: 11.78 x 8.03 x 0.63 inches
• Warranty: 1-year limited
• Special features: Dual displays, included Bluetooth keyboard, mouse, and stylus, folio stand/keyboard cover

The Lenovo Yoga Book 9i is designed to flip, fold, and rotate into several form factors: a traditional laptop, with or without a physical keyboard and mouse; a traditional tablet; tent-mode to watch movies and play games; horizontal or vertical dual-screen; and as one giant screen.

While this laptop only comes in the above configuration, you can increase the storage capacity to 1TB.

What we like

The design is, hands down, incredible

Lenovo took the design for its 2-in-1 Yoga 9i and expanded it into a true, portable office. It has two OLED screens that can be oriented vertically or horizontally for serious multitasking; a detachable keyboard and mouse for when you need the lower input latency of physical accessories over the laptop's virtual ones; the modular, fabric stand becomes the keyboard's protective case, and the included stylus slips into an elastic band attached to the case—and those are just the first things you'll notice. If you've been looking for a portable work setup, look at the Yoga Book 9i.

You can use the dual screens in multiple orientations, complete with dedicated touch-gestures. In “waterfall” or cross-browsing mode (when the displays are oriented so that the sound bar is horizontal), if you have a browser window open on any one of the screens, just tap that display with five fingers and it will automatically span the entire length of both.

Turn the displays so that the sound bar is vertical to enter “reading mode” (not to be confused with Smart Reader, which uses the same screen orientation). It’s like having two separate windows open on the same screen, except at full-width with one showing on each display separately—just like you'd have with a traditional desktop setup.

Despite my apprehension, the Bluetooth keyboard was incredibly comfortable to use when the Book 9i was in its normal laptop configuration. The keys are snappy and wonderfully tactile without loud clacks. Using the physical keyboard still felt like I was typing on a “regular” Lenovo laptop, regardless of if it was magnetically attached to the top half of the bottom display or the bottom half.

If they physical keyboard is attached to the bottom half of the second screen in laptop mode, you can pick from a few pre-installed widgets to display your Outlook inbox, local weather, and other. Or you can move the keyboard to the top half and leave the bottom half of the display for the Yoga Book 9i's virtual trackpad.

You can display the onboard notetaking app above or below the detachable keyboard or expand it to Fullscreen. It was a tad more efficient to write my notes directly into that app to keep them on one device than in a separate notebook (even my reMarkable 2).

Wicked fast hardware

Even though this futuristic “book” has an Intel U-series processor (Intel's most power-efficient chips intended for thin and light laptops), it keeps up with or surpasses the Apple M2 processor in single core and lightly threaded applications, from web browsing to simple photo and video editing. It also beats its own 2-in-1 Yoga 9i sibling even though it comes with a more powerful Core i7-1360P. (The P literally stands for "performance.")

The laptop’s multicore performance ranked in the middle out of all the laptops we’ve tested in the last year. But even though it is intended first and foremost for simple tasks, it holds its own when processing light multicore tasks, like rendering 3D images in Blender or another program. And compared to other Windows machines, it has one of the fastest integrated GPUs we’ve tested so far, outdone only by more powerful 12th and 13th-gen processors and AMD 7000 series mobile CPUs with a 680M iGPU and up.

Next-level portability

The Yoga Book 9i’s folio stand doubles as its Bluetooth keyboard case. The keyboard attaches to the folio magnetically, held securely in place when folded in either configuration. The elastic loop attached to the folio holds the stylus, which proves sometimes the best solutions are the simple ones.

The laptop, folio, and stylus can all be held in one hand. The laptop itself is within about 0.02 inches of thickness and 0.5 pounds to other ultra-portable laptops like the Dell XPS 13, MSI Prestige 13 Evo, and Apple MacBook Pro 13 M2.

You also don’t need to use a physical keyboard and mouse; the laptop has a virtual keyboard and trackpad with specific gestures for the days you need to travel as light as possible. The virtual keyboard instantly and accurately reacted to inputs I made with my fingers and not my palms. The virtual trackpad was more finicky, and didn’t register all my inputs, but nothing that prevented me from doing a simple task quickly.

A dual-OLED display convertible laptop is a more convenient option than carrying a tiny laptop monitor around with you. It’s also slightly cheaper compared to something like the LG Gram SuperSlim ($1,700) and its portable IPS monitor ($350), which doesn’t come with a mouse and stylus, and the OLED display isn’t a touchscreen.

What we don't like

There is a learning curve

If you’re like me, someone who works on a desktop PC with a 27-inch monitor but wants to make their workspace more fluid, it might take some time to get used to this laptop. Physically transforming the Yoga Book 9i is easy to remember, but I easily confused the gestures used on other touchscreen devices for the first few days.

There are also tons of dual-screen settings in the Yoga Book 9i User Center that you will need to figure out, and whether it’s better for you to turn them off or leave them on. For instance, “waterfall” mode needs to be enabled in the Yoga Book 9i User Center and you must remember to tap on the window you want to expand with five fingers. If the system tray shortcut for calling up the virtual trackpad and keyboard is turned off, then you’ll need to remember those gestures, too.

The User Center does present all this information in an easy-to-understand way, but what it won’t tell you is how tinkering with the Windows 11 display or taskbar settings can mess with what’s enabled.

The touch gestures are finicky

The Yoga Book 9i’s “waterfall” mode is as alluring as it is touchy (please clap at my pun). This mode is super useful for reading long articles and parsing spreadsheets. But, if you expand a window from the bottom display and then want it to show only on the top display, you can’t just tap on the top display even if the taskbar is only showing there. It will always shrink back down to the display it started from.

The User Center isn’t crystal-clear on how to perform the “flick” gesture to whoosh a window to the other screen. For a while I was “holding” the window with my finger expecting it to snap away from the display’s edges to the center of the screen, but it never worked. The actual gesture is a single fluid motion, more of a subtle “swish and flick.” (Imagine your finger is a magic wand.) But you must move the window immediately after you touch it.

Additionally, tapping the stylus in the bottom right or lefthand corner of the bottom display and then moving to the middle doesn’t always trigger what it’s supposed to: bringing up the note app or taking a screenshot.

Kindle books are not compatible with Smart Reader

Smart Reader could be the most useful and versatile for anyone in any line of work (students and teachers, especially) for taking notes or highlight passages directly on the pages while typing an outline for your next assignment on the other screen. But converting Kindle books to any of the Smart Reader’s supported file types (PDF, Mobi, EPub, Txt) requires removing the DRM, which you may not feel comfortable doing.

The other issue is that any Kindle book could be one of three file types (.azw, .azw3, .kfx) depending on which Kindle you own. So even if you’re okay with removing the DRM (for personal use only), you’ll need to find a program that supports all three file types—and you’ll have to figure out which file type your Kindle book is formatted in. All that file conversion wizardry is a major time-sink.

The power cord is attached to the charging block

Lenovo’s power cord is permanently attached to the charging block. That doesn’t affect its usefulness, but for people who like to pack their laptop as neatly as possible into their bag, the Book 9i’s is more cumbersome because the cable doesn’t detach.

If the actual plug on the power adapter wasn’t USB-C, it would make more sense to not have a USB-C plug on both ends of the charging cable. But taking that and this laptop’s three Thunderbolt 4 ports with pass-through charging into consideration, it makes me wonder why Lenovo didn’t stick a USB-C port on the charging block.

If you don’t like the charger, you can easily find another one with at least one USB-C port. The Book 9i uses a 65W charger, and there are plenty of those around, like this compact one from Anker.

Should you buy the Lenovo Yoga Book 9i?

Yes, I’m buying one

I’m skeptical of any laptop company that makes claims regarding how its product will improve my workflow; a lot of things are not made with neurodivergent brains in mind. But the Yoga Book 9i lives up to Lenovo’s claims and has been a better tool than I could have ever imagined for my unique brain.

Efficiency isn’t just about how fast a computer can sort a spreadsheet with lots of formulas, but also how you can physically manipulate the device you’re using, to make your “organic chips” process information faster. That’s the Yoga Book 9i, a snappy machine that is both efficient in processing, power draw, and battery life, and can physically transform for a variety of use cases.

Some of the closet alternatives you’ll find with some similar combination of price, specs, and features are the Apple MacBook Pro 13 M2, Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5i, and Acer Swift Go 16 , but none of them can do what the Lenovo Yoga Book 9i can do.