Lenovo Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Aura Edition review: This laptop takes premium to a whole new level

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The Lenovo Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Aura Edition (Gen 10) has arrived, and man, it’s a stunner. My daily driver laptop is the Yoga 9i 2-in-1 (Gen 7), so I already guessed I’d love a lot about this laptop. What I wasn’t expecting was to be absolutely flabbergasted by this laptop’s jaw-dropping battery life, despite boasting many of the same great features as its predecessor.

The Yoga 9i Aura Edition’s most striking features include a bright, colorful OLED display, an incredibly responsive, springy keyboard, and its beautiful, sleek cosmic blue chassis that stands out in a world full of gray and black laptops. It does have a slightly less powerful processor than its Gen 9 predecessor, but it still performs just as well and delivers over three times the battery life.

The days of Windows laptops offering laughable battery life as MacBooks reign supreme might be over. Yes, this laptop does have a few downsides, but when its battery lasts nearly 24 hours, who’s complaining about a couple of minor faults?

Lenovo Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Aura Edition price and specs 

The Lenovo Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Aura Edition comes with a relatively high price tag, but in exchange, you get a laptop with premium features, excellent battery life, and well-rounded performance. Our review unit costs $1,749 and comes with the following specs: 

• Intel Core Ultra 7 258V CPU

• Integrated Intel Arc graphics

• 32GB of RAM

• 1TB of SSD storage

• 14-inch, 2880 x 1800-pixel, 120Hz, OLED display

The 32GB of RAM and 1TB of SSD storage that come with the configuration above allow for seamless tab-hoarding, multitasking, and file organizing. However, you can drop the price to a little under $1,500 via Lenovo’s website, where this laptop starts with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of SSD storage and frequently gets discounted.

It’s a sleek and portable fingerprint magnet

Lenovo’s Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Aura Edition is a travel-friendly laptop with convertible convenience. At just 2.9 pounds and 12.4 x 8.7 x 0.6 inches, it’s barely noticeable in a backpack, and the easy form factor flip between traditional laptop and tablet can’t be beat when you’re on the move.

The all-aluminum chassis is cool to the touch and pleasant to look at, but it does attract fingerprints easily, and this isn’t something the Yoga 9i used to do. I dragged my fingers across my Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Gen 7 daily driver, and my fingerprints disappeared almost instantly. Repeating this on this Gen 10 Yoga 9i results in streaky fingerprints that stay until they’re wiped away.

Our review unit is in the cosmic blue colorway, but there’s also a luna gray color option available, which is the colorway I chose for my Gen 7 daily driver. This difference in colorways could explain the difference in noticeable fingerprint smudges.

Other than it being prone to collecting unwanted fingerprints, the Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Aura Edition is a well-constructed, attractive laptop. The top lid sticks out slightly where the webcam is, making it easier to open the laptop, and the mirrored edges on the bottom are a unique design element. Perhaps most importantly, the hinges are sturdy (without being too strong) when flipping between laptop, tent, and tablet modes.

A gorgeous display that’s surprisingly efficient

It’s a smooth transition between laptop, tent, and tablet modes.
Credit: Joe Maldonado / Mashable

The Lenovo Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Aura Edition features a 14-inch, 2.8K (2880 x 1800) OLED touch display with a smooth refresh rate of 120Hz, and it’s perhaps my favorite thing about this laptop.

This laptop’s OLED panel helps colors appear immensely vibrant without being oversaturated and blacks appear rich and deep. Then, 2.8K resolution is a step above the 1920 x 1080-pixel resolution found on many laptops, yet not as battery-draining as 4K. You can opt for a 4K display with this laptop instead, but you’ll have to downgrade to 60Hz as well.

With 500 nits max brightness (1,100 nits HDR), the display was sufficiently bright, even at only 50 percent brightness in the middle of the day. The display is glossy, so it’s quite reflective, but I didn’t run into any annoying issues while using it, even in direct sunlight.

Whether I was catching up on Bridgerton, organizing my weekly tasks in Trello, or streaming lo-fi music on YouTube while working, the colors popped off the screen and made my overall laptop experience better and brighter.

Although I didn’t use the touchscreen a lot to prevent greasy fingerprints from dirtying the display, it was smooth and responsive when I tested it to navigate Spotify and browse the web. You can either use your fingertip or the included Lenovo Yoga Pen with the display.

This thin design only accommodates a few ports

For most people, the minimal ports available on the Yoga 9i will suffice. However, if you’re looking for an HDMI port, an SD card reader, or more than one USB-A port, you’ll be out of luck.

On the left side, you’ll find: 

And on the right: 

• Headset jack

• USB-C 4 Gen 2 port

While I’m not enamored with this laptop’s lack of port variety, I do love that there’s a USB-C port on each side because it makes charging more convenient.

The left side includes a USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 port and two USB-C (Thunderbolt 4) ports.
Credit: Joe Maldonado / Mashable

The right side includes a headset jack and a USB-C 4 Gen 2 port.
Credit: Joe Maldonado / Mashable

Plus, many modern wired peripherals now use USB-C cables or come with an adapter, or you can connect wireless peripherals via Bluetooth without needing to bother with a cable at all. If you absolutely need any of the ports the Yoga 9i is missing, you can always invest in a USB-C hub that has what you’re looking for.

An unexpected downgrade in sound quality

Usually, Lenovo’s Yoga 9i 2-in-1 lineup receives a boatload of praise when it comes to sound quality, but I can’t say the same for this Gen 10 model.

The previous Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Gen 9 model had excellent speakers, and the Yoga Book 9i has the best audio setup I’ve ever experienced in a laptop. Unfortunately, Lenovo ditches Bowers & Wilkins sound in this Gen 10 laptop, and I can tell.

The sound quality is lacking in the new generation of Yoga 9i.
Credit: Sarah Chaney / Mashable

Playing Machine Gun Kelly’s new summer smash “Cliché” on this Yoga 9i Gen 10 laptop and then on my daily driver Yoga 9i Gen 7, which has a Bowers & Wilkins soundbar, I can hear the missing atmosphere in the song. MGK’s slightly gravelly vocals, the lightly plucked strings, and the snare drum come through beautifully, but that full-bodied, subtle bass that rounds out a song is absent in this set of speakers.

The Lenovo Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Aura Edition (Gen 10) still has better audio than most laptops I’ve tested, but if you’re seeking powerful bass like past editions with Bowers & Wilkins soundbars have had, you’ll be disappointed.

An incredibly satisfying keyboard and a silky trackpad

This laptop features an island-style, chiclet keyboard, and I adored typing on it. The keys are well-spaced, pleasantly bouncy, and responsive. It almost feels like I’m typing on a minimalist mechanical keyboard, like the Logitech Mechanical MX Mini with tactile switches, because of the slight travel and noticeable actuation.

There’s no 10-key number pad on this compact laptop, but you will find a full number row and function key row at the top. The fingerprint sensor is discreetly nestled into the bottom right corner, and there are helpful mode-switching buttons above it.

This keyboard is pleasntly bouncy and the touchpad is a dream.
Credit: Sarah Chaney / Mashable

As with every Yoga 9i 2-in-1 I’ve reviewed, the buttonless, glass touchpad is a dream. It’s large and responsive, and my finger glides across like a warm knife through butter. Clicking with the trackpad is also nice, despite there being no haptics. 

Lenovo Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Aura Edition benchmarks and performance

The Lenovo Yoga 9i performed beautifully during testing, with minimal fan noise and only slight heat buildup. 

To pressure the laptop, I simultaneously opened the Clock app and ran the stopwatch, pulled up Spotify and played music, and loaded 20 Google Chrome tabs, one of which was a live YouTube stream. The result? Seamless performance, with zero lag when loading a new page and no stuttering when typing in Google Docs.

I only noticed the fans kick on when the laptop was plugged in. Otherwise, it does a great job of regulating heat without fans when tackling daily tasks. The hottest spot on this Yoga 9i Gen 10 is on the chassis above the center of the keyboard.

This is a big improvement over its Yoga 9i Gen 9 predecessor, which got quite noisy and hot under pressure with typical productivity tasks. However, this Gen 10 model delivered a lower Geekbench 6 score than the Gen 9 model.

The Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Aura Edition features an Intel Core Ultra 7 258V processor and notched a score of 10,765 on the Geekbench 6 performance test. The Yoga 9i Gen 9 before it is equipped with an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H processor, which earned a score of 12,345 on the same benchmark.

A Geekbench 6 score like that tells me that the Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Aura Edition won’t be landing a spot as one of the best laptops for video editing or the best gaming laptops anytime soon. But if you only plan to use your laptop for browsing the web, watching content, listening to music, and working with low-intensity apps and programs, your experience will be smooth.

Lenovo Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Aura Edition battery life

The Lenovo Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Aura Edition may just earn a spot as one of the best laptops for battery life, and that genuinely surprises me.

In our battery test, which involves looping a 1080p version of Tears of Steel at 50 percent brightness, the Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Aura Edition held out for a staggering 23 hours and 34 minutes. Compared to its Gen 9 predecessor, this laptop more than tripled its battery life. 

Our Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Gen 9 review unit wasn’t equipped with any Aura Edition features like this laptop, and it had half the RAM (16GB), but it shares the same 14-inch, 2.8K OLED display that the Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Aura Edition (Gen 10) does. And yet, the Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Gen 9 only lasted 7 hours and 21 minutes in the same video rundown test.

Historically, one of the biggest trade-offs for stellar premium features in the Yoga 9i 2-in-1 was battery life. With this new Gen 10 configuration, that’s no longer the case.

A disappointingly average webcam

The Lenovo Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Aura Edition features a 5-megapixel camera with infrared and a privacy shutter, just like its Gen 9 predecessor. However, compared to the webcam quality on the Yoga 9i Gen 9, this Gen 10 laptop’s webcam is a bit disappointing.

I expected more from this webcam.
Credit: Sarah Chaney / Mashable

Granted, it’s still sharper and more accurate compared to most laptop webcams, but the picture it produces isn’t nearly as detailed or colorful as that of its predecessor. Considering Lenovo has upped its webcam game in recent years with out-of-this-world picture quality on the Yoga Book 9i, I expected more from the Yoga 9i Gen 10’s webcam.

Is the Lenovo Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Aura Edition worth it?

The Lenovo Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Aura Edition (Gen 10) features a stunning 2.8K OLED display with rich blacks and vivid colors, a responsive keyboard that I didn’t want to stop typing on, and the best battery life I’ve ever seen from the Yoga lineup. Plus, it delivered admirable performance, tackling my typical daily workload with ease.

I’d say the Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Aura Edition is definitely worth it for those looking for a sleek, well-rounded everyday laptop with the flexibility to switch to tent mode and tablet mode. It offers solid performance, nearly 24-hour battery life, great future-proof specs, and devoted attention to the little details that make using the laptop a more enjoyable experience overall. 

For me, this laptop’s minor negatives of minimal ports and a fingerprint-attracting colorway are quickly overshadowed by all of the positives it has to offer. At $1,749, this Yoga 9i 2-in-1 configuration is pricey, but it’s worth it if you want a premium, convertible Windows laptop to handle simple productivity tasks. If you’re not attached to Windows OS, you might want to consider Apple’s MacBook Pro 14-inch M4 as well.