Lenovo has a close relationship with Intel when it comes to producing high-end, unique ultrabooks from its active participation in Project Athena and Intel Evo design philosophies. The Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i Gen10 continues to embody both brands’ vision of a high-end ultrabook that not only provides a premium, lightweight design but also decent performance and long battery life – all made possible with the Intel Core Ultra 9 258V. Let’s see how the Yoga Slim 9i sets the standard for premium ultrabooks.
Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i – A Closer Look
Lenovo is one of the few brands that takes bold steps in its design and its implementation, with a glass lid on the Yoga Slim 9i Gen10 is nothing short of gorgeous. While it can be a finger magnet, the glass design makes it distinct from any laptop we’ve reviewed so far. The glass reflects light in a 3D swirling cat-eye effect to provide a unique style and two-tone finish.
I initially didn’t like the module sticking out on the lid, as you don’t get to have the full glass back for a more premium finish, not until I got to daily drive the laptop. The module on the lid is for the 32MP camera and four mics. Upon our time with the Yoga Slim 9i, the module served a secondary purpose as a handle of the laptop to easily pull it out of a sleeve or in a bag and provides an easy grip of the device.
Connectivity is arguably limited, with only two physical Type-C ports. That said, Lenovo compensates for the lack of ports with expandability as these Type-C ports both support Thunderbolt 4 connectivity. Apart from the Type-C ports, the power button and electronic shutter switch are located on the right side of the laptop. Kudos to Lenovo for not having its power button located on the keyboard deck.
When it comes to keyboard typing experience, Lenovo sits at the top of the pile with crisp tactile feedback and very minimal key wobble, and that remains true with the Yoga Slim 9i Gen10.
Unlike most brands, Lenovo maximized the keyboard deck with the keys reaching very close to the edge of the laptop, resulting in large keys relative to its 14-inch form factor.
Instead of the usual speakers found on the sides of the keyboard, Lenovo used the extra space for custom keys. The time to get used to an offset layout isn’t as long compared to other keyboard decks as these custom keys have a stiffer tactile feedback, which minimizes the chances of typos. You could even rest your fingers on the side without worrying if the idle weight will trigger a keypress.
The shortcut keys are well thought out. From top to bottom, you have a performance mode toggle, mute button, a lock button, a customizable button, and a fingerprint reader. The customizable button can be set via the Lenovo Vantage Software. That said, it would’ve been nice if the fingerprint button were the first button, as it’s closer to the power button on the side. Moreover, the fingerprint reader will do nothing in the event of a misclick, especially since you have backspace and delete as potential points of errors.
Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i – Display and Camera
OLED displays are now becoming the standard for premium ultrabooks. Lenovo takes it up a notch with its taller PureSight Pro Display. The Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i Gen10 is equipped with a 14-inch 3840 x 2160p 16:10 120Hz OLED. The 4k resolution gives users crisp visuals, and it’s denser with the 14-inch screen size paired with the 16:10 aspect ratio. It’s a multitasker’s paradise as they can fit multiple windows without losing visual clarity.
The PureSight Pro Display of the Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i Gen10 is rated at 100% sRGB, 100% DCI-P3, and our SpyderXPro Display analysis tool confirms it with even a 95% AdobeRGB rating. The display also has 750 nits peak brightness, and we were able to measure around 420 nits of uniform max brightness. The high, dense resolution paired with its color accuracy and performance make the Yoga Slim 9i Gen10 an ideal mobile photo and video editing laptop.
Going back to the notch on the top of the lid, Lenovo opted to have the love-hate module placement outside the lid to make the still laptop thinner overall, as well as hide the webcam. This makes the display even more stunning and immersive as you have a dense screen-to-body ratio that’s as close to the edge as you can get on a laptop without an awkward circle like the ones on your smartphone. The pixels around the camera black out whenever the camera is in use.
Despite Lenovo pushing a 32MP camera and the extra effort to have the nudge and all. Camera quality is by far the worst part of the laptop as its quality is along the lines of the entry-level laptops of the 2010s. That said, I’ll take this day and night if it means I’m getting the superb screen of the Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i Gen10.
Lenovo Vantage
Lenovo revamped its Lenovo Vantage all-in-one software, making the UI feel less intimidating for new people. The new Vantage software has more settings to tinker with to fully customize your laptop.
Benchmark Setup and Test Methodology
Gadget Pilipinas’ testing philosophy is to provide detail-oriented results as accurately as possible so that our readers can replicate our tests, given that these conditions are met. Different benchmarking apps and sequences are used depending on the tested component or device.
We use CapFrameX 1.7.2 Beta as our primary FPS capture and analysis tool for all our gaming benchmarks. The latest build version of Windows 11 Pro and WHQL-certified drivers are used for our benchmarks. Readings such as temperatures and power draws are recorded using HWINFO64, and OCCT Enterprise.
We benchmarked the Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i Gen10 together with its different power profile settings found in the Vantage Software – Batt Saver, Adaptive, and Performance. The main purpose of benchmarking power profiles is to show how aggressive or conservative the manufacturer is regarding thermal management. These profiles will affect the CPU and GPUs’ boosting behavior regarding duration and max clock speed, translating to higher scores and stable frame rates.
As part of our 2024 laptop benchmark methodology revamp, we’ve changed how these profiles are tested. Synthetic and Productivity benchmarks include all of the power profiles. We decided to drop the silent or power-saving profile for gaming benchmarks as these lowest profiles generally produce unplayable frame rates, especially at 1440p and above resolutions. Moreover, games are tested at the laptop’s native resolution as we expect most, if not all, gamers to game on the laptop’s native resolution.
For more information, read our Benchmark Methodology article.
Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i Synthetic and Productivity Benchmarks
OCCT Benchmark
OCCT is a popular benchmark and stability testing tool among overclockers, enthusiasts, and system integrators.
CINEBENCH 2024.1
Maxon’s Cinebench benchmark is one of the most iconic benchmark applications used by reviewers and enthusiasts. The latest Cinebench 2024 uses the latest rendering architectures, including Intel’s Embree ray tracing technology and other advanced features from AMD and Intel that allow users to render the same scene on the same hardware.
PROCYON – ADOBE PREMIERE PRO VIDEO EDITING BENCHMARK
Procyon benchmark suite is developed by the UL, the same team behind 3DMark and PCMark benchmarks. The UL Procycon video editing benchmark uses Adobe Premiere in a typical video editing workflow. The benchmark starts by importing two video project files with various edits, adjustments, and effects – the second project uses several GPU-accelerated effects. Each project is exported in 1080p with H.264 encoding and again in 4K with HEVC H.265. The reported score is based on the time taken to export all four videos.
V-RAY 6
V-Ray Benchmark is a stand-alone version of V-Ray developed by Chaos Group. It is designed to test the CPU and GPU by rendering sample scenes within a fixed amount of time. V-Ray is a plug-in mostly utilized by 3D computer graphics software applications, mainly for industrial design, product design, architecture, film, and video game production. V-Ray is not limited to 64 threads as it supports multi and mega-threading.
SuperPI 32M
SuperPI is a single-threaded benchmark application that lets the CPU calculate Pi(π) to the nth digit. In this benchmark, we selected the Pi calculation to 32M, the highest available for the app.
wPrime 1024M
wPrime is a benchmark tool similar to SuperPI, but the former focuses on finding prime numbers using Newton’s Method. The benchmark is set to calculate 1024 million prime numbers, and the performance is measured according to calculation time.
GeekBench 6.4 and GeekBench AI
Geekbench is a multi-platform benchmark used to gauge CPU performance and compare it across Windows, Mac, and Mobile. Geekbench 6 is the latest version and doesn’t rely on memory more as the previous Geekbench 4, making it a great tool to measure both single-core and multi-core CPU performance.
CORONA RENDERER
Corona Renderer is an unbiased photorealistic render available for Autodesk 3Ds Max, Maxon Cinema 4D, and as a stand-alone application. Its popularity, similar to Blender, led Chaos Group to develop a benchmark version of the app, which runs using Corona Renderer 1.3. Workstation systems, especially CPUs, can utilize Corona Benchmark as up to 72 threads can be used in the benchmark, making it very suitable for CPUs in various price segments.
BapCo CROSSMARK
Crossmark is one of the few native cross-platform benchmark tools available for Windows, Android, Linux ChromeOS, iOS, and macOS. It measures overall system performance and system responsiveness using models of real-world applications, making it a great comparison point across multiple platforms.
Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i SSD Benchmark
Lenovo used a Samsung PM9C1a series SSD rated at 6,000MB/s read and 5,600MB/s write, which we were able to verify with our quick Crystal Disk Mark Benchmark. The write speed is slower than what’s rated, but it’s still on the fast side among ultrabooks.
Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i Battery Life
Sporting a 1200p, IPS display has a tiny silver lining, and that’s battery life. Thanks to the efficiency of the Intel Core Ultra 7 255H CPU paired with a 70Wh battery capacity, the ASUS VivoBook S 16 managed to consistently hit around 16 hours of battery life on most of our performance profiles. Using full speed still managed to hit a still impressive 13-hour battery life.
Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i Temperatures
Max temps are considerably low for an Intel Core Ultra CPU. That said, Lenovo made a conservative power profile, as we only peaked at 79°C, about 20°C+ more than the TJMax of the Core Ultra 7 258V. That said you could tune both the CPU and fans at the vantage software.
Conclusion
While most ultrabooks aim for lightness and portability, Lenovo skews a bit by packing everything it can in such a small form factor. It’s on the heavier side for a laptop in its class and consequently makes it feel more premium thanks to the combination of materials used to justify its weight. Its denseness makes it more than worth it for what you’re getting, notably the OLED display and Ultra 9 275HX CPU. Moreover, while we don’t measure speakers, the one found on the Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i Gen10 is one of the best, even rivaling larger-sized laptops, which rounds up the overall experience with the OLED display.
The Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i isn’t without compromise, however, the compromises are very well thought out and can easily be solved with money – if you have the Php 130,995 price tag, you’d have the budget to get a few accessories. The webcam is definitely sub par but it’s a good trade-off to have the immersive PureSight Pro Display. An external webcam is the solution, but it also brings us to the next compromise, its physical IO ports. Two Type-C ports aren’t gonna cut it for productivity, but these ports are Thunderbolt 4, meaning you could easily expand the IO by getting a hub. Not to mention, you also have the option of getting more performance with an external GPU thanks to the TB4 support.
Overall, the Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i Gen10 is currently the best ultrabook you could get in the market, that is, if you could afford the Php 130,995 asking price. It offers unrivaled entertainment with the combination of the PureSight Pro OLED display, superb-sounding speakers, and extensive battery life. It has the performance to back up the high-resolution display, enabling it to do some productivity workloads, with the option to make it a mini-desktop replacement with TB4 external graphics. That said, it does come with a few caveats, with its slightly heavier weight for a 13-inch and the need to get accessories, but these are almost negligible with the overall package it offers. It’s simply the ultrabook to get if you want the best of everything, all condensed in a small form factor.
Grant is a Financial Management graduate from UST. His passion for gadgets and tech crossed him over in the industry where he could apply his knowledge as an enthusiast and in-depth analytic skills as a Finance Major. His passion allows him to earn at the same time help Gadget Pilipinas' readers in making smart, value-based decisions and purchases with his reviews and guides.
