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The Lenovo Yoga Professional 9 is a content material creator laptop computer. If you happen to’ve not appeared into certainly one of these earlier than, your first query ought to be “what the hell does that imply?”
These laptops merge the facility of the very best gaming laptops with a few of the model of, nicely, the very best laptops and ultraportables on the market. In spite of everything, content material creators are influencers. And also you ain’t influencing anybody with a boring black plastic workstation.
In typical Lenovo vogue, although, the Lenovo Yoga Professional 9 tackles what may sound like a fluffy thought with severe rigour. It has a fab keyboard, glorious audio system, a high-quality gigantic touchpad, and an ultra-bright mini-LED display screen which proves these supernova shows aren’t only for the very best Apple MacBook fashions.
A couple of little points maintain it off from an ideal rating although. We’ll get to these intimately on this Lenovo Yoga Professional 9 assessment. However total it is excellent information, so learn on for the total breakdown…
Lenovo Yoga Professional 9: Value & Availability
The Lenovo Yoga Professional 9 begins at £1769 within the UK (I am unable to spot it within the US or Australia; nevertheless the ‘9i’ AMD-toting mannequin is accessible within the latter from AU$2599). For that money you get a wholesome Intel Core i7 CPU, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 GPU, 16GB RAM and a 1TB SSD.
Our assessment laptop computer might look related on the skin, however the insides are fairly totally different (and, it appears, on the time of writing it is the one model obtainable within the UK). This top-end mannequin will price you £2599, and has an Intel Core i9, 64GB RAM, an RTX 4070 graphics card and a mini-LED show.
Most of those are simple spec upgrades. However the show panel change is a little more dramatic, so bear that in thoughts when studying the assessment if you happen to don’t need to spend greater than two grand.
Lenovo Yoga Professional 9 assessment: Design
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The Lenovo Yoga Professional 9 comes throughout an XL model of certainly one of Lenovo’s absolute top-tier slim and finest light-weight laptops. It has an all-aluminium shell and the perimeters bloom out, virtually like mini semicircles, to melt the texture.
You may discover this model on different 9-series Yoga laptops, however it’s not the standard search for what’s successfully a pro-grade PC.
This laptop computer has a 180degree hinge, and is available in colors apart from black or silver. These are “life-style” touches that set the Lenovo Yoga 9 Professional aside from different true-performance laptops.
It’s a little heavy for a way we sometimes use smaller laptops that look a bit like this one, although. Weight for this collection begin at a shade over 2kg. Hefty.
We have used the Lenovo Yoga Professional 9 out and a couple of bunch of occasions. It feels nice when working in your knees, will get by simply superb in espresso retailers and libraries. Nonetheless, if you happen to plan on lugging this factor round each single day, contemplate one thing lighter.
Key choices at this measurement are the ridiculously gentle 1.2kg LG Gram 16 and, sitting between the 2 in weight, the 1.7kg Samsung Galaxy Book3 Extremely.
Lenovo Yoga Professional 9 assessment: Show
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The Lenovo Yoga Professional 9 is accessible with certainly one of three display screen varieties, and we’ve got probably the most attention-grabbing, and most costly, of the lot.
This can be a 16-inch mini-LED with 3200 x 2000-pixel decision. It is large, it is sharp, and it type of merges the advantages of high-end normal LCDs with these of OLED laptops.
How? Your common LCD laptop computer has a common backlight, that means it can not show excellent blacks when something is displayed on-screen.
Mini-LED makes use of clusters of LEDs behind the show, which might be managed independently. It is probably not fairly pretty much as good as OLED’s per-pixel lighting, however its most brightness of 1200 nits beats all OLED laptops we’ve seen. laptop computer OLED may present round 400-450 nits.
In actuality, you will solely hit round 600 nits generally use. As within the rival MacBook Professional 16, the height brightness is barely actually right here to ship HDR pop. Nonetheless, we used the Lenovo Yoga Professional 9 exterior a bunch and located the additional 50% over the norm actually helps to offset the reflections of the shiny, glassy display screen end. That is one other of these “content material creator” swings: this can be a shiny touchscreen.
You’ll find some little points with the implementation of this mini-LED display screen if you happen to go searching for them, although. We discovered the true energy of mini-LED, that elements of the display screen might be turned off fully, solely labored after we had the HDR mode switched on in Home windows. In any other case you’d see the standard raised blacks of a traditional LCD when watching movies, whether or not they’re HDR or not. And also you see these raised blacks within the Yoga start-up display screen too, which is minor bummer we by no means failed to note.
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We additionally seen that when watching a 4K HDR pattern of the infamously tough area film Gravity, the mini-LED panel launched what appeared like macro blocking – a sort of digital pixelation. It presumably wasn’t, however quite the impact of the varied zones making an attempt to symbolize area as black as it may be, with out obscuring stars. Consequently some movies, or no less than some scenes, might look higher with mini-LED’s particular transfer native dimming switched off. You don’t get these points with OLED.
In keeping with our testing the Lenovo Yoga 9 Professional’s display screen has someplace within the area of 1188 zones. And, sure, we actually counted them. Apple says the MacBook Professional 16 has 2554. The extra dimming zones you’ve got, the much less darkish scene weirdness and haloing you’re more likely to see. Nonetheless, we do completely love that while you watch a 16:9 film in a darkish room right here, the black bars on the highest and backside of the display screen grow to be invisible.
We’re virtually executed with the gripes, however there’s yet another. We could not get HDR content material to look proper on the Lenovo Yoga 9 Professional both. YouTube HDR was massively overexposed, Cyberpunk 2077’s HDR appeared kinda washed out.
We are able to most likely blame Home windows for this one, because it has fairly dangerous native HDR optimisation in our expertise. Presumably not least as a result of principally no laptops apart from this one can even have a strong stab at HDR.
Again to fundamentals, color depth is implausible and, simply because the “3K Calibrated Professional Show” sticker guarantees, accuracy is superb. Distinction is sweet too, however once more all of it is determined by whether or not the show is correctly native dimming or not. It usually gained’t be if you happen to’re not cautious.
Lenovo Yoga Professional 9 assessment: Keyboard & touchpad
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A giant, brilliant display screen with a 16:10 side ratio is nice for work, and so is the Lenovo Yoga Professional 9’s keyboard. This can be a a lot deeper-dish keyboard than we’re used to today, with 1.5mm key motion.
1.4mm was the usual earlier than Apple persuaded everybody to get into slim keyboards, and Lenovo has gone a step additional. It is much like the keyboards of Lenovo’s well-known ThinkPad fashions, however with a lighter, sooner really feel. This factor is gorgeous to kind away on. And, as you’ll be able to see, there is a numpad too.
The numpad is prone to ruining one other of the Lenovo Yoga Professional 9’s nice bits, the extra-large textured glass touchpad. Why? As usually occurs with these designs, the numpad means the left clicker space is shunted to date over to the left it’s prone to feeling flat-out incorrect.
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We advocate both switching the L/R button zones (an ordinary Home windows 11 characteristic) or ditching these zones altogether in favour of the MacBook-like strategy the place you two-finger click on for the appropriate mouse button (additionally an ordinary Home windows 11 characteristic).
The pad itself? Pretty, largely. It is large, the floor is easy and low-friction. Not like the ThinkPad Z1 Carbon collection, the Lenovo Yoga 9 Professional nonetheless makes use of a mechanical clicker quite than the haptic form. And we’re not upset about that.
Nonetheless, it’s not Lenovo’s finest or more-expensive-feeling clicker. It actually seems like one of many most cost-effective elements right here. The little contact of velvet you get with the perfect from Lenovo would set this in any other case spectacular laptop computer off nicely.
Lenovo Yoga Professional 9 assessment: Efficiency
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The Lenovo Yoga Professional 9 is a efficiency PC, significantly if you happen to get the high-end spec reviewed right here. Our laptop computer has a top-tier Intel Core i9-13905H CPU, a borderline ridiculous (for most people) 64GB RAM, a tasty Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card with 8GB RAM and a 1TB SSD.
It is not usually a 1TB SSD appears stingy, however we think about anybody shopping for at this stage would improve that too. The SSD we do get is cutting-edge stuff, although, with learn speeds of round 7000MB/s, writes of 5960MB/s. That tempo is much like the famously quick Sony PlayStation 5 storage.
The Lenovo Yoga Professional 9 would make a dream video enhancing station because of the scads of CPU and GPU energy, and the massive quantity of RAM. Even if you happen to purchased the extra fundamental, extra approachable, mannequin with a Core i7 CPU and 16GB RAM, we would contemplate it a fab machine for a budding content material creator.
You’ll be able to, in fact, recreation too. We reached round 93fps in Cyberpunk 2077 at Extremely settings (1080p decision). Unsurprisingly, although, the comparatively slim Lenovo Yoga Professional 9 would not have a model of the RTX 4070 that attracts ungodly quantities of energy. The usual is 115W, we noticed it repeatedly slipping down 95W. This is not peak gaming efficiency, however it’s not embarrassing both.
It is the sound the Lenovo Yoga 9 Professional makes, greater than its efficiency, that reminds you this is not a “constituted of the bottom up” gaming PC. It has fairly high-pitch followers, and even merely taking part in video can get them to rev up. Do a lot past the fundamentals and also you’re more likely to hear them.
We discovered them a lot tougher to disregard than the followers of a few of Lenovo’s beefier Legion laptops. It is one of many key elements right here, past the worth, that ought to flip off just a few people. However if you happen to’re enhancing movies you’ll be able to no less than go off to make a cuppa – or seize a vlog if that is extra the content material creator vibe – whereas the CPU will get a sweat on to start out encoding your closing YouTube information.
Lenovo Yoga Professional 9 assessment: Battery Life
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The concept the Lenovo Yoga Professional 9 combines the very best bits of workstations/gaming laptops and slim and lightweight fashions additionally falters while you take a look at battery life. This laptop computer has a 75Whr battery. It is massive, however not a monster when you think about how power-hungry the parts inside might be.
With gentle work, on the sort of conservative display screen brightness you may use indoors, we discovered the Lenovo Yoga Professional 9 lasts 5 hours and 50 minutes. It is not sufficient for a full day’s work, however it may very well be worse.
Utilizing the laptop computer exterior within the blazing sunshine, however doing nothing greater than writing a doc, it misplaced 45% cost in simply 90 minutes. That mini-LED certain appears to be hungry when working laborious.
You could get higher outcomes with a lower-spec model, however you’re nonetheless not going to get near true long-lasting ultraportable stamina.
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There are another techy niceties. Within the final yr or so we have seen higher-end laptops lastly soar from utilizing 720p webcams as normal to 1080p ones. However the Lenovo Yoga Professional 9 has a 5MP digital camera that may shoot at 1440p decision. It can be used for face unlock. That is an unusually good webcam, and produces unusually good-looking footage for a laptop computer.
We had been much more impressed by the audio system, a six-driver array. They’re loud, bassy, and all-round much better than you’d get within the common high-end gaming laptop computer. Not like a few of Lenovo’s different fashions these aren’t formally a tie-in with Bowers & Wilkins, however it’s an indication of how little these model team-ups truly imply. They do help Dolby Atmos however, once more, that does not imply a complete nice deal right here.
The EQ settings are dubbed Dolby Atmos within the Dolby Entry app, however good as these are we’re not listening to a cinematic presentation right here. Nonetheless: they will’t half blast out a YouTube video.
Lenovo Yoga Professional 9 assessment: Verdict
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The Lenovo Yoga Professional 9 is a gaming laptop computer and a content material creator laptop computer rolled into one. And in Lenovo’s fingers what may appear a fairly cynical train helps to spotlight a few of the issues gaming laptops may do higher elsewhere.
Unusually good audio system, a cutting-edge display screen (Home windows settings dependent) and a top-quality touchpad are all straightforward to understand whether or not you might be gaming or not. They’ll undoubtedly come in useful when enhancing movies away from a house workplace setup too.
You aren’t getting these extra model laptop-like extras without spending a dime, although, and by focusing a bit on decreasing the thickness of the Lenovo Yoga Professional 9, we find yourself with a cooling system that is a lot much less simpler to disregard given the pitchy fan whirr – and that is the principle cause this is not a full 5-star mannequin, shut because it will get in lots of different areas.
Additionally contemplate
The Lenovo Yoga Professional 9 manages to undercut all three core fashions of MacBook Professional 16, even at our elevated assessment spec. Good. This Lenovo can also be going to be much better than any MacBook for gaming, no less than till Apple’s Sport Porting Toolkit totally kicks in (this was introduced in June, and makes it a lot simpler to get Home windows gaming working on Macs).
The Razer Blade 16 is one other key rival. And, once more, it exhibits the Lenovo in a quite good gentle as Razer costs no less than three-figures extra for 1 / 4 the RAM (based mostly on present Amazon pricing). Sheesh.
If you happen to’re right here for worth, although, don’t overlook the Dell Inspiron 16 Plus. Its specs don’t run fairly as excessive, however for half the worth in comparison with the Yoga Professional you may get only one step down in every space: GPU, CPU, RAM. It’s nonetheless a decent-looking laptop computer and supplies related portability.