The new Lenovo Yoga 9i laptop gets a comfy redesign, 4K OLED display and more

It's a year of important laptop anniversaries for Lenovo. The ThinkPad business line turns 30 and its Yoga line of two-in-ones is now 10 years old. I'm not surprised the line's lasted this long: It was the best two-in-one design to come out with the launch of Windows 8. It worked so well as a full-time laptop and part-time tablet that it was the design other PC makers adopted for their convertible laptops. While the look, features and performance have improved over the years, it's essentially the same device. And that includes the new flagship 14-inch Yoga 9i announced Wednesday at CES 2022.

For the new Yoga 9i, Lenovo rounded off all the edges and corners on its aluminum body. Lenovo calls it a Comfort Edge design because it's more comfortable to carry and rest your wrists on while typing. The other big change is the addition of a row of shortcut keys down the right side of the keyboard. 

The one-click Function keys give you direct access to four features designed to make it easier to use the 9i for hybrid work or learning. There's a key that controls your fans for quiet or increased performance, one that instantly adds a background blur when you're using a video conference app, and there's the awkwardly named Vibe Check key -- an easy way to pick audio profiles for music, gaming or movies. With Dolby Atmos support and the Yoga 9i's 360-degree soundbar hinge with quad Bowers & Wilkins speakers with two woofers and two tweeters, all of those modes should give you impressive sound quality from the 9i. 

There's a Color Mode key also that lets you quickly flip between light and dark modes in Windows 11. This might seem kind of silly, but if you get the Yoga 9i with one of its OLED display options, dark mode is a good way to conserve battery life. There will be three 16:10 touchscreen options: a full-HD LCD with 100% sRGB color gamut, a 2.8K OLED and a 4K OLED with 100% P3 color gamut. 

At the bottom of the one-click Function key row is a fingerprint reader for Windows Hello sign-ins. The full-HD IR webcam can be used to sign in with facial recognition, too, and there's a sensor that detects when you walk away from the laptop and locks it automatically. It can sense when you return and it'll wake and unlock the laptop with facial recognition. 

The Yoga 9i will be available with either a 12th-gen Intel Core i5-1240P or i7-1260P processor, up to a 1TB PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD, 8GB or 16GB of memory and integrated graphics. Ports include two Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports and for wireless, you get Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2.

The 14-inch Yoga 9i convertible laptop is expected to be available in the second quarter of 2022 and will start at $1,399 (roughly £1,040, AU$1,940). Since the Yoga 9i is the top of the line, it gets more novel features that not everyone wants or needs. That's why I tend to recommend the Yoga 7i since they have the same premium design but the 7i has fewer bells and whistles. 

For example, the updated Yoga 7i has the Comfort Edge chassis design but not the 360-degree soundbar hinge. You can get it with a 2.8K OLED display but not the 4K OLED. The row of one-click Function keys is gone but you still get a fingerprint reader below the keyboard and a full-HD IR webcam. 

Lenovo did announce both 14- and 16-inch models for the Yoga 7i, though. The larger model also gets an HDMI output and SD card slot as well as 12th-gen Intel i5-12500H or Core i7-12700H processors and Intel's new discrete Arc graphics. The 16-inch Yoga 7i will be available starting in Q2 and will start at $899. The 14-inch model will start at $949. 

If you want a smaller, less expensive option, Lenovo also updated its Yoga 6 line. It has a 13-inch full-HD 16:10 touchscreen, up to an AMD Ryzen 7 5700U processor and is partly made and packaged with materials made from recycled plastics and aluminum. You can even choose to get it with a lid covered in recycled aluminum or a fabric-wrapped cover made with 50% recycled plastics. 

The 13-inch Yoga 6 two-in-one will start at $749 is expected to arrive in the second quarter of 2022 along with the rest of the Yoga lineup.