Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i review: beauty hurts this stunning laptop
I love how the Yoga Slim 9i looks, which makes me love to use it. But there are way too many drawbacks to recommend it
🏆 Rating: 3/5
✅ Pros
📺 Gorgeous 4K OLED display
📐 Stunning design with glass lid
🏎️ Good performance for most tasks
⚡️ Thunderbolt 4 support
⌨️ Comfortable keyboard
🔊 Surprisingly good speakers
❌ Cons
📸 Awful webcam
🪫 Middling battery life
🏋️♀️ Kinda heavy
💰 There are better values on the market
The Shortcut review
Lenovo makes a lot of laptops, yet the Yoga Slim 9i managed to stop me in my tracks. It has a design that stands out among the rest of the company’s lineup and the laptop market at large. It’s glossy, it’s curvy, it’s covered in glass, and it has super-slim bezels. It’s a stunning device from a company that’s known for making unimpressive aluminum shells for laptops, giving the Yoga Slim 9i quite the edge in Lenovo’s lineup.
The design draws me in so much that I want to use it over my MacBook Pro, but I just can’t do it. No, it’s not because I’m married to macOS or anything. It’s the fact that, beyond the good looks, the Yoga Slim 9i is nothing to write home about. Sure, the design and OLED display are stunning, but what good is that if the laptop can’t last all day or power through all the stuff you have to do? Oh, and don’t get me started on the webcam.
At $1,820, the Yoga Slim 9i is tough to recommend. Unless you need a gorgeous laptop to show off to your friends, there are plenty of better options for less money. It’s really nice to use, but you run into problems too quickly to make this laptop worth buying.
Full review
Design and ports
😍 Absolutely gorgeous. The Yoga Slim 9i is straight-up gorgeous. There’s no two ways about it, it’s one of the prettiest laptops I’ve ever reviewed. Glass panels on laptops used to be more popular than they are now, but maybe it’s time for manufacturers to use them once again. It gives the Slim 9i a shimmering, eye-catching aesthetic that blends perfectly with the curved edges. There is also a unique 3D swirling pattern on the lid that catches light in various ways. The rest of the machine is mostly aluminum, a nice complement to the shiny lid.
🟢 This teal, tho. I’d also like to mention that I’m a very big fan of Tidal Teal. It’s the only color available for the Slim 9i, so you’re out of luck if you want a more generic finish. Still, on its own, it’s a great color that stands out in a world of gray, metallic laptops.
🏋️♀️ Pretty hefty. One aspect of the design that isn’t great is the weight. The Yoga Slim 9i weighs 2.76 pounds which is noticeably heavier than most 14-inch laptops. You’ll likely notice it when you slot it in your bag as a result. It’s likely due to the glass lid which undoubtedly adds weight to the design.
⌨️ Comfy keyboard and trackpad. Open the laptop and you’ll be greeted with a keyboard and trackpad combo that’s both comfortable and functional. I like the travel and clickiness of the keys, while the size of the trackpad isn’t too small, where you’ll get frustrated trying to perform multi-finger gestures.
Awkward, inaccurate fingerprint reader. In the bottom right corner of the keyboard sits a fingerprint reader, which is one of the most awkward places you can put a sensor like that. Even if you get used to its position, though, there’s no guarantee it’ll work. The sensor has been highly inaccurate for me during my testing; I’ve gotten it to work somewhere around 10-15% of the time on the first try, with the sensor failing completely to read my fingerprint more often than not. I hope you’re ready to enter your PIN every time you open your laptop.
🔌 Limited ports. The Yoga Slim 9i comes with two Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports, one on each side. There are no USB-A or HDMI ports here, and there’s no headphone jack. This means you’ll need to buy a USB-C hub if you want access to any extra ports, which is unfortunate given the price of this machine. That being said, if all you use are USB-C devices, you’ll probably be fine.
Display
📺 OLED is the way, the truth, and the light. The 14-inch display Lenovo includes is absolutely stunning. Not only is it OLED, but it also comes with a 4K resolution and a 120Hz refresh rate, which helps it feel more responsive than traditional 60Hz panels. The bezels are also incredibly thin all the way around the screen, while the curved corners give it a modern aesthetic. It also comes with Dolby Vision, HDR, and advanced color support, translating to one of the best displays I’ve seen on a laptop in a while.
💡 Crank it up. The display can also reach 750 nits of peak brightness, which is enough to see in the sunlight at a coffee shop. Whereas many laptops can’t reach this level of brightness, I’m glad to see Lenovo include it here. It makes a world of difference when you don’t want to sit inside and get out to do your work.
Webcam and speakers
🥔 Potato, anyone? The Yoga Slim 9i is the first laptop on the market to ship a webcam behind its display. We’ve seen this technology before on smartphones (like the Galaxy Z Fold 6), but it’s now starting to creep into more product categories. But maybe it shouldn’t, because the camera on this laptop is terrible. It’s a 32MP sensor that only appears when you need it to through a black orb at the top of your screen, but Lenovo fails to maintain detail, clarity, and color by placing it behind the OLED panel. The result is a camera you’ll never want to use, even for occasional video calls.
🔊 Delightful speakers. The speakers on the Yoga Slim 9i are solid. There are twin 2W tweeters and two 3W woofers that kick out good audio quality. Backed by Dolby Atmos support, the speakers sound full and offer deep bass. I wasn’t expecting these speakers to do much, so this was a nice surprise.
Performance
🏎️ Snappy for light tasks… Lenovo included Intel’s Lunar Lake Core Ultra 7 258V processor with 32GB of RAM and 1TB of storage in my review unit, and as a result, you get great performance for lighter tasks. Most of my day is consumed by Google Chrome tabs, Lightroom edits, and Spotify in the background, and the Slim 9i had no issue handling it all. The base model gets you a slightly less powerful Core Ultra 7 256V chip and 16GB of RAM which should be enough for most, but if you’re like me and keep things running in the background all the time, the extra RAM makes a big difference.
🎨 … not so much for creatives. Where performance gets questionable is when you fire up heavier projects like video edits, Photoshop, and games. The Slim 9i’s integrated graphics are enough for casual users, but not for those who need to eek out every ounce of performance they can. The Slim 9i struggles to maintain usable performance when under heavy loads, which turns this nearly $2,000 laptop into a super-fancy word processor. Other laptops in this price category can handle heavier tasks like this just fine, but not the Slim 9i.
🥵 It tends to run warm. On top of the middling performance, the Yoga Slim 9i runs hot. Even under light conditions, the Slim 9i’s base starts to heat up and stays hot while you use it. There’s a fan inside the laptop that keeps quiet even when it’s on full speed, but it never seems to be enough to cool this machine. Your best bet is using it on a desk in a cool place, not on your lap by the pool this summer.
🛜 The right wireless specs. Lenovo includes Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 on the Yoga Slim 9i, which gives you the latest connectivity technology to keep all of your accessories and internet connection afloat, all with steady connections. They also help to future-proof the Slim 9i so you can take advantage of faster wireless connections in the future.
Battery life
🪫 A middling experience. There’s nothing worth bragging about in the battery department for the Yoga Slim 9i. Lenovo includes a 75Whr battery which isn’t the smallest or largest we’ve ever seen, and when it comes to lasting all day, it can barely squeak by. I can generally get 7-8 hours of use out of it before it conks out, unless I have to spend a lot of time in Lightroom. This is very middle-of-the-road performance for laptop battery life in 2025. Charging remains pretty efficient at 65W, which is nice, but you’ll be relying on the plug more often than not with this laptop.
Pricing
💰 Yeah, not great. It’s $1,820 to start, which sends it into a pricer market filled with laptops that perform better, last longer on a charge, and are often lighter and thinner. In the case of the Yoga Slim 9i, you’re paying for a premium design that stands out from the competition, but ultimately fails to keep up with similar price points. You’ll find much better values in the Microsoft Surface Laptop, Asus Zenbook S 14, and even Lenovo’s own Yoga Slim 7i.
Should you buy the Yoga Slim 9i?
Yes, if…
✅ You want a gorgeous laptop to stare at
✅ You want a beautiful display
✅ You don’t need a ton of ports
✅ You need speedy performance
✅ You want a comfortable keyboard
No, if…
❌ You take a lot of video calls (get the Microsoft Surface Laptop)
❌ You need more powerful performance for video editing or gaming (get the Lenovo Legion Pro 5i)
❌ You need long battery life (get the Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 with Snapdragon)
❌ You want the most bang for your buck (get the MacBook Air M4 or Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x)
Max Buondonno is an editor at The Shortcut. He’s been reporting on the latest consumer technology since 2015, with his work featured on CNN Underscored, ZDNET, How-To Geek, XDA, TheStreet, and more. Follow him on X @LegendaryScoop and Instagram @LegendaryScoop.