As is well known, Microsoft gave up the Surface Neo years ago, but the Redmond-based company’s vision of notebooks with two touchscreens seems to have been taken up by the software company’s PC partners. Lenovo now provides another example of this, because the Yoga 9i is essentially just that: a larger Surface Neo.
Lenovo Yoga 9i
The Lenovo Yoga 9i offers a 2.8K resolution on each of its two 13-inch displays, which are connected in the middle with a 360-degree hinge, although Lenovo has so far kept secret details. The brightness of the two panels is specified as a maximum of 400 candelas. They should each fully cover the DCI-P3 color space and are, of course, touchscreens with a capacitive digitizer, which means that pressure-sensitive handwriting inputs are possible.
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The overall package weighs 1.38 kilograms and contains an Intel Core i5-1335U or Core i7-1355U, which is why there are always two performance cores with a maximum of 4.6 or 5.0 gigahertz turbo frequency and eight efficiency cores for less demanding users tasks and an Intel XE GPU are available. The main memory is always 16 gigabytes and there is a choice between PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSDs with 512 GB or one terabyte.
Foldable variety: Lenovo Yoga 9i
Of course, further equipment includes a full HD webcam, a total of four speakers and three USB Type-C ports with Thunderbolt support. Transmission is via WiFi 6E or Bluetooth 5.2, so you have to do without LTE or 5G. You will also look in vain for a microSD card slot for memory expansion. When closed, the Yoga 9i is almost 16 millimeters thick, so the two halves are each almost eight millimeters thick.
Huge battery provides seven to ten hours of run time
Lenovo also uses the space inside to accommodate a battery that is almost gigantic for this form factor. The power storage has a decent capacity of 80 watt hours. Apparently, this is also necessary because the two large OLED panels and the Intel chips should reduce the maximum battery life to a good seven hours in MobileMark 2018. When operating with a maximum screen brightness of 150 candelas, up to 10 hours are supposedly possible; if one of the two displays is switched off, the runtime increases to up to 14 hours. Lenovo wants to offer the Yoga 9i with a number of software tweaks that will optimize it for using the two screens with multiple applications. The device can also be set up “creatively”, as the manufacturer’s various marketing images suggest. It’s also interesting that Lenovo offers a Bluetooth keyboard for the dual-screen laptop, so you can supposedly do “real” work with it.
The Lenovo Yoga 9i will be available in Europe from June 2023 and will then be available at prices starting at an impressive 2699 euros. For the USA, however, the device was announced for 2099 dollars. However, we do not yet know which configuration the customer will receive.
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