Getting started with the Yoga Slim 9i: Lenovo takes it up a notch in elegance

Announced at CES 2022, the new Yoga Slim 9i once again materializes Lenovo’s very high end in the ultraportable segment. A few days before its launch in France, the device let itself be approached… all in chrome and curves.

Remember the iPhone X and XS? Long before the chassis change made by Apple on the iPhone 12, the two smartphones sported a “silver” color, with a glass back with a white background associated with rounded and chrome sides. Well, strangely, the new Yoga Slim 9i takes this look a bit to gain elegance, while radically changing its style. Two years after a leather-covered version (which did not leave us with an imperishable memory at Clubic), the Slim 9i reference could well become alluring again at Lenovo. With this 2022 model, the manufacturer seems to be developing the codes of its new design to their full potential, gradually applied to all of its laptops.

A glossy, chrome ultraportable

The device therefore stands out from most of its competitors by the softness of its lines. No sharp corners or sure edges here, it’s all curves and curves. This new Slim 9i thus becomes very pleasant to handle and is even quite atypical to handle when you got used to old Lenovo ultraportables. The finishes, for their part, are neat, meticulous even, and it is the impression of dealing with a high-end product that predominated during our first minutes in its company.

© Nathan Le Gohlisse for Clubic

What is wrong, however, is the connection. On his 7^e generation of Yoga Slim, Lenovo relies a little too much on USB-C for our taste. The Slim 9i is thus content with three Thunderbolt 4 ports and a headphone jack. A bad habit that many manufacturers have taken… and that we deplore once again here.

The device nevertheless catches up on the screen and, theoretically at least, on performance. The model presented to us was equipped with a 2.8K OLED panel which rose to 90 Hz. This nifty 14-inch Ultra HD screen also benefits from a 16:10 ratio, to offer a better screen-to-frame ratio. It also has DisplayHDR 500 True Black certification thanks to an announced luminance of 400 nits. We will check this in the test, but it is certain that the content displayed on the Yoga Slim 9i has all the image depth specific to OLED here.

XXL price for XS laptop

Under the glass hood of the machine is housed a keyboard which also made a good impression on us. Typing feels precise and comfortable, and the trackpad is also pleasing at first glance, while being larger than in the past. A a priori positive that we will have to confirm during a further test of the PC.

The latter embeds for the rest what is currently best in terms of components for its segment. We thus find up to a Core i7-1280P (Alder Lake-P), coupled with a maximum of 32 GB of RAM (LPDDR5 at 5,600 MHz). Storage can go up to a maximum of 2 TB on this model, powered by a 75 Wh battery. Relatively imposing for a 14 inch, it promises a perfect autonomy, anticipated at more than 10 hours.

© Nathan Le Gohlisse for Clubic

The Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i will be displayed at a starting price of 1,899 euros. A substantial sum for an ultraportable which will have to come up against competition from the new Dell XPS 13 Plus and Apple MacBook Air 14, launched over the same period… but at more aggressive starting prices. In the end, the main flaw of this new Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i, the first laptop in the world to be certified “carbon neutral” (all carbon emissions induced by its manufacture are offset, Lenovo promises), could therefore be its price placement. .

Full test coming soon on Clubic.

Source: Lenovo press presentation