Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i 16 Aura Edition Review: Kick-Ass Laptop for Creators

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Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i 16 Gen 10 Aura Edition

Pros

• Gorgeous 16-inch, 2.8K OLED display
• Capable CPU and discrete GPU combo
• Runs quietly, even under heavy load
• Premium feel and finish
• Priced less than $2,000

Cons

• Overall look lacks aura
• Six-speaker array produces tinny, hollow sound
• Slightly awkward keyboard placement

Lenovo has been on a hot streak with its line of Yoga two-in-ones. The Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Aura Edition that I reviewed a few months ago won a CNET Editors’ Choice award, and the Yoga 7 14 Gen 9 took home the same award before that. The Yoga 9i 14 Gen 9 and Yoga 7 16 Gen 9 also garnered high marks. The Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i 16 Aura Edition extends this run of success. 

Unlike the other Yogas mentioned above, the Yoga Pro 9i 16 Aura Edition is not a two-in-one convertible but a traditional laptop. The Pro 9i represents the top end of the Yoga line, while the Aura Edition represents Lenovo’s commitment to AI features, performance tuning and high-end displays. Like many people, I’m ambivalent at best about AI features being shoehorned into laptops, but the Yoga Pro 9i 16 holds up its end of the bargain on the performance and premium display fronts, packing a gorgeous OLED powered by a potent CPU and discrete GPU combo. 

The Yoga Pro 9i 16 Aura Edition is a great pick for creators in search of a high-performance laptop with a roomy 16-inch screen that still manages to be thin and fairly portable. And it’s likely you’ll be able to find it discounted soon, because Lenovo announced its successor at CES. The Gen 11 model is expected to hit this spring, which should mean the outgoing Gen 10 model will go on sale to make room for its replacement.

The model Lenovo sent along for testing is one of two primary units available at Lenovo directly and at Best Buy. I received the lower-end configuration that costs $1,950 at Lenovo and Best Buy. The primary difference between my test model and the other one is the display. My machine has a 2.8K OLED touchscreen, while the higher-end alternative includes a 3.2K tandem OLED panel. It also upgrades the RTX 5050 in my machine to an RTX 5060, for a $250 price jump. 

At Lenovo, you can customize the system, selecting up to 64GB (mine packs 32GB) RAM, which also brings with it an RTX 5070 GPU and the option to add a second 1TB solid-state drive. There’s no choice in CPU, however, no matter which system you choose. It’s a Core Ultra 9 285H from Intel’s Arrow Lake series.

The Gen 11 model expected this spring will start at $1,900 and feature Intel’s latest Panther Lake processors inside a redesigned chassis. From the photos, it doesn’t look like a radical departure, but the touchpad will offer pen support so you can use it for both mousing and drawing with the included Yoga Pen Gen 2. 

The Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i 16 Gen 10 Aura Edition starts at £1,700 in the UK and AU$2,959 in Australia.

Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i 16 Aura Edition performance

Our performance testing reflected well on the pairing of the high-end Core Ultra 9 CPU and RTX 5050 GPU. The Yoga Pro 9i 16 outshone similar competitors like Lenovo’s own well-equipped gaming laptop, the Legion 5i Gen 10, as well as premium productivity machines like the Dell 16 Premium, in the majority of our tests.

As a machine that’s positioned primarily for productivity and content creation, the Yoga Pro 9i 16 is also a capable gaming laptop. It delivered stellar 1080p performance on our gaming benchmarks, and I experienced playable frame rates even at its steep 2,880×1,800-pixel native resolution. 

Importantly, it also stays cool and quiet, even under high stress. The chassis design helps in this regard. The laptop features an unusually high rear rubber foot across the back of the machine, as well as two shorter ones near the front, giving it plenty of clearance off whatever surface it’s perched on. There’s also a massive vent spanning the back of the bottom plate to aid airflow. The few times the fans did spin up, they were relatively subdued, even during extended gaming sessions.

Design is more durable than dazzling

Despite the Aura Edition branding, the Yoga Pro 9i 16 lacks an aura. It isn’t exactly a masterclass in dazzling aesthetics. It’s a bog-standard, gray laptop: inoffensive but unimpressive. While I appreciate touches like the rounded edges along nearly every surface, and the webcam bump-out along the top that doubles as a handle for easy opening, nothing about the exterior is particularly attention-grabbing.

That’s not to say that it’s particularly unattractive. It’s sleek enough, and the presentation leans more toward elegance than workmanlike, a trend that continues inside the machine. 

The touchpad is glass, a lovely touch that gives it a much better feel than if it were a plastic surface. And the touchpad is huge. It’s so big, in fact, that it pushes the keyboard slightly too high up the machine, meaning that my palms and wrists end up resting on the touchpad in a slightly awkward way much of the time. I’m a sucker for a glass touchpad, though, and this one is responsive and generously sized with effective palm rejection. The display offers touch support, which is a nice, if largely unnecessary, feature since, unlike most other Yogas, this one can’t rotate into tablet mode.

The keyboard itself has slightly recessed keycaps, decent travel and is fairly snappy, imparting a premium chiclet feel that I appreciate in a laptop keyboard. The keys are backlit as well, with adjustable brightness that ranges from a subtle glow to a distracting glare. The overall typing experience is generally comfortable and pleasant, except for the wrist placement issue caused by that ocean of a touchpad living at the bottom of the deck.

Given the impressive internals, the Yoga Pro 9i 16 is a fairly slim machine at 0.75 inches thick, but it’s hefty, weighing in at 4.52 pounds. It won’t disappear into a bag the way an ultraportable can, but a few extra ounces are a small price to pay for this level of performance and the spacious 16-inch screen.

The superstar of the whole package is the 16-inch, 2.8K OLED display. It demonstrated perfect color range in our sRGB test at 100%, and an impressive 94% in the (larger gamut) Adobe RGB test. It’s bright, with a (non-HDR) brightness of 489 nits, vivid whites and perfect blacks. It’s hard to imagine that the slight resolution bump in the tandem OLED in the higher-priced unit would provide much more sharpness and fidelity than the 2.8K option, which feels like a near-perfect sweet spot for a panel this size. And at the 500 nits of peak brightness, I’m not too motivated for the extra brightness the tandem OLED might provide.

The one real letdown was the speakers. With six total speakers (four woofers and two tweeters), I was anticipating a robust sound stage, at least by laptop standards. Something about the chassis design and speaker integration gives the sound a certain hollow quality, as well as a hint of tinniness. It’s certainly not a deal-breaker, verging even on a nitpick, but I think for movies or extended listening sessions, I’d want a pair of quality headphones. And for such a thing, there’s a 3.5mm audio jack included in the generous port selection.

Speaking of ports, Lenovo didn’t skimp, with a pair of Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports alongside two USB-A connections plus an HDMI port, full-size SD card reader, aforementioned audio jack and Lenovo’s proprietary charging port.

The 5-megapixel webcam is sharp and exhibits virtually no artifacting or blur in my tests. It worked flawlessly with Windows Hello facial recognition, and Lenovo has helpfully included a physical kill switch for it on one side of the machine.

CNET buying advice for the Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i Aura Edition

At its price of $1,950, the Yoga Pro 9i Aura Edition is an excellent value. It’s thoughtfully designed to serve creators and productivity users, while simultaneously providing enough horsepower for gamers, all in conjunction with a gorgeous OLED. Getting this level of performance in a fairly compact package that is also able to operate in near silence for less than $2,000 makes it a great buy. And even with the Gen 11 model coming soon, this Gen 10 machine is worthy of an Editors’ Choice award.