Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i: Luxury notebooks with a soft keyboard and haptic touchpad

Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i Notebook

Although the IFA 2020 takes place in a shortened Special Edition and many manufacturers participate purely virtually, the product presentations have not been postponed. Lenovo presents the Yoga 9i and Yoga Slim 9i, two luxury notebooks with Intel Tiger Lake, optional leather housing, soft keyboard and haptic touchpad.

Yoga 9i and Yoga Slim 9i rank at the top of Lenovo’s yoga portfolio and represent the new spearhead. The Yoga 9i is a convertible whose optional 14-inch or 15-inch display is attached to a 360-degree hinge and can therefore be folded completely so that the notebook can be used as a tablet. The hinge is also designed in such a way that the sound bar integrated in it and certified for Dolby Atmos always rotates along and follows the orientation of the display. In the hinge, Lenovo hides a stylus that can be drawn on the display.

Soft keyboard and haptic touchpad

Lenovo is breaking new ground with the input devices, especially the keyboard. The aim of the invention is to use a two-stage rubberdome construction method to prevent hard placement on the substructure during keystroke. Lenovo compares the system with the soft-close mechanics of drawers or car doors. The manufacturer promises a much more pleasant typing experience than with previous keyboards of the yoga series. For the first time, Lenovo connects the illumination of the keyboard to an ambient light sensor in order to be able to control its brightness individually and automatically instead of manually in fixed stages.

Also new in the Windows world is the touchpad, which is hidden in the 14-inch version under a glass cover running from edge to edge, which covers the entire palm rest. Underneath, a 50 percent larger haptic touchpad, which gives the user feedback on vibrations, sits centrally arranged compared to the previous top yoga model. The 15-inch model retains the normal touchpad.

New materials are also provided for the housing, which Lenovo manufactures as standard from CNC-milled aluminum, but optionally offers with a leather-covered top. It is genuine leather, which according to Lenovo comes from responsible production, although it remains the skin of an animal.

Tiger Lake with Project Athena

On the technical side, both variants rely on new 10 nm processors of the Intel Tiger Lake series and are certified for the Project Athena from Intel, with connections such as Thunderbolt 4 and in the wireless area Wi-Fi 6. Since Intel has not yet presented the Tiger Lake generation with all the details such as cores and clock rates, this information is also missing from Lenovo. For RAM and SSDs, increments of 8 GB, 12 GB and 16 GB are provided, the SSDs range from 256 GB to 1 TB or 2 TB in the 15-inch variant.

For the displays, Lenovo calls a screen-to-body ratio of 90.5 percent, either FHD or 4K resolution, a brightness of 500 cd/m² for both panels and a coverage of the DCI-P3 color space of over 90 percent including HDR certification for Dolby Vision. The overall package should reach an extremely long duration of up to 18 hours in the MobileMark in 14 inches if the FHD panel is selected. With UHD resolution, the runtime is halved to just 9 hours. For the 15-inch model, up to 14 hours (FHD) or up to 11 hours (UHD) are specified.

Yoga Slim 9i dispenses with 360-degree angle 

With the same features, but in the classic notebook format without 360-degree hinge, the 13.9 mm thin and 1.2 kg light Yoga Slim 9i comes along. This version is only available with a 14-inch display, which offers an IR camera for Windows Hello and an electronic privacy shutter in the upper frame. The webcam can be closed mechanically via a switch on the side of the notebook.

The Lenovo Yoga 9i will be available in 14 inches at prices from 1,799 euros and in 15 inches from 2,199 euros in November on the German market. The Yoga Slim 9i also starts at 1,799 euros and is also planned for November.