Lenovo Slim Pro 9i review: The display will knock your socks off

Price When Reviewed

$1,899.99

Best Prices Today: Lenovo Slim Pro i9

Lenovo’s top-tier Slim Pro and Yoga laptops have come into their very own in recent times, delivering top-notch efficiency alongside glorious design. The new Slim Pro 9i as soon as once more ups the ante for Lenovo’s opponents, pairing a 14-core Intel processor with Nvidia RTX graphics and a Mini-LED show. Let’s get into it.

Looking for extra choices? Check out PCWorld’s roundup of the best laptops obtainable at this time.

Lenovo Slim Pro 9i: Specs and options

The Lenovo Slim Pro 9i packs Intel’s Core i7-13705H, a uncommon different to the Intel Core i7-13700H. The two processors share the identical core rely, clock pace, and most energy draw. The Core i7-13705H lacks vPro, nevertheless, and it’s bodily smaller. 

• CPU: Intel Core i7-13705H
• Memory: 32GB LPDDR5 6400 MHz
• Graphics/GPU: Nvidia RTX 4050
• Display: 3072×1920 165Hz Mini-LED touchscreen
• Storage: 1TB stable state drive
• Webcam: 1440p with digital privateness shutter
• Connectivity: 1x USB-C 3.2, 1x Thunderbolt 4 / USB 4, 2x USB 3.2, 1x HDMI 2.1, 1x card reader, 1x 3.5mm combo audio jack 
• Networking: Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.1
• Biometrics: Windows Hello facial recognition
• Battery capability: 75 watt-hour
• Dimensions: 12.9 x 9.64 x 0.85 inches
• Weight: 3.7 kilos
• MSRP: $1,899.99

Lenovo additionally delivers a Mini-LED show with an uncommon 3072×1920 decision. It’s a substitute for the OLED shows which can be frequent amongst opponents. The Mini-LED show quotes a particularly excessive most brightness of 1,200 nits in HDR, a lot increased than the 400 to 600 nits of typical LED and OLED shows.

Lenovo Slim Pro 9i: Display and construct high quality

Lenovo’s Slim Pro 9i retains the good-looking, refined design frequent to high-end Lenovo laptops. Its metallic-gunmetal colorway and lack of apparent aptitude makes for a secular first impression. Look nearer, although, and the laptop computer’s benefits turn into apparent. The use of rounded edges throughout the laptop computer’s perimeter makes for a pleasant, inviting really feel. Material high quality is great, as effectively. Both the decrease and higher half really feel sturdy in-hand.

The Slim Pro 9i is a bit thick, although, measuring as much as 8.5 inches thick and almost 13 inches huge. The Apple MacBook Pro 14, Lenovo Yoga 9i, Razer Blade 14, and Acer Swift X 14 are much less voluminous. Lenovo retains the Slim Pro 9i’s weight in verify, although, because it ideas the scales at simply 3.7 kilos. Don’t get me incorrect, although: the Lenovo isn’t huge and can slot in most backpacks and messenger baggage with out challenge. 

There’s a pair design quirks to notice. The Slim Pro 9i has a digicam bump-out above the show which homes the 1440p webcam and IR digicam. The laptop computer’s show lid can be a tad thicker than traditional (because of the Mini-LED show). Fortunately, neither quirk turns into a problem in day-to-day use. 

Lenovo Slim Pro 9i: Keyboard, trackpad

IDG / Matthew Smith

A cushty keyboard greets anybody who makes use of the Lenovo Slim Pro 9i. It supplies a spacious, standard structure that feels instantly acquainted. A numpad isn’t included (which is typical for a 14-inch laptop computer), so the keyboard stays centered above the touchpad. 

Keys activate with prolonged journey and a agency bottoming motion that gives good tactile suggestions. It’s a quiet keyboard, too: personally, I favor a bit extra click on, however your mileage could range. The general expertise is superior to Apple’s MacBook Pro 14 and Razer’s Blade 14. 

A girthy touchpad consumes a lot of the true property under the keyboard’s spacebar. It responds rapidly to enter and supplies ample house for home windows multi-touch gestures. The dimension of the touchpad meant my palms typically partially rested on its floor, but I had no points with unintended mouse enter. Apple’s MacBook Pro touchpads stay the gold customary for laptops, however the Slim Pro 9i’s touchpad is nearly as good because it will get on Windows machines.

Lenovo Slim Pro 9i: Display, audio

IDG / Matthew Smith

The Lenovo Slim Pro 9i’s specs are spectacular, however its greatest function is the one you’ll see most frequently: the Mini-LED touchscreen. It delivers extraordinary efficiency that leaves OLED within the mud. 

Let’s speak luminance. The Slim Pro 9i can attain a peak brightness of 548 nits in SDR mode and an outlandish 1145 nits in HDR mode. That’s a bit lower than the claimed peak of 600 nits and 1,200 nits, respectively, however I’m not going to complain. Razer’s Blade 16 and Apple’s MacBook Pro 14 and 16, which even have a Mini-LED show, are the one laptops that ship comparable efficiency.

Brightness is beneficial when utilizing the laptop computer in a brilliant room or in a setting the place you may not have management over the lighting, like an airport foyer. However, the Slim Pro 9i’s unbelievable brilliance can be helpful in HDR video games and films. I used to be amazed by the element and punch delivered in Top Gun: Maverick. The solar shone intensely over Maverick’s shoulders and its reflections glittered via micro-scratches within the cockpit. OLED has its perks, however it could actually’t hope to match the Slim Pro 9i’s cinematic immersion. 

The Slim Pro 9i does effectively in distinction. It achieves an infinite distinction ratio in HDR content material, and in SDR when the show was used at a low stage of brightness. This happens as a result of the Mini-LED show can obtain an ideal minimal brightness of zero nits when displaying darkish content material. The distinction ratio isn’t infinite when SDR is considered at a extra affordable 50 to 100 % brightness, however nonetheless hits a powerful distinction ratio of 5070:1. 

Color efficiency is nice, too. The Slim Pro 9i can show 100 % of sRGB, 97 % of DCI-P3, and 87 % of AdobeRGB, all with stable colour accuracy. It does fall a tad behind OLED: the Acer Swift X 14’s show hit 100 % of DCI-P3 and 94 % of AdobeRGB. Still, the Slim Pro 9i has a vivid, punchy image. 

Sharpness is great, because the laptop computer’s uncommon 3072 x 1920 decision packs nearly 250 pixels per inch (a 27-inch 4K monitor has 163 pixels per inch). Motion readability is nice, too, because of the show’s 165Hz refresh price. 

Downsides? While the Mini-LED’s HDR efficiency is nice, it’s solely obtainable when the laptop computer is plugged in. But even this isn’t actually a criticism, as a result of the identical is true of almost all laptops that assist HDR.

Lenovo helps the Slim Pro 9i’s glorious visuals with beefy four-speaker audio. It consists of vital bass that properly fills within the low finish. That, in flip, supplies house for the mid and higher vary, which avoids the muddy or metallic sound frequent to most laptops. Maximum quantity is excessive, too, so the laptop computer can properly fill an workplace with sound. I’m undecided it’s fairly nearly as good as Lenovo’s Yoga 9i nevertheless it beats most 14-inch Windows laptops I’ve tried lately, and stands toe-to-toe with Apple’s MacBook Pro 14. 

Lenovo Slim Pro 9i: Webcam, microphone, biometrics

Lenovo goes all-in on the webcam. It has a most decision of 1440p and consists of an IR sensor for compatibility with Windows Hello facial recognition login (a fingerprint reader isn’t obtainable). The webcam’s excessive decision delivers a particularly crisp picture, particularly in good lighting, and colour copy seems pure in most conditions. Image high quality stays unimpressive in dim lighting, however that’s true for all laptop computer webcams. 

Microphone high quality is great, too, because of a four-microphone array that picks up clear, crisp dialogue and removes most quiet to reasonable background noise. The microphone array was capable of decide up my voice even once I moved my head back and forth or barely conscious from the laptop computer. 

Lenovo Slim Pro 9i: Connectivity

IDG / Matthew Smith

As talked about earlier, the Slim Pro 9i is a bit thick for a 14-inch laptop computer. It places that thickness to good use with a mixture of future-proof and legacy connectivity.

Modern units can hook up with the laptop computer’s Thunderbolt 4 / USB4 port or the USB-C 3.2 port, each of which dot the laptop computer’s left flank. Both ports assist DisplayPort Alternate Mode and USB Power Delivery, as effectively, to allow them to be used to attach an exterior USB-C show or energy the laptop computer with the included 140-watt energy adapter. 

Older peripherals are dealt with by a pair of USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 ports on the fitting flank. An HDMI 2.1 port, SD card reader, and 3.5mm combo audio jack spherical out the choices. It’s a particularly robust choice that gives a bonus over opponents that focus solely on Thunderbolt 4 and USB-C.

Wireless connectivity is great, too, with assist for Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.1. This is typical for many laptops offered in 2023, however good to see all the identical. 

Lenovo Slim Pro 9i: Performance

The Lenovo Slim Pro 7, which I reviewed earlier this yr, was already a little bit of a powerhouse for a 14-inch machine. Yet Lenovo ups the ante with the Slim Pro 9i, which packs an Intel Core i7-13705H processor that has a complete of 14 cores (six efficiency cores and eight environment friendly cores). It upgrades from Nvidia RTX 3050 graphics to the brand new Nvidia RTX 4050, too. 

These upgrades place the Slim Pro 9i alongside different 14-inch efficiency laptops, such because the Acer Swift X 14, however a tad behind essentially the most highly effective alternate options, like Razer’s Blade 14. 

IDG / Matthew Smith

PCMark 10, a holistic system benchmark, places the Lenovo Slim Pro 9i off to a powerful begin. It scored 6,864 mixed, which defeats many laptops that present related {hardware} in a slim or small design. The Acer Swift X 14 and Lenovo Slim Pro 7 each lag behind. Samsung’s Galaxy Book3 Ultra is high canine on this check, nevertheless it’s a considerably bigger laptop computer.

IDG / Matthew Smith

Cinebench R15, a multi-core CPU check, is much less favorable to the Slim Pro 9i. It supplies an inexpensive rating of 1,979 however lands fairly far behind the Acer Swift X 14 and Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Ultra. 

It’s an fascinating outcome which underscores the distinction between the Intel Core i7-13705H and the Core i7-13700H. They’re extraordinarily related on paper, however they don’t carry out equally in the true world. The Core i7-13705H is at a drawback right here. 

IDG / Matthew Smith

Handbrake, one other CPU-heavy benchmark, confirms that outcome. The Lenovo Slim Pro 9i is the slowest of all laptops used for comparability, falling behind even the AMD Ryzen 7735HS within the older Lenovo Slim Pro 7.

The Slim Pro 9i’s CPU efficiency isn’t unhealthy, nevertheless it doesn’t impress. In truth, it struggles to face out even when in comparison with the AMD Ryzen 7735HS, a processor with fewer cores and a decrease most clock pace. That’s not an important outcome for Intel, which continues to look lackluster subsequent to much less power-hungry AMD Ryzen 7000-series processors.

IDG / Matthew Smith

Fortunately, the Slim Pro 9i has a secret weapon: the Nvidia RTX 4050 GPU.

The Nvidia RTX 4050 doesn’t look intimidating on a spec sheet. It’s Nvidia’s least performant RTX 40-series GPU, in any case. However, Lenovo supplies an RTX 4050 with a most graphics energy of 80 watts. That’s a giant enchancment over opponents just like the Acer Swift X 14, which limits the RTX 4050 to a most graphics energy of 50 watts.

It exhibits in 3DMark Time Spy, the place the Slim Pro 9i delivers a formidable rating of 7,236. That’s a greater than 20 % enchancment over the Acer Swift X 14, and greater than 35 % faster than the Slim Pro 7 with Nvidia RTX 4050.

IDG / Matthew Smith

The same enchancment is present in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, the place the Slim Pro 9i supplies one other roughly 25 % enchancment over the Acer Aspire X 14. That places the Slim Pro 9i at a powerful 100 frames per second at 1080p decision and the sport’s Highest element preset. 

IDG / Matthew Smith

The Slim Pro 9i continues to do effectively in Metro Exodus, which we examined at 1080p decision and Extreme element. Its lead is decreased to just some frames, nevertheless, offering a much more slim benefit than in Tomb Raider. Memory could also be a problem: although it could actually eat extra energy, the Lenovo’s RTX 4050 stays restricted to 6GB of VRAM.

I wrapped up testing with Cyberpunk 2077, which gives an instance of ray-traced efficiency in motion. The recreation averaged 58 frames per second at 1080p decision and Ultra element (with AMD FSR 2.0 on). Switching on the ray-traced Ultra preset decreased that to simply 16 frames per second, however Nvidia DLSS 3 lifted efficiency again to a playable 50 frames per second. It’s additionally a tad higher than the Acer Swift X 14, which achieved 46 frames per second on this state of affairs.

Lenovo Slim Pro 9i: Battery life

The Slim Pro 9i packs a 75 watt-hour battery into its thick chassis. That’s a pretty big battery for many laptops, however the Slim Pro 9i’s CPU and GPU put it to the check—and discover it wanting.

Our customary battery life check, which loops a 4K file of the quick movie Tears of Steel, drained the battery in seven hours and 47 minutes. That’s a usable outcome, and definitely higher than the disappointing Acer Swift X 14. 

Still, this result’s unlikely to impress street warriors on the lookout for all-day battery life. The older Slim Pro 7 was a more sensible choice for marathon classes and a few bigger laptops, just like the Samsung Galaxy Book3 Ultra and Asus Vivobook Pro 16X OLED, outlast the Slim Pro 9i.

Lenovo Slim Pro 9i: Should you purchase it?

The Lenovo Slim Pro 9i is a powerful laptop computer with a superb Mini-LED show, a strong 100-watt model of Nvidia RTX 4050 graphics, and glorious connectivity. Intel’s Core i7-13705H lets the laptop computer down, because it fails to ship a big enchancment over the cheaper Lenovo Slim Pro 7. That wound is worsened by the Slim Pro 9i’s MSRP, which is increased than alternate options with superior CPU efficiency. Still, the Slim Pro 9i is a simple advice for individuals who care extra about GPU than CPU efficiency. It’s additionally a unbelievable alternative when you often view HDR motion pictures and video games in your laptop computer.