Lenovo Slim 9i 14 Review

The new Lenovo Slim 9i 14 was created with two targets in thoughts: first, it’s the first carbon-neutral laptop computer to be commercially out there. Secondly, regardless of being manufactured from many recyclable supplies, it ought to deliver premium leisure and cellular luxurious. In this evaluate, we are going to take a look at the alternatives and design methods Lenovo has adopted to see if the truth matches the pitch.

Slim 9i Specifications Highlights

With the Lenovo Slim 9i 14, potential consumers received’t have to fret an excessive amount of about understanding their {hardware} choices as a result of Lenovo made it quite simple. There’s one processor possibility (together with graphics) and two glorious OLED show choices. The RAM (16 GB or 32G soldered) and storage (512GB or 1 TB) are straightforward selections, relying in your wants.

Our testing unit has an Intel Core i7-1280P (6P+8E cores) with built-in Intel Iris Xe graphics. There’s 32 GB of RAM and 1 TB of storage, although this won’t have an effect on the benchmarking efficiency in comparison with fashions with smaller reminiscence and storage footprints.

The two show choices are 2.8K (90Hz) and 4K OLED (60Hz) panels with comparable efficiency, aside from the refresh fee and pixel rely. More on that within the Display part.

Lenovo included its A.I. Core 2.0 characteristic, a chip (+software program) that neatly manages energy and show settings to maximise advantages whereas decreasing energy utilization. Among many different issues, Lenovo can detect whenever you’re going away and lock your pc instantly, each for safety and energy financial savings.

Industrial Design

The Lenovo Slim 9i 14 design is among the most fun elements of the laptop computer, giving it a distinct appear and feel that units it other than different laptops we’ve seen this yr.

The Slim 9i 14 is constructed like a smartphone, with curved edges and an enormous tempered glass floor on the show’s again cowl. The glass makes it look terribly slick and chic. At the identical time, the glass might be extra immune to minor scratches than aluminum and is simpler to scrub. Unfortunately, it may additionally crack should you mistreat it.

Lenovo is offering a cool laptop computer sleeve within the field as customers will in all probability need to maintain this laptop computer as pristine as doable. The glass is examined to withstand a 50cm drop however keep away from drops altogether. The sleeve has a pen holder, however sadly, there’s no e-Pen help. For e-Pen help, take a look at the brand new Yoga i9 14, the convertible-PC counterpart to this laptop computer.

“THE GLASS MAKES IT LOOK EXTRAORDINARILY SLICK AND ELEGANT”

Thanks to the rounded edges, holding the laptop computer is extremely snug and smooth, which you’ll admire as you go from assembly to assembly. The telephone is just 0.59-inch thick (14.9mm), comparable to 2 stacked smartphones.

An enormous side of this design is the world’s first Carbon Neutral laptop computer, licensed to the ISO 14067:2018 customary that describes how we should always calculate a product’s carbon footprint. Even the bundle paper is FSC certified.

Making this laptop computer carbon impartial is a outstanding technical feat of engineering and a doubtlessly sensible enterprise route. Many firms are actively in search of methods to hit their ESG targets (Environmental, Social, and Governance) to fulfill traders.

“CARBON NEUTRAL: A REMARKABLE TECHNICAL FEAT OF ENGINEERING”

The laptop computer’s dimensions of 315 x 214.4 x 14.9 mm (12.4 x 8.44 x 0.59 inches) make it a really compact pc in its class. The aluminum and glass development offers it a 3.02 Lbs (1.37Kg) weight. That’s larger than the ThinkPad X1 Carbon or ThinkPad X1 Carbon nano, two exceptionally light-weight laptops.

The Slim 9i 14 has a light-weight heft that screams “quality material” whenever you choose it up. Check one out in a retailer if in case you have an opportunity, because it’s definitely worth the expertise, even only for curiosity’s sake.

Keyboard and Trackpad

The keyboard is much like what Lenovo makes use of in its high-end shopper laptops. Smile-Shape keys supply a 0.9mm (guestimate) key journey with agency and agreeable tactile suggestions. This keyboard is backlit by monochrome LED lighting (2 ranges).

The glass Trackpad is ~50% bigger than the brand new ThinkPad X1 Carbon, in order that’s an enormous change for Lenovo. It is now very appropriate for complicated gestures utilizing 3-4 fingers, and if these are a part of your workflow, you’ll be thrilled with this trackpad.

Ports

Having three USB-C ports on the laptop computer is nice, particularly when utilizing the Thunderbolt 4 protocol. There’s additionally a 3.5mm audio connector and Lenovo additionally supplies a USB-C multiport adapter (VGA, HDMI, USB-A) that provides primary connectivity.

Sound

The Slim 9i comes with a quad-speakers, Dolby Atmos-certified Bowers & Wilkins sound system with two woofers (2x 3W) on the backside and two tweeters (2x 2W) on both aspect of the keyboard hidden behind the speaker grills.

“A WORLD-CLASS AUDIO EXPERIENCE”

The speaker set produces a world-class audio expertise, not just for a laptop computer this dimension but in addition for laptops of any dimension. For instance, the sound high quality is a lot better than our giant 17-inch gaming laptop computer on the workplace. It’s mind-boggling.

It is a testomony to the standard elements and tuning Lenovo has chosen for this laptop computer. In the top, Audio does depend on sound physics, so bigger laptops have the potential to characteristic even higher and extra highly effective audio, however sadly most don’t.

Display

The Lenovo PureSight 4K OLED show we now have examined is magnificent. Of course, it comes with all of the OLED advantages you’ve heard of: intense black and glorious coloration copy are the 2 properties which make this display an ideal leisure medium, particularly in a dimly lit surroundings.

PureSight is a Lenovo model that describes a top quality stage for its greatest flat panels. The technicalities could change over time, however Puresight represents workstation-level shows of the second.

In a vibrant setting like the outside, it’s harder to understand all of the nuances the show can render. The specs of this display present 400 NITs of brightness, however we measured it at 558 NITs which was an excellent shock. Both choices are shiny shows, so the colours and particulars look a bit higher than a matte panel. The draw back is excessive reflectivity.

“MAGNIFICENT.”

The 16:10 side ratio offers a bit extra vertical area, which is just about an ordinary in 2022 for high-end productiveness laptops. With 100% DCI-P3 (125% sRGB) coloration protection and built-in X-Rite coloration tuning, this laptop computer can undoubtedly cater to the wants of 2D graphics professionals who want to point out their work below one of the best circumstances.

The 1080p webcam is a step up from earlier 720p built-in webcams and has an infrared sensor to log in with facial recognition securely. An e-Privacy shutter as a bodily swap off to the laptop computer’s proper aspect. You should be inside Windows to allow/disable the digital camera utilizing an Fn key. The swap helps you to do that even when locked out.

This laptop computer has far-field microphones, which suggests it’s optimized to document sound from any route. This was initially added to help voice assistants like Microsoft’s Cortana or Amazon’s Alexa.

Performance

The Slim 9i 14 (“i” stands for Intel) is powered by an Intel Core i7-1280P, one of many extra performant cellular laptop computer processors for this class of laptops. Our knowledge exhibits it to deliver a big efficiency increase over the i7-1260P (as examined within the X1 Carbon) and much more over the i7-1230U (as seen as one Dell XPS 13 possibility).

All productiveness and multimedia duties are dealt with with ease and velocity. However, this platform can also be very applicable for 2D graphics design and net growth. Light video modifying is feasible since there’s 32GB RAM and a 1TB storage possibility, however the lack of a discrete (GPU) would possibly cap your video-editing potential.

Enterprise-oriented laptops such because the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen10 do get a better sequential disk learn/write efficiency, which may translate to barely larger productiveness for I/O heavy workloads corresponding to video compression export. However, the extent of disk efficiency of the Slim 9i 14 is superb in its shopper laptop computer class.

Battery Life

With the usual PCMark 10 Modern Office battery test, we bought 460 minutes (7.6 hours) of steady office-like work with the display (110 NITs). It is necessary to notice that that is with the 4K OLED show configuration, which is probably the most power-hungry. With the two.8K show, this may climb to 9.5+ hrs, however we now have not examined that one.

Lenovo says this 4K laptop computer may yield 11.5 hours of native video playback at 150 NITs, whereas the two.8K mannequin would get 11.7 hours. Both claims appear plausible, however that’s a best-case state of affairs.

The 75Wh battery is sort of giant for a 14” skinny and light-weight laptop computer, which explains why Lenovo can suggest such show and processor choices and nonetheless preserve stress-free battery life for many customers.

There’s a 65W compact AC Adapter, or you would additionally use a third occasion adapter that complies with USB-PD (Power Delivery) on the right wattage, just like the EZQuest FinalPower 90W GaN Wall Charger.

Those who carry out solely very primary duties and need excessive battery life ought to verify the ThinkPad X13s, however we predict the use case is totally totally different from what is meant for the Slim i9.

Conclusion

The Lenovo Slim 9i 14 is designed as a luxurious, carbon-neutral pc that provides “premium entertainment” in a small type issue. From that standpoint, the design has achieved and maybe surpassed its targets.

This laptop computer is an absolute multimedia beast that provides the final word visible and sound expertise in a 14-inch laptop computer type issue. In addition to entertaining, we predict it’s a succesful 2D create workstation or an ultramobile net growth pc with sufficient CPU, RAM, and storage for these duties.

Data exhibits the Slim 9i 14 is most frequently in contrast to the brand new Yoga 9i, and for good causes. Internally, each computer systems have many widespread traits, however the Yoga 9i has a 360-degrees hinge (and speaker) design along with e-Pen help.

“AN ABSOLUTE MULTIMEDIA BEAST”

The Dell XPS 13 can also be one other widespread comparability. We assume the use case is totally different. The XPS 13 is considerably extra compact than the Slim 9i, however that’s as a result of it’s a 13.3” laptop computer (vs. 14”). The XPS 13 additionally has much less highly effective CPU choices and doesn’t supply OLED shows. It is perhaps an X1 Carbon Gen10 or X1 Nano competitor as a substitute.

We like the place Lenovo goes with this product and are typically impressed with the economic design, construct high quality, and chosen applied sciences.

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