A threat to portable monitors everywhere: Lenovo Yoga Book 9i review

Dual-screen laptops have been around for enough years that Asus now has a lineup of them. But Lenovo's Yoga Book 9i is the dual-screen option for maximum screen space. Open the 2-in-1 laptop, and you'll find two 13.3-inch, 16:10 OLED touchscreens in lieu of any integrated keyboard, touchpad, or traditional deck.

The machine looks striking. But once you're past the initial intrigue, you might ask yourself: Why would I want this? Well—you might not. This is an unusual laptop built for unique needs. While our review will explain how it works—and its undesirable quirks—many might find its design inconvenient.

But for some, the laptop opens possibilities in ways new laptops rarely do. It can make your portable monitor redundant, and it sports a crease-free look that foldables can only dream of at this point. Lenovo's dual-screen laptop could influence future products for the better. For now, the laptop's a refreshingly realistic option for people who want more screen real estate without giving up more space.

As with many innovative designs, there's a trade-off, and in this case, that includes the price-to-productivity ratio.

So much screen

Thirteen-inch laptops are often easy to move around, but serious multitasking on a small screen gets tedious. If you're tight on space and need more pixels, a portable monitor can be helpful, but the Yoga Book 9i gives you an extra screen without requiring as much space, laptop ports, or an additional device.

Lenovo's Yoga Book 9i dual-OLED screen laptop.

Scharon Harding

Lenovo's Yoga Book 9i dual-OLED screen laptop. Scharon Harding

A company called SZBOX is already selling a similar design, and I don't think it'll be the last.

Scharon Harding

A company called SZBOX is already selling a similar design, and I don't think it'll be the last. Scharon Harding

Lenovo's Yoga Book 9i dual-OLED screen laptop. Scharon Harding

A company called SZBOX is already selling a similar design, and I don't think it'll be the last. Scharon Harding

Another angle.

Another angle.

The origami stand manages to keep the laptop sturdy.

Scharon Harding

The origami stand manages to keep the laptop sturdy. Scharon Harding

Another angle.

The origami stand manages to keep the laptop sturdy. Scharon Harding

With one screen propped up and the other resting in the included stand/keyboard cover, things look... hazardous. But the laptop stayed put for me, including when I wrote on the bottom screen with the stylus. I've seen people mimic this setup by using a portable monitor and stack of books behind their laptop, which doesn't look particularly safe, either.

Some portable monitors attach to the top of laptop screens and expensive dual-screen ones, but the Yoga Book offers a similar experience while ensuring the two screens are virtually identical and both use OLEDs, which is a nice feature compared to the limited options among niche portable monitors.

Tapping a screen with five fingers expands the open window so it fills both screens. There were times when the laptop didn't adjust to this properly, though. When I wrote this review or read long articles in a Chrome or Edge window that filled both displays, sometimes the page would only scroll within the top screen.

The laptop's 360-degree hinge, which also holds some of the laptop's speakers, makes one enormous bezel. Occasionally, the division between the two displays felt natural, but at other times the separation distracted me. The hinge separating the two screens is flanked by two gaps, sometimes making whatever was behind my laptop visible. If bezels distract you, this is even worse. But most of the time, I didn't notice the gaps.

The bezel-soundbar hinge was less distracting than the cursed foldable PC crease. I haven't had as much time with foldable PCs as I have with this laptop. But the time I spent with 2020's ThinkPad X1 Fold and a prototype of the 16-inch ThinkPad X1 Fold were each marred by a distracting crease, especially with the screen in portrait mode, that mildly altered the image and caused glare.

Foldable PCs, in theory, give you a laptop-size screen but in a more portable package. A folded-up Asus Zenbook 17 Fold or 16-inch ThinkPad X1 Fold takes up less space than a shut Yoga Book 9i, but the Lenovo's still a 0.63-inch-thick ultralight laptop. And with a proper keyboard, the dual-screen setup is better equipped for multitasking than a 16-inch foldable screen, let alone a traditional laptop the Yoga Book's size.

I wouldn't typically have a video, a note-taking app, and Slack open simultaneously on a 13-inch laptop, but doing so was simple on Lenovo's PC. Like any convertible laptop, you can tent the Yoga Book. And if you duplicate the screens, you can easily do a tutorial or presentation. If I wanted to show someone how to do something on a traditional 13-inch clamshell, they'd have to squeeze in uncomfortably close.

An open Book.

Credit: Scharon Harding

Remember that soundbar that's decently distracting with both laptop screens horizontal? When both screens are vertical, it's kind of neat. With the laptop looking like a book (hey, I get the name now!), the spine-like division made sense to me. And, perhaps just because the opportunity to use a pair of 10:16 ultra-tall screens is so rare, this setup felt fresh—an increasingly rare sensation for a laptop reviewer.

Another downside to using the laptop like a book in its stand is its angles aren't adjustable. The PC wouldn't fit in the stand when I tried bringing the 'pages' closer together, and I couldn't adjust the stand so that the screens were tilted more toward me. It's also awkward to do video calls or charge the laptop in this setup.

Physical keyboard, virtual touchpad.

Scharon Harding

Physical keyboard, virtual touchpad. Scharon Harding

I didn't like having windows here,

Scharon Harding

I didn't like having windows here, Scharon Harding

Physical keyboard, virtual touchpad. Scharon Harding

I didn't like having windows here, Scharon Harding

Setting the Yoga Book up on its stand is simple enough with sufficient space and patience, but what about when you want to use the laptop on, dare I say, your lap? Or what if you don't feel like carrying around its peripherals? Spoiler alert: virtual keyboards and touchpads aren't ideal.

This computer could do wonders with a third-party wireless keyboard. But the included clacker can at least attach to one of the screens quickly and reliably, and the computer instantly responds, including by bringing up a virtual touchpad if the keyboard is on the upper half of the screen.

Putting the keyboard on the screen's lower half leaves space for one or two small windows. I couldn't get serious work done in windows there, though, because looking down at them would eventually bother my neck or make me feel ill. I could see the windows without straining my neck, but then they would be hard to read. Alternatively, you can have Windows Outlook and news widgets fill the spaces north of the keyboard, but they're useless if you don't use Outlook or insist on reliable news sources. Lenovo tells me that performance monitor and weather widgets are in the works.

The Yoga Book 9i's gimmick is multiscreen productivity, but carrying around a keyboard and mouse would minimize that convenience. Technically, you don't have to haul all that gear, though.

Touchscreen input is my last resort, but I wasn't SOL if I needed the computer and lacked a keyboard or mouse.

Credit: Scharon Harding

Like with most touchscreen keyboards, I can use the Yoga Book 9i's on-screen keys if I must. Optional haptic feedback adds tactility, and the keyboard kept up with fast input better than expected. But using the virtual keyboard is a painfully flat experience, and I still typed slower and less accurately. The virtual touchpad also quickly appeared whenever I slid the virtual keyboard up with eight fingers or tapped three fingers on the screen.

Eureka! It works

Not every OS can accommodate a dual- or foldable-screen PC properly. But Windows 11 has proven easier to navigate with a stylus or finger than Windows 10, and "snap layouts" really seal the deal.

By hovering my mouse on a window’s maximize button or bringing the window to the screen's upper edge, I could easily make a window adhere to various layouts—like taking up two-thirds of a vertically oriented screen or a fourth of one in landscape mode—on either screen. I'm not saying Windows 11 plays better with a dual-screen laptop than a foldable PC. The experiences seem comparable. My point is, rather, that these types of innovations are realistically feasible—and not overtly buggy—with Windows 11.

There were hiccups, though. Sometimes I’d drag a browser tab to the top of a screen to bring up snap layouts, but if a different browser tab was nearby, the two tabs would merge instead. Some apps just don’t get it, either. When I had Zoom open on the left two-thirds of a horizontal screen and another window occupying the remaining third, closing Zoom's chat section resulted in the entire Zoom window shrinking. Resizing the Zoom window made the screen expand off-screen.

Snap layouts was the most helpful tool in making the most of the two screens, but Lenovo sought to further simplify things with proprietary software. There's an optional feature where tapping an icon in the taskbar opens the app on the tapped screen, for example. There are also thoughtful inclusions, like the ability to adjust screen brightness in unison or separately (you can make a screen go dark, too).

The Smart Note app lets you write reminders, with notifications automatically set based on the time written in the note, that display on the lock screen. You can also write notes from the lock screen with the app.

Lenovo's got deeper dual-screen dreams, with its preloaded User Center app promising more features, like dual-screen wallpaper options and a Smart Reader app. Ideas are brewing, but with this new premise, there's a need and hope for further development to maximize the usefulness of a laptop with this much screen space.

Keyboard and mouse

The stand morphs into a keyboard cover that leaves the peripheral's charging port and bottom edge exposed.

Credit: Scharon Harding

A quick note on the included Bluetooth keyboard and mouse: They were adequate for drafting articles, but long-term owners will want more robust tools for serious work.

The keyboard's keys have noticeable travel to them but not as much some of the best laptop keyboards, plus they're pretty flat.

The mouse has two Bluetooth channels (a nice bonus for a free mouse), a button for adjusting dots per inch (800, 1,600, or 2,400 DPI), and firm clicks. But it's not rechargeable (it uses one AA battery) and lacks programmable buttons and sufficient height for comfortably filling my palm. The Lenovo Digital Pen 3, meanwhile, supports the AES protocol, has two buttons, and needs a AAA battery. I wish it had a flat side for a better grip.

Speaking of input, there are only three Thunderbolt 4 ports, so you may need adapters. Considering you'll likely be carrying around a keyboard and mouse with this laptop, too, that's more than a handful.

Regarding durability, only you can ensure a dual-screen laptop gets the extra care required. But the aluminum, unibody chassis has the same premium feel as other Lenovo Yoga laptops. The laptop, as is typical for Lenovo, has a one-year warranty.

Displays quality

This laptop is mostly screens, so it's important those panels shine for users. For OLED fans, they mostly will. Colors are strong and rich with OLED contrast that makes even mundane text appear strong and precise. Some colors, particularly greens and reds, occasionally looked oversaturated, though. Depending on the content, things could look extra vibrant or distractingly overblown. Our i1 DisplayPro colorimeter recorded 120 percent DCI-P3 coverage. Each screen has a solid 255.4 pixels per inch, and I'm glad to see Lenovo going for a taller orientation, 16:10, with this costly computer.

Interestingly, the bottom screen can get slightly brighter than the top screen. I'm unsure if this was intentional, but it wouldn't be a bad idea. The angle where people may view the bottom screen is less direct, so more nits can make content more easily visible.

The brightness compared to LCD-LED alternatives, like Mini LED laptops, is typically a downside for OLED, and indeed there are brighter screens in the chart above. The screen screens were too dim to work outside on a sunny day, especially with the virtual keyboard/touchpad, but they were bright enough for most scenarios.

More distracting than a lack of nits, though, is how reflective the glossy screens are. The screens sometimes picked up overhead lights, and it was even harder to work outside with my reflection staring back at me.

Performance

Lenovo sells the Yoga Book 9i with only one CPU, Intel's Core i7-1355U with a 15 W TDP. The U-series isn't surprising here. After all, the machine's slim and, with two OLED screens, needs to conserve battery power. U-series is also in Asus' foldable PC and will power the 16-inch Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold, Lenovo last said. Current-gen ultralight laptops with greater emphasis on performance than the Yoga Book 9i often have P-series processors, but we may see more U-series-based laptops as vendors continue experimenting with foldable and portable PC designs.

At 0.63 inches thick and 2.95 lbs, this laptop's as portable as Lenovo's Yoga 9i Gen 8 (0.6 inches, starts at 3.09 lbs) or the 2023 Framework Laptop (0.62 inches, 2.87 lbs). But the P-series chips in those laptops have more power.

While the Yoga Book has two Performance cores, the Yoga 9i has four and with a higher base speed (2.2 GHz versus 1.7 GHz). The Yoga Book and Yoga 9i each have eight Efficient cores, but the E-cores in the latter have a higher base speed (1.6 versus 1.2 GHz). The Yoga 9i has more threads (16 versus 12), too. The single-screen Yoga is also $600 cheaper with the same RAM and storage specs as the dual-screen Yoga, as of this writing.

Meanwhile, the recent Framework laptop nets you more RAM and storage, plus a beefier processor (i7-1370P with six P-cores, eight E-cores, and 20 threads) for a similar price as the Yoga Book.

Here are more details on the recently Ars-tested machines used in the upcoming benchmark charts:

The Yoga Book 9i held its own against the comparison machines regarding single-core performance, but, as expected, multi-core performance lagged. The laptop's multi-core Geekbench 6 score was about 24 percent worse than the cheaper Yoga 9i's.

Throttling, though, isn't a huge concern here. The dual-screen device scored about 28 percent better than the fanless 13-inch MacBook Air in Cinebench's R23 test and around 10 percent better than the 12th Gen Intel-based HP Spectre x360 (7,517).

This Yoga Book doesn't have the computing power of some other ultralight laptops, but it's also much better at managing heat than something like an XPS 13 Plus. No part of it ever felt too hot to touch comfortably, even when handling heavy workloads.

The Vulkan benchmark shows the integrated Iris Xe graphics performing similarly among the Intel-based machines. But in the more extensive 3DMark Wild Life Extreme test, the Yoga Book fell behind the Yoga 9i by nearly 12 percent.

Battery life

A pair of OLED screens will really hamper battery life, even with a lower-wattage processor. Lenovo, like many OEMs, ships its OLED laptops in Windows' dark mode, so I tested the Yoga Book 9i's battery life in both light and dark mode:

Another Yoga

The Yoga Book 9i looks experimental but feels like a polished, finalized product worthy of a permanent place in Lenovo's lineup if it generates sufficient interest. Some of Lenovo's more adventurous laptops landed in its ThinkBook series, but by making this a Yoga, Lenovo's claiming the laptop is worthy for those with big budgets. So it's important Lenovo didn't neglect frequently used features, like the speakers and webcam. Thankfully, the Yoga Book 9i has the same exemplary (for a thin-and-light laptop) audio as other Yoga 2-in-1s and an advanced webcam with features people have come to expect at this price.

The right side has the power button, too.

Credit: Scharon Harding

The loud, full speakers are a pair of 2 W tweeters (in the soundbar) and a pair of 2 W woofers (one on each of the deck's corners facing the user). The 1080p camera has a physical switch for closing it (though you won't see the difference on the actual hardware), and it can use an infrared sensor to automatically lock the PC when you're not there. Such features won't have you reaching for your wallet. But for a $2,000 laptop that's already missing typical inclusions—like an integrated physical keyboard—it better have other features found on normal, premium laptops.

Turning the page on laptop design

At some point, laptop releases got predictable. The latest and greatest designs are often reduced to CPU upgrades, smaller bezels, and, perhaps, an improved keyboard or a reduction in size and ports. Lenovo's Yoga Book 9i is a reminder that there's more innovation to be done with laptops... even if this isn't a laptop you'll likely buy.

The good news is that no one will force you to use a 13-inch laptop with more screens than keyboards. And the better news is that if you decide to do so, this product feels complete. I rarely dealt with bugs, and once I got used to the laptop's limited but acceptable stand, keyboard, and mouse, I could do more work more comfortably here than on a single-screen laptop this size.

As a unique design, this laptop is overpriced for its productivity performance. While it's hard to replicate the convenience of the Yoga Book 9i's second screen, reflections and occasionally oversaturated colors mean neither screen's perfect.

I wouldn't blame you for avoiding something with this specialty design, limited specs, and price. But the Yoga Book 9i's existence could encourage a return to the halcyon days when companies had to dream up innovations to suit all the weird and wonderful ways we work. I won't get my hopes too high, but Lenovo reminds us that companies can still create daring laptops for unique uses.

The good

• Double the screen real estate of a regular 13-inch laptop
• Included peripherals are passable
• PC responds quickly to different orientations and keyboard setups

The bad

• Sometimes buggy when expanding a window across both screens
• Reflective screens
• Widgets have limited use and a strain to look at for long
• Expensive for its productivity capabilities
• Limited port selection emphasized by lack of traditional input methods

The ugly

• Most people aren't ready for a laptop with no integrated keyboard or touchpad