Lenovo Yoga Book 9i Is Like A Mini All-In-One PC With Double Displays
Tech
Speaker 1: So this is the Lenovo Yoga Book Nine Eye. And if something looks not quite right, that's because it has one too many displays and no keyboard. It's a two in one. But unlike Lenovo's Plain Old Yoga nine Eye Lenovo bless the yoga book with two 13 inch ole touchscreens attached by a 360 degree speaker bar hinge. I had a lot of questions going into testing this, like what can you do with this that you can't do with a regular two in one? Are [00:00:30] two screens actually better than one? Why would you want two screens and no keyboard? Who is this even for? But before I get to answering those, let's get the top level stuff out of the way. The Lenovo Yoga book nine II tested is $2,000 and at its core it's a 13.3 inch, three pound ultra portable laptop. It's a productivity machine, but the OLEDs and audio are more than good enough for entertainment in your downtime.
Speaker 1: Inside is an intel [00:01:00] core I seven U series processor and that balances out performance and battery life, which really is what you want when you're trying to power two screens without killing your battery. Immediately the body is metal and it looks and feels great in the hand. These curved edges certainly help. It has a hef to it that makes it feel like it should be heavier than three pounds. Though one of the nice parts about it being all screens is that there's no need to make the laptop any larger. For a keyboard or touch pad, you get the full 13.3 [00:01:30] inch screen, the regular 14 inch yoga nine eye weighs about the same, but of course has a keyboard and touch pad, the yoga books, accessories, uh, it's stand pen, keyboard, and mouse. Add another pound to the package. My guess is most of the time you'll be using the accessories because the overall touch experience is still finicky and really set up like this is its most useful form as sort of a dual display all in one pc.
Speaker 1: I preferred using [00:02:00] the screen side by side mostly because I like having two tall panels to work on and it also seemed more stable. The origami stand is pretty sturdy though, and there are good reasons to use the screen stacked horizontally with the additional touch features that Lenovo has built on top of windows. So here's where things get more interesting. Lenovo baked in a bunch of touch features to make better use and take more advantage of the dual [00:02:30] display. So for example, I'm gonna open a chrome window here and there we go. I'm gonna go to uh, my favorite website and uh, we've got CNET open with five finger touch. You just tap and it streams down, cascades down to that bottom display and you can tap it five fingers again and it goes away. Then if you say you wanna move this window altogether down to the bottom, you just flick, oh look, there it goes.
Speaker 1: Um, so you just flick it back and well, sometimes it just doesn't go when I [00:03:00] want, but there you go. That's a flick gesture. And then if you just wanna drag and you can just drag it and then you see this little popup here and you can just send it to the bottom display using that. Or the last one is you can select the um app on the task bar and just tap on the different screen. So if you want it up at this top one, you'll tap there and it'll jump there. If you want it back at the bottom, you tap the bottom one and it jumps back down. Um, after you're done with that, I'm just gonna, nope, [00:03:30] nope, still can't get the flick. Right. When you're not gonna be using the physical keyboard, you're gonna take this out of the way or fold it into a laptop and then with your eight fingers keyboard fashion, you're just gonna tap that and the whole keyboard's gonna pop up and you're ready to start typing.
Speaker 1: I'm a touch typist and I found it completely unusable, especially when I tried to use it on my train commute. Uh, if you hunt and peck it might be fine though there are haptics, so you do get a slight vibration, but the [00:04:00] feel is kind of disappointing. Also, Lenovo, what's with the separate mouse buttons. Even if you extend the touch area to the whole bottom of the display, you still have these dinky buttons instead of a full touch pad, like every other laptop available. Now, if you wanna use the bundled Bluetooth keyboard instead of the virtual one, just drop the keyboard on top of the display and the touch pad will open below it. And if you slide the keyboard down, you get this notification panel and [00:04:30] some current headlines in a widget. There are a couple more ways to use the dual display, like putting a video chat on the top screen and using the included journal app to take notes.
Speaker 1: There are also some games that take advantage of the dual displays that Lenovo is included also, and there's supposed to be some smart reader functionality, but that's listed as coming soon. So all these interactions are nice, especially when they work smoothly, but the fact is, the real [00:05:00] benefit of the yoga book is that you're getting another 13 inches of screen space without adding weight or losing performance or battery life, which was a surprise. So my final thoughts, the yoga book nine I is not for everyone, but my guess is the people who understand it, who can see how the design fits into their lives, they'll love it and won't regret dropping the two grand. It's also extremely eye eye-catching. So if you appreciate people starting [00:05:30] conversations with you about your tech, this is the laptop for you. I like it as sort of a portable all-in-one desktop. That's really where I think it shines. It's like having a portable display without the need to carry a portable display, but as a laptop it kind of falls apart for me. The software still needs some fine tuning and the onscreen keyboard and touch pad could be a better experience. Those can be ironed out over
Speaker 2: Time. So you really need to decide if you're willing to wait [00:06:00] or at least be comfortable knowing that most of the time you'll be using it with its accessories. You can read more about the Lenovo Yoga book nine I and many, many other laptops on cnet.com via the links below and follow us for more reviews. I'm Josh Goldman, thanks for watching. And you'll see me when you see me.
