Meet Maggie, PCMag'sIn a vacuum, the Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i Aura Edition Gen 11 is a decent high-end content creation laptop. Lenovo gave it an incredible OLED screen, an elegant design, and excellent battery life. When you take the price into account, though, the system's appeal diminishes. While the Yoga Pro 9i starts at $2,939.99, our review configuration costs a scorching $3,229.99 for a slightly stronger GPU, a sharper screen, and average performance overall. Furthermore, apart from the gorgeous screen, the Yoga doesn't do much to stand out from the competition.
The Apple MacBook Pro 16-Inch (2026, M5 Max) is a better choice for video editing, while the Framework Laptop 16 (2025) brings many of the same features as the Lenovo and a higher-class GPU for less. (Both are Editors' Choice award winners.) If you come across a significant sale, the Yoga Pro 9i is worth considering, particularly if you want a machine that's optimized for the handy Lenovo Yoga Pen Gen 2, which comes included. Otherwise, competing machines deliver better performance for a similar cost.
Lenovo has a few different ways to customize the Yoga Pro 9i Aura Edition Gen 11. Every configuration has an Intel Core Ultra 9 386H CPU with 16 cores and 16 threads (comprising four Performance-cores, eight Efficient-cores, and four Low Power Efficient-cores) running at up to 4.9GHz. For the rest of the components, you basically have three options. While one option is less expensive, none is genuinely cheap.
To illustrate the point, the default Yoga Pro 9i configuration costs $2,939.99. Aside from the 386H chip, it contains an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5050 Laptop GPU, 32GB LPDDR5X memory running at 7,467 megatransfers per second, a 1TB M.2 PCIe solid-state drive, and a 16-inch OLED touch screen with a 2,880-by-1,800-pixel resolution.
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By contrast, the model I tested comes with an RTX 5060 GPU, 32GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD, and a 16-inch OLED touch screen with a 3,200-by-2,000-pixel (3.2K) resolution. This configuration costs $3,229.99, and the device can actually grow more expensive than this.
The most expensive model you can configure costs $4,479.99. Still on the same processor, this model locks an upgrade to 64GB of RAM with an RTX 5070 GPU, and that allows for an optional 2TB SSD upgrade. That's more than a $1,500 difference from the standard configuration.
My issue with the Yoga Pro 9i is that it costs far too much for an entry-level GPU, and even more so for the more capable midrange part. You might be convinced into a system with an RTX 5050 for basically $3,000, considering the build quality and the OLED screen, but it's still unlikely. Regardless, nearly $4,500 for an RTX 5070 system is just not a smart move, even if you consider the build quality, excellent touch screen, and included stylus.
For instance, you could take the gaming laptop route as a content creator, and grab the 18-inch powerhouse MSI Raider 18 HX AI, which has a larger and sharper screen with a much more powerful RTX 5080 GPU for hundreds less than this top-end Yoga configuration. The Yoga Pro 9i simply didn't deliver the level of performance expected for the price, which you'll see below.
You'll pay a premium price for this Yoga, but you'll receive a top-end look and feel in return. The dark gray matte chassis is made from aluminum, giving the device some heft and durability. You'll find a slight lip on top, which makes the laptop easy to open and close. A large vent on the bottom distributes heat evenly, so you can hold the Yoga in your lap for anything but the most demanding content creation tasks.
However, the laptop's design was also the first place where I noticed its general middle-road tendencies. At 0.68 inch in height, it's thinner than the Dell 16 Premium (DA16250) at 0.75 inches and the Framework Laptop 16 at 0.82 inch, but slightly thicker than the 16-inch MacBook Pro at 0.66 inch and the Asus ProArt P16 (2026) at 0.59 inch. The Yoga does weigh just 4.19 pounds, which is lighter than every other laptop in our comparison set.
The Yoga's port selection is respectable. On the left, you'll find a proprietary power port, an HDMI 2.1 connection, two Thunderbolt 4 ports, and a 3.5mm audio jack. On the right, you'll notice an SD card reader and two 10Gbps USB Type-A 3.2 ports. With this setup, I can connect every peripheral I need to work, usually with one or two ports left over.
The beautiful display is where the Yoga comes closest to justifying its premium price. This 16-inch OLED touch screen displays in 3.2K resolution (just shy of full 4K) and a 120Hz refresh rate. While true blacks are usually the best part of an OLED display, the Yoga Pro 9i features gorgeous colors all around, particularly its lush greens and subtle grays. The depth and breadth of the color is especially important for this laptop's target audience: graphic designers, visual artists, video editors, and animators.
Lenovo's keyboard is also luxurious for a laptop. With 1.5mm of key travel and soft-touch keycaps with rounded edges, the keyboard makes typing feel both comfortable and responsive. Subtle backlighting makes the Yoga Pro 9i easy to use in dark environments.
The large touchpad (called the Force Pad) also doubles as a drafting surface for the included Lenovo Yoga Pen Gen 2. When you write or draw with the pen, the Force Pad provides haptic feedback, making it feel more like a traditional pen and paper. You can also customize the pen's sensitivity and menu options with the Lenovo Pen Settings app. From a tech reviewer's perspective, the pen and its associated features all work well, though I can't say how it might feel in the hands of a visual artist.
Content creators who work remotely may be pleased to know that the Yoga's communication tools are excellent. The 5MP webcam delivers sharp images and realistic colors, even in low-light environments, and it includes an e-shutter button for privacy. The dual microphones work fine, but the speakers are a cut above most laptop fare. Voices come through crisp and clear, while music, videos, and games all sound balanced and lifelike.
AI fans might also appreciate that the Yoga Pro 9i is a Microsoft Copilot+ PC, which means it has more powerful and nuanced AI features than a standard Windows 11 system. I personally drew some use out of the intelligent search, which makes it easier to find files and settings, even if you don't know exactly what they're called or where they're located. On the whole, though, the standard Copilot app delivers a similar experience.
We tested our Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i Aura Edition Gen 11 unit with a variety of productivity, graphics, and content creation benchmarks. As a recap, the configuration we reviewed costs $3,229.99 and comes with an Intel Core Ultra 9 386H CPU, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Laptop GPU, 32GB of LPDDR5X RAM, and a 1TB M.2 PCIe SSD.
In terms of raw numbers, the Yoga Pro 9i scored well in most tests, particularly our graphics benchmarks. The OLED display also performed beautifully across the board, with nearly perfect color coverage and one of the highest brightness ratings we've measured. However, the numbers are less promising when you line them up against the Yoga's competitors. More expensive systems generally outperformed this laptop, but so did some cheaper models. Lenovo's laptop delivered inconsistent results, sometimes acing one test, then falling far behind on another one in the same category. The Yoga is a capable enough content creation laptop, but considering how much even the midrange configurations cost, it should have had more standout showings.
For comparison machines, we chose the 16-inch MacBook Pro ($8,149 as tested), our $5,499.99 Asus ProArt P16 review configuration, the Dell 16 Premium ($3,199.99 as tested), and our $3,164 Framework Laptop 16 review build. Save for the exorbitantly configured MacBook and ProArt systems, these are all 16-inch content creation laptops with options available in the $3,000-to-$4,000 range. While they differ in terms of memory and storage capacities, their overall capabilities are comparable.
Our primary overall benchmark, UL's PCMark 10, puts a system through its paces in productivity apps ranging from web browsing to word processing and spreadsheet work. Its Full System Drive subtest measures a PC's storage throughput.
Three more tests we rely on are CPU-centric or processor-intensive: Maxon's Cinebench 2024 uses that company's Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene; Primate Labs' Geekbench 6.3 Pro simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning; and we see how long it takes the video transcoder HandBrake 1.8 to convert a 12-minute clip from 4K to 1080p resolution.
Finally, workstation maker Puget Systems' PugetBench for Creators rates a PC's image editing prowess with a variety of automated operations in Adobe Photoshop 25.
The Yoga's productivity benchmarks were hard to parse. In the PCMark 10 full productivity test, this laptop scored last among its competitors, followed immediately by a respectable second-place showing in the PCMark 10 full system drive test. For the rest of the tests, the Lenovo was usually dead center.
Apple's more expensive MacBook Pro beat out the Yoga Pro 9i most of the time, which makes sense. Still, the cheaper Dell 16 Premium and 16-inch Framework occasionally bested the Lenovo and usually produced similar numbers when they didn't. "Fair-but-unpredictable performance" became a running theme with the Yoga. "Unpredictable" is not a word you want to associate with more than $3,000.
We challenge all systems’ graphics with a quintet of animations or gaming simulations from UL's 3DMark test suite. The first two we use, Wild Life (1440p) and Wild Life Extreme (4K), stress the Vulkan graphics API to measure GPU speeds. The next pair, Steel Nomad's regular and Light subtests, focuses on APIs more commonly used for game development, like Metal and DirectX 12, to assess gaming geometry and particle effects. Last, we turn to Solar Bay to measure ray tracing performance in a synthetic environment.
For most of our graphical benchmarks, the Yoga Pro 9i came in toward the lower-middle end of the scale. The 16-inch Framework beat it in every 3DMark test, while the ProArt P16 came out ahead in four out of five tests. The only benchmark where the Yoga performed especially well was the standard Wild Life test, and even then, it came in second place.
In my qualitative testing, the Yoga Pro 9i was OK for graphically intensive tasks, such as gaming. I was able to run demanding titles like Avowed and Cyberpunk 2077 on high resolutions, but had to dial down most of the other settings to medium. Once again, the Yoga worked well enough, but not quite as well as you'd expect from a $3,300 machine.
Since the Yoga Pro 9i didn't perform as well as expected in our graphics tests, we investigated the issue a bit further. The mobile RTX 5060 GPU has a thermal design power rating (TDP) of 100W. To test where the GPU landed at maximum load, we used the Nvidia app to measure its power draw under extremely taxing conditions: a Cyberpunk 2077 benchmark with the settings turned up as high as they would go. Even though the RTX 5060 operated at 99% capacity, its power draw hovered around 70W and intermittently maxed out at 100W as if that were its boost target when that's simply the normal operating maximum.
In theory, the Yoga could generate better graphical performance than what we measured, but not with how its GPU has been tuned. The other Nvidia GPUs here, namely those inside the Framework and ProArt laptops, were tuned to run at full capacity.
First, we measure workstation performance with SPECviewperf 2020 (version 3.1), which renders, rotates, and zooms in and out of solid and wireframe models at 1080p resolution. The three subtests represent PTC's Creo CAD platform, Autodesk's Maya modeling and simulation software for film, TV, and games, and Dassault Systemes' SolidWorks 3D rendering package.
Next up is Blender, an open-source 3D content creation suite for modeling, animation, simulation, and compositing. We record the time it takes for Blender 4.2 to render three distinct scenes to measure CPU and GPU rendering performance.
Then, we run an automated extension, PugetBench for Creators from workstation maker Puget Systems, in Adobe Premiere Pro. The extension executes and times real-world video editing tasks, such as file export, high-resolution encoding with various codecs, processing and decoding different types of source media, and applying GPU-accelerated special effects. (The Yoga didn’t complete the Adobe Premiere test due to an issue with the benchmark itself, so we excluded that chart below.)
Finally, we also use PugetBench for Creators to test DaVinci Resolve Studio 18 video editor performance on systems suitable for that challenging app. As with Adobe Premiere, these automated tasks and features push the CPU and GPU, letting us gauge real-world media creation speeds.
Gauging the Yoga's workstation performance is somewhat difficult, since we weren't able to test every competitor on every benchmark. Of the systems we tested, the ProArt P16 ran most of the same tests as the Lenovo, so we can compare them directly.
Compared with the productivity and graphics benchmarks, the Yoga Pro 9i was much more consistent in its workstation performance. In our Blender tests, the Lenovo lost out to the Asus every time, with the Asus sometimes doubling its GPU score. That makes sense, as the ProArt has an RTX 5090 to the Yoga's 5060.
In our SPECviewperf tests, though, the Lenovo beat the P16 across the board, decisively in the Maya and SolidWorks tests. Since the two benchmarks evaluate similar functions, it's hard to say whether the Lenovo laptop is better at content creation than its competitors. It will likely come down to the individual application.
We test each laptop's battery life by playing a locally stored 720p video file (the open-source Blender movie Tears of Steel) with display brightness at 50% and audio volume at 100%. We make sure the battery is fully charged before the test, with Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting turned off.
In addition, to gauge display performance, we use a Datacolor SpyderX Elite monitor calibration sensor and its Windows software to measure a laptop screen's color saturation—what percentage of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 color gamuts or palettes the display can show—and its 50% and peak brightness in nits (candelas per square meter).
In terms of battery life, the Yoga Pro 9i was one of the better systems we tested. At 18 hours and 26 minutes, the Yoga didn't quite measure up to the MacBook Pro's more than 27 hours, but it beat the rest of the set handily. While you won't see 18 hours of battery life while running content creation apps with an active internet connection, you can also take the Yoga on the road and not have to worry about finding an outlet too often.
The Yoga also had the brightest and broadly most colorful screen among its competitors. With 100% of the sRGB gamut and 96% of the Adobe RGB gamut, the Lenovo either tied for first or beat its competitors. At 98% of the DCI-P3 gamut, only the Framework performed marginally better. When it came to brightness, the Yoga earned first place in 50% brightness by more than 40 nits, and in 100% brightness by more than 400 nits.
A bright, colorful screen is one of the most important features in a content creation laptop, and the Yoga Pro 9i's panel is about as high-quality as these displays get.
Final Thoughts
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i Gen 11 Aura Edition
- 5.0 - Exemplary: Near perfection, ground-breaking
- 4.5 - Outstanding: Best in class, acts as a benchmark for measuring competitors
- 4.0 - Excellent: A performance, feature, or value leader in its class, with few shortfalls
- 3.5 - Good: Does what the product should do, and does so better than many competitors
- 3.0 - Average: Does what the product should do, and sits in the middle of the pack
- 2.5 - Fair: We have some reservations, buy with caution
- 2.0 - Subpar: We do not recommend, buy with extreme caution
- 1.5 - Poor: Do not buy this product
- 1.0 - Dismal: Don't even think about buying this product
Read Our Editorial Mission Statement and Testing Methodologies.
The Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i Aura Edition Gen 11 is a tough machine to pin down. As content creation laptops go, the impressive display is the only area where this machine stands above its competition. While the Yoga Pro 9i delivers suitable performance, its cost is high for not outright winning many contests and falling behind from a price-for-parts perspective.
If you want faster performance at a similar price, the 16-inch MacBook Pro, the Framework Laptop 16, or the Asus ProArt P16 are better-equipped options for the price. If you can catch the Yoga at a steep discount, though, look sharp and strike fast: You'll score, at the very least, a beautiful screen and a sleek digital pen, along with on-point speed (and then some) for most tasks.
About Our Expert
I've covered science and technology for the past 15 years, with a special focus on gaming hardware. During my career, I've reviewed hundreds of mice, keyboards, headsets, monitors, smartphones, laptops, desktops, and various other gadgets that defy easy categorization. I've also covered some of the industry's biggest trade shows, including the Consumer Electronics Show, E3, IFA, SXSW, and PAX East/West. After starting at The Escapist, my work has appeared in Tom's Guide, Tom's Hardware, Laptop Magazine, LiveScience, Space.com, Scientific American, and Worth Magazine.
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