We shouldn’t expect any Windows laptop with a powerful discrete GPU to truly replicate what the MacBook Pro does. Yes, there are more powerful systems out there, but efficiency is not the goal of these systems. Even with the improvements Nvidia has made to Advanced Optimus (automatic switching between discrete GPUs when needed), battery life suffers, especially when running heavier applications. In a local video playback test, the Yoga Pro 9i 16 lasted about 12 hours. Despite using the same 84-watt-hour battery, this appears to be a slight improvement over last year’s model, although it’s difficult to make a head-to-head comparison. I know battery life decreases quickly under heavy load, as it died in just 45 minutes while running a benchmark. You’ll want to be connected if you’re doing something very serious.
Regardless of the task, you’ll get twice the battery life in an M4 Max MacBook Pro. Only when we have ARM-based systems with powerful integrated graphics that rival the M4 Pro and M4 Max will there be competition for Apple. The closest thing we’ve seen so far is AMD’s exclusive Ryzen AI Max+ processor, which appeared in the Asus ROG Flow Z13 and used a massive integrated graphics chip to challenge traditional discrete graphics. But we still have a long way to go.
The only other Windows laptop that could be better is the Asus ProArt P16which I haven’t tested yet. Now it even comes with an RTX 5070 or 5090 option, which could make it significantly more powerful than the Yoga Pro 9i. However, it’s also a much more expensive laptop, configured with a 4K OLED display and only high-end GPUs. The Yoga Pro 9i is also hundreds of dollars cheaper than the Dell 16 Premium when configured similarly.
The Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i 16 gets a lot of things right—enough to make it worth recommending as a worthy MacBook Pro competitor. Ultimately, it’s the performance, screen, and premium quality that make it a worthy content creation machine, and the Yoga Pro 9i succeeds on all of those fronts, perhaps better than any other Windows machine I’ve tested.
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