Lenovo Yoga Pro 9 16IRP8 review: a powerful laptop with a thin metal body

Recently, laptop manufacturers have been increasingly releasing so-called content creator models: powerful, with high-quality screens and relatively lightweight bodies. The Lenovo Yoga Pro 9 16IRP8 laptop, which is currently under review at gg, belongs to this class. Its components allow you to work with heavy video editing or 3D modelling programs, as well as sometimes play modern games. All this is greatly facilitated by a large 16-inch Mini LED display with excellent picture and high brightness. Lenovo Yoga Pro 9 16IRP8 has a comfortable full-size keyboard with an additional number pad, a large touchpad, a good audio system and a good set of connectors. Those who work with photos and videos will especially appreciate the SD card reader. And all this is packed into a fairly thin metal case. Among the complaints about the laptop, it is worth mentioning the short battery life, which is inferior even to competitors with similar characteristics. Of course, such models are never cheap, and this is also true for the Lenovo Yoga Pro 9 16IRP8.

Among the competitors, we can distinguish the Acer Predator Helios 16 model, which has similar characteristics (but a higher TGP video card) and a lower price. However, it has a simpler screen and a plastic case. Or the Lenovo Legion Pro 5, which is generally very close to the aforementioned Acer. Models with more powerful graphics and/or OLED screens are already significantly more expensive.

6 reasons to buy Lenovo Yoga Pro 9 16IRP8:

• high performance;
• gorgeous 16-inch Mini LED screen with 165Hz refresh rate;
• full-size keyboard with a separate number pad and huge touchpad;
• loud and high-quality audio system with 6 speakers;
• sufficient set of ports, including an SD card reader;
• durable and stylish metal case.

2 reasons not to buy Lenovo Yoga Pro 9 16IRP8:

• high price;
• modest battery life, even in its category.

Quick Transition:

1. What's included with Lenovo Yoga Pro 9 16IRP8?
2. What about the appearance and construction of Lenovo Yoga Pro 9 16IRP8?
3. How comfortable is it to use Lenovo Yoga Pro 9 16IRP8?
4. How good is the screen of the Lenovo Yoga Pro 9 16IRP8?
5. What about the performance and battery life of the Lenovo Yoga Pro 9 16IRP8?
6. In the end,

What does the Lenovo Yoga Pro 9 16IRP8 come with?

The Lenovo Yoga Pro 9 16IRP8 package is quite typical for modern laptops from the company. So there are no unexpected bonuses: a recycled cardboard box containing the laptop itself, a medium-sized power supply, a power cable, and all the necessary documentation.

What about the appearance and construction of the Lenovo Yoga Pro 9 16IRP8?

Recently, more and more so-called laptops for content creators have appeared. That is, it is no longer an ultrabook for documents or a browser, but it is not a full-fledged top-of-the-line gaming laptop either. Somewhere in the middle: quite powerful processors and discrete graphics cards are used, but rather limited in terms of power, which makes it possible to make the case not too large and heavy. Lenovo Yoga Pro 9 16IRP8 is one of these laptops. It has an all-metal body in dark grey with a turquoise tint. It is partially made of recycled aluminium and has a sandblasted finish. The coating is fingerprint resistant and the laptop always looks neat. The Lenovo Yoga Pro 9 is a large 16-inch laptop, so the working panel has a full-size keyboard and two speakers on its sides.

The lid has minimal decorative elements. There are only Lenovo and YOGA logos. There's also an unusual mirror element at the top of the lid, behind the webcam. It protrudes slightly beyond the lid area, making it easy and convenient to open the laptop with one hand.

Another characteristic of modern YOGA laptops is the rounded shape of the side edges. All ports are located on them. On the left, there's a branded rectangular connector for the power supply with LED, USB 3.2 Gen1, HDMI, Type-C (with support for Thunderbolt 4, DisplayPort), 3.5mm for headphones, and speaker holes.

On the other hand, there's another USB Type-A 3.2 Gen 1, a two-position webcam switch, another speaker, a card reader for full-size SD cards, and a power button with an LED. Quite a strange and not the most convenient position, given that Lenovo Yoga Pro 9 16IRP8 is not a transformer. Although this can be partially solved by the function of turning on the laptop when the lid is opened.

The front and rear edges do not have any functional elements. Except for a massive hinge that stretches almost the entire width of the laptop.

The entire display unit is covered by a protective glass. The bezels around the perimeter of the screen are thin. Above the screen there is an array of microphones and a slightly wider area with a 5 MP webcam and an infrared camera for owner identification.

The bottom cover of Lenovo Yoga Pro 9 16IRP8 is quite familiar: lots of ventilation holes, massive rubber feet that prevent slipping and speaker holes. There is no particular reason to open the laptop: you can only replace the SSD. The network adapter and RAM are soldered on the board.

The dimensions are 362.4 x 244.8 x 17.9 mm and the weight is 2.18 kg. Lenovo Yoga Pro 9 16IRP8 cannot be called compact. But this is quite normal, given the 16-inch screen and powerful components inside. Moreover, the laptop fits easily into a standard laptop compartment in a backpack. The laptop is well-made and certified to MIL-STD-810H. So it should be quite durable.

How comfortable is the Lenovo Yoga Pro 9 16IRP8?

The Lenovo Yoga Pro 9 16IRP8 has a very good hinge with a smooth movement and good fixation in the desired positions. It is claimed that it allows you to open the laptop by 180°, although this is not entirely true: the actual angle is slightly smaller. But it's hard to call this a problem, as the angle is more than enough for most situations.

The keyboard occupies almost the entire width of the working surface, and the engineers managed to place two speakers on the sides. The keyboard has a standard layout with an additional number pad. It can be useful both when working with texts to quickly type special characters and when working with video or 3D processing software. For example, in Blender, it is extremely convenient to quickly switch views using the NumPad. The digital block itself is not separated from the main one. Everything is quite familiar: a reduced-size function key row, it ends with Home, End, PgUp, PgDown, which are also responsible for controlling media playback. The navigation block is not separated in any way, the up and down arrows are reduced in size. In general, there are no radical unusual solutions, so it takes a minimum of time to get used to.

The buttons have a typical Lenovo laptop shape with a rounded bottom. They don't have the longest stroke, but they're quite comfortable with a soft but clear response. There is a white LED backlight with two brightness levels and an automatic adjustment mode.

The touchpad is very large, has a glass surface, excellent sensitivity and positioning accuracy. It is absolutely sufficient for everyday tasks. But when working with professional software, a mouse will still be extremely useful.

How good is the screen on Lenovo Yoga Pro 9 16IRP8?

Lenovo Yoga Pro 9 16IRP8 has a 16-inch Mini LED display. It has a resolution of 3200 x 2000, which Lenovo calls 3.2K, an aspect ratio of 16:10. It is claimed that the colour coverage is 100% of the DCI-P3space, the refresh rate is 165 Hz. They promise a maximum brightness of 600 cd/m² and a peak brightness of 1200 cd/m² in HDR mode. There is support for HDR Dolby Vision and HDR10+. The screen is touch-sensitive, so it is covered by a protective glass that glares slightly. Mini LED panels offer a much higher contrast level than IPS, higher brightness, and more even backlighting. In the Lenovo Vantage settings, you can choose the colour gamut: sRGB, Adobe RGB and DCI-P3. You can also adjust the colour temperature and eye protection.

The screen is really very high quality, with rich colours, very high brightness and maximum viewing angles. Mmaximum brightness is 570.582 cd/m², black field brightness is 0.189 cd/m², and static contrast is 3019:1. The colour space coverage is much wider than sRGB, and the colour temperature and RGB components are close to the reference values:

What about the performance and battery life of Lenovo Yoga Pro 9 16IRP8?

Lenovo Yoga Pro 9 16IRP8 is equipped with a powerful processor Intel 13th generation Raptor Lake H series. In the configuration in the review, it is Intel Core i9-13905H. It is a kind of updated version of the more familiar Intel Core i9-13900H. The updated processor has a new socket and reduced size, supports up to 64 GB of RAM instead of 96 GB and does not have vPro. Other characteristics are familiar. Theprocess Intel 7, configuration with 14 cores: 6 productive with clock speeds from 2.6 to 5.4 GHz and 8 energy efficient, from 1.9 to 4.1 GHz. Supports up to 20 threads of computation, cache - 24 MB. Standard TDP level is 45 W, maximum theoretical short-term power up to 115 W. For battery operation and generally light tasks, there is integrated graphics Intel Iris Xe with a frequency of up to 1.5 GHz. The amount of RAM is - 64 GB LPDDR5X 6400 MHz. It is soldered on the board, but this amount will be quite enough for a few more years for sure. Wireless interfaces: Bluetooth 5.1 and fast Wi-Fi 6E (802.11ax) 2x2. The discrete video accelerator used is NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Laptop with a maximum TGP value of up to 100W. By the standards of gaming models, this is quite modest, but for a thin model, the figure is very good. At the same time, as practical tests have shown, in games, the power of the video card can really reach about 95 W. The Lenovo Vantage has a video card overclocking function, but it is still at an experimental stage and the manufacturer warns that the laptop may be unstable and display a blue screen of death. Video memory capacity 8 GB GDDR6.

Synthetic performance tests Lenovo Yoga Pro 9 16IRP8

In synthetic performance tests, the Lenovo Yoga Pro 9 16IRP8 demonstrates excellent results. This applies to both processor and graphics benchmarks. Of course, this is not the most productive laptop, there are large gaming models with more powerful versions of video cards. But the power of the Yoga Pro 9 is enough for working with heavy 3D graphics or video editing, and for gaming.

Cooling and stability of the Lenovo Yoga Pro 9 16IRP8

The cooling system of the Lenovo Yoga Pro 9 16IRP8 includes 2 fans, an evaporation chamber and heat pipes. The AIDA64 stress test showed that at maximum load, the components initially warm up to about 95° and throttling is observed at about 33%. After the cooling system adapts, the temperature drops and the laptop operates stably. At the same time, the maximum processor frequency is almost 4.8 GHz, and the average is about 4.2 GHz, which is very good. The noise level of the laptop, even at maximum speed, is lower than in large gaming models. The case does not heat up too much.

Lenovo Yoga Pro 9 16IRP8 drives

The Lenovo Yoga Pro 9 16IRP8 uses the already familiar SSD format M.2 interface PCIe Gen4 x4 NVMe Samsung PM9A1 with a capacity of 1 TB.

The speed reaches 6500 MB/s when reading data, and about 4950 MB/s when writing.

Games on Lenovo Yoga Pro 9 16IRP8

In general, the laptop can handle any modern games. During testing, we used the native resolution of 3200x2000, and the settings were chosen to achieve a comfortable frame rate for gaming. Of course, if you lower the resolution to 1920x1200, you can turn the settings up higher.

• Cyberpunk 2077. Ray tracing preset: medium,. DLSS in automatic mode with frame generation. 40-50 FPS
• Ghostrunner. Epic settings, no tracing, DLSS in balanced mode. 120-165 FPS
• God of War. Maximum settings. DLSS in quality mode. 55-85 FPS
• The Ascent. Maximum settings, with ray tracing, DLSS in performance mode. 50-65 FPS.
• Callisto Protocol. A combination of medium and high settings with ray tracing. 50-60 FPS

Lenovo Yoga Pro 9 16IRP8

The laptop has a 75 Wh battery. Considering the power and screen, this is not much. And the manufacturer itself indicates that the laptop works without an outlet for up to 6.4 hours. In real life, if you try hard enough: significantly reduce the brightness, lower the screen frequency, and work mainly with office applications and a browser, you can get up to 4.5-5 hours. This is a rather modest figure. Especially since there are competitors with a 90 Wh battery that can last up to 7 hours in a similar mode. The laptop charges from the bundled power supply in about 2.5 hours.

Lenovo Yoga Pro 9 16IRP8 audio system

Lenovo Yoga Pro 9 16IRP8 has 6 2W speakers. As you can see from the section on appearance, they are directed in different directions. Therefore, the sound is quite surround, especially given the support for Dolby Atmos virtual sound. The volume is sufficient, and there are even low frequencies.

Lenovo Yoga Pro 9 16IRP8 Software

For the vast majority of settings, the Lenovo Vantage app is used. It contains settings for performance, display, charging modes, system testing, updates, etc.

Four things you need to know about the Lenovo Yoga Pro 9 16IRP8.

• Lenovo Yoga Pro 9 16IRP8 is a powerful large-format laptop for those who work with 3D and video content.
• Equipped with a gorgeous, bright 16-inch Mini LED display with a frequency of 165 Hz.
• It has a full-size keyboard with an additional number pad and a large touchpad.
• The battery life is no more than 5 hours.

For those who want to know more:

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• Acer Predator Helios 16 review
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• Lenovo Legion Pro 7 review: a powerful gaming laptop with Intel Core i9 and RTX 4090