The Lenovo Slim Pro 9i 14-inch is a 3K display 3072 by 1920 16:10 aspect ratio 165Hertz refresh rate as well, with 1200 nits of peak brightness, is a real a stunner in terms of the display we’re going to get into all the metrics and Why I think Slim Pro 9i 14″ might be one of the best laptop for 2023. As far as a 14-inch laptop is concerned especially ones that are geared towards content creators hey everybody it’s Abrar and this is my review of the Lenovo slim Pro 9i 14-inch 2023.
Note: In this story the product that we review is linked with affiliate links and when you purchase something, we earn a small commission.
Table of Contents
Lenovo Slim Pro 9i 14″ Design and Build Quality
So inside the box of Slim Pro 9i 14″ first we have the power cord, we’ve got a pretty compact 140 Watt USB type-c adapter. Some documentation And Lenovo Slim Pro 9i 14-inch laptop itself, it looks like a gen 8 product. This is the storm gray now it also available I think outside North America in that title teal that’s that beautiful color, there’s the storm gray finish with show less fingerprints also its very thinner one. So with just the laptop alone 1.694 kilograms, and with the power cord and the weight is 2.108 kilograms. So that’s all in travel weight not too bad considering the power is packing under the hood.
Lenovo Slim 9i 14″ Ports and Connections
As far the port selection on the Lenovo Slim Pro 9i on the left side we have 1x HDMI 2.1 Port, 1x USB Type-C 3.2 Gen 1 Port, and that is a full function Port supporting data charge and display out that one is not Thunderbolt, but the one next to it is a thunderbolt 4 Port. so that also has full functionality as well and next to that is a full-size SD card reader with UHS2 support and it sticks out about halfway, when inserted for those wondering.
On the right edge you get your kill switch for the webcam, 1x 3.5 millimeter microphone headphone combo Jack, 2X USB type-A ports, their legacy ports good to see that and finally your power button with an LED indicator light-in it letting you know the device is powered on that is a pretty good Port selection overall.
Lenovo Slim 9i 14″ User Upgradeability
Getting inside Lenovo Slim 9i Pro 14″ laptop is really easy all you need to do is remove the five T5 Torx screws and pop off the bottom plate, (But if doing this so just do with expert supports). Now once inside Slim Pro 9i you’ll notice the 2x fans for cooling and 75 watt hour battery that’s the same size as you find in it’s 16-inch version so pretty interesting.
| All | Read (MB/s) | Write (MB/s) |
|---|---|---|
| SEQ1M Q1T1 | 6917.58 | 6404.33 |
| SEQ1M Q1T1 | 4885.35 | 3659.90 |
| RND4K Q32T1 | 426.66 | 536.00 |
| RND4K Q1T1 | 70.77 | 148.50 |
And as far as what’s user upgradable the SSD is user upgradeable and as you can see above table reads and write is super fast, these are certainly Gen 4 speeds we like to see here in 2023 there’s no doubt about it, It has 32 gigabytes of LPddr5x Ram 6400 MegaHertz running in Quad Channel and it is also very good. One thing you’ll have to note that Ram is soldered that means it’s not upgradable by the user, but I like the option for a 32 gigabytes of memory.
So that’s really something I like to see I wish more manufacturers would offer this not everyone does so having 32GB Ram is certainly a great option. you have Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.1 combo card and that slotted-in not soldered, so if you need to change it out down the road you have that option to change, and as far performance the Wi-Fi and the Bluetooth both working flawlessly I’ve had no issues with either one.
Lenovo Slim Pro 9i 14″ Display and Audio
Lenovo Slim Pro 9i has a 14.5 inch 3K mini LED display, resolution of 3072 by 1920 and it is a 16″10 aspect ratio with a peak brightness of 1200 nits. Although most of the time in standard definition you’re looking at around 680 nits pretty phenomenal people, but when you’re watching HDR Peak brightness of that 1200 nits it’s also 165 Hertz, in terms of the refresh rate very smooth very fluid experience.
As far as the display itself is concerned you get the really deep wax the super vibrant colors, the really high contrast with mini LED and it also has very good coverage of the color gamut. And Slim Pro 9i 14 has a good color accurate display, so if you’re a content creator doing Lightroom, Photoshop, video editing, color grading, and the like you certainly will be very happy with slim pro 9i panel.
And the touch layer is really responsive pinch to zoom work very well navigating the OS with your finger also work very well good implementation, and it’s also an HDR display watching High dynamic range content in Netflix, Amazon, YouTube has been pretty phenomenal on Slim Pro 9i 14″ laptop. Now you have to understand that with a mini LED you might get a blooming effect, that means when you have a dark background you might see sort of trails, and when you’re mousing around and so forth not much of an issue on Lenovo Slim Pro 9i 2023.
So Lenovo slim Pro 9i 2023 has 1440p video camera, it’s an IR camera so you can log in with face recognition. Also it has a kill switch on the side for the webcams that gives you more security and privacy.
The Slim Pro 9i 14″ has 4 quad speakers with Dolby Atmos speakers, remember the 16-inch at six speakers, this is 4 but it has a great sound nonetheless. I think it’s one of the best out there for a Windows laptop, there’s no doubt about it. Let me know in the comment what do you think?
Lenovo Slim Pro 9i 14″ Performance and Gaming
| PCMARK 10 | 7,398 |
| GEEKEBENCH 6 (Single-Core) | 2,678 |
| GEEKEBENCH 6 (Multi-Core) | 14,051 |
| CINEBENCH R20 | 6,241 |
| CINEBENCH R15 | 2,733 CB, 200.83 FPS |
| CINEBENCH R23 | 1,919 Single Core, 17,842 Multi-Core. |
| 3DMARK Fire Strike | 19,012 |
| 3DMARK Time Spy | 8,121 |
The Performance on Lenovo Slim Pro 9i 14″ is very good with portablity, It has the Intel Core i7-13705H A45 Watt CPU with 14 Cores, that’s eight efficient cores and six performance cores, with into that the Nvidia RTX 4050 GPU with 80 watts of total tgp. In terms of the power it has pretty nice CPU and GPU combination.
| Lenovo Slim Pro 9i 14 Core i7-13705H | 1,919 |
| Dell Precision 5470 Core i9-12900H | 1,778 |
| HP ZBook Firefly 14 G10 Core i7-1365U | 1,727 |
| Apple MacBook Pro 14 M2 Max | 1,613 |
We’re get good single and multi-core performance and you’re really going to be able to use this for anything you pretty much throw at it, in terms of everyday use Microsoft Office, email, web browsing, it all worked well as you can see above table. A good single and multi-core performance as I mentioned in fact it did really well in that multi-core, So if you’re going to do intensive tasks which you require multi-cores multi-threads Lenovo Slim Pro 9i is going to really Excel.
I know a lot of you are going to want to do content creation specifically video editing with this type of portable laptop and that is going to be very good on slim Pro 9i 2023 especially in Premiere Pro or DaVinci Resolve, when I rendered a three minute h.264 4K video in DaVinci Resolve it took 1 minute 34 seconds to render that video that’s an excellent result, and when I change to different codec h.265 it took 1 minute 29 seconds to render that video excellent result once again Slim Pro 9i 14″ is a very good video editing machine for those on the road certainly can get the job done.
| Games | Low | Medium | High | Ultra |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Witcher 3 | 109 FPS | 79 FPS | 166 FPS | 74 FPS |
| GTA V | 179 FPS | 180 FPS | 170 FPS | 91 FPS |
| Dota 2 Reborn | 181 FPS | 166 FPS | 158 FPS | 147 FPS |
| Cyberpunk 2077 | 99 FPS | 77 FPS | 66 FPS | 60 FPS |
As far the gaming I wouldn’t classify Lenovo Slim Pro 9i as a gaming laptop but with the CPU and GPU combination, you get some very playable frame rates on some of the more popular titles as you can see above performance tabel, so when you’re not content creating, when you’re not doing work you can definitely play some games on your downtime as indicated by above numbers.
Thermals, Surface Temps and Fan Noise
When it comes to Thermal throttling I ran the time spy stress test, Lenovo Slim Pro 9i 14″ 2023 got a passing score of 99.2%, meaning it detected very little if any thermal throttling that’s been really good. This laptop also stayed relatively cool I didn’t see it get very hot maybe 43-44 degrees above, the keyboard below the display where there are some heating vents which is normally you don’t place your fingers there so that’s been pretty good.
It did heat up on the underside around 57-58 degrees Celsius, so you got to be care careful there that is of course in the performance mode under heavy load when you’re doing everyday tasks in the balance mode, it didn’t heat up all that much. Lenovo Slim Pro 9i 2023 can reach as high as 53 decibels in terms of fan noise in the performance mode under load, but when you’re doing everyday tasks in the balance mode not really an issue in terms of fan noise as being distracting.
Lenovo Slim Pro 9i 14″ Battery Life Performance
| Laptops | PCMARK 10 Modern Office | PCMARK 10 Video PLAYBACK |
|---|---|---|
| Lenovo Slim pro 9i 14″ 75Wh | 5 hours 22 minutes | 7 hours 48 minutes |
| Lenovo Slim Pro 9i 16″ 75Wh | 5 hours 14 minutes | 8 hours 6 minutes |
Now when Lenovo Slim Pro 9i 2023 comes to battery life, we saw what the 16-inch not great battery life similar situation on 14-inch both have the same 75 Watt Hour Battery, it did 5 hours and 22 minutes on the PCMark 10 modern office battery test, the 16-inch version did 5 hours and 14 minutes very similar result.
When I did the PCMark 10 video playback test Slim Pro 9i 14″ did 7 hours 48 minutes whereas the 16-inch did 8 hours and 6 minutes again very similar results not surprising there, so I wouldn’t use this as an all-day battery Beast, that’s not what this is designed to do. Slim Pro 9i is more for Content creation you will have to take that power adapter on the road, if you’re going to do any kind of intensive tests a 4K video editing on the go, you’ll definitely want to bring your power charger so just something to keep in mind not the greatest battery life not the worst I’ve ever seen but certainly average at best.
Hinges, Keyboard and Touchpad
You can open the lid with one finger the screen goes back about 170 to 180 degrees not quite flat but almost there and that’s nice you always get the perfect viewing angle each and every time so no complaints on that front. And the hinges are on pretty nice and tight, I saw very little if any screen wobble when typing something I’m a little bit annoyed with some other laptops not the case on it, so that’s a good thing.
As far as the keyboard itself is concerned Lenovo slim pro 9i 2023 has good key travel, at around 1.5 millimeters of that key travel Goods activity, good feedback, good for typing out long documents, emails that worked well. It has is a multi-stage backlight that certainly allows you to get work done in a dark room, dimly lit environment, the keys light up White against the dark gray Key So not bad at all, as far as the contrast seeing them is not been an issue.
And as far as the touchpad is concerned it’s a Precision touchpad that I found was very responsive for tw finger scrolling doing all the gestures everything seemed to work as you’d expect, not a haptic touch pad but it is a well implemented touch pad nonetheless.
My Final Thought
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Impressive 3K Mini LED Touch Display | Mediocre Battery Life |
| 1200 Nits and 165Hz Refresh Rate | Noticeable Fan Noise Under Load |
| Solid Productivity Performance Laptop | Soldered RAM |
| Good Gaming Performance | |
| Amazing Keyboard and Touchpad | |
| No Throttling Detected and Runs Cool | |
| 5MP IR 1440P Video Webcam | |
| 4 Quad Speaker System |
So what do I think about the Lenovo slim Pro 9i 2023 the 14-inch version otherwise known as the yoga 9i outside North America. It has stunning 3K mini LED touch display has been fantastic 1200 nits of peak brightness, 165 Hertz refresh rate, you can’t argue with that solid productivity performance, Competitive Gaming performance excellent keyboard and touchpad, no throttling detected runs relatively cool and a nice 5 megapixel IR webcam capable of 1440p video and 4 quad speakers sound great especially with the Dolby Atmos everything worked really well.
As far as negatives, like its bigger brother the 16-inch and the 14-inch also has mediocre battery life, and there was noticeable fan noise under heavy load, and then soldered Ram that’s been plaguing a lot of the laptops not just Lenovo but other brands for 2023 but I do like the option of having 32 gigabytes of ram.
So that’s been pretty good but my overall takeaway is this is a really portable Powerhouse in terms of the CPU and GPU great for the content creator. I think for 2023 Lenovo Slim Pro 9i 14″ brings a lot to the table checks a lot of the boxes and I highly recommend it.
Lenovo Slim Pro 9i 14" recommending productivity laptop with it's stunning 3K Mini LED Display and solid performance with sleek looks, its brings a lot to the table for the content creator for 2023.
-
Design9
-
Hardware10
-
Ports10
-
Display10
-
Audio10
-
Keyboard10
-
Touchpad9
-
Webcam9
-
Performance10
-
Thermals and fan Noise9
-
Battery6
-
Value9
