The brand new Lenovo Slim 9i 14 was created with two targets in thoughts: first, it’s the first carbon-neutral laptop computer to be commercially accessible. Secondly, regardless of being product of many recyclable supplies, it ought to deliver premium leisure and cellular luxurious. On this overview, we’ll take a look at the alternatives and design methods Lenovo has adopted to see if the truth matches the pitch.
Slim 9i Specs Highlights
With the Lenovo Slim 9i 14, potential consumers received’t have to fret an excessive amount of about understanding their {hardware} choices as a result of Lenovo made it quite simple. There’s one processor choice (together with graphics) and two glorious OLED show choices. The RAM (16 GB or 32G soldered) and storage (512GB or 1 TB) are simple decisions, relying in your wants.
Our testing unit has an Intel Core i7-1280P (6P+8E cores) with built-in Intel Iris Xe graphics. There’s 32 GB of RAM and 1 TB of storage, although this is not going to have an effect on the benchmarking efficiency in comparison with fashions with smaller reminiscence and storage footprints.
The 2 show choices are 2.8K (90Hz) and 4K OLED (60Hz) panels with related efficiency, apart from the refresh fee and pixel rely. Extra on that within the Show part.
Lenovo included its A.I. Core 2.0 characteristic, a chip (+software program) that neatly manages energy and show settings to maximise advantages whereas decreasing energy utilization. Amongst many different issues, Lenovo can detect once you’re going away and lock your pc instantly, each for safety and energy financial savings.
Industrial Design
The Lenovo Slim 9i 14 design is likely one of the most enjoyable elements of the laptop computer, giving it a distinct feel and appear that units it other than different laptops we’ve seen this yr.
The Slim 9i 14 is constructed like a smartphone, with curved edges and an enormous tempered glass floor on the show’s again cowl. The glass makes it look terribly slick and chic. On the similar time, the glass might be extra immune to minor scratches than aluminum and is simpler to scrub. Sadly, it may additionally crack in the event you mistreat it.
Lenovo is offering a cool laptop computer sleeve within the field as customers will most likely wish to preserve this laptop computer as pristine as attainable. The glass is examined to withstand a 50cm drop however keep away from drops altogether. The sleeve has a pen holder, however sadly, there’s no e-Pen assist. For e-Pen assist, take a look at the brand new Yoga i9 14, the convertible-PC counterpart to this laptop computer.
“THE GLASS MAKES IT LOOK EXTRAORDINARILY SLICK AND ELEGANT”
Due to the rounded edges, holding the laptop computer is very comfy and comfortable, which you’ll recognize as you go from assembly to assembly. The cellphone is barely 0.59-inch thick (14.9mm), comparable to 2 stacked smartphones.
An enormous side of this design is the world’s first Carbon Impartial laptop computer, licensed to the ISO 14067:2018 normal that describes how we should always calculate a product’s carbon footprint. Even the bundle paper is FSC licensed.
Making this laptop computer carbon impartial is a outstanding technical feat of engineering and a probably good enterprise route. Many corporations are actively searching for methods to hit their ESG targets (Environmental, Social, and Governance) to fulfill traders.
“CARBON NEUTRAL: A REMARKABLE TECHNICAL FEAT OF ENGINEERING”
The laptop computer’s dimensions of 315 x 214.4 x 14.9 mm (12.4 x 8.44 x 0.59 inches) make it a really compact pc in its class. The aluminum and glass building offers it a 3.02 Lbs (1.37Kg) weight. That’s greater than the ThinkPad X1 Carbon or ThinkPad X1 Carbon nano, two exceptionally light-weight laptops.
The Slim 9i 14 has a lightweight heft that screams “high quality materials” once you choose it up. Examine one out in a retailer you probably have an opportunity, because it’s definitely worth the expertise, even only for curiosity’s sake.
Keyboard and Trackpad
The keyboard is much like what Lenovo makes use of in its high-end shopper laptops. Smile-Form keys provide a 0.9mm (guestimate) key journey with agency and agreeable tactile suggestions. This keyboard is backlit by monochrome LED lighting (2 ranges).
The glass Trackpad is ~50% bigger than the brand new ThinkPad X1 Carbon, in order that’s an enormous change for Lenovo. It’s now very appropriate for advanced gestures utilizing 3-4 fingers, and if these are a part of your workflow, you’ll be thrilled with this trackpad.
Ports
Having three USB-C ports on the laptop computer is sweet, particularly when utilizing the Thunderbolt 4 protocol. There’s additionally a 3.5mm audio connector and Lenovo additionally offers a USB-C multiport adapter (VGA, HDMI, USB-A) that provides fundamental connectivity.
Sound
The Slim 9i comes with a quad-speakers, Dolby Atmos-certified Bowers & Wilkins sound system with two woofers (2x 3W) on the backside and two tweeters (2x 2W) on both aspect of the keyboard hidden behind the speaker grills.
“A WORLD-CLASS AUDIO EXPERIENCE”
The speaker set produces a world-class audio expertise, not just for a laptop computer this measurement but in addition for laptops of any measurement. For instance, the sound high quality is significantly better than our giant 17-inch gaming laptop computer on the workplace. It’s mind-boggling.
It’s a testomony to the standard parts and tuning Lenovo has chosen for this laptop computer. Ultimately, Audio does depend on sound physics, so bigger laptops have the potential to characteristic even higher and extra highly effective audio, however sadly most don’t.
Show
The Lenovo PureSight 4K OLED show we now have examined is magnificent. In fact, it comes with all of the OLED advantages you’ve heard of: intense black and glorious coloration copy are the 2 properties which make this display an ideal leisure medium, particularly in a dimly lit surroundings.
PureSight is a Lenovo model that describes a high quality degree for its finest flat panels. The technicalities could change over time, however Puresight represents workstation-level shows of the second.
In a vibrant setting like the outside, it’s harder to understand all of the nuances the show can render. The specs of this display present 400 NITs of brightness, however we measured it at 558 NITs which was a superb shock. Each choices are shiny shows, so the colours and particulars look a bit higher than a matte panel. The draw back is excessive reflectivity.
“MAGNIFICENT.”
The 16:10 side ratio offers a bit extra vertical house, which is just about a normal in 2022 for high-end productiveness laptops. With 100% DCI-P3 (125% sRGB) coloration protection and built-in X-Ceremony coloration tuning, this laptop computer can undoubtedly cater to the wants of 2D graphics professionals who want to indicate their work below the perfect circumstances.
The 1080p webcam is a step up from earlier 720p built-in webcams and has an infrared sensor to log in with facial recognition securely. An e-Privateness shutter as a bodily swap off to the laptop computer’s proper aspect. You have to be inside Home windows to allow/disable the digicam utilizing an Fn key. The swap allows you to do that even when locked out.
This laptop computer has far-field microphones, which suggests it’s optimized to file sound from any route. This was initially added to assist voice assistants like Microsoft’s Cortana or Amazon’s Alexa.
Efficiency
The Slim 9i 14 (“i” stands for Intel) is powered by an Intel Core i7-1280P, one of many extra performant cellular laptop computer processors for this class of laptops. Our information exhibits it to deliver a major efficiency increase over the i7-1260P (as examined within the X1 Carbon) and much more over the i7-1230U (as seen as one Dell XPS 13 choice).
All productiveness and multimedia duties are dealt with with ease and velocity. Nonetheless, this platform can also be very acceptable for 2D graphics design and net improvement. Mild video enhancing is feasible since there’s 32GB RAM and a 1TB storage choice, however the lack of a discrete (GPU) may cap your video-editing potential.
Enterprise-oriented laptops such because the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen10 do get the next sequential disk learn/write efficiency, which may translate to barely greater productiveness for I/O heavy workloads equivalent to video compression export. Nonetheless, the extent of disk efficiency of the Slim 9i 14 is excellent in its shopper laptop computer class.
Battery Life
With the usual PCMark 10 Trendy Workplace battery check, we received 460 minutes (7.6 hours) of steady office-like work with the display (110 NITs). It is very important observe that that is with the 4K OLED show configuration, which is probably the most power-hungry. With the two.8K show, this may climb to 9.5+ hrs, however we now have not examined that one.
Lenovo says this 4K laptop computer may yield 11.5 hours of native video playback at 150 NITs, whereas the two.8K mannequin would get 11.7 hours. Each claims appear plausible, however that’s a best-case situation.
The 75Wh battery is sort of giant for a 14” skinny and light-weight laptop computer, which explains why Lenovo can suggest such show and processor choices and nonetheless preserve stress-free battery life for many customers.
There’s a 65W compact AC Adapter, or you possibly can additionally use a third occasion adapter that complies with USB-PD (Energy Supply) on the appropriate wattage, just like the EZQuest UltimatePower 90W GaN Wall Charger.
Those that carry out solely very fundamental duties and wish excessive battery life ought to verify the ThinkPad X13s, however we expect the use case is totally totally different from what is meant for the Slim i9.
Conclusion
The Lenovo Slim 9i 14 is designed as a luxurious, carbon-neutral pc that gives “premium leisure” in a small type issue. From that standpoint, the design has achieved and maybe surpassed its targets.
This laptop computer is an absolute multimedia beast that gives the final word visible and sound expertise in a 14-inch laptop computer type issue. Along with entertaining, we expect it’s a succesful 2D create workstation or an ultramobile net improvement pc with sufficient CPU, RAM, and storage for these duties.
Information exhibits the Slim 9i 14 is most frequently in contrast to the brand new Yoga 9i, and for good causes. Internally, each computer systems have many frequent traits, however the Yoga 9i has a 360-degrees hinge (and speaker) design along with e-Pen assist.
“AN ABSOLUTE MULTIMEDIA BEAST”
The Dell XPS 13 can also be one other well-liked comparability. We predict the use case is totally different. The XPS 13 is considerably extra compact than the Slim 9i, however that’s as a result of it’s a 13.3” laptop computer (vs. 14”). The XPS 13 additionally has much less highly effective CPU choices and doesn’t provide OLED shows. It may be an X1 Carbon Gen10 or X1 Nano competitor as an alternative.
We like the place Lenovo goes with this product and are typically impressed with the economic design, construct high quality, and chosen applied sciences.
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