The Lenovo Yoga Book 9i is efficient but pricey
(Picture: Lenovo)Dubbed by Microsoft as “the first full-size dual sceen OLED laptop”, it’s perhaps more accurate to describe the Lenovo Yoga Book i9 as two tablets stuck together.
In 2019, Microsoft announced the Surface Duo — a clamshell laptop that had a second screen instead of a keyboard. With the device still yet to see the light of day and seemingly abandoned, Lenovo has instead come up with something that takes that unique concept and runs with it.
While the second screen on the new Yoga Book can display a virtual keyboard, it’s also possible to attach a dedicated Bluetooth accessory, letting you place the two 2.8K 13.3-inch screens above it in either portrait orientation, or stacked with two landscape displays atop one another.
Alternatively, support for the Lenovo Smart Pen means you can hold it like a book and annotate work on both screens on the go. Or you can flip it 360 degrees, so it stands like a tent with a visible screen on each side. Whatever orientation you use it in, the sound bar rotates so audio is fired towards the user at all times.
It’s not a million miles away from Lenovo’s Thinkpad X1 Fold, but where that uses a single folding panel, this is two distinct screens, which comes with its pros and cons. On one hand, it’s a lot more durable (folding panels have a finite number of folds) but, on the other, it will always replicate a dual-screen setup, rather than being usable as one giant display.
Internally, Lenovo has opted for efficiency rather than power, using a 13th-generation Intel Core i7 U-series chip, rather than the more power-hungry H-series models aimed at more graphically intensive stuff.
That isn’t surprising, given the company is trying to ensure the 80w battery can run two power-hungry OLED screens at the same time. But it does mean that the $2,100 (£1,770) starting price could prove a little offputting to some when the laptop ships in June.
