Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i Aura Edition Review (Gen 10 | 2026)

Lenovo’s multiple Yoga laptops stole the show last year… their combination of build quality, features and value were only challenged by a few rivals. However, the variant we didn’t get to see, was the Pro version which adds a GPU for gaming and graphic design to the mix. Now we have it, the Gen 10 Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i Aura Edition. So, is it the ultimate laptop?

Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i Aura Edition Specs

Features, Ergonomics and Design

I was perhaps a little shocked to see the difference two inches can make. The Yoga Pro 9i’s 14-inch aluminium siblings are lightweight and robust but this 16-incher – which has identical livery courtesy of the Luna Grey aluminium chassis – feels big and heavy by comparison. Still, there’s a great deal packed inside this beast and, as we always say in our group tests, you can’t have everything when it comes to laptops – there’s always a compromise when it comes to price, weight, features and build quality.

Opening it up reveals the rather amazing OLED screen. Glossy reflections aside, this bright and colourful, touchscreen display has a very high, 3,200 x 2,000 resolution to provide a great deal of desktop real estate for general work and graphic design. Colours are vibrant and contrast extreme. Both are augmented by HDR compatibility that’s among the best on the market. Activating it within Windows’ Display Settings reveals details in both bright areas and shadows simultaneously while almost blinding you with highlights (I had to turn the brightness down when viewing particularly bright content).

The 120Hz refresh rate marries with the quick, OLED pixel response time to generally banish blur from all fast-moving objects to a point where only competitive fast-and-frantic, shoot’em up gamers might object.

The built-in speakers get loud, offer very-well-rounded-fidelity and booming bass, despite the relatively thin chassis. It’s a great laptop for multimedia consumption.

Above the screen is a high-quality 1,400p webcam which captures a sharp image that only gets grainy in very low light. It’s partnered by a microphone array that captures very clear audio, even in relatively noisy environments.

Below the screen, the keyboard is generally very well-weighted and accurate to type (and game) upon. There’s a full number pad and I found it very comfortable for day-to-day use. My only (very minor) gripe is that the keys themselves seem to have a cheap-looking plasticy coating compared to its relatives, but this wouldn’t affect anyone’s buying decision.

Being an Aura Edition laptop means that it’s got a bunch of bloatware software augmentations that have been made in partnership with Intel. These include… To be frank, none of these are enough to warrant getting more points in the feature score, but some buyers may find some useful.

Ports & Connectivity

Inside there’s Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4. That’s all the important bases covered.

Performance

Inside the Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i Aura Edition is an Intel Lunar Lake processor – the 1 – 5.4GHz Core Ultra 9 258H processor which has six Performance cores, 8 Efficient Cores and 2 Low Power Efficient cores. There’s also an NPU for AI acceleration and an integrated octa-core Arc GPU that runs at a hasty 2.35GHz. The latter can potentially be useful if you want to save power by disabling the 8GB Nvidia GeForce 5070 graphics. There’s also a generous 64GB of integrated LPDDR5x-8400 RAM and our review unit had two, 2TB SSDs for storage (retail units only have 2TB).

We’ve overhauled our benchmarks for 2026. For CPU and general computing, we’re focusing on Geekbench 6 and the Cinebench R24. We’ve been using both for almost a year already. PCMark and (especially) UL’s Procyon Office and Photo Editing tests kept breaking and having their baseline results changed due to driver and application updates. Plus, they don’t even work on the increasing number of Snapdragon (or Apple) laptops that we get through the door.

We still ran some legacy benchmarks for reference, though. We’re also leaving out dedicated AI benchmarks because they’re near meaningless when it comes to establishing (especially cross platform) real-world performance – we’re treating them as more of a processor feature that can help in other computing tasks. This may change in the future.

As always, we also include a mathematically derived star-rating out of five where a score of 1 represents the lowest score we’ve seen in a test while 5 is the best. It’s worth noting that a laptop scoring 1 will happily operate office software and play basic/older games at (usually) a Full HD resolution. You can read how we test laptops, here.

General Computing & CPU Tests

In Geekbench 6, the Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i Aura Edition managed 17,800 which is very high for any Intel laptop and only beaten by the overclocked AMD monsters seen in premium gaming laptops. Score 3.8 / 5

While we don’t factor it into the overall rating (it’s more of a technical rating than a reflection of real-world performance), the single-core score was 2,985 which rivals premium gaming laptops but is thumped by Apple’s M4 processor. Score 2.8 / 5

In the Cinebench R24 processor rendering test, the Yoga Pro 9i scored an average 1,169 which reflects the lack of hyperthreading on Lunar Lake processors. Rendering tasks are best offloaded to the Nvidia GPU. Score 2.6 / 5

Ultimately, these scores show that the Yoga Pro 9i sits where Lenovo positions it in the market – above almost all thin-and-light portable laptops and just at the base of the larger, not-very-portable, bona fide gaming laptop territory.

General Computing & CPU Score 3.2 / 5

Graphics & Gaming Performance

To establish the Yoga Pro 9i’s gaming potency, I started by running the 3DMark gaming tests. The results were as follows…

These scores demonstrate that Lenovo’s Yoga Pro 9i (Gen 10) is an above average gaming laptop that can play all games – although you’ll likely need to drop the resolution and detail settings of the most-demanding most-eye-candy-rich titles, somewhat.

We also ran the UL Procyon Video Editing test, which uses Adobe Premiere and the Yoga Pro 9i scored 20,891 (Score 2.1 / 5). That means the most difficult rendering test (UHD, H.265, 60fps) for a 900MB video file took 96 seconds. The fastest laptop we’ve seen takes 38 seconds while models without a discreet GPU can take a few minutes. So, this isn’t bad for those wanting to do semi-regular video rendering on the move.

Cooling

Under general use, the Yoga Pro 9i is completely silent, though it doesn’t take too much for the fans to ramp up to a light whoosh. It’s not intrusive, though. It’s forbears were often hot and loud. This model doesn’t get more than luke warm. It also didn’t suffer any thermal throttling in the 30-minute version of our Cinebench rendering test. It’s an efficient system.

Graphics & Gaming Performance Score: 2.7 / 5

Portability & Battery Life

One of the great things about previous Yoga Pros was that they remained thin and light. The 16-inch Gen 10 Yoga Pro 9i, however, is a bit of a chonk, tipping the scales at 2.06KG. It’s not heavy, but you’ll feel it at the end of the day. The power supply and cables add another 535g to the mix too, so it’s considerably more than its 14-inch siblings and almost a kilo more than 16-inch LG gram’s total package.

You’ll be needing to carry the cables around too as it only managed to run our battery tests for 14 hours 21 minutes. That’s half what its siblings managed (disappointing) and will certainly be significantly less when performing tough workloads. It’s certainly better than most other gaming laptops, though.

Portability & Battery Life Score:  2.7 / 5

Price, Availability & Value

We’ll be adding some international pricing in our laptop reviews from now on as many international readers struggle to visualise what an Aussie dollar is worth compared to more recognisable global currencies.

In Australia, Our SKU of the Gen 10 Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i Aura Edition appears to be a (heavily discounted) Officeworks exclusive, costing AU$4,497. That represents slightly above average value. It’s not cheap, though, and hopefully it will drop somewhat in Lenovo’s frequent sales. Availability has also been problematic owing to the RAM crisis.

On Lenovo’s own site 14-inch and 16-inch Gen 11 variants are available with Panther Lake processors and GPU’s up to Nvidia’s RTX 5060. The 16-inch 5060 variant (with a 1TB hard drive) costs a whopping $5,219 equivalent though it was on sale when we went to press.

In the US, Lenovo’s store also lists the 5060 version as the max variant and it too was on sale for US$2,560 when we went to press.

In the UK, you can buy the 5070 variant, but it’s not on sale and costs a hefty £2,900.

In India, the Yoga Pro 9i wasn’t available at the time of going to press, but many of its less-powerful cheaper siblings, were.

Value Score: 3.1 / 5

Conclusion: Should You Buy the Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i Aura Edition (Gen 10)?

My expectations for this laptop were sky high as its predecessors had won our Best Laptop award. Those were all 14-inch models, however, and this larger one loses points for portability and value. It’s still a very good, (generally portable, powerful device, though and it will suit anyone that wants excellent features, ergonomics and connectivity plus above average gaming and graphics prowess. But, it’s not the outright winner we hoped it would be.

Awards

Scores

Last Updated on 25 August 2026 by Nick Ross