Forget the MacBook Air — this new OLED laptop blows it away

Lenovo Yoga 9i Gen 8 on a desktop
(Image credit: Laptop Mag)

The MacBook Air M2 is irrefutably one of the best laptops available today, but after we reviewed the Lenovo Yoga 9i Gen 8 it was hard to think about any other laptop.

The 14.5-inch 2.8K OLED touchscreen display on the Lenovo Yoga 9i is quite literally mesmerizing, it's difficult to tear your eyes away from the dazzling colors on the screen and return to your dull laptop or monitor. After just a few hours with the laptop, our reviewer was uncertain how she was going to back to using her MSI gaming monitor which now looked drab by comparison.

Our lab tests only served to confirm how otherworldly the Yoga 9i's display is compared to its competitors coming in over 50% higher than the premium laptop average.

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Lenovo Yoga 9i DCI-P3 color gamut vs. the competition
Row 0 - Cell 0 DCI-P3 color gamut percentage
Lenovo Yoga 9i142.1%
Premium laptop average91%
HP Spectre x360 13.5--inch87.7%
Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Pro 36085.2%
MacBook Pro 1482.9%
Dell Inspiron 1669.5%

Looking to a concrete example beyond the numbers, here's an excerpt from our review, with a look at a scene from The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. 

In another scene where the blindingly bright Trees of Valinor hang over the land of the Valar, the Yoga 9i beautifully represented Laurelin, an especially brilliant tree that is comparable to the Sun, with an unmatched golden radiance. I also noticed just how deep its warm glow seeped into the surrounding forests and kingdoms.

Lenovo Yoga 9i Gen 8 Review

(Image credit: Future)

Just a pretty display?

There's considerably more to a great laptop than just its display of course and you can read our full Lenovo Yoga 9i Gen 8 review if you want an in-depth look at our latest Editor's Choice laptop, but rest assured if you are ever able to get over how great the display looks, you won't be disappointed by the rest of what it has to offer.

The Yoga 9i boasts an Intel Core i7-1360P processor, 16GB of RAM, and a blistering-fast 512GB SSD. That SSD is particularly impressive, hitting a transfer speed of 1,669Mbps, over 350Mbps faster than the category average. 

Despite that 14-inch touchscreen display, the trusty 360-degree Yoga hinge, and the all-aluminum construction, the Yoga 9i only comes in at 3.09 pounds. Its lightweight design and flexible configuration options make it a nice option for travelers or students and with over 10 hours of battery life in our testing, it should hold up to a full workday on a charge.

Unless you need the MacBook Air M2's enhanced performance for content creation or similarly robust tasks, the Lenovo Yoga 9i offers a vastly superior touchscreen display in a form factor that is far more versatile than the MacBook Air M2, so it is well worth considering in your search for the best 14-inch laptop for you.

Sean Riley

Sean Riley has been covering tech professionally for over a decade now. Most of that time was as a freelancer covering varied topics including phones, wearables, tablets, smart home devices, laptops, AR, VR, mobile payments, fintech, and more.  Sean is the resident mobile expert at Laptop Mag, specializing in phones and wearables, you'll find plenty of news, reviews, how-to, and opinion pieces on these subjects from him here. But Laptop Mag has also proven a perfect fit for that broad range of interests with reviews and news on the latest laptops, VR games, and computer accessories along with coverage on everything from NFTs to cybersecurity and more.