Lenovo's new Yoga Book 9i looks like the most thoughtful dual-screen notebook yet

Lenovo's new Yoga Book 9i looks like the most thoughtful dual-screen notebook yet

Lenovo's new Yoga Book 9i is one of the most interesting and thoughtful takes on a dual-screen notebook that I've seen yet.

In essence, it's like a giant Surface Duo but with a few tweaks up its sleeves to improve usability.

To start, despite having two displays, it's really thin and light. Lenovo says it weighs 1.38kg and is just 15.95mm thick. That's roughly the same as most 13 and 14-inch ultraportable notebooks.

Speaking of displays, the two 13.3-inch displays are OLED and support 2.8K resolution. You can use the notebook with its dual displays like a conventional notebook, in which case one of the displays will turn into a virtual keyboard. 

The virtual keyboard implementation is thoughtful because the top half of the display becomes a keyboard while the bottom half becomes a virtual trackpad complete with two virtual trackpad buttons. There's haptic feedback too so you won't be tapping away too blindly.

If typing on a virtual keyboard weirds you out, there's a detachable keyboard that can click into place on top of the display.

What's also thoughtful is the included stand. With the stand, you can place the Yoga Book 9i in portrait mode and have two 13.3-inch displays side by side or in landscape and have the two displays one on top of the other. 

If you are using the stand, the detachable keyboard clicks into place at the bottom of it. This really makes it seem like you have a large-screen mobile workstation.

Powering the Yoga Book 9i is Intel's newest 13th Gen Raptor Lake Core processor and up to 16GB of memory and 1TB of SSD storage.

Availability and pricing

The Lenovo Yoga 9i will be available in the US sometime in June and prices will start at US$2,099.99 (~S$2,825). No word yet on local availability and pricing, but we'll update this article once we have details.