Lenovo Yoga 9i Gen 8 Gaming Performance: Is It Good Or Are There Better Options?

While desktop computers tend to offer more robust specs (and are easier to upgrade over time), gaming laptops do have their uses. Particularly if you're interested in a machine you can easily carry with you wherever you go. And as with all computers, no matter the shape or size, if you want to play games on them you're going to want something with decent (if not great) overall performance.

This, of course, also applies to the recently-released Lenovo Yoga 9i Gen 8. With an approximate price tag of $1700 putting it out of the lower range, even hitting the high end of the middle range for cost, knowing how it stacks up against its contemporaries is pretty important. To be fair, though, it's worth noting that the Yoga 9i Gen 8 isn't being billed (by Lenovo) specifically as a gaming laptop.

In our Lenovo Yoga 9i Gen 8 Review, we found that the device can certainly handle "older" games with little to no issue — for example, "XCOM 2" (2016) plays much more smoothly here than, say, on a 2020 M1 MacBook Pro. And the model we tested provides a sharp OLED display, a 13th Generation Intel Core i7-1360P CPU, 16GB of RAM, and Intel Iris Xe GPU. But is that enough for modern games and modern gamers?

Looking back at SlashGear's favorite affordable gaming laptops of 2022 paints an interesting picture. The Yoga 9i Gen 8 does indeed offer more performance power in most instances. Depending on the models you're looking at the GPU may be up for debate, but most of the time the Gen 8 is the clear winner with more RAM and a newer CPU.

However, there's also the matter of price, which actually puts the Yoga 9i Gen 8 at least $400 above SlashGear's most expensive 2022 pick: The Acer Predator Helios 300.* And the Helios 300 comes with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 rather than the Intel Iris Xe found in the Gen 8, making it the more affordable and probably better-performing choice. Then again, games will likely look sharper on the Gen 8's OLED display versus the Helios 300's IPS screen.

*That is, unless you're getting the device from Best Buy, where it seems to be substantially less expensive at around $1400.

Ultimately, whether or not the Yoga 9i Gen 8 meets your gaming expectations depends largely on what you're looking for and what your budget might be. It does provide more overall power than many of the other gaming laptops in a vaguely similar price bracket, but there are more affordable options out there that would arguably run your games more smoothly. However, those options don't include a 14-inch OLED display, so what you really need to ask yourself is: Do you want your games to look better, or play better?