Lenovo IdeaPad Pro 5i Review (16-Inch Gen 9, 2024): Subtle But Powerful

If you aren't looking for a laptop that labels you as a "gamer," yet is perfectly capable of playing games, then the Lenovo IdeaPad Pro 5i 16 Gen 9 is an attractive option. With a surprisingly powerful processor and a discrete GPU under the hood, it should be able to not only handle some gaming on the go, but also power through more intense productivity tasks. Looking at it on paper, it seems like a device which should occupy a really nice sweet spot that doesn't compromise on much, and at an attractive price point.

However, there's a lot more to a laptop than a pretty spec sheet. An Nvidia GPU and the latest high end processor are all very well and good, but when buying a compact, all-in-one device, it's necessary for a lot of other factors to line up for a laptop to live up to expectations. Is the IdeaPad Pro 5i 16 Gen 9 good enough to be your next portable computing powerhouse?

Lenovo provided an IdeaPad Pro 5i 16 Gen 9 unit for this review.

There's nothing pretentious or obnoxiously bold about the IdeaPad Pro 5i 16 Gen 9, and in many ways its conservative design is a definite strength. Though I love colorful, edgy, sci-fi style laptops, in most scenarios a simple and demure aesthetic is a better strategic move. It's easier to pitch a laptop to your parents or spouse as being for work or school if it doesn't look like it was leftover as a surplus prop from the set of "Blade Runner."

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Materials are all high quality, and the laptop is reasonably lightweight. The 1080p webcam has a physical privacy shutter, which I love to see, though the image quality of the camera is about as bog-standard as you'd expect from a laptop webcam. It's functional, but don't expect anyone to be impressed by how good the footage looks on your next Zoom call. IO selection is very good, with two USB-A 3.2 gen 1 ports, Thunderbolt 4, USB-C 3.2 gen 1, AUX, HDMI 2.1, and even an SD card reader.

I didn't go into testing the IdeaPad Pro 5iwith the highest of expectations for its ability to play the latest and greatest games. However, I'm happy to say I was pleasantly surprised. I was able to crank Helldivers 2 up to its maximum settings and still get a smooth framerate, though with occasional stutters. Dropping the settings down to medium delivered a more consistent experience that took better advantage of the 120hz refresh rate monitor. Lies of P was a similar story, though it proved more consistent at maximum graphical settings.

This impressive gaming performance stems from the fact that the IdeaPad Pro 5i is packing 32GB of RAM, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050, and an Intel Core Ultra 9 185H Processor, all paired with a fast 1TB SSD. This means that programs load fast and run far better than you'd expect on a relatively thin and light laptop.

"Elden Ring" performed smoothly even with all settings, including ray tracing, maxed out, though I needed to disable ray tracing to consistently hit the 60fps limit on the unmodified game. In less demanding titles such as "World of Tanks I" was easily able to use the maximum settings and maintain a 120fps framerate with plenty of horsepower to spare.

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This power translates well to graphically intensive productivity applications such as video editing software. Additionally, the built in speakers deliver decent audio, and wifi connectivity was fast and reliable.

While not as detail rich as a 4K display, the 16-inch 2K (2048 X 1280) OLED touchscreen monitor is absolutely gorgeous, providing rich colors and deep blacks. With a 120hz refresh rate, it has the potential to be also great for rendering buttery smooth high frame rate games. It's bright enough to use outdoors in sunlight, though the glossy finish of the display does mean you will be dealing with some irritating reflections.

One of the few downsides to the IdeaPad Pro 5i is that it is marred by the presence of bloatware, the most serious offender in this regard being McAfee LiveSafe. Third party antivirus software should be the choice of the end user — it should never come pre-installed — and McAfee antivirus software is rightfully notorious for being difficult to remove and persistently obnoxious with its pop ups and advertisements. Lenovo Vantage is also present, and though it's less offensive, my preference is for computers to ship with as little software as possible other than the operating system itself.

I have no complaints regarding the keyboard on the IdeaPad Pro 5i; it's very typical for a laptop and very slightly less tactile than that on my HP Zbook, but it gets the job done. I do like the expansive touchpad, which is large and allows for accurate mouse navigation. I prefer to have separate buttons instead of the sort which are integrated into the touchpad, such as is found on the IdeaPad 5i 16 Gen 9, but it works well enough here.

As awesome as the full power of the Lenovo IdeaPad Pro 5i is for gaming and other power hungry applications, running the laptop at full throttle is only an option for the briefest of sessions. Expect not to eek out much more than half an hour of playtime, depending on how graphically intensive your games are. The good news is that if you're doing lightweight tasks such as web browsing it'll last a good few hours.

At $1499, the Lenovo IdeaPad Pro 5i isn't the cheapest of laptops and falls decidedly into the middle range. Nevertheless, given its impressive gaming performance, that price tag is fairly attractive. There are cheaper laptops with better GPUs, but all give up some of the nice features which make the IdeaPad Pro 5i so appealing, such as Intel Core Ultra 9 processor and high refresh rate OLED display. The Dell XPS 14 is the closest match I could find, and it costs around a thousand dollars more than the Lenovo.

The IdeaPad Pro 5i is by no means a bargain, but it does manage to offer an attractive value depending on what you need out of a laptop. As a relatively thin and light machine with a large, vibrant OLED display and enough power to handle modern games, it offers a somewhat unique compromise between portability, price, and performance.

The Lenovo IdeaPad 5i 16 Gen 9 is an unusual amalgamation of attributes, with components you wouldn't expect to see in a laptop of this size and weight. It's equally at home playing the latest games, watching movies, and editing video as it is working spreadsheets or writing a novel. It's got the power to be a gaming PC, but is not obtrusively a gaming device, and is sleek and light enough to haul around without it becoming a burden.

The tradeoff is that if you actually put all that power to use, you'd better be plugged in, because while it may have the guts of a gaming laptop, it doesn't have the beefy battery necessary to play much more than a single round of Helldivers 2, and I wouldn't trust it not to die on me during the middle of a particularly long DOTA 2 match.

With that in mind, perhaps the best way to look at the Lenovo IdeaPad Pro 5i is as a tool for working on the go and to plug in and play when you get back home. It's certainly a versatile device, one which I'd be tempted to purchase myself if I was currently in the market for a new laptop.

The Lenovo IdeaPad 5i 16 Gen 9 is available from Lenovo's own website and Costco, among other retailers.