Why should a creator’s laptop be boring? Lenovo is normally a company that’s willing to—if not break the mold—then stretch it with colorful and occasionally outlandish laptop designs. With the Lenovo Pro 9i 16 G11 Aura Edition, it feels as if some energy-vampire corporate type sucked the joy from what could have been a specialized and fun laptop and instead gave us a gray approximation of what such a creature imagines “professional” creatives crave. Lenovo wanted to sit with the big dogs of “Pro” laptops, and it did so in a very Dell way (specifically, when that company dropped and then resurrected its longtime XPS branding). The Lenovo Pro 9i, aka the Legion Pro 916IPH11, ditches any hint of its “Yoga” language for no good reason (the name is still applied on this same laptop sold outside the U.S.). Lenovo wants to position this machine as a jack-of-all-trades laptop, and it certainly hits that mark—if the eponymous “Jack” in this case wasn’t all that fun at parties or didn’t have the social/physical battery to last a whole day of work. 4 Lenovo Pro 9i 16 G11 Aura Edition It has a seriously impressive screen and sound stage, brought down by pointless stylus features and an ugly look. Pros Super bright tandem OLED screen Seriously strong audio Solid port selection Relatively light Quality CPU performance Cons Stylus features are tacked on Only one ugly color choice Meh battery life Hard to justify the price But don’t let Lenovo pretend this is anything but an ideal creator’s laptop. The Lenovo Pro 9i includes a glossy 16-inch display that hits a high-water mark for visual quality with its seriously bright tandem OLED screen. In a cursory nod to other “fun” devices, the Lenovo Pro 9i even steals Acer’s whole brand of letting you use a stylus on the trackpad rather than on the touchscreen. If anything, it’s unique enough to make you consider having a mobile drawing pad.