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6.3/ 10 SCORE Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5i 16 Gen 9 Pros
Thin and light for 16-inch laptop
All-metal design
Good performance for the price
Long battery life
Cons
Dim display
Dismal audio output
Mushy keyboard
Slow USB ports
The IdeaPad Slim 5i sits in the middle of Lenovo’s IdeaPad lineup. It trades the plastic chassis you get with the budget IdeaPad Slim 3i series for an all-aluminum design, but one that lacks the rigidity and gently rounded edges of the high-end Slim 7i line. Decked out in a deep blue color, our IdeaPad Slim 5i 16 Gen 9 review unit boasts an upscale look, and it’s surprisingly light for its size. It makes a good first impression, but the warm feelings I had initially for this thin-and-light midrange 16-inch laptop evaporated as soon as I powered it up.When I plugged in the IdeaPad Slim 5i and turned it on, I was greeted with a dim image on the 16-inch display. White backgrounds were a dull gray, and colors looked muted. Pushing the brightness to its max didn’t do much to improve things. I also didn’t like the keyboard feel, the placement of the touchpad or the speed of the USB ports. Lenovo’s own Yoga 7 16 Gen 9 is a better option if you’re looking for an affordable, big-screen laptop; it offers better build quality and a brighter display for roughly the same price while also adding two-in-one functionality to the mix.Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5i 16 Gen 9 Price as reviewed $730Display size/resolution 16-inch 1,920×1,200 touch IPS LCDCPU Intel Core 7 150UMemory 16GB LPDDR5 5,200MHz RAMGraphics Intel Iris Xe GraphicsStorage 1TB SSDPorts 2 x USB-C 3.2 Gen 1, 2 x USB-A 3.2 Gen 1, HDMI 1.4b, combo audio, microSD card slotNetworking Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2Operating system Windows 11 HomeWeight 4 pounds / 1.8 kilograms The IdeaPad Slim 5i 16 Gen 9 is based on a roomy 16-inch touch display with a 1,920×1,200-pixel resolution. Lenovo sells two fixed configurations of it. The base model costs $580 with Lenovo’s consistent discount and features an Intel Core 5 120U CPU, 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD. We received the step-up model that costs $730 and bumps you up to a Core 7 150U chip and a 1TB SSD. The IdeaPad Slim 5i 16 Gen 9 starts at £730 in the UK and AU$1,689 in Australia. Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5i 16 Gen 9 performanceThe Intel Core 7 150U processor inside our IdeaPad Slim 5i 16 Gen 9 test system is a low-power chip that prioritizes battery life over raw performance. It features two performance cores, eight efficiency cores and a total of 12 processing threads. If you don’t need the extra storage, then the baseline model with the Core 5 120U chip and 512GB SSD will likely offer similar performance because there’s little difference in the two CPUs. Both feature the same number of cores and threads — the only difference is that the Core 7 150U operates at slightly higher frequencies.In testing, the IdeaPad Slim 5i 16 Gen 9 turned in solid if not spectacular scores. Its single-core results were strong, but it fell back on our multicore tests because the Core 7 150U has only two performance cores. In comparison, the Core Ultra 155H of the HP Spectre x360 16 has six P-cores, eight E-cores and 22 total threads. Still, its overall performance on our application benchmarks — Geekbench 6 and PCMark 10 — wasn’t terrible when you factor in that the IdeaPad Slim 5i 16 Gen 9 costs hundreds less than the other 16-inch laptops in the performance charts at the end of this review. Matt Elliott/CNETThe other big difference between the Core 7 150U and Core Ultra 7 155H is the integrated GPU on each chip. The Core Ultra 7 155H features Intel’s next-gen Arc GPU, but the Core 7 150U features previous Intel Iris Xe graphics. The IdeaPad Slim 5i 16 Gen 9 couldn’t keep pace on 3DMark Time Spy with competing models with Intel Arc or AMD Radeon graphics.The benefit of the efficient Core 7 150U chip becomes evident when we get to battery testing. The IdeaPad Slim 5i 16 Gen 9 lasted for more than 15-and-a-half hours on our online streaming battery drain test. The dim and relatively low-resolution display certainly helps extend battery life, but that’s still an excellent runtime for a big-screen laptop. It’s more than four hours longer than the next-closest competitors among this group of midrange 16-inch models.Cool blue design but basic displayLenovo sells the IdeaPad Slim 5i 16 Gen 9 in either Cloud Grey or Abyss Blue; we received the latter. It’s a deep, dark blue that looks almost black. It gives the laptop a more interesting look than basic gray, but not so interesting to prevent you from using it in a professional setting — it won’t look out of place in an office.The enclosure is blue, but it appears that Lenovo outfits the laptop with the same gray keyboard on both the Cloud Grey or Abyss Blue models. The gray keys don’t look great against the blue keyboard deck — if getting Abyss Blue keys is too much to ask, then I’d settle for a standard black keyboard that would look better with the blue color. Matt Elliott/CNETThe keyboard deck as well as the top and bottom panels are all made from aluminum, which isn’t a given at the IdeaPad Slim 5i 16 Gen 9’s low price. Many laptops at this price might slap on an aluminum top cover behind the display but use plastic for the rest. Or perhaps outfit the lid and keyboard deck in aluminum but try to slide by with a plastic bottom panel. Not so with the IdeaPad Slim 5i 16 Gen 9 — you get an all-metal chassis. It’s not the most rigid of aluminum enclosures — there’s some flex in the lid and keyboard deck — but it still feels well put together.It also feels light for its size. It weighed in just shy of 4 pounds — 3.98 pounds to be exact. And it’s just 0.7 inches thick, making for a thin-and-light 16-inch laptop. By comparison, the Yoga 7 16 Gen 9 has a more solid build but is heavier, at 4.4 pounds, and the Dell Inspiron 16 Plus 7640 is almost a full pound heavier, at 4.9 pounds.I don’t like the look of the keyboard, and I’m not a fan of its feel either. The keys have little travel and yet a pleasingly springy feedback, but the keys feel wobbly. If you strike a key off-center, you’ll know because it bends instead of traveling straight down. And I’m not sure how useful the narrow number pad will be to many users. I’d rather jettison it and have the keyboard centered below the display — and get four full-size arrow keys instead of the half-height treatment that the up- and down-arrow keys get. Matt Elliott/CNETThe touchpad is off-center and will take some getting used to before you stop performing right-clicks when you’re meaning to simply click. The touchpad is positioned way over on the left side of the expansive wrist rest. It’s not even centered below the keyboard sans numpad but a bit to the left of that. Perhaps Lenovo wanted to give the small fingerprint scanner below the arrow keys a lot of breathing room. I’d much rather move the fingerprint reader to the power button where it’s often located and shift the touchpad over to the right so it’s closer to the center of the wrist rest. The display is the IdeaPad Slim 5i 16 Gen 9’s downfall, though. While the rest of the design is midrange for the most part, the display is strictly budget-class. It’s dim with terrible color performance and a resolution that results in fuzzy text. With a 1,920×1,200-pixel resolution across a 16-inch, 16:10 panel, it suffices for watching shows and movies but not for reading for long stretches. Text lacks the crispness you’d get from a higher resolution, but it’s made all the worse by the panel’s dimness. Matt Elliott/CNETAs soon as I powered on the machine, I knew I was staring at a dim display. I immediately pushed brightness to its max, but it did little to improve the situation. At its default setting of 80% brightness, white backgrounds were a dull gray, and colors looked muted. On my tests using a Spyder X colorimeter, it managed to hit a peak of 300 nits, which matches its rated brightness, but it looked duller than a typical 300-nit panel. Perhaps because its color performance was dreadful, with coverage of only 67% of sRGB and 51% of P3. The speakers and webcam were also unimpressive. A 16-inch laptop has room for four speakers for fuller sound, but the IdeaPad Slim 5i 16 Gen 9 serves up just a pair of 2-watt speakers. And predictably, the sound was underwhelming. With the obvious entertainment appeal that a 16-inch laptop has, it’s doubly disappointing when laptop makers pair small sound with a big display. You can add the webcam to my list of disappointments here. It’s a 1080p webcam, but the image it produces looks closer to that of a 720p camera; it was grainy, poorly balanced and struggled in low light. Matt Elliott/CNETThe IdeaPad Slim 5i 16 Gen 9’s selection of ports is wide and varied, but USB connectivity is slow. You get two USB-A and two USB-C ports, but the USB-C ports are of the USB-C 3.2 Gen 1 variety with speeds up to only 5Gbps — a fraction of the 40Gbps that Thunderbolt 4 offers. The HDMI port is also outdated and supports only 1080p output, but you can always use one of the USB-C ports to connect to a 4K monitor. Lastly, Wi-Fi is behind the times with Wi-Fi 6 instead of the newer Wi-Fi 6E or the latest Wi-Fi 7.Is the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5i 16 Gen 9 worth buying?Despite its good looks and trim design, I can’t recommend the IdeaPad Slim 5i 16 Gen 9. The dull display is a downer in general, and the poor audio output detracts from its appeal as a low-cost, big-screen entertainment laptop. The Lenovo Yoga 7 16 Gen 9 doesn’t offer better sound, but it does provide a better overall build and a brighter display for roughly the same cost, along with two-in-one versatility. And if you can extend your budget past $1,000, the HP Envy x360 16 offers greater value with its higher-resolution OLED display and stronger performance.
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The review process for laptops, desktops, tablets and other computerlike devices consists of two parts: performance testing under controlled conditions in the CNET Labs and extensive hands-on use by our expert reviewers. This includes evaluating a device’s aesthetics, ergonomics and features. A final review verdict is a combination of both objective and subjective judgments. The list of benchmarking software we use changes over time as the devices we test evolve. The most important core tests we’re currently running on every compatible computer include Primate Labs Geekbench 6, Cinebench R23, PCMark 10 and 3DMark Fire Strike Ultra. A more detailed description of each benchmark and how we use it can be found on our How We Test Computers page.
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Geekbench 6 CPU (multi-core) Dell Inspiron 16 Plus 7640 12388HP Spectre x360 16 11459HP Envy x360 16 10941Lenovo Yoga 7 16 Gen 9 9507Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5i 16 Gen 9 8939 Note: Longer bars indicate better performance
Geekbench 6 CPU (single-core) Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5i 16 Gen 9 2587HP Envy x360 16 2510Lenovo Yoga 7 16 Gen 9 2378Dell Inspiron 16 Plus 7640 2258HP Spectre x360 16 2205 Note: Longer bars indicate better performance
Cinebench 2024 CPU (multi-core) Dell Inspiron 16 Plus 7640 883HP Envy x360 16 748Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5i 16 Gen 9 426 Note: Longer bars indicate better performance
Cinebench 2024 CPU (single-core) Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5i 16 Gen 9 108Dell Inspiron 16 Plus 7640 103HP Envy x360 16 100 Note: Longer bars indicate better performance
PCMark 10 Pro Edition Dell Inspiron 16 Plus 7640 6829HP Envy x360 16 6671Lenovo Yoga 7 16 Gen 9 6618Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5i 16 Gen 9 6067HP Spectre x360 16 5789 Note: Longer bars indicate better performance
3DMark Time Spy Dell Inspiron 16 Plus 7640 8237HP Spectre x360 16 5518HP Envy x360 16 2828Lenovo Yoga 7 16 Gen 9 2573Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5i 16 Gen 9 1770 Note: Longer bars indicate better performance
Online streaming battery drain test Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5i 16 Gen 9 934Dell Inspiron 16 Plus 7640 671HP Envy x360 16 671Lenovo Yoga 7 16 Gen 9 657HP Spectre x360 16 637 Note: Longer bars indicate better performance
System configurations Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5i 16 Microsoft Windows 11 Home; Intel Core 7 150U; 16GB DDR5 RAM; Intel Iris Xe; 1TB SSDLenovo Yoga 7 16 Gen 9 Microsoft Windows 11 Home; AMD Ryzen 5 8640HS; 8GB DDR5 RAM; AMD Radeon Graphics; 512GB SSDHP Envy x360 16 Microsoft Windows 11 Home; AMD Ryzen 7 8840HS; 16GB DDR5 RAM; AMD Radeon Graphics; 512GB SSDHP Spectre x360 16 Microsoft Windows 11 Pro; Intel Core Ultra 7 155H; 16GB DDR5 RAM; Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 graphics; 1TB SSDDell Inspiron 16 Plus 7640 Microsoft Windows 11 Home; Intel Core Ultra 7 155H; 16GB DDR5 5,600MHz RAM; 8GB Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060; 1TB SSD
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