Lenovo X9 Series ThinkPad X9 14 Aura Edition Review

The Lenovo ThinkPad X9 14 Aura Edition is a 1.24kg ultraportable that scores an 89.3/100 for compactness. That's its main story. It's built around a stunning 14-inch OLED screen that lands in the 92nd percentile, and it packs 32GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD into that tiny frame. You're looking at a machine that's almost perfect for travel and media consumption, with scores of 89.2/100 for entertainment and 84.6/100 for business. But its gaming score is a hard 24/100, which tells you exactly where its priorities lie.

Performance is a mixed bag, and the percentiles tell the story. The Intel 268V CPU sits at the 58th percentile. That's fine for office work and media playback, but don't expect it to tear through heavy video encodes. The integrated Intel Arc graphics with 16GB of VRAM is interesting, but it only hits the 59th percentile. It'll handle the display's 2880x1800 resolution for everyday tasks and even some light photo editing, but 3D gaming is off the table. Where this thing shines is in responsiveness. That 32GB of LPDDR5X RAM (81st percentile) and fast NVMe SSD (78th percentile) mean everything feels snappy, and the 120Hz OLED makes every scroll and animation look incredible.

At $1569, the value proposition is tricky. You're paying a premium for that incredible OLED screen, the ultra-portable magnesium build, and the generous 32GB of RAM. The raw CPU and GPU power you get for that money, however, is mid-tier. If the screen and portability are your top priorities, it's a justifiable splurge. But if raw performance per dollar is your main metric, there are stronger options.

Compared to a MacBook Pro 14 with an M4 chip, the ThinkPad X9 gives you a better screen and more RAM for the price, but the MacBook's CPU and GPU will run circles around it. Next to an ASUS Zenbook Duo, you lose the innovative dual-screen design but gain a simpler, more reliable single-screen experience with better build quality. Against gaming laptops like the MSI Vector or Gigabyte AORUS, there's no contest for gaming, but the ThinkPad is in another universe for portability and screen quality. It's all about trade-offs.

The ThinkPad X9 14 Aura Edition is a specialist. If you want one of the best screens on any laptop and need to carry it everywhere, its 92nd percentile display and 87th percentile compactness make it a compelling, if expensive, choice. But with CPU and GPU performance stuck in the high-50s percentiles, you have to really want those strengths. For most people, it's a hard sell at $1569 unless that OLED screen is non-negotiable.