Lenovo Yoga Mini i Gen 11 Launches in China as Compact AI-Ready Desktop

Lenovo shipped the first retail units of its Yoga Mini i Gen 11 in China on March 31, placing a 600-gram circular desktop with a built-in 50 TOPS neural processing unit on the market at CNY 5,499, roughly $797.

For yoga instructors running home studios, the specs read like a practical checklist. The base configuration pairs an Intel Core Ultra 5 325 processor with 16 GB of RAM and a 512 GB SSD, while higher-tier builds will push to an Intel Core Ultra X7 385H-class chip, 32 GB of LPDDR5x memory, and 2 TB of PCIe Gen 4 storage. The connectivity slate includes dual Thunderbolt 4 ports, HDMI 2.1 capable of 4K at 60Hz, 2.5 Gb Ethernet, Wi-Fi 7, and Bluetooth 6, enough bandwidth to run a multi-camera live stream, push 4K output to a studio monitor, and maintain a wired backup connection simultaneously.

The 50 TOPS NPU is the detail that matters most for instructors handling their own post-production. That figure puts the Yoga Mini i in the same performance bracket as other Copilot+-class PCs, meaning on-device AI acceleration for tasks like automated captions, background removal in recordings, and noise suppression in live audio, without routing footage through a cloud service.

Compare that to Lenovo's own Yoga laptop and tablet lineup and the trade-offs become concrete. A Yoga 9i laptop starts around $1,300 and adds portability; a Yoga Tab handles casual viewing but tops out well short of 50 TOPS and lacks Thunderbolt entirely. A budget mini-PC from competing brands typically undercuts the Yoga Mini i on price but sacrifices the NPU headroom and Wi-Fi 7 support that separate adequate streaming from reliable streaming. At $797 base, the Yoga Mini i sits in a genuinely competitive position for a dedicated studio machine that stays on the desk.

The circular aluminum chassis, finished in what Lenovo calls Seashell, is small enough to tuck behind a monitor or beside a speaker. Active cooling handles a 45W TDP on higher-end SKUs, so intensive rendering or a two-hour live class will not throttle performance. Human presence detection via Wi-Fi sensing and a fingerprint reader on the power button add convenience features that matter in a solo-instructor setup where no one is managing the gear but you.

The catch for instructors outside China: the device was only listed for Chinese retail as of March 31, and pricing in other currencies remains unannounced. Anyone wanting it now faces an import or forwarding service with no warranty safety net. Lenovo has confirmed phased international shipping ahead of a broader mid-2026 push, putting global availability no earlier than sometime before July, which means a spring studio refresh will have to wait.

The Yoga Mini i Gen 11 first appeared at CES 2026, making the March 31 China listing the first moment retail buyers could actually configure and price one. Lenovo has marked the unit with ENERGY STAR certification and offers carbon-neutral packaging on select SKUs, details that align squarely with the studio-owner audience the Yoga branding has always been chasing.