Because consumer demand isn't as high, the price is more than it should be. They're nice laptops, but the main buyers are large corporations, which don't pay these prices. This is the main problem with the X1 series-and with Dell's Latitude series, many HPs, and other "business" laptops. That's a reasonable price for those high-end specs, but the actual list price is $3,409, which is an insanely high price for this laptop. I couldn't find the exact configuration I tested for sale on Lenovo's site, but I have seen a version with an i7 chip, 16 gigabytes of RAM, and 1-terabyte SSD on sale for around $2,000. If you're primarily working with office documents, watching HD movies, and browsing the web, save some money and go with the Intel i5 model. It's fast, but there's no discrete GPU, so don't plan on using this for graphics-intensive games or rendering huge video files.įor most people's needs, though, the i7 is plenty powerful enough. The PCMark benchmarks that I ran put the X1 Carbon right beside the rest of the 11th-generation Intel Core processor laptops. The model I tested featured the i7 chip with 16 gigabytes of RAM, and 512-gigabyte SSD (note that the RAM is soldered, so there are no upgrades down the road). The change to 11th-generation Intel processors is also a welcome upgrade. To be fair, no computer-maker seems to be willing to put a decent camera in a laptop, so if you really need high-quality video, you're better off with a third-party webcam. Given the amount of Zoom meetings the average corporate worker is doing these days, this seems like a huge oversight on Lenovo's part. No Lenovo I've used has had an outstanding webcam, but this one is bad enough that my colleagues commented on how bad it was when I used it for a Zoom meeting. Perhaps the biggest disappointment, aside from the missing SD card slot, is the 720p webcam. Unfortunately, there's no OLED screen, which is disappointing. It only gets to 365 nits of brightness, which isn't industry-leading by any means, but it was plenty bright enough to sit outside on a summer day and do some work in the sunshine. The 1080p version has a matte panel, though, which is a plus if you're working in brightly lit situations. The model I tested had the FHD+ (1920 x 1200-pixel) panel, but there's a 4K option available if you want it. The body size and weight difference compared to the 16:9 model is negligible, and any extra screen you can eke out of a laptop is a win for the user. When I sent the X1 Carbon back to Lenovo, my X250's 16:9 screen suddenly felt more cramped. That extra half inch of screen means there's more vertical room for documents, web pages, and spreadsheets, which means less scrolling and generally makes life more pleasant. As I said when Dell made the same change to the XPS, you wouldn't think this would be that big of a deal, but it really is noticeable in day-to-day work. The most noticeable change in the Gen 9 X1 Carbon is the new 16:10 screen size. Still, one dongle is better than the half dozen you need with other laptops. The only thing missing is an SD or microSD card slot. Unlike other ultraportables-I'm looking at you, XPS 13 and MacBook Air-there are two USB-C Thunderbolt 4 ports, two USB-A ports, an HDMI 2.0 port, a headphone jack, and a Kensington lock slot. It depends on your personal aesthetics, I suppose, but I've always much preferred the Thinkpad carbon fiber look and feel to aluminum and titanium laptops.Īll the familiar, and deservedly famous, Thinkpad elements are here: The keyboard is excellent the red pointer nub is between the G, H, and B keys and there are three buttons at the top of the trackpad. It's lighter than most of the competition, especially the business class laptops like the Dell Latitude, and the soft carbon fiber surface is a Thinkpad hallmark at this point. That's a good thing, though, because the design has always been very well done and doesn't need a makeover. The new X1 Carbon is not a design revolution.
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