Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon (2018) - Review 2022

The 6th-generation Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon ($1,789) is more of a status symbol than the workhorse ThinkPad that business users know and dear. But this ultraportable laptop is far from a gimmick with incredible bombardment life and a pleasingly premium soft-touch chassis. It fifty-fifty brings back a few features that were removed in last year'south model. All told, the X1 Carbon delivers most of what we love virtually the ThinkPad T470 in a much smaller packet, which makes it the all-time high-stop laptop you can buy for your business.

Familiar Looks

The consumer ultraportable laptop market is flooded with head-turning designs (come across, for instance, the vanishingly thin bezels on the Dell XPS 13 or the snow white expanses that beautify the HP Spectre 13), but ultraportables meant for concern can be far more stodgy. Lenovo is somewhat responsible for this trend, since its chunky blackness ThinkPad notebooks have been the aureate standard in enterprise mobile computing for years.

With the latest X1 Carbon, however, the Chinese tech giant fuses a traditional black aesthetic—complete with a slightly soft exterior of carbon cobweb and magnesium alloy that makes information technology feel so premium—with a thin screen bezel and a lite weight. The result is an ultraportable that weighs just 2.49 pounds, measures 0.63 by 12.74 by 8.55 inches (HWD), and still manages to fit in legendary ThinkPad characteristics similar a comfortable keyboard, long battery life, and a semi-rugged enclosure. The ThinkPad T470, past dissimilarity, is 0.79 past 13.25 by 9.xv inches and weighs 3.74 pounds.

And yes, in instance you're wondering, Lenovo throws in a red pointing stick to delight the most discerning ThinkPad purists. Why you'd still use one is a flake of a mystery, especially since Lenovo has as well brought back a affect brandish, which was missing from the final generation of the X1 Carbon.

You can also upgrade to either a sleeky or matte QHD (ii,560-by-1440) display that lacks bear on capability. This high-end screen is targeted at well-heeled enthusiasts rather than corporate Information technology departments, Lenovo said at CES this yr when it unveiled the new X1 Carbon. The glossy version promises to be the first HDR laptop screen one time an update is rolled out this spring to unlock the Dolby Vision functionality on the software side. Y'all'50 likely take a battery life hit by choosing this configuration, all the same.

The 14-inch total Hard disk (1,920-by-1,080) touch screen on our base of operations model Carbon X1 is still unique, in both skilful and bad ways. Instead of calculation weight and complexity to the screen by enabling touch the old-fashioned way, with a protective layer on top of the display, Lenovo engineers instead added capacitors directly into the screen. The result is a matte, anti-glare impact display that is perfect for bright office environments and piece of cake on the battery, but that also includes bear upon for when you need it.

Ideally you won't need information technology as well often, though, considering the unconventional integrated capacitors are much less precise than you might look if y'all're used to tapping on a glossy screen like the i that comes with the HP Spectre 13. The X1 Carbon'south screen isn't very responsive, but whether that'southward a worthy sacrifice for an anti-glare screen is a matter of personal preference. Note also that the touch capabilities of the competing MacBook Pro are relegated to the TouchBar.

Along with the screen, y'all tin also upgrade the memory, storage, and hard drive (which will increase the price to more than $ii,000). You can also choose a silver version that ThinkPad purists volition likely scoff at. This entry-level model is equipped with an eighth-generation Intel Core i5 processor, 8GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD. The processor and memory might initially seem a bit anemic for a laptop that costs more than $1,700, just they tin handle about common computing tasks with aplomb, as yous'll run into in the performance department below.

Luxurious Keyboard

When y'all're not tapping, y'all'll likely be luxuriating in the X1 Carbon's backlit island-style keyboard, which boasts fantabulous travel and supremely sturdy, sculpted keys. This is largely the aforementioned lath we loved on the ThinkPad T470, and the fact that Lenovo manages to stuff information technology into a much thinner chassis is impressive. I capeesh that the Fn and Command keys are swappable using the Lenovo settings app, which ways y'all can decide if y'all'd like the outermost key to perform the Control function equally it would on a standalone keyboard.

The clickable touchpad is improve than you lot'd expect for a Windows laptop, but it's rather small-scale and tin can't match the excellent Strength Bear on capabilities nor the gargantuan size of the one on the MacBook Pro. Next to the pad is a fingerprint reader complete with its own processing chip, so that it verifies your prints on the chip without Windows having access to them, a security enhancement that's new on this year'south X1 Carbon and sure to please wary corporate security managers. Other corporate-friendly features include Intel's vPro management and an integrated cover for the webcam when you're non using it, but there'south no keycard functionality like you'll find on a business workstation.

The port selection is excellent for such a thin automobile. Dissimilar Apple, which equips the MacBook Pro solely with USB-C ports, Lenovo gives business users several more than options. There are two USB-C ports with Thunderbolt three back up that are besides used for charging, equally well two USB three.0 ports and an HDMI-out port. The left edge also features a dock connector for the new ThinkPad dock (old ones that connect to the bottom of the laptop won't work), while there's a Kensington lock slot on the right. There's fifty-fifty a microSD card slot located at the dorsum of the laptop, in the same enclosure that houses the SIM card for cellular-equipped models.

Your only thwarting volition be if, like united states, you expect to find an Ethernet port on your business organization laptop, which tin brand your life much easier if you're faced with poor Wi-Fi in a hotel or crowded feast hall, but manage to find a wired connectedness. At least at that place's 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.2 to help you stay continued.

Impressive audio isn't expected on an ultraportable, and the X1 Carbon didn't surprise the states. Information technology offers present if not startling bass and treble, only the downward-firing speakers aim straight at your desk or lap, resulting in an anemic sound.

Lenovo includes a one-year warranty with mail-in hardware support for the X1 Carbon.

Power on the Go

Let's confront information technology: You're not buying ultraportables for the multimedia content creators, programmers, and information scientists in your company. You lot're ownership them for workers whose jobs entail give-and-take processing, email checking, and maybe some lite Excel work. The Intel Core i5-8250U processor running at 1.6GHz with integrated graphics should be more than acceptable for these tasks, even though yous can notice more powerful processors for less coin in consumer ultraportables.

As proof, the X1 Carbon turned in a respectable score of 3,363 on the proprietary PCMark 8 benchmark test, which is inside a few hundred points of its competitors—even within striking altitude of the HP EliteBook 1040 G4 and its more powerful Intel Core i7. Any PCMark viii score in a higher place 3,000 indicates more than than enough juice for basic computing tasks. On a more than anecdotal level, app loading was snappy and startup times were lightning fast—less than 10 seconds—over several days of heavy use.

Tasks such as rendering video footage and editing photos are improve suited to laptops with discrete graphics cards and CPUs with more than processing cores. Still, if you had to do it in a pinch, note that X1 Carbon was faster than the MacBook Pro on our Handbrake video-encoding test, our Cinebench 3D-rendering criterion, and our series of Photoshop editing tasks.

Gaming performance is predictably subpar, with neither the X1 Carbon nor any of its Windows competitors turning in frame rates college than 30 frames per second, which we consider to be the accented minimum threshold for enjoyable gaming. Thanks to its superior Intel Iris Plus graphics card, the MacBook Pro offers slightly better frame rates, only information technology'southward withal not a substitute for a machine with a dedicated graphics carte.

The X1 Carbon'south fans spooled up during the criterion tests, producing audible exhaust racket, but they were silent during a weekend of mixed regular use, including spider web browsing and watching Netflix. That'due south a huge benefit that this laptop shares with the MacBook Pro over like consumer ultraportables like the Asus ZenBook UX430U, which produces aural fan noise even during casual tasks like web browsing.

Run across How We Test Laptops

Battery life is excellent, as you'd expect from a Lenovo laptop. I was on the edge of my seat during our battery rundown test, wondering if the X1 Carbon would outlast the ThinkPad T470's fantabulous upshot of 17 hours and 36 minutes. Alas, information technology did non, coming in merely a few minutes curt at 17:26. That is notwithstanding very impressive, fifty-fifty more and then when you consider that the T470 requires two batteries to last that long. No other business ultraportable comes shut.

When information technology comes time to charge, you can fill up up the battery from empty in less than an hour and a one-half, cheers to Lenovo's quick-charging engineering.

Everything First-class in a Smaller Package

For road warriors who value portability and are blest with generous IT budgets, it doesn't get much meliorate than the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon. This ultraportable takes nigh everything there is to dear nearly full-size ThinkPads and puts it in a much smaller, just merely equally good-looking, package. From all-day bombardment life to a wonderfully comfortable keyboard, the X1 Carbon'due south characteristic listing is made for business, and will even please enthusiasts with cutting-edge options like an HDR brandish. For all these reasons, it's our Editors' Choice for business ultraportables.

Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/laptops/19945/lenovo-thinkpad-x1-carbon-2018

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