The lord of business laptops, Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon recently received an upgrade and is now on its 6th generation. It offers all the hallmarks that ThinkPad series is known for, from slim and sexy carbon fiber chassis to great performance and battery life. Of course, it retains the classic keyboard which is well known for providing the best typing experience along with a red eraser nub TrackPoint in the center
The laptop packs plenty of modern upgrades which has helped in drastically improving the performance. So without any further ado let’s find out whether this new upgrade is worth your money.
Design:
Starting things off with the design I must say it is a really slim and sleek looking device featuring the luxurious soft-touch lid and deck which provides a really nice grip and comfortable hand rest.
The carbon fiber chassis really attracts me with its soft-touch texture, it is one of the most portable 14-inch business laptops available in the market measuring at 12.7 x 8.5 x 0.6 inches and weighs only about 2.5 pounds.
Some subtle changes have been made like the ThinkPad branding on the lid and the deck is now more black and silver than the usual. Also, there is a new elegant red and black logo on the lower left corner of the back. All in all, it is a really attractive looking laptop, you can also choose a dark silver color option which has a slightly different texture.
Display:
The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon comes in two display options, a standard 1920 x 1080 touch panel and a 2560 x 1440 HDR Dolby Vision display which is not touch responsive. Both the displays are really impressive although the 1440p variant looks sharper and has better dynamic range.
The color reproduction is impressive, the colors are really vibrant and really pop up. The saturation, contrast levels and details are on point. The viewing angles are great the colors do not shift even when viewed at 90 degrees.
The 1080p model uses Lenovo’s in-cell touch technology which makes the display more power efficient than a standard touchscreen. It produces 129 percent of the sRGB color gamut while the 1440p HDR display can produce a strong 199 percent. This pretty impressive as even the best 4K displays in the market only produce up to 132 percent of the sRGB color gamut. These displays without a doubt are the brightest in the market, they can get bright up to 462 nits.
Specifications:
The most impressive upgrade in the ThinkPad is that they now feature 8th Gen quad-core CPU. The base model is equipped with Core i5 8250U CPU paired up with 8 Gigs of RAM and 512GB NVMe PCIe SSD. The higher-end model comes with Core i7 8550U processor combined with 16 Gigs of RAM and 1TB of SSD storage.
The laptops performed really well no matter what I threw at them. I did some Video Editing on the Final Cut Pro for my project and the performance was really smooth with minimal loading time. I also played CS GO at max setting and was easily able to get 90+ FPS.
However, don’t expect to do some serious gaming with this laptop as it does not have a powerful GPU. The input and output include two Thunderbolt 3 ports, two USB Type-A ports, a microSD card slot and a full-sized HDMI connector.
The speakers are not the best thing about this device. They are loud and decent and gets the job done for the most part, at max volume they do distort a little. There is a Dolby Audio software that automatically selects the sound profile depending on the app that you are using, you can also select the sound profiles manually.
Keyboard And TrackPad:
The Lenovo ThinkPad laptops are best known for their fantastic laptops, they offer really tactile and comfortable typing experience. The key travel is 1.8 millimeters and requires a strong 2 gram actuation force. I was able to score 72 wpm on 10FastFingers.com which is my personal best.
Moving on to the trackpad is fairly decent having a surface area of 3.9 x 2.2-inch. The response is really great and the experience is pretty smooth. It supports all the latest Windows 10 multi-finger gestures.
Battery:
The battery life of this laptop is really great, it will easily get you through the day along with some juice still left. The 1440p variant lasted for 10 hours and 30 minutes on the Laptop Mag Battery test while the 1080p one lasted for 11 hours. The X1 is also equipped with fast charging and can get from 0 to 80 percent in just an hour with its AC adapter. The full charge takes about an hour and 30 minutes.
Final Verdict:
The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon is a really impressive business machine that packs plenty of performance in small and sleek chassis. It sports one of the best laptop displays in the market and provides great battery life. The typing experience is amazing plus you get durability and security. So if you are in the market looking for the best laptop to take with you on the go for business then make sure to check out the Carbon X1. You can buy it from Amazon here.