Lenovo X1 Carbon Review
Lenovo’s X1 Carbon comes packed with splendid performance and battery life in a slim carbon fiber chassis. It is the 6th Generation of the ThinkPad X1 Carbon series- a line of premium laptops which has introduced some really innovative designs for its audience. The X1 Carbon contains the most recent 8th generation Core i5 processor, a RAM of 8 GB, and an SSD storage of 512 GB. The business laptop has a fantastic keyboard and colorful display like its predecessors but far better performance thanks to the 8th generation quad-core central processing unit.
The laptop’s Carbon cover feels rock solid when handled. On the other hand, the entire device is covered in some sort of carbon material, which unlike other laptops that have hard plastic surfaces, feels quite soft when touched. The material seems long lasting and sold.
Despite not being the thinnest or the lightest laptop out there, the Lenovo X1 does not fail to impress. With a weight of fewer than 2.5 pounds, it has beaten MacBook Pro and Dell XPS 13 which are .5 pounds and .17 pounds heavier respectively. The laptop is aimed for the professional lot out there and therefore is expected to get some serious work done. It has almost all sorts of ports. It has a full-size HDM and two USB-A ports and two Thunderbolts 3 ports, which would allow effortless and pain-free connections with displays and other accessories that would definitely please the target audience.
The famous TrackPoint is found in the center of the keyboard, something Lenovo knows it has traditionally been able to achieve better than its peers. For the trackpad, its click is almost perfect and satisfying without being stiff or loud. However, it lags behind when it comes to the size, as the touchpad surface is quite small. Although the navigation is fluid and it does not confuse a resting thumb with two fingers still, the size should have been a little bigger.
Lenovo has made a smart move by introducing some add-on features which include an advanced fingerprint scanning technology, touchscreen and even a cover for the webcam. The fingerprint scanner is a great addition for professionals, but the touchscreen could use some more effort, as it is not that responsive and might induce anger and frustration when the user would have to tap one option several times to open or close a window.
The laptop has a display of 14 inch which is nonglossy, with a resolution of 1920 x 1080; comfortable for professionals and businessmen. The color accuracy is brilliant and shows almost 78 percent on the RGB scale. The brightness, on the contrary, seemed to be the major flaw with the display which is hard to ignore. But owing to the X1’s matte display the glare is not visible. Lenovo has introduced 360-degree far-field microphones in order to help the Cortana voice assistant. Since the laptop is targeted at professionals, it is no wonder that with the ThinkPad X1 Carbon you would not be playing games. Aimed at increasing productivity at work the 13-inch laptop does not handle complicated 3D games that require complex graphics; though you will still be able to play simple games like Candy Crush.
The laptop comes with a 57 watt per hour battery, a common element for laptops of this size. On their official page, Lenovo has cited 15 hours of battery, but buyers have constantly complained that with normal web browsing and other meager tasks the battery only lasts for about 6 to 7 hours.
The X1 pad comes with the 8th generation Core i5 8250U, which is a mid-range processor for a base configuration. The tiny laptop also has an impressive RAM of 8 GB and an amazing 512 GB of SSD storage, which is quite suitable for such a tiny laptop. With 512 GB of NVMe SSD storage, one would never have to worry about the space or fear of running out of space, neither would one have to wait long to write or read files. The X1 Carbon also has impressive drive performance, better than the Surface Book 2. If you want to buy laptops based on storage performance then X1 Carbon should be it, without a doubt. There is a 45 percent increase in multi-core performance and handles stress quite well. If you are running multiple applications at the same time, you will hear noise and notice heat but it’s not excessive and something to worry about.
Lenovo’s ThinkPad X1 is aimed at professionals. It has tried to be an all-rounder and hence has managed to feature excellent fundamentals such as the keyboard, microphone, and even processors, and even comes with a one year warranty. The only question is whether anyone really will be comfortable working with such a small touchpad. Also, the touchscreen is a real bummer and can mess up the mood while working on important office tasks.
