Not that many laptop brands have lasted as long as Lenovo’s ThinkPad product-line. Its success has led to Lenovo hybrids and Ultrabooks. The company’s latest laptop, the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon 2015, is a flag-ship Ultrabook which sports a superb design wrapped around a magnesium alloy and carbon fibre build.
The third iteration to bear the name Carbon follows the 2012 and 2014 releases. Lenovo doesn’t just staple the Carbon name onto the same old rehashed device. The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon competes with top-of-the-shelf laptops from Apple and Dell. It’s also more business oriented and it comes packed with an extended warranty, vPro and TPM.
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Review
It has a high-resolution, top-notch screen, with an excellent and comfortable keyboard, it’s lightweight sporting a beautiful exterior design, and the three year warranty is just the bomb.
The thing is, for the $1,900 price tag, it isn’t the best one in its price range. Battery life is great, but it gets beaten elsewhere, it’s bigger and heavier than its rival, and because it’s so business oriented it makes Lenovo pump up the price a bit.
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Design and Build Quality
It’s beautiful and sleek, with a powerful vibe to it. It comes with a matte black finish, a red trackpoint and a diagonal retro logo. It shouts ThinkPad from its every screw.
The Carbon stays true to its ThinkPad origins and the machine favors being practical over little gimmicks. Dedicated buttons have been augmented onto the trackpoint and the capacitive functions keys are now binned, featuring more practical physical keys. It’s something that we would have just loved for the second gen 2014 model. It’s a nice addition, more so considering that Lenovo has clearly been listening to its community.
The machine is built out of high-quality materials, there is no doubt here. But Lenovo doesn’t showcase this in detriment of the device’s practicality. Aluminium and magnesium stand at the core of build-materials. If they were to use only aluminium, the machine would be slippery and it would have been riddled with scratches from God knows where
The panel found on the rear of the machine’s display is built from fine carbon-fibre. Other gaps found on the Carbon are filled with reinforced fibre made out of plastic. At the touch, the blackness feels soft and smooth.
I’ve got no quarrel with how Lenovo constructed their machine. It’s lightweight and sturdy because of the materials used.
The Carbon was never constructed with design in mind just for design’s sake. This means that the latest Apple MacBook Pro, or the Dell XPS 13 are better looking. They are sleeker, and subsequently more desirable. The ThinkPad has been built with business in mind – elegant, simple but capable of doing the exact same thing other flag-ship laptops boast about.
Even though it’s business-aimed, it’s an Ultrabook, clearly. The Carbon X1 weighs 1.31 kilos, which is just a couple of grams lighter than the MacBook Pro. Surprisingly, Lenovo’s machine is just about as thick as the 13-inch MacBook Air.
It’s more than great, but it’s worth noting that there are other consumer machines which are smaller, and lighter. The Dell XPS 13, revised, is about 15 millimeters thin and weighs 1.17 kilos.
It’s not something noticeable at first, but if you carry it on a day to day basis, it will pull on your shoulder more, and your carry-bag will be a little bit bigger.
It has better components when compared to the 2014 second gen model. The machine is 4G-ready, it has a dual-band 802.11ac wireless support and the TPM and vPro are included to assure security for businesses – this isn’t something that you will be get if you choose to acquire a Dell or a MacBook.
Indeed, it can be upgraded, but not by much. The RAM is soldered in place, but you can lift the base panel and gain access to the M.2 SSD, the wireless card and other internals.
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Screen and Sound Quality
The X1 Carbon has a 14-inch display and a resolution of 2,560 x 1,440 – the display panel is of IPS descent. With a pixel density of 210ppi it’s borderline excellent, however Apple’s latest MacBook features 227ppi. Though, the difference isn’t noticeable at all.
Because of the screen’s high density images, icons and text are sharp and clear.
You’ll be using the scaling option for Windows. If you opt-in for a native res, then the OS will look small and it will become barely usable.
Unfortunately, third party tools still don’t get as much support as we would have wanted. It isn’t a huge issue, but it’s worth mentioning that there will be minor pixelation problems and other visual artefacts present. It has improved, a lot I might add, but OS X is by far the better one.
It has a fantastic 6,584k color temperature, but the XPS 13 beats it, slightly. In fact, ThinkPad’s rivals end up in the lead in almost every department. Brightness levels are better than Dell’s XPS, but when comparing black points Dell, once again, takes first place.
However, both of them are exquisite.
Lenovo features a 1,013:1 contrast. Dell is superior with 1,505:1. Yet again, another area where the Carbon falls a little bit short.
The X1 has a high-quality sharpness and it can handle anything photo-edit related, but Apple’s latest MacBook has flawless viewing angles and much better scaling due to its OS X.
Sound-quality wise, speakers are quite good, but they have too much middle. This means that volume is plentiful, but treble takes a beating. Sound doesn’t seem to have the required high-punch in order to really stand out.
What I found impressive is how much bass the laptop can output. Unfortunately, it gets swamped and sound is buried under a stew of high-pitched noises trying to make themselves heard.
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Performance
The ThinkPad X1 comes packed with a Core i7-5600U proc that outweighs Dell’s XPS. It’s even faster due to it having 400MHz. The L3 cache can stretch the power even further with Turbo Boost.
Clearly, the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon beats Dell in the performance department, but it doesn’t pack enough punch to make a clear ground between itself and Apple’s MacBook machine. It came as quite the shock because Apple’s laptop has a Core i5 proc. Under closer investigation, you can observe that Apple’s machine has a more powerful and faster chip – 100MHz faster.
MacBook’s GPU also overpowers Lenovo’s – it’s an Intel Iris 6100, which is better than X1’s HD Graphics 5500 chipset.
Benchmark tests is where both machines prove their worth. Although the Carbon scored 17.1 frame per second in the Unigine Heaven gaming test, it comes dead second in Geekbench. It barely scored 5,194. Apple’s MacBook managed a whooping 7,010.
Bottomline is that both machines output a decent amount of speed for work related tasks. Your usual office apps run without issues. Photo editing tools work flawless. Only the most demanding programs will make the X1 struggle.
Storage tests proved that the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon is quite the beast. That is, if it’s compared with average laptops that come equipped with an HDD. The X1 M.2 Samsung SSD is by far quicker than any hard drive, but it’s sequential read and write speeds aren’t enough to compete with Apple’s machine.
Lenovo’s 482MB/s read speed and 256MB/s write speed doesn’t compare with Apple’s 645MB/s and 1.2GB/s.
There were no issues regarding heating or too much noise. The i7 proc reached a high of 68 degrees and little to none heat got out of the laptop.
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Battery Life
During a standard 40 percent brightness test, the ThinkPad lasted 9 hours and 50 minutes. This is more than great, but its rivals performed better. The Dell XPS 13 almost reached the half day mark, and the MacBook Pro went over it.
The Carbon is pretty good in this area, but its competitors take the gold.
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Keyboard and Trackpad
Lenovo’s ThinkPads are considered to have one of the best keyboards on the market. The third gen X1 Carbon had big shoes to fill.
Initially I thought that because the Carbon was so lightweight and slim, Lenovo had to cut down somewhere, and that somewhere had to be the keyboard area. Quality remains unhindered. Keys are still large with a deep dip so you can type better and faster. Typing is consistent and responsive, it’s soft and comfortable. No criticism here.
The third gen Carbon has a better trackpad than its previous gen brother, and its two built-in buttons are highly responsive. The points can feel a little bit twitchy, initially, but it has to be this way for a longer use. Its more than decent.
Lenovo’s keyboard remains reigning king, but the trackpad? Not so much. MacBook Pro’s Force TouchPad is better. But to be honest, this is a matter of taste. Needless to say, both of them are great.
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Miscellaneous
The most expensive Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon costs $2650. But there are cheaper configs available. You can choose from various options that include, or exclude touchscreens. You can choose a 1920 x 108 res or a 2560 x 1440 one. You can even choose models with more, or less RAM and storage.
The cheapest Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon costs $1,900 and it comes packed with a 1920 x 1080 res display, non-touchscreen however, 4 gigs of RAM, an SSD comprised of 128 gigs and an Intel Core i5 5200U proc.
If you want to compare the Lenovo with its competitors, you should know that the MacBook Air’s cheapest model retails at $1,300, and Dell’s XPS 13 starts at $1230. You can save a ton of money, but neither of them don’t have vPro, or TPM like the ThinkPad.
Lenovo’s 2015 Carbon comes with a three-year warranty. This is more than great, and it can put your mind at peace when considering the long-term investment.
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Verdict
The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon is an impressive laptop and it shines in every area. Yet, it gets beaten by competitors in almost every department. It’s aimed at businesses but it also offers a commercial appeal. Unfortunately, business use is on the top of its priority lists.
It’s as thin as you get them, and it won’t strain your back even though it’s slightly bulkier than the MacBook Pro or the Dell XPS 13. The screen is sharp, with vibrant colors. Everything looks superb on the laptop’s display, but visually, Apple’s machine betters the ThinkPad.
The X1 Carbon outperforms the XPS, but it’s a ton slower than Apple’s MacBook Pro. Also, Lenovo, although it has a great battery life, considering all things, it gets bested by Dell and Apple.
If you’re in need of a consumer laptop, then you should definitely go for an Apple or Dell machine. Lenovo’s ThinkPad is best used for business. Its strengths lie in the vPro, the fingerprint reader, TPM, the more than generous huge three-year warranty and access to all of its internals.
Because it’s business oriented, you’ll have to pay more. Is it worth the trade-offs? It’s a pretty great business Ultrabook, but going over the $2,000 mark seems a little bit of an overkill for what it has to offer. The laptop is consistently good, with no crashes encountered, and most importantly it doesn’t creak or squeak. Build material is top notch.
Bottomline is – looking for a business machine? Take the Lenovo. Looking for a consumer machine? Pick an Apple or Dell laptop.
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Price – Between $1,900 and $2,650.
