the thinkpad x1 carbon is the suit of laptops with its thin tailored bezels
and stark black back with a logo pocket square accent
bringing it out of your bag says you don't have time for someone to be
late and that the meeting notes you take will be both somehow exceptionally
thorough and concise but is the x1 just a suit or is there
more substance behind it
like the substance bringing you this video zotac's mech one gaming pc it's
ultra slim and features a sleek robotic style design check it out at the link
below to learn more that's not really a substance is it's
more of a product
the build quality of the thinkpad x1 carbon is exceptional with a very stiff
chassis especially considering how light it is and it's got plastics that feel
soft and good on the hands the overall
feel of it is more like a tool or a piece of equipment which might not
appeal to folks who gravitate towards prettier devices like the surface laptop
or dell xps but will to others and
you know who you are you're the kind of person who wants a thinning light but
also still wants to plug stuff into it
and that's what we've got a smattering of type a and type c usbs Thunderbolt 3
HDMI and Ethernet with pass through to
their proprietary dock a very important feature for accessing your corporate
network when you are docked performance wise you've got the pick of the litter
with 8th gen Intel u-series processors from a core i5 all the way up to the
core i7 8650u although it should be noted that lenovo
tuned the CPU in their top config to 15
watts so dell's xps 13 actually performs
better with a lower tier processor
though not by much over a half hour stress test the
thinkpad x1 carbon reached around 90 degrees which is a little on the hot
side but wasn't enough for it to thermal throttle putting it ahead in performance
of basically every other thin and light that we've tested
and the keyboard that's another strong point with its long 18 millimeter key
travel and super satisfying tactile bump
it's a solid contender for best notebook keyboard on the market
compared to say the macbook pro i don't think i can actually hit the same peak
speed for short bursty messages but if i
had to type for hours i would much rather use the x1 which i can easily do
with its over six hours of battery life and while we're praising the keyboard
isn't it about time that somebody put snipping tool on the print screen button
now the trackpad this is also good
but maybe not as excellent the tracking and feel is solid and satisfying but
pulling out the macbook pro for comparison reminded me how nice it would
be if i could click on the whole thing
and how small it is
like i realized that the options are
either a small track pad or
a mouse nipple so it's not a simple choice but i'm
personally not a track point guy so nah sorry
sorry everyone but i would actually like to see that
vertical space used another way
now there are two screen options that really stick out with the x1 with the
most interesting being the new 2560 by 1440 glossy finish with HDR like
look at them side by side even dang this thing is nice to look at
at this size you really don't need 4k
but the extra sharpness at 1440p
is more than welcome then the colors brightness and black levels all blew me
away which is all fine and good if you're buying a laptop for watching movies
but given how um
how do i put this gently bad yeah yeah
that's the word i was looking for bad uh the speaker sound
movies are probably not what you want this for you wanted to use between nine
and five so actually out of the two displays we
tried the 1080p with touch is the one
that got the most use its matte finish is great when you have to work under
fluorescent lights and i'm never going to turn down the opportunity to navigate
using my screen unfortunately
i do really like unlocking my computer with my face and facial recognition sign
in is only available on the higher res
model forcing me to use the fingerprint reader to the right of the trackpad
which by the way is the wrong place
anywhere but the power button these days is the wrong place
though to lenovo's credit while their reader isn't as fast as the dell xps or
the lg gram it uses match on chip
technology for an additional layer of security so i won't be docking any
points what i will be docking points for though
is the webcam i do like the additional security of
being able to just flip it shut so that no one can be
spying on me in the event that uh my computer is compromised but
when it isn't disabled quite frankly it is just not good enough for a webcam in
2018 especially on a business sku that
is presumably going to be used for conference calls
taking apart the thinkpad x1 carbon is pretty easy
but doesn't give you access to a whole lot of upgrade options the storage is
upgradeable which is nice but the RAM is
not so make sure you grab enough when you're buying
though now that i think about it should you buy
one of these the pricing makes a clear recommendation
here actually kind of difficult at regular price
it is a big fat
no but lenovo was really cagey about
whether the promotional prices on their website
were actually promos or if they were just attempts to make you feel like
you're getting a special deal every day so
if the price you pay is closer to what was on the site when we were shooting
this about 13.50 to start that is still
more than an xps but for business use the sim slot could
massively improve productivity in the field and then back in the office the x1
will make the it department happy as a clam 2. when it's connected to the dock
Mac Address passthrough pxe boot and wake on lan along with all of the
additional security features superfish notwithstanding will allow your company
to be productive during the day and sleep well at night
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