Review: Lenovo’s latest ThinkPad X1 Carbon is a good performer with questionable battery life

The Dell XPS 13 has been at the forefront of the thin-and-light laptop race on the Windows side for years, ever since it adopted the ubiquitous ultra-thin display bezel in 2015. Dell was also a step ahead a couple of years ago when it moved to a taller 16:10 aspect ratio screen, further enhancing the usability of the design without increasing its size.

But for power users who can afford to spend a few hundred dollars, Lenovo’s ThinkPad X1 Carbon has always been an attractive option. It’s slightly lighter than Dell’s ultraportable, but still manages to fit a larger screen and a better selection of ports. Lenovo laptop keyboards and trackpads are almost always best in class. And the ThinkPad’s pedigree as a business laptop means the Carbon’s design is still focused on maintainability and upgradeability, even if many of its internal components were still soldered to save space.

This year’s X1 Carbon version – we’re up to the 10th generation, if anyone’s counting – hasn’t changed much on the outside. But it does include new 12th-gen Intel Core processors, which, as we’ve seen in other laptops, can be both a blessing and a curse. Performance on CPU-heavy tasks can be better, sometimes significantly. But this comes at the cost of extra heat and less battery life, and it’s a tough trade-off to recommend for an all-around ultraportable.

See and feel

Lenovo has thoroughly redesigned the X1 Carbon from last year’s Gen 9 model, replacing the 16:9 screen with a 16:10 version and ditching Lenovo’s semi-proprietary dock port in favor of a pair of older Thunderbolt ports. The Gen 10 model is nearly identical – the only physical change I noticed is a slightly raised area above the webcam on the display bezel, presumably making more room for an updated 1080p webcam (Gen 9 used a 720p model).

For those of you less than intimately familiar with the intricacies of the X1 Carbon’s design history, the main thing to know is that it takes ThinkPad’s classic black, angular style and pushes it almost to the limit (I say “almost”because the X1 Nano is a thing). It’s not as boxy as some of the cheaper ThinkPad L- and E-series, but it definitely uses the same design language that Lenovo and IBM have been perfecting for 30 years. It’s both a blessing and a curse – its durable body and soft-touch finish is nice to hold and carry around, but it’s a hand oil and fingerprint magnet that’s hard to keep clean.

The most important component of any ThinkPad is the top-tier keyboard and trackpad, and the Gen 10 X1 Carbon has both. The kit includes a large, precise touchpad and a red ThinkPad pointing nub, and both work as intended. The chiclet style keys are well spaced and nicely backlit. The keys aren’t as solid as on current Dell XPS models, and I’ve occasionally been annoyed that the Fn key is to the left of the left Ctrl key instead of the other way around, although this is a longstanding ThinkPad feature that can be fixed in software if that bothers you. But overall, this is one of the best keyboards you can get on a laptop right now.

The choice of port remains one of the best arguments in favor of the X1 Carbon over the XPS 13 or even the MacBook Air. The Carbon excels in both quantity and variety: a pair of Thunderbolt 4 ports, one of which is used to charge the laptop, plus one USB-A port on each side, a full-size HDMI port, and a headphone jack. Carbon ditched the microSD card reader generations ago, which is disappointing, and the XPS 13 puts Thunderbolt ports on both sides of the laptop, so you can charge it (or plug it into a dock or whatever) from either side. Laptops that have nothing but Thunderbolt/USB-C ports aren’t as fiddly as they used to be either. But the presence of additional ports is convenient and useful for those who regularly use external displays or other accessories.

The X1 Carbon can be configured with any of seven different display panels including 4K, OLED, privacy screen, and touch screen options; choosing any of them will slightly change the battery life and weight of the laptop. Our test unit provided by Lenovo uses a 1920×1200 pixel IPS touchscreen with a maximum brightness of 396 nits, an impressive 1744:1 contrast ratio, 98% sRGB color gamut coverage, and 71.5% DCI-P3 gamut coverage (all given by our i1). Display Studio colorimeter). Even the base screen is bright and colorful, and if you’re still using a 16:9 display on an older laptop, you’ll find that the extra 120 pixels of height makes a surprisingly big difference to usability.