Not much has changed with this year’s ThinkPad X1 Carbon, as Comet Lake chips do not make an enormous difference.
The old saying is that”if it ai not broke, do not fix it” That certainly appears to be Lenovo’s strategy for this year’s version of this ThinkPad X1 Carbon, the eighth generation of the company’s executive notebook.
The X1 Carbon continues to be almost identical for many decades now–here are my reviews of the 2019 and 2018 models –and the only significant change this year is that the move to Intel 10th Production chips at the Comet Lake family.
As always, the X1 Carbon stays suitably compact, measuring 0.63 by 12.74 by 8.55 inches (HWD) and weighing just under 2.5 lbs. It is light weight3 lbs, 1.3 ounces like the charger–making it effortless to carry.
It has been a 14-inch screen, with comparatively tiny bezels about it, although not as modest as the bezels on the current Dell machines. The unit I tested had a UHD (3,840-by-2,160-pixel) screen with HDR support and 500 nits of brightness. It looked perfect, and the cost differential for your UHD screen has come down. However, I still think many folks will probably be delighted with a complete high profile (FHD) (1,920-by-1,080) variant. Lenovo also provides regular FHD screens, FHD displays using an integrated touchscreen, and screens with a touchscreen and an integrated privacy display, but maybe not a UHD variant with touch service.
The business has a somewhat similar 2-in-1 known as the X1 Meditation, which does have a UHD signature choice. Here is my overview of last year’s version of the X1 Yoga, that such as the X1 Carbon has not altered much since.
I tested the X1 Carbon version with an Intel Core i7-10610U (Comet Lake) chip with four cores and eight threads, using a base rate of 1.8GHz and a turbo of 4.9GHz, together with vPro support and 16GB of memory. Generally, benchmark results were not a lot different than last year’s version; it was marginally faster on some evaluations, marginally slower on other people –you likely would not see the difference. In more real-world evaluations, a Matlab portfolio simulation was conducted slightly slower than it did last year’s version, although a vast Excel model using an info table and Monte Carlo simulations was roughly 10 percent quicker. Again, I am unsure that Comet Lake provides a great deal of increase over the past year’s Whiskey Lake chips.
It’s a 51 watt-hour battery life, which is sufficient to get you through a typical day’s work, but in my tests, not like competing notebooks.
The X1 Carbon has been 2 USB-A ports, 1 USB-C/Thunderbolt for charging and peripherals, HDMI out, along with also a UBS-C/proprietary jack docking connector on the other side. The front-facing webcam functioned well and featured a bodily solitude shield. The unit I tested had an IR camera, which worked great with Windows Hello, along with a”carbon fiber using Woven cover layout”-meaning that a small pattern on the machine’s cover rather than the normal ThinkPad matte black.
The backlit keyboard has not changed. ThinkPads continue to possess the recognizable ThinkPad computer keyboard, which stays top-notch, together with the identifying red TrackPoint cursor controller plus a comparatively small but decent touchpad. The touchpad has been getting physical buttons, something that lots of the aggressive executive notebooks have eschewed in favor of a bigger size, but you likely need if you use the TrackPoint.
Overall, the ThinkPad X1 Carbon is still an outstanding, very mobile 14-inch executive laptop. It is not the hottest, latest layout, but it’s normal, easy to transport, and an established workhorse.
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