Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon 2016 Review

Today we’ll be reviewing the fourth generation of the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Lite. A portable, business class, laptop aimed at professionals and enterprise users.

Every year Lenovo had to compromise some sort of feature like battery life or keyboard in order to keep the carbon lite “portable” but this year they really nailed it with nearly zero drawbacks.

You can’t help but notice that it’s extremely well built. It’s made out of grey carbon fiber that screams classy, durable and “ready to do business”! In fact, Lenovo tested their laptops against the elements – it’s spill proof and they even placed a roll cage inside it – that’s right, like a car – to protect the internals from getting damaged. The X1 is built like a tank to withstand rough use while keeping a light and thin profile. At only 2.6 pounds it’s sometimes hard to tell that you’re even carrying a laptop inside of your backpack.

Grey carbon fiber exterior.

In terms of ports, on the left side, there’s a power connector, a Lenovo’s onelink plus docking port, a miniDP and a USB 3.0 port. On the left we have an HDMI port, two USB 3.0 ports and an audio jack. On the back, under a flap, lies a microSD card slot and a SIM tray.

The x1 can be configured with up to 16 Gb of RAM and 3 different types of display. The model we’re using is packed with a 1080p display (14″ FHD TN 1920 x 1080), a sixth generation Intel i5 VPRO processor – for those unfamiliar with VPRO: it provides harder enhanced security that enterprise requires. It also has a 256 Gb SSD – this model retails for $1241.

There’s no Ethernet port which is not a big deal but there’s also no full-size SD card reader which is a bummer but we were really hoping for Lenovo to at least include one USB type-c port since that’s becoming the new standard

The 14″ FullHD display on the X1 carbon is really good. The colors are vibrant, text is sharp and the viewing angles are great – it produces over a 100% of the SRGB color gamut which is much higher than other competing notebooks such as the Dell XPS and MacBook Air.

The only minor complaint that we have is that the screen is a little dark. I found the most comfortable brightness setting was between 75% and 200%. The screen we are using doesn’t support touch but the option is available. The screen is Matte which means no glare.

Above the display rests an HDD webcam which is fine for videoconferencing, the colors are a little muted but most people won’t complain.

Now, on to the best part – the keyboard on this laptop is the “bomb”. It’s absolutely awesome and we dare to say it’s one of the best keyboards we’ve tested over the year. The trademark U-shape Lenovo keys feel great, tactile, not mushy and have a comfortable travel distance of 1.8 mm. The entire keyboard is spill proof, it has three levels of back-lighting which can be adjusted by tapping the function key in the space bar. The layout makes sense and below the arrow key is a fingerprint scanner which can be used for Windows hello or pre-boot authentication.

The U-shaped, back-lit keyboard.

Call us old school, but we’re still fans of the old TrackPoint, it’s accurate, it works well and for some reason I just find it comfortable but if you despise it there’s a great glass touchpad below it. It’s really good – pinch-to-zoom, scrolling and clicking all worked flawlessly – overall a solid touchpad and keyboard.

In order to keep the clean black look Lenovo had to place the speakers on the bottom of the laptop. It’s not an ideal place, the sound is a little tingly but the overall result is good, it’s not as loud as the speakers on the Dell XPS 12 but they get loud enough to fill up a small room, listen to presentations and watch movies. As with the previous generation it also comes with Dolby audio software that allows you to change the presets depending on what you’re listening to.

The X1 is a strong performer when it comes to productivity tasks and multimedia – we were able to keep open about 10 to 12 chrome tabs while playing a fullHD video without any hiccups. Light photo editing runs fine and any work inside Microsoft Office or Google Docs will run well.
At the end of the day this is a business machine first so don’t expect to play any newer games on it. However one thing I did notice is that the fans power on pretty quickly by doing basic tasks like browsing the internet, the fans are not extremely loud but definitely noticeable.

The Lenovo X1 carbon packs a Samsung SSD disk up to 512 Gb and we have to say that the read and write speeds are insanely fast. The drive inside is a Samsung P951 which we’ve tested other laptops ending up with poor results. We’re not sure what changed or if this is a new model, because the read and write speeds are absolutely amazing. We were averaging around 1140 MB/s read speeds and 1260 MB/s per second write speeds. If you need to rely on a very fast ride then you won’t be disappointed.

The X1 carbon does a great job at handling heat under full load. The upper portion of the deck, just past the keyboard, reaches a temperature of 102 to 105 degrees Fahrenheit while the same holds true for the back of the laptop near the exhaust fans.

And finally, the battery. Inside is a four cell battery that is good enough to get you through the entire day. We were averaging around eight hours with the brightness up to 75%. Reducing the brightness to 50% or lower could easily push the battery time to 9 hours.

The battery life is really good granted that we are using the fullHD model and those considering the QHD version should expect a drop in battery life.

Let us know what you guys think of Lenovo ThinkPad x1 carbon in the comments below. Can you see yourself buying this laptop? And if you have one let me know what you like and dislike about it.