A mean business machine

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon

byKoh Wanzi Aug 2016

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon

CONCLUSION: If you can stomach the price, this is one of the best business notebooks out there.

Lenovo’s ThinkPad laptops are widely regarded as the last word on business notebooks. And among the ThinkPad notebooks, the X1 Carbon sits right at the top of the totem pole. This year’s ThinkPad is – unsurprisingly – thinner and lighter than its already svelte predecessor, and comes packed with the latest sixth-generation Intel Core i7-6500U processor. One of the first things you’ll notice when picking up the ThinkPad X1 Carbon is how light it is. That’s all thanks to the extensive use of what Lenovo says is “satellite-grade” carbon fiber. Starting at just 1.17kg, this is one of – if not the lightest – 14-inch business ultrabooks available. It also has one of the best keyboards in its class. The island-style, backlit keys are spaced just the right distance apart, and provide an extremely enjoyable typing experience with around 1.8mm of vertical key travel. As notebooks become thinner and thinner, one of the trade-offs has been the typing experience, which makes us appreciate what the X1 Carbon offers even more.

The X1 Carbon comes stocked with a variety of connectivity ports, including three USB 3.0 ports, a full-sized HDMI connector, a Mini DisplayPort output, and Lenovo’s own OneLink+ docking port. The latter lets you connect to the ThinkPad OneLink Pro Dock for extra display connectors and USB ports, but you can also connect wirelessly to the ThinkPad WiGig dock. A microSD card reader and SIM card slot at the rear edge round out the expansion options, but the X1 Carbon actually supports 4G LTE wireless cellular connectivity, so you don’t have to rely on Wi-fi hotspots on-the-go. The display itself is 14 inches across with a 2,560 x 1,440-pixel IPS panel and a matte coating to cut down on glare. This means colors may appear slightly less vibrant, but it’s a small sacrifice to make for an overall more useable display under a wider range of lighting conditions. The display can actually be pushed back to almost a