Reports of the death of the single-mode notebook have been greatly
exaggerated. While convertible laptops that transform into tablets and
other permutations continue to proliferate, there's still plenty of room
in the market for a handy clamshell traveling and productivity partner.
Especially if it's anything like the third-generation Lenovo ThinkPad
X1 Carbon.
The 2015 Carbon combines cutting-edge components and materials to deliver a remarkably thin and light portable with sterling performance and all-day battery life. Granted, the system can be a budget-buster compared to the sub-$1,000 prices we've grown accustomed to—models start at around $1,100 depending on Lenovo's current promotions, and our fully loaded Windows 8.1 Pro test unit rang up at $1,754 on the company's online configurator. But for executives and power users who carry a laptop all day, every day, the X1 Carbon is a worthy investment.
As in past generations, the X1 Carbon's claim to fame is as the lightest 14-inch notebook you can buy—just 3.1 pounds with a touch screen or 2.8 pounds without one, compared to about five pounds for a mainstream 14-inch laptop or about 3.5 pounds for a 14-inch ultrabook. As the name implies, the secret is carbon fiber. The stuff used in supercars and spaceships is stronger and lighter (and pricier) than aluminum or magnesium, enabling a chassis that is a mere 0.73 inch thick to protect the computer's inner bits without bending.
For the aesthetics, Lenovo has not departed from the trademark ThinkPad black. The matte finish is impervious to fingerprints, so if you value practicality over flashy style you probably won't mind the machine's understated—all right, plain—looks. But you're not buying a ThinkPad for looks, you're buying it for durability. As with other models in the line, the Carbon is a "business rugged" machine that has gone through assorted drop, flex, and spill scenarios in Lenovo's testing and passed eight MIL-STD 810G tests for humidity, low and high temperatures, altitude, vibration, shock, and more.
The full-size, island-style keyboard is the best you'll find on an ultrabook, with roomy key spacing, excellent up-down travel, satisfying tactile and audible feedback, and a two-level backlight. As for the function row: Like other recent-vintage Lenovo laptops, the primary tasks for those buttons are things like audio volume, mute, Wi-Fi on/off, and projector mode—essentially giving you a dozen dedicated quick-access buttons. (Need F2, F5, or whatever? Just press the Fn key and the corresponding button.)
The touch pad is fairly spacious given the return of the TrackPoint buttons, and we have no problem with the pad's left/right mouse buttons lurking beneath the lower corners instead of being separate. The pad is responsive and also gesture-enabled, although we noticed that the pinch movement for zooming in and out led to a jerky response on screen, not a smooth zoom action as we've grown used to on today's touch screens.
The high-resolution screen delivers crystal-clear text and lets you have two application windows visible at once for less Alt-Tab toggling. But for our aging eyes, that many pixels on a 14-inch screen makes text and other on-screen elements too small. So if you have a pressing need for WQHD (like looking at large CAD drawings or sending the signal out to a larger monitor), plan on blowing up everyday applications to 200 percent zoom. We also felt the 2,560x1,440 screen was slightly less bright than lower-res panels we've seen, which was evident in dark scenes in videos (and made our Green Day music videos even more brooding).
The speakers tucked into the ThinkPad deliver a surprising
amount of volume for a machine so thin. As is typical of most
ultrabooks, sound quality is fine for Web audio, Skype chats, and the
like, but a little thin for movie and music playback. There just isn't
enough bass punch, so music came across as a little strident. We do
appreciate the Dolby Digital Plus utility, which offers equalizer
presets for movies, music, games, and voice, along with two custom
settings you can create and save and checkboxes to enable 3D sound
virtualization and dialog enhancement.
The webcam is typical Lenovo fare, which is to say still a low-res (by today's standards) 720p or 1-megapixel camera. Image quality was good in bright light, with accurate color reproduction and little motion blur; in dim lighting, the image showed a lot of digital noise. But for video chats and the like, the quality should prove fine (and won't choke slower connections).
Also welcome for webinars is a choice of microphone settings to optimize pickup for just one voice centered in front of the screen, several voices coming from in front, or a group of voices coming from all around. There's even an option to suppress noise from the keyboard, so the others on your conference call will never know you're ignoring them and catching up on e-mail.
For storage, the base offering comes with a 128GB solid-state drive (SSD), while our test unit offered a 256GB SSD (a $150 upgrade). We love the crash-proof reliability and silent running, but do worry about running out of on-board storage. You may want to step up to the offered 512GB SSD, but that adds another $550. (Lenovo doesn't offer a traditional hard drive for the Carbon.)
For connectivity, the X1 Carbon comes with 802.11ac and Bluetooth 4.0 chipsets, and the platform supports integrated 4G mobile broadband (a $250 option). For security, all models include a fingerprint reader.
Need more ports? Opt for the ThinkPad OneLink Dock Pro ($180), a compact port replicator that houses four USB 3.0 and two USB 2.0 ports, DisplayPort and DVI monitor connectors, full-size Ethernet, and a headset jack.
The 2015 Carbon combines cutting-edge components and materials to deliver a remarkably thin and light portable with sterling performance and all-day battery life. Granted, the system can be a budget-buster compared to the sub-$1,000 prices we've grown accustomed to—models start at around $1,100 depending on Lenovo's current promotions, and our fully loaded Windows 8.1 Pro test unit rang up at $1,754 on the company's online configurator. But for executives and power users who carry a laptop all day, every day, the X1 Carbon is a worthy investment.
As in past generations, the X1 Carbon's claim to fame is as the lightest 14-inch notebook you can buy—just 3.1 pounds with a touch screen or 2.8 pounds without one, compared to about five pounds for a mainstream 14-inch laptop or about 3.5 pounds for a 14-inch ultrabook. As the name implies, the secret is carbon fiber. The stuff used in supercars and spaceships is stronger and lighter (and pricier) than aluminum or magnesium, enabling a chassis that is a mere 0.73 inch thick to protect the computer's inner bits without bending.
For the aesthetics, Lenovo has not departed from the trademark ThinkPad black. The matte finish is impervious to fingerprints, so if you value practicality over flashy style you probably won't mind the machine's understated—all right, plain—looks. But you're not buying a ThinkPad for looks, you're buying it for durability. As with other models in the line, the Carbon is a "business rugged" machine that has gone through assorted drop, flex, and spill scenarios in Lenovo's testing and passed eight MIL-STD 810G tests for humidity, low and high temperatures, altitude, vibration, shock, and more.
Features
A laptop's marquee component is typically its display, but while the Carbon indeed has an impressive screen (three to choose from, actually), with a ThinkPad it's all about the keyboard. With last year's version, Lenovo switched things up with a one-piece touch pad that also subsumed the mouse buttons of the TrackPoint pointing stick, plus a capacitive-touch top row of buttons that performed several dozen functions in addition to F1 through F12. Apparently ThinkPad purists rose up in revolt, because the third-generation device sees the return of the dedicated mouse buttons for the TrackPoint and an almost traditional function-key row.The full-size, island-style keyboard is the best you'll find on an ultrabook, with roomy key spacing, excellent up-down travel, satisfying tactile and audible feedback, and a two-level backlight. As for the function row: Like other recent-vintage Lenovo laptops, the primary tasks for those buttons are things like audio volume, mute, Wi-Fi on/off, and projector mode—essentially giving you a dozen dedicated quick-access buttons. (Need F2, F5, or whatever? Just press the Fn key and the corresponding button.)
We've seen other manufacturers copy this convention of late, which we're happy about. Next they need to copy Lenovo's inclusion of a microphone-mute button, since toggling it off in a hurry—say, when you are on a webinar from home and the dog starts barking—is not an option on many other machines.
The touch pad is fairly spacious given the return of the TrackPoint buttons, and we have no problem with the pad's left/right mouse buttons lurking beneath the lower corners instead of being separate. The pad is responsive and also gesture-enabled, although we noticed that the pinch movement for zooming in and out led to a jerky response on screen, not a smooth zoom action as we've grown used to on today's touch screens.
And speaking of screens, you can get the X1 Carbon with either a 1080p (1,920x1,080) non-touch panel, a 2,560x1,440 (what Lenovo calls WQHD) non-touch panel, or a 2,560x1,440 touch screen as on our test unit. All feature in-plane switching (IPS) technology for a wide viewing angle in all directions, even for video. In day-to-day use, the touch screen abilities were top-notch, with fast, accurate response to input.
The high-resolution screen delivers crystal-clear text and lets you have two application windows visible at once for less Alt-Tab toggling. But for our aging eyes, that many pixels on a 14-inch screen makes text and other on-screen elements too small. So if you have a pressing need for WQHD (like looking at large CAD drawings or sending the signal out to a larger monitor), plan on blowing up everyday applications to 200 percent zoom. We also felt the 2,560x1,440 screen was slightly less bright than lower-res panels we've seen, which was evident in dark scenes in videos (and made our Green Day music videos even more brooding).
The webcam is typical Lenovo fare, which is to say still a low-res (by today's standards) 720p or 1-megapixel camera. Image quality was good in bright light, with accurate color reproduction and little motion blur; in dim lighting, the image showed a lot of digital noise. But for video chats and the like, the quality should prove fine (and won't choke slower connections).
Also welcome for webinars is a choice of microphone settings to optimize pickup for just one voice centered in front of the screen, several voices coming from in front, or a group of voices coming from all around. There's even an option to suppress noise from the keyboard, so the others on your conference call will never know you're ignoring them and catching up on e-mail.
For storage, the base offering comes with a 128GB solid-state drive (SSD), while our test unit offered a 256GB SSD (a $150 upgrade). We love the crash-proof reliability and silent running, but do worry about running out of on-board storage. You may want to step up to the offered 512GB SSD, but that adds another $550. (Lenovo doesn't offer a traditional hard drive for the Carbon.)
For connectivity, the X1 Carbon comes with 802.11ac and Bluetooth 4.0 chipsets, and the platform supports integrated 4G mobile broadband (a $250 option). For security, all models include a fingerprint reader.
The thin edges of the X1 Carbon have the basic ports: two USB 3.0 ports, a full-size HDMI connector (thanks for listening, Lenovo) and a mini DisplayPort for connecting external displays, a headphone/mic jack, and a mini-Ethernet jack (the adapter to plug in a full-size Ethernet connector is included). There is no room, apparently, for a memory card reader, so plan on having a USB card reader handy.
Need more ports? Opt for the ThinkPad OneLink Dock Pro ($180), a compact port replicator that houses four USB 3.0 and two USB 2.0 ports, DisplayPort and DVI monitor connectors, full-size Ethernet, and a headset jack.
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