Perhaps the most noticeable and important change to the ThinkPad X1 Carbon is what Lenovo calls the Adaptive Function Row. However, both Core i5 and Core i7 configs bested the Asus ZenBook 13 UX334F, which has a Core i7-10510U, and the HP Elite Dragonfly we tested, which was rocking an older, Core i7-8665U. Techs: Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga Review: the X1 Carbon Goes Yoga Lisa Gade reviews the new ThinkPad X1 Yoga from Lenovo. The ThinkPad X1 Carbon (Gen 8) is only available with integrated Intel HD graphics, which makes it power efficient, but not a machine worth gaming on. Of these competitors, only the Dell XPS 13 is thinner, but by a mere 0.02 inches (and it lacks Type-A ports). We tested units with both Core i5-10310U and a Core i7-10610U processors and found both were more than capable of handling whatever tasks we threw at them, from surfing the web to transcoding videos. Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon (8th Gen, 2020) CPU variants. With the Core i7 processor, the ThinkPad got an average score of 1,308 with an average clock speed of 2.5 GHz and an average temperature of 83 degrees Celsius with a maximum of 99 degrees Celsius. Slick Ultraportables Face Off: 2020 Apple MacBook Air vs. Microsoft Surface Laptop 3, High-End Mac Showdown: Apple iMac vs. Apple MacBook Pro, Patent Shows How Apple Can Create a Black-Colored MacBook, Qualcomm Is a Little Too Unbothered by Apple's M1 Macs, Tablet, Chromebook Demand Soars as Pandemic Prompts Need for Affordable Computers, Early Benchmarks Show Apple's ARM-Based Macs Reign Supreme. Flawless lightweight construction Superb keyboard and display Good array of ports and configuration options The Asus ExpertBook holds the PC Labs record with a phenomenal 29 hours of battery life, but the Carbon's time is more than acceptable for an ultraportable. Our Lenovo rep says it's $1,888 from CDW, which seems a tad steep compared to Lenovo.com's base model at $1,331 (a few dollars cheaper with Linux). Interestingly, Lenovo has made one, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it change to the keyboard design since last year’s Gen 7 model. The soft-touch palmrest added another level of comfort as I rested my wrists on it and racked up a strong 108 word-per-minute score (5 percent error rate) on the 10fastfingers.com typing test. Trending. Lenovo's durable ThinkPad X1 Fold, with its detachable keyboard and revolutionary foldable screen, is the most futuristic Windows device of 2020—though far from the most practical one. An X1 insignia below the lid's diagonal ThinkPad logo is the only change in the familiar matte-black design. Please refresh the page and try again. Supplied Dolby software lets you switch among music, movie, dynamic, game, and voice presets or play with an equalizer. The same video wasn’t quite as sharp or colorful on the 1080p ThinkPad X1 Carbon screen, but the viewing angles were better. That's the latest version of Windows right … Colors stayed true even at wide viewing angles (up to 90 degrees left and right) but since the screen is glossy, intense ambient light such as sunlight makes it harder to see at those angles and even shows some reflections head on. Lenovo has been slightly more generous with ports on this year's ThinkPad X1 Carbon than with its 2015 predecessor. Built for business, but great for anyone who wants to get work done, Lenovo’s ThinkPad X1 Carbon has long been one of the best ultrabooks you can buy. Colors like the greens in a computer readout and the reds in a jacket were all extremely vibrant. The Photoshop test stresses the CPU, storage subsystem, and RAM, but it can also take advantage of most GPUs to speed up the process of applying filters. The main utility for all ThinkPads, Lenovo Vantage, helps you keep drivers and firmware up-to-date while also giving you some control over the system’s power and cooling policies. Visit our corporate site. For our benchmark comparisons, I matched the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 8 against four other 14-inch business laptops ranging from Lenovo's own ThinkPad T14s (whose eight-core AMD Ryzen 7 Pro processor makes it the favorite in our CPU tests) to the Dell Latitude 7410 and abovementioned Acer TravelMate P6 and Asus ExpertBook B9450. The keys have a solid 1.5mm of travel and offer strong tactile feedback, along with curved, smile-shaped keycaps that make it easier to feel one’s way around. CPU Performance: Intel Core i7-10510U . The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon 7th Gen we received for review came with Windows 10 Pro 1903 installed. The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon gets its name from the built-in carbon fibre 'roll cage' and lid, which keeps the chassis light, yet extremely resilient. No matter what capacity of SSD you choose, the ThinkPad X1 Carbon has speedy storage for you. Lenovo also offers the 2020 ThinkPad X1 Carbon with an optional glossy 4K screen, which is supposed to reach a brightness of 500 nits and also supports HDR contents. Cinebench stresses the CPU rather than the GPU to render a complex image. Its glass surface is smooth but gives just the right amount of friction. Lenovo charges a whopping $268 to move up from a 256GB SSD to a 512GB model and a gobsmacking $536 to go all the way to 1TB. Next is Maxon's CPU-crunching Cinebench R15 test, which is fully threaded to make use of all available processor cores and threads. A handy webcam shutter and a … To see how the ThinkPad X1 Carbon performs under stress, we took both configurations and ran Cinebench R20 on them 20 times and logged the results and the clock speeds. Its slightly larger screen, slightly preferable keyboard, and HDMI port put us on Team X1 Carbon instead of Team XPS 13, but you can't go wrong with either. It's not a 3D rendering or huge-dataset-gobbling workstation, but it'll rip through your most complex spreadsheets without breaking a sweat. Here you can see an approximate comparison between the CPUs that can be found in the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon (8th Gen, 2020) models on the market. There’s a proprietary Ethernet port that sits next to one of the Thunderbolt ports and, together with its neighbor, can plug into one of Lenovo’s side-attaching docks. If you don't need the LTE, you would see little difference with the starter machine. The result is a proprietary score indicating a PC's suitability for processor-intensive workloads. © What are your thoughts? Though the lightest of Lenovo's three 14-inch business notebooks (under the 2.8-pound ThinkPad T14s and 3.2-pound ThinkPad T14), the Carbon isn't the lightest on the market; the Asus ExpertBook B9450 is just 1.91 pounds. However, the tiny button is annoyingly hard to locate by feel and it’s so small that you have to be very deliberate about finding and pressing it. The new ThinkPad X1 Carbon is Lenovo’s halo entry into the high-end business Ultrabook market. Top Searches Holiday Gifts. However competitors offer noticeably longer endurance than the 1080p model. There was a problem. NY 10036. PCMag Digital Group. However, with improved performance and battery life to go with its sleek design and snappy keyboard, the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon (Gen 8) is a compelling productivity powerhouse. PCMark 8, meanwhile, has a storage subtest that we use to assess the speed of the system's boot drive. Available on configs with the 4K screen only, Lenovo Display Optimizer allows you to calibrate the panel or change it for different viewing modes such as movie editing or blue-light reduction. You may unsubscribe from the newsletters at any time. After 15 minutes of streaming a video, the Core i5 and Core i7 configs had touchpad temperatures of 73 / 78.6 degrees Fahrenheit while the keyboard hit a mere 86.2 / 88 degrees Fahrenheit and the underside was a modest 92.1 / 95.6 degrees Fahrenheit. It’s a beautiful, super cool product with plenty of potential — but it has a few issues, and it also costs $2,499. Unlike some other ultralights, the magnesium-reinforced-with-carbon-fiber ThinkPad doesn't feel flimsy; there's no flex if you grasp the screen corners or press the keyboard deck. Fine details are as sharp as the 1080p resolution permits and viewing angles are broad. While it couldn't keep up with the hot-rod T14s, the Carbon aced our most important test, exceeding the 4,000 points that indicate outstanding productivity in PCMark 10. As with the XPS 13, the Carbon’s slim bezels and minimal excess bulk results in … The extra $557 buys you a trivially faster Core i5 with Intel's vPro remote IT management, Windows 10 Pro instead of Home, and LTE mobile broadband. The ultimate in lightweight productivity, the ThinkPad X1 Carbon (Gen 8) combines a best-in-class keyboard with a stunning screen and strong endurance. While we haven’t always gotten (or expected) outstanding audio from Lenovo ThinkPads, the X1 Carbon (Gen 8) is an exception. Because the lower-end panel is matte, I saw no reflections and image quality didn’t degrade at all even at a full 90 degrees to the left or right. It to assess overall system performance for office-centric tasks such as on-site service, we may be paid a by! 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