Two minute evaluate
The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9 is the most recent refresh of probably the most in style enterprise laptops on the market and this yr’s mannequin exhibits why it is such a fascinating machine. For those that must get excellent efficiency on the go in a extremely transportable (and trendy) package deal – no matter the price – the X1 Carbon must be the primary laptop computer you choose up and think about.
When it involves the design of the X1 Carbon Gen 9, Lenovo additional refined its already phenomenal predecessors by including Eleventh-gen Intel processors and Intel Evo-certification, offering the excellent efficiency, battery life, begin up time, and safety features that the Evo-certification entails.
What stays the identical are the entire components we like in regards to the X1 Carbon line, together with the light-weight carbon fiber chassis with its super-slim profile, excellent keyboard, top-notch safety features, top-firing audio system, and sufficient ports to embarrass most of the greatest Ultrabooks in the marketplace that declare you possibly can solely match one or two USB Type-C ports onto a chassis so skinny.
The 14-inch show is implausible, even at 1200p, and multi-touch help is definitely worth the improve because the ThinkPad X1 Carbon can nonetheless absolutely open to 180 levels to put flat on a desk, making it straightforward to collaborate with colleagues when wanted.
The 4K show can also be an choice, however truthfully, at this dimension you will barely be capable of inform the distinction, so you would be higher off placing that more money in direction of extra RAM, which is able to make this much more of a powerhouse that it already is.
We cannot depart off with out noting that the battery life on the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9 far surpasses its rivals, just like the Razer Book 13, Dell XPS 13, and even its siblings just like the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano.
This is an all-day, away-from-an-outlet ultrabook that may simply go all the day shifting from convention room to convention room at main conventions with out lacking a beat. What’s extra, you will solely want 15-Half-hour plugged in to get one other few hours of battery life out of the X1 Carbon because of its fast cost battery.
All this comes at a price, nevertheless, and the ThinkPad X1 Carbon undoubtedly is not low-cost. It’s additionally not for skilled, particularly creatives. The built-in Intel Iris Xe graphics are nice for modest video playback and conferencing, gentle multimedia creation like slideshows for a presentation, or working with paperwork, spreadsheets, and databases. Without a discrete GPU, it should battle with artistic workloads, particularly the extra heavy obligation work like video enhancing and encoding.
When all is alleged and finished, although, if you’re a enterprise skilled who expects to be on the transfer far most of the time and also you want among the finest enterprise laptops yow will discover, then you ought to be taking a protracted onerous have a look at the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9 and asking if its rivals actually even come near matching it.
Price and availability
Spec Sheet
Here is the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon configuration despatched to SociallyTrend for evaluate:
CPU: Intel Core i7-1165G7
Graphics: Intel Iris Xe
RAM: 16GB
Screen: 14-inch, 16:10 (1920 x 1200p), as much as 500 nits, touchscreen
Storage: 512GB PCIe NVMe SSD
Ports: 2 x USB Type-C (Thunderbolt 4 w/ DispayPort, Data, and Power switch), 2 x USB Type-A, 1 x HDMI 2.0, 1 x 3.5mm microphone/headphone combo jack, 1 x Kensington lock
Connectivity: Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.2
Camera: 720p IR with bodily privateness shutter
Weight: 2.49 lbs (1.13 kg)
Size (W x H x D): 12.38 x 8.72 x 0.59 ins (314.5 x 221.6 x 8.72 mm)
Battery: 57Whr
The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9 is on the market now within the US, UK, and Australia, beginning at $1,426, £1,499, and AU$2,089, respectively.
In the US, the bottom mannequin begins out with an Intel Core i5-1135G7 processor operating Windows 10 Home, 8GB LPDDR4X RAM, 256GB PCIe SSD, 720p webcam with out IR, and a 14-inch 1200p show (16:10) with as much as 400 nits brightness. In the UK, the bottom mannequin is barely totally different in that it comes loaded with Windows 10 Pro, 16GB LPDDR4X RAM.
The Australia base mannequin can also be barely totally different from the US base mannequin in that it comes with an Intel Core i5-1145G7 processor as an alternative of the i5-1135G7, and it solely comes with a 1-year guarantee, quite than a 3-year guarantee that covers the US and UK fashions.
The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9 can also be very customizable by way of Lenovo’s website, so you’ve gotten loads of choices to select from. The configuration we examined runs about $2,008 / £1,869 / AU$2,868.
The most at present accessible configuration within the US, in the meantime, has an Intel Core i7-1185G7 with vPro operating Windows 10 Pro, 32GB LPDDR4X RAM, a 1TB PCIe SSD, and a 14-inch, 16:10 4K non-touch show with as much as 500 nits of brightness for $2,715. The UK and Australia fashions can max out at 2TB PCIe SSD with the identical specs in any other case for £2,669 / AU$4,592.
Design
The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9 is as fairly because it has ever been, because of its carbon fiber chassis and modest however trendy presentation. The all-black carbon fiber lid with its ThinkPad X1 emblem within the nook (with a well-known purple LED dot above the ‘i’) undoubtedly has a distinct aesthetic than a MacBook Air, however that is undoubtedly a degree in its column. If this laptop computer might put on a tie, it will, and it will look rattling good within the course of too.
Like with just about each Lenovo laptop computer keyboard, the X1 Carbon is a dream to kind on, with wonderful key journey, roomy key spacing, a accountable cursor button and mouse buttons over the trackpad, in addition to a responsive trackpad for these of us who might by no means fairly get the dangle of the intense purple button on most enterprise laptops.
All these roomy keys does not get in the way in which of placing a pair of high firing audio system on both aspect of the keyboard deck, giving remarkably good sound high quality for a laptop computer this dimension. If Lenovo can do it, so can everybody else, and we actually want they’d.
Speaking of different Ultrabooks whining that they can not match one thing onto a chassis so small, the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9 is simply 0.59-inches thick (8.72 mm), but in some way manages to squeeze in not simply two USB Type-C ports like loads of latest ultrabooks, however two USB Type-A ports and an HDMI 2.0 connector along with a Kensington lock and a 3.5mm combi jack. What’s everybody else’s excuse?
Performance
Benchmarks
Here is how the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9 carried out in our suite of benchmark assessments:
GeekBench 5 Single core: 1,537; Multi core: 5,506
CineBench23: 5,389
PCMark10 Home: 5,168
3DMark Night Raid: 15,633; Firestrike: 4,644; Time Spy: 1,771; Blender Fishy Cat: 10 minutes 47 seconds; Classroom: 21 minutes
Battery Life (PCMark10 take a look at): 15 hours 07 minutes
Battery Life (SociallyTrend film take a look at): 10 hours 04 minutes
An Ultrabook this skinny and lightweight should not have this sort of efficiency, probably not. While it is graphics efficiency is a bit underwhelming in comparison with extra highly effective – and larger – laptops, amongst Ultrabooks its solely actual challenger is the Asus ZenBook 13 (2021), which is operating a Ryzen 7 5800U processor.
On sure benchmarks that rely closely on multicore efficiency, like PCMark 10, GeekBench 5, and CineBenchR23, the AMD processor within the ZenBook 13 is certainly higher.
In CineBench, the ZenBook 13 scored a formidable 7,773 to the X1 Carbon’s 5,389; in GeekBench 5’s the ZenBook 13 put up a 6,824 to the X1 Carbon’s 5,506; and in PCMark 10, the ZenBook 13 scored 5,963 to the X1 Carbon’s 5,168.
The ZenBook 13 additionally beat the X1 Carbon by a wholesome margin in our artistic benchmarks utilizing Blender, with the ZenBook 13 rendering Fishy Cat and Classroom roughly 30% sooner.
Meanwhile, the X1 Carbon continues to be nicely forward of nearly another rival Ultrabook on these identical assessments, even these operating the identical i7-1165G7 processor just like the Razer Book 13, and on each different benchmark, the X1 Carbon trounces the ZenBook 13 by an equally vast margin.
What this in the end means is that whereas the ZenBook 13 goes to be a greater multitasker total and is certainly going to chew by way of a number of concurrent workloads, when it comes all the way down to brass tacks and it’s good to put some critical computing energy into your work for an prolonged stretch, the X1 Carbon goes to get you throughout the end line faster.
Battery life
When it involves battery life, there isn’t any query that the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9 is about nearly as good as a laptop computer battery life will get with out operating an ARM chip – and even then, it is aggressive towards the most recent MacBook Air operating the ARM-based Apple M1 chip.
The proven fact that the X1 Carbon’s solely actual competitors right here is a completely totally different processor structure construct round power effectivity just about speaks for itself. Against its rival Intel or AMD processors, the X1 Carbon squeezes extra life out of its 57Whr battery than we thought doable.
It lasted 15 hours and 7 minutes, on common, throughout our PCMark 10 battery take a look at, with the ZenBook 15 falling greater than an hour brief at 13 hours 50 minutes even with a considerably bigger 67WHr battery.
Last yr’s Dell XPS 13, in the meantime, managed simply 11 hours 47 minutes, and the Razor Book 13 made it 11 hours 42 minutes, each with batteries roughly comparable (although nonetheless smaller) than the X1 Carbon’s.
All we are able to say is we do not know the place the X1 Carbon is getting that additional juice from, however you like to see it.
Webcam and microphone
We’re not but on the level the place 1080p cameras are customary for laptop computer webcams, so the 720p webcam on the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9 is par for the course. It’s not one thing we are able to actually fault the ThinkPad X1 Carbon for because it’s an trade vast drawback and we have collectively determined that thinner bezels have been higher than the next decision webcam.
For what it’s, it is high-quality for teleconferencing thought correct lighting will likely be tough. You can improve to an IR 720p digital camera that you should utilize with Windows Hello to log in effortlessly as nicely, and might be definitely worth the funding.
It’s all the time, all the time, value noting that the webcam has a bodily privateness shutter that you could slide over the webcam. Even for a primary shopper laptop computer at this level, a bodily cowl in your webcam needs to be non-negotiable, however for a enterprise laptop computer, it is a deal breaker. Fortunately, Lenovo has been nicely forward of its rivals on this regard and we’re pleased to see that pattern proceed.
The microphone array for the ThinkPad X1 Carbon, in the meantime, is evident sufficient to hold us by way of throughout conferences and interviews, however there’s not a lot to notice right here as laptop computer microphones are by no means going to be nearly as good as knowledgeable mic arrange.
Software and options
Fortunately, there wasn’t a lot in the way in which of bloat on the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9, which we truthfully did not count on anyway owing to it being a way more premium enterprise laptop computer.
There are a bunch of safety features that just about come customary with the ThinkPad line, together with Windows Hello and fingerprint log in, and for the sake of future-proofing, the ThinkPad X1 Carbon does include TPM 2.0 so it is prepared for Windows 11 when that releases later this yr.
Buy it if…
You need a excessive efficiency Ultrabook
The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon is about as highly effective an ultrabook as you are going to discover to get you thru your work day.
You need fashion and portability
The ThinkPad X1 Carbon is attractive to take a look at in addition to to the touch, and it is extremely gentle weight makes it about as easy to take with you in a bag as any Ultrabook we have examined.
You need a battery that may go the space
At simply over 15 hours in our common use testing, the ThinkPad X1 Carbon’s battery life is about the very best you are going to discover outdoors of ARM-based laptops.
Don’t purchase it if…
You’re on a price range
All of those goodies come at a worth, so for those who’re not seeking to spend some huge cash, you need to in all probability look elsewhere.
You are a artistic skilled
With built-in graphics, this laptop computer actually cannot deal with a artistic’s workload past essentially the most primary picture enhancing.
You need a bit extra aptitude in your laptop computer design
We love the look of the ThinkPad X1 Carbon, however there isn’t any mistaking this for something however a strictly business-with-a-capital-B laptop computer.
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