Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Ultrabook Review
by Dustin Sklavos on May 15, 2013 12:01 AM ESTConclusion: Prosumer Grade
Much as Mark Rosewater can't go a month without mentioning how he used to write for "Roseanne," I have a hard time not mentioning my background in video production. The reason to bring it up with the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon is simple: whether you're a hobbyist or a professional in any kind of content creation field, you have a pretty good idea of what "prosumer" means. Consumer grade hardware and software are generally (but not always) not worth your time, but professional grade kit often requires a substantial investment. Thus there's the middle ground: prosumer. Prosumer kit is typically fully featured, but doesn't cost an arm and a leg. You get 90% of the power of professional grade stuff at a fraction of the cost.
That's essentially what the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon is. Weird as it sounds, the ThinkPad is basically the Windows user equivalent of a Mac and has been for a while. The name has a cachet to it, and you have a good idea of what it represents. In the case of the X1 Carbon, we get a strong and sturdy build, great quality display, and the best chiclet keyboard in the business. We also get the kind of price premium we've come to expect for the ThinkPad brand, a premium that predates Lenovo's ownership.
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I have often said that you cannot charge Apple prices for Dell products. That's not necessarily to disparage Dell, but merely to make a point: you can't make bargain consumer grade hardware and still try to sell it at a premium. The ThinkPad X1 Carbon is a fine Ultrabook, and the $1,187 touch-free entry level model is without question the best deal in the lineup (though the 4GB of DDR3 stings mightily) and easy to recommend. If you want 8GB of memory you'll have to fork over at least $200 more (you get a CPU upgrade in the process), which is a bitter pill to swallow.
Where the Carbon runs into trouble is that its price is, like its battery life, barely competitive, and the higher-priced models are almost impossible to justify. Actual business-class kit is more expensive, but the Carbon is really competing with the likes of Dell's XPS 13. Dell will sell you an XPS 13 with a 1080p IPS display, faster processor, and 8GB of memory for $1,299. Married to the 14" form factor? Not a problem, they'll give you an XPS 14 with the same resolution display for $999, and at $1,199 you can even get dedicated graphics hardware.
Ultimately, if you're still smarting from what Lenovo has done with the ThinkPad brand like I am, it can be difficult to appreciate the X1 Carbon. It bears repeating this really is an excellent Ultrabook, falling short primarily in battery life and price but otherwise pretty tough to argue with. And Lenovo has been thriving compared to some of the competition, so they must be doing something right. I just don't like how they've sacrificed the ThinkPad brand on the altar of consumerism, and the X1 Carbon doesn't buck the trend. It's a fantastic Ultrabook, but it's not enterprise.
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gobaers - Wednesday, May 15, 2013 - link
Lenovo needs to fork their Thinkpad line into two, one for enterprise (what "Thinkpad" used to be) and one for consumer/prosumer. I thought the "Thinkpad Edge" branding would have been good for this. Taken as such, this should be called the "Thinkpad Edge X1."If they want to keep using "Thinkpad" the way they have been the past few years, why not separate out a line called "Thinkpad Pro" for diehards like me? Give us an X series, a couple T series, and a workstation replacement W series. Give us the keyboard back, magnesium rollcage design, IPS displays, charge $1800 for it. Roll back the numbers a bit; I want mine to be called Thinkpad Pro T30s. It has Haswell.
A guy can dream...
Mumrik - Wednesday, May 15, 2013 - link
Dustin, I have a suggestion.Anandtech is a general hardware site, so you don't have to review all laptops. How about just making it a rule that you unless special circumstances are in place simply won't review laptops with 1366x768 or lower resolution?
JFish222 - Wednesday, May 15, 2013 - link
Stay Away!I purchased 2 of these for my company (about 3 months apart.)
Normally I would never buy a non-upgradable & difficult to service laptop for the company, but what management wants . . .
The newer of the two laptops had its battery stop holding a charge after about 6 months of use. The older unit's battery stopped holding a charge 5 days after the 1yr warranty expired. Lenovo will not replace it and referred us to a local 3rd party service center (who wants ~$600).
I can't speak on the newer unit, but the older unit that just crapped out shows 84 cycles on the battery. The only good thing out of the whole mess: Management will stop arguing with me when I say no (for now at least). A T430S is close in weight and size, and lacks the repair / mid-cycle upgrade headaches that are sure to happen in any environment.
How they every marketed this to businesses is beyond me!
PS: Only good thing about Lenovo (besides the T series) is they document the hell out of everything. Replacing the batt. will be a headache, but is doable. Anyone who's repaired a laptop shouldn't have to much difficulty, and the service manual tells you exactly what components to remove to get to it.
some_guy - Thursday, May 16, 2013 - link
This is the kind of info I was looking for. Thanks.I am still waiting for something that is closer to my T60 notebooks with the 4:3 SXGA+, nice keyboard, TrackPoint, and runs Linux, though some compromise seems necessary. Perhaps the next version of the Chromebook Pixel.
Belard - Sunday, May 19, 2013 - link
Nobody is making 4:3 screens. 16:10 was fine... but now its 16:9... it sucks. And when I'm ready for the next monitor upgrade... it will be 16:9 ugh... but it will be at least 2560x1400 res (I'd like for it to be 2560x1600 thou)... and be only 27" to get the higher dot pitch.jmsb - Saturday, May 18, 2013 - link
"stopped holding a charge 5 days after the 1yr warranty expired"The x1 carbon has only been out since August 2012 - 9 months at best.
Belard - Sunday, May 19, 2013 - link
There are other Carbon series notebooks.eviljav - Thursday, May 16, 2013 - link
The keyboard layout is terrible. The should put page up and page down back in the top right corner, in a block with delete, home, & end.CrazyElf - Thursday, May 16, 2013 - link
Yeah, it's really the price that kills this laptop. It's not a bad laptop per se, but for the money ... it's really hard to justify.One huge advantage I suppose of getting this over the Mac is that laptops like these are more durable - Lenovo Thinkpads in general are well built (although their cooling solutions could be better). I think they do pass MIL-SPEC 810F (not 100% on this one).
Battery is just so, so. And for the price they ask, I expect a better LCD panel.
CrazyElf - Thursday, May 16, 2013 - link
I wonder if they cheaped out on the battery - not able to hold a charge after only a handful of cycles. This is an example of saving a few dollars here and there for a laptop that costs over a thousand dollars.