The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Review (2015)
by Brett Howse on May 21, 2015 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
- Lenovo
- ThinkPad
- Ultrabook
- Broadwell-U
Battery Life
With the introduction of Broadwell-U earlier this year, we have seen yet another step up in battery life on notebooks. It does not all come down to the CPU though, although having one that draws plenty of power while doing nothing is certainly not beneficial. Display technology is also a big factor, and we have seen quite strongly that the higher resolution panels can certainly struggle for battery life compared to more average resolution displays. If a device is to have truly great battery life, every single component needs to be sorted out, because any single one drawing extra power can have a significant effect on the overall battery life. The other factor of course is battery size, and the X1 Carbon has a 50 Wh battery.
To test battery life on notebooks, we have two tests. Our light workload consists of browsing four pages every minute with the display set to 200 nits. The heavy test gets a lot of the other components into the mix. The web browsing is increased to about twenty pages per minute, a video is played, and a 1 MB/s download is done to keep the wireless active.
On our light test, the X1 Carbon is well off of the leaders in this test. It does seem odd to say that almost eight hours of battery life is not enough, but the bar has been raised this year. The X1 Carbon does have a slightly smaller battery, but as we will see in a bit that is not the reason for the lower than average result. A lot of this can likely come down to the display. In order to hit 200 nits, the display had to be set at 92% brightness which is quite a bit higher than most devices. Since this test is generally affected more by display power draw than any other, I would tend to think that this display is not the most efficient out there. It is always a bit of a guess though, since we cannot directly measure the power of each component.
In the heavy test, the X1 Carbon falls even farther as the more efficient devices move past it. One thing to highlight from this test is the 2013 X1 Carbon. That was just two years ago, and battery life has skyrocketed since then.
Next we have our normalized graphs which show the amount of battery life divided by the size of the battery in order to judge how efficient each device is.
The light result shows that the X1 Carbon is not that much less efficient than some of the competition, but it also has one of the smallest batteries at 50 Wh despite this being a 14-inch notebook. Dell squeezed a 52 Wh battery into the XPS 13 this year despite the much smaller dimensions facilitated by the small display bezels. The heavy graph has an even worse result. Battery life is not the forte of the X1 Carbon. Even though it is not the battery life winner, taking a look at the Ivy Bridge powered X1 Carbon for 2013’s score really underlines the big gains seen in efficiency. Just two years ago, the X1 Carbon was about mid-pack in efficiency (see our review here) and just two years later the new X1 Carbon is almost 45% more efficient than the 2013 model, and yet it is almost at the bottom of our Ultrabook chart for battery life.
Charge Time
The X1 Carbon sports Lenovo’s Rapid Charge technology which will let you charge 80% of the battery capacity in just 30 minutes. Lenovo says that they use high current rather than high voltage to increase the battery charge rate, which they claim helps battery longevity. Whichever it is, the X1 Carbon does offer some pretty fast charging.
With the included 45 watt adapter, I was unable to reach the 80% in 30 minutes, but with the higher output adapters it could happen. Even with just the 45 watt model 80% happened in just 69 minutes which is very impressive, and a full charge took just over two hours. The battery life may not be at the top of the charts, but luckily if you do drain the battery you can get it back to a reasonable level in not too long.
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Shan Barns - Monday, October 19, 2015 - link
Beware the so-called extended warranty(tl;dr -- warranted computer, gone for over 6 weeks so far, dismissive and poor service, want replacement if they can't repair)
I own an X1 carbon (2 years old) which over the last year has started to spike in temperature. The fan software no longer works, so I've installed TPFancontrol and Speedfan (one the first time I reformatted and reinstalled Widows, the other the second time) to manually control the fans. I updated BIOS and drivers, reinstalled Windows, etc. I did the normal blowing out of the vent and so on, but the computer would go up to 90+ degrees Celsius and crash. The wireless stopped working as well--intermittently and irrespective of location/modem/time of day.
I sent the computer in for repair, under my 3 year warranty. The first "repair" did nothing. Within 15 minutes, the computer reached 92 degrees Celsius and crashed 3 times. I sent it back for further repair. (By the way, they didn't return it with all parts of the power cord, even though they insisted I send it, and I marked all the parts on the shipping form). Obviously there is no quality control on their so-called repairs.
I have now been without a functioning computer for over 6 weeks. Lenovo doesn't have the correct parts and cannot find them. Parts for a popular computer that is only 2 years old. Now, as a doctoral student, it's pretty hard to write a dissertation without a computer, but as a consultant, I am losing money, since I cannot consult until I have a computer. Moreover my doctoral program is only funded for so long--every month of waiting equals a month in which I will have to pay out of pocket to be a student. Being without a computer for over 6 weeks has already cost me at least $4000.
But when I contact Lenovo to demand they deal with this issue , they reluctantly promise to add 2 months to my warranty--that's it! An acknowledgement that I've lost 2 months of computer use, and a further tacit acknowledgement that they think it will break again. This is after the problem "escalated." Mind you, they don't actually contact you after you "escalate" even though they insist they will.
Other computer companies will replace a defective computer under warranty if they cannot fix it. This happened with my old Asus, and with my kids' HP also. What is wrong with Lenovo's warranty? I feel that if they cannot fix a 2 year old computer, then this warranty is a fraudulent service they are selling.
And I also feel that anyone considering buying a Lenovo should be aware of how poor their customer service is. They do not call back, though they say they will. They issue "part hold final" emails insinuating that this is the last time they will await a part, but then re-start the part ordering process. They do not know who your case has gone to when it is "escalated" and are entirely confused by their own computer system when you ask about your repair status. The "escalation" people are dismissive and condescending when you do finally get a hold of a person. They do not stand by their product.
chris_of_sd - Friday, October 30, 2015 - link
I bought this laptop last May after a thorough search. I've been using T410 at work for years, thus the bias. Also I was aware with the quality reduction when Lenovo took over.I chose this laptop for a few reasons
1. Keyboard layout - meaning Enter button and navigation arrows are at the edge; and the trackpad is aligned with the space button.
2. High resolution display available
3. Style/ weight
My experience with it has been quite bad actually.
The WiFi adapter is the worst I've seen. Well, I haven't seen that many, except my old t410 and the usual mix of apple idevices. Eventually I was able to figure out some obscure setting that was disabling the wifi adapter to save power. Still is very slow to connect. With some old router the wifi was not able to identify the encryption method ( in contrast to all other devices ).
As build there are highs and lows. My laptop has a loose screw on the bottom ...
The display is quite annoying. I chose to have touch screen and the look I got is sort of the look that you get when you have a privacy screen on top. Not nice.
The sound from this laptop is absolutely terrible. And this is not about the speakers, is about the sound that comes from the headphones. It makes is pretty much impossible to watch youtube.
There are a few issues with cooling too.
The laptop gets quite hot to hold on lap; let's say that this is expected. However, a second problem is that the air vent is on the right hand side, meaning if I place a mouse there or if I use my right hand for the touch screen I can feel the hot air. My old laptop had it on the left which was much better.
mistera1 - Friday, February 12, 2016 - link
I got a new X1 this week and was disappointed to find the Trackpoint and Keyboard Backlight not working. I called support and upgraded everything, still no go. Lenovo wanted me to send back for repair but I told them I wanted a full refund, and they said OK to that with no fuss. I have an X200 and looking for something faster and with a better display. At this point I will probably buy a used X220.