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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close - Friday, May 22, 2015 - link
Samus, Lenovo used the IBM logo on T60 an T61 even though they weren't IBM anymore. Probably because the chassis was built in the same machines and according to the same plans and they had the shape cut out for the IBM logo. In 2007 the T61/p were being built also without the IBM logo and used a ThinkPad logo. But that was it. T61 had the last of the IBM logos in 2007.Samus - Friday, May 22, 2015 - link
I understand and agree with you. It's CasualUker that seems to think there are IBM "imprints" on the T430's. LOL.close - Friday, May 22, 2015 - link
CasualUker: the last one IBM made under their own name was the T43/T43p. T60 was already a Lenovo affair. Ok, they were probably riding on a lot of IBM knowhow, designs and everything but to be honest it was all downhill from there. I'm not saying they're the worst, they're still among the OK ones, just that the general level of quality and reliability has constantly dropped.I have a running T43. It's 2015 and it's still running. I had two R31 and R32 that ran until a few years ago. Also a running X200 (3 generations after lenovo took over). Had some issues but still running. After that I couldn't get a laptop to run fine for more than 3 years. And I work in a company that buys thousands of Lenovos X, T and W every year, generation after generation. Reliability is down. I have no expectations from a ThinkPad anymore.
sorten - Thursday, May 21, 2015 - link
I have to agree. Thinkpads were brilliant laptops when IBM owned the brand. I had a T20 for years. Our company started using the T440s about a year ago. I'm on my second laptop after the MB failed on the first one, and my touchscreen has stopped working. I'm going BYOD with a Surface Pro 4 as soon as it's available.Daniel Egger - Thursday, May 21, 2015 - link
Totally agree, I've had IBM Thinkpads for many years before I move everything to Apple. A couple of years ago I made the horrible mistake to buy a Lenovo Thinkpad; unusable trackpad and trackpoint is often erratic, soft controlled radio functions sometimes can be activated and other times needed a reboot, locked down BIOS to only support Lenovo branded cards in the two mini-PCIe slots, screen easily cracks due to bogus frame and design and claims from Lenovo that a laptop is not made to be transported around -- service is horrible as well.Nowadays I see them for what they are: always the cheapest and as usual you get what you pay for...
tuxRoller - Friday, May 22, 2015 - link
For the enterprise, their service has been pretty great.Very fast response times, and prompt deliveries (had to replace a keyboard and battery, but for two different lappys).
I do wish they'd up their quality, though, b/c, as you say, aspects of their assembly leave room to be desired.
For linux support, however, they are the only real option. Yeah, you can hack it onto a mac (lots of folks do), but you're at the mercy of mathew garrett to fix the issues at that point.
DukeN - Friday, May 22, 2015 - link
Hi,Lenovo apologist here - we've bought over around a hundred or so Thinkpad units since late 2007, and have yet to retire one. There were only two that needed a repair (under warranty), and the only other issues we have had til date have been due to keys ravaged or physical damage.
Also, LOL @ the guy citing some guy's IT business closing down because of poor Lenovo service
Samus - Friday, May 22, 2015 - link
Do a quick google search into corporate fallout from Superfish before you "LOL" a lot of people irrationally overreacted costing a lot of IT departments their jobs for "putting companies in danger."It was utterly ridiculous, but not really surprising considering how unprofessional of an organization Lenovo is. They are a consumer company, not an enterprise company. Think Ideapad, not Thinkpad. Huge difference. The fact they created the unholy offspring Thinkpad E-series to replace the budget R-series (the E-series is Ideapad internals) then created the joke that is the X100 series that have literally no Thinkpad technologies (Thinklight, Trackpoint, TPM, magnesium...) just goes to show Lenovo is willing to sell anything at any price in any disguise.
carbonx1_is-the-worst - Friday, May 22, 2015 - link
agree - worst customer service. tons of problems. tons of costs. i am switching to apple.Mumrik - Saturday, May 23, 2015 - link
My mother buys herself a new Thinkpad every year through her company. Through 4-6 years she has yet to have one last the whole year without the battery, keyboard or pointing device (last year of course) breaking down.