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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Chloiber - Monday, May 25, 2015 - link
Sounds to me like a layer 8 issue right there.drwho9437 - Sunday, May 31, 2015 - link
So I have owned a T60, an X200, an X220 and an X230.I sold the T60 to get the X200 because I wanted something smaller. No issues with it until sale. I still have the X200 only failure is a small crack in the bezel that I caused by picking it up pinching the right hand side of the screen for years and years.
I got my mother a T61 which did seem to develop a firmware issue after 2 years (it was already 10 years old; I had gotten it used). I replaced it with a T400 which is working well.
My X220 was working fine when I sold it. It had always run a little hot for my taste so I replaced it with the X230 as I had a chance to use the new style keyboard and found it not completely unacceptable.
Friend of mine has an X201t no issues. I got an X300 off ebay for next to nothing, it does run hotter than I would have thought for so low a power CPU but the fan is tiny. One mouse button didn't work so I got a new set for few dollars.
All in all some failures to be sure but I have yet to have a single failure in year 1, that said I always buy them refurbished from the outlet or used. Perhaps those get more testing. They cost about 75% of new too, with a longer 3 year warranty in most cases. I just wait until what I want shows up on the outlet and then get it. The need for the newest computer available is long over.
carbonx1_is-the-worst - Friday, May 22, 2015 - link
Battery broke completely within 18 months for no apparent reason - one day my laptop simply said 'no battery'. Replacement part order took forever - had to call IBM that handles parts for lenovo. part cost over $160 with shipment; installation cost $50 by geeksquad. Once installed, new battery runtime = 4h which is 50% of IBM-tech-support-promised capacity for the new part which was supopsed to be exactly the same OEM as in the brand new laptop. Now, dealing with faulty part replacement - which is another ordeal -- first you call IBM "supplies" number recommended on the packlist; then IBM send you an email with instruction to forward that email to 'returns' - etc. I think they dropped a ball here - the process could have been much more COMPLICATED so no one ever bothers with replacement requests. For instance, IBM could have gently recommended to write a letter by hand with special golden-sparkle-inc explaining the reasons for exchange order, then pack the letter in the eggshell colored in black, then put the eggshell in the treasure box of size 10x10cm, then put that in the oversized envelop with sufficient amount of cushioning, and at last, courier-deliver that to a special location in PA and give a secret knock on IBM/Lenovo door: knock-knock --- triple knock.protomech - Saturday, May 23, 2015 - link
Wat? You went back to a 2010 laptop over a new 2015 because it offers better battery life?That's.. surprising.
beastly - Sunday, November 29, 2020 - link
I have the X1 Carbon as well and it has easily. 19 hr life and charges in about 40 mins to 100%. The biggest factor for laptops not living up to the estimated battery life generally has to do with USB devices drawing off that battery. I use a powered USB hub to prevent battery drain from slave USB devices.lilmoe - Thursday, May 21, 2015 - link
Really, battery life is a bummer for an otherwise great, expensive machine. But ultrabooks aren't for people like me anyway (also a developer; VS2013/15). I wouldn't mind the extra thickness, performance and weight of the T450s with its hot swappable battery.sorten - Thursday, May 21, 2015 - link
I guess it depends what you're developing. For me personally, performance has always been more important than battery life because my laptop is docked and attached to two monitors for 95% of my dev time. The only time battery life is a concern is when I'm stuck in all day planning sessions. If I'm undocked and programming on the couch or in some open space at the office then I'm concerned with heat and, to a lesser extent, noise.mmrezaie - Thursday, May 21, 2015 - link
I have a decent Xeon workstation and some other clusters. I need something with decent performance that I can take where ever I go and also with best class battery. Something that thinkpad was. Actually some of my colleagues chose x250, but somehow I prefer the macbook pros.mmrezaie - Thursday, May 21, 2015 - link
which is not remotely as durable as I would like. You should have it for a year to see what happens to it.lilmoe - Thursday, May 21, 2015 - link
Having both would be great (and I really love the ability to hot swap batteries). I'm a freelance developer and I have my own LoB software. I use lots of rich controls, so Visual Studio could use all the oomph it can get. WPF can be harsh at design time, even WinForms can with lots of nested table layout panels. I was shopping around last year for a new Haswell MQ/HQ laptop around the time when Lenovo kind of MESSED UP the trackpad among other things.....I don't like U-series CPUs so I opted for a 4702MQ HP ProBook and it's been great. I installed decent quality 16GB RAM modules and a Samsung 850 Pro to help. I'm getting 3-4 hours of heavy usage and, now after Windows 10, up to 8 hours of light use and browsing on Edge (used to be less than 7). But I seriously HATE the TN panel, and I've been shopping around for an IPS replacement part (still waiting on the HP agent in my country) since none of the models I've seen had IPS.
I really LOVE Thinkpads, but Lenovo just has to mess something up. I can live with a not-so-great screen and so-so battery life if performance was great, but a trackpad with no physical buttons and good travel (on the bottom of the pad)?? Heck no. Not even the clicky type buttons. I hope they get those back next gen.
I have my eyes on the T550 since I need the numpad, hope the next gen will have hot swap batteries like the T550s. Anandtech really need to do some comprehensive testing of the T-series, and not only U-series alone.