The 720p webcam captures good color and is free of digital noise, but the picture is soft-focus, bordering on blotchy. Of these competitors, only the Dell XPS 13 is thinner, but by a mere 0.02 inches (and it lacks Type-A ports). Lenovo's durable ThinkPad X1 Fold, with its detachable keyboard and revolutionary foldable screen, is the most futuristic Windows device of 2020—though far from the most practical one. While we haven’t always gotten (or expected) outstanding audio from Lenovo ThinkPads, the X1 Carbon (Gen 8) is an exception. The T14s and its Radeon Graphics integrated silicon led the way in this contest, but even it is blown away by almost any gaming laptop with a discrete GPU. Trending. There are three USB 3.0 ports rather than two as … If you click an affiliate link and buy a product or service, we may be paid a fee by that merchant. Both battery numbers are a noticeable step up from X1 Carbon (Gen 7) we tested last fall which had times of 9:30 and 5:33 with its 1080p and 4K panels. Built for business, but great for anyone who wants to get work done, Lenovo’s ThinkPad X1 Carbon has long been one of the best ultrabooks you can buy. Perhaps the most noticeable and important change to the ThinkPad X1 Carbon is what Lenovo calls the Adaptive Function Row. To see how the ThinkPad X1 Carbon performs under stress, we took both configurations and ran Cinebench R20 on them 20 times and logged the results and the clock speeds. Using an early 2018 release of the Creative Cloud version of Photoshop, we apply a series of 10 complex filters and effects to a standard JPEG test image. Cursor jockeys can as usual choose between the buttonless, slightly small touchpad and three-button TrackPoint embedded mini joystick, both of which are perky and precise. Our two models had 256GB and 512GB NVMe drives and they transferred 5GB of files at rates of 783 and 997.9 MBps respectively. Two upward-firing tweeters and two downward-firing woofers pump out above-average sound, with plenty of volume and a modest amount of bass; highs and midtones are clear and it's easy to distinguish overlapping tracks. Unfortunately, the RAM is soldered to the motherboard so there’s no way to upgrade it. The ThinkPad X1 Carbon (Gen 8) is only available with integrated Intel HD graphics, which makes it power efficient, but not a machine worth gaming on. You can see their basic specs in the table below. However, you can pay to extend the warranty up to five years or get added benefits such as on-site service. Cinebench stresses the CPU rather than the GPU to render a complex image. None of the competitors came close to either score. Lenovo probably does this to avoid accidental presses, but it’s still a pain in the butt. According to Lenovo, the Thinkpad X1 Carbon is constructed of four layers of carbon fiber, together with a magnesium alloy roll-cage. The extra $557 buys you a trivially faster Core i5 with Intel's vPro remote IT management, Windows 10 Pro instead of Home, and LTE mobile broadband. Colors stayed true even at wide viewing angles (up to 90 degrees left and right) but since the screen is glossy, intense ambient light such as sunlight makes it harder to see at those angles and even shows some reflections head on. No matter what capacity of SSD you choose, the ThinkPad X1 Carbon has speedy storage for you. A handy webcam shutter and a … We run two different 3DMark subtests, Sky Diver and Fire Strike. 3D Rendering; Adobe Photoshop; Results are from the … What are your thoughts? The main utility for all ThinkPads, Lenovo Vantage, helps you keep drivers and firmware up-to-date while also giving you some control over the system’s power and cooling policies. The screen bezels are thin, with a webcam with sliding shutter above the display; the face-recognition camera and a small fingerprint reader beside the touchpad give you two ways to skip passwords with Windows Hello. Fine details are as sharp as the 1080p resolution permits and viewing angles are broad. PCMag.com is a leading authority on technology, delivering Labs-based, independent reviews of the latest products and services. The lid of most configs is plain back, but if you opt for the 4K display, you get a carbon fiber cross-hatch pattern, which adds a unique dose of style I wish was standard. Today's best Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon (Gen 8) deals. PCMag Digital Group. Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon 20U9005KUS (14.0 Inches 60Hz 4K UHD/10th Gen Intel Core i7 10610U/Intel UHD Graphics 620/16GB RAM/1TB SSD/Windows 10 Pro) Add to wishlist Added to wishlist Removed from wishlist 0. The 4K display returned a strong 498 nits of brightness on our light meter while the 1080p screen hit a respectable 364 nits. Read the full review . The eighth generation of Lenovo's ThinkPad X1 Carbon (starts at $1,331; $1,888 as tested) carries that history, having racked up more rave reviews and awards than any notebook we can think of except possibly the Dell XPS 13. At that weight, it’s quite a bit lighter than the Dell XPS 13 (9300) (2.8 pounds), the Asus ZenBook 13 (2.7 pounds) and the HP Spectre x360 (2.7 pounds) and even a little lighter than the HP Elite Dragonfly (2.5 pounds). The new ThinkPad X1 Carbon is Lenovo’s halo entry into the high-end business Ultrabook market. However, it lacks some necessities, like an SD card reader, or upgradable memory. Visit our corporate site. The aesthetics of the ThinkPad X1 Carbon haven’t changed much over the last several generations, but why mess with a good thing? If you don’t care as much about the keyboard and don’t require a business laptop with MIL-SPEC-grade durability, consider the Dell XPS 13 (9300) or HP Spectre x360, both of which offer about two hours longer battery life and slightly better performance, thanks to their 10nm Ice Lake processors. An impressively strong showing by the Dell, but a solid, middle-of-the-pack finish for the ThinkPad X1 Carbon here. Facebook Supplied Dolby software lets you switch among music, movie, dynamic, game, and voice presets or play with an equalizer. It’s only 19mm thin at its thickest point, … Interestingly, Lenovo has made one, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it change to the keyboard design since last year’s Gen 7 model. Get instant access to breaking news, in-depth reviews and helpful tips. Like most ThinkPads, the X1 Carbon (Gen 8) has both a TrackPoint pointing stick and a touchpad. The F10 and F11 keys have telephone icons on them as they can be used for VoIP call answer or hang up functions. Cinebench is often a good predictor of our Handbrake video editing benchmark, in which we put a stopwatch on systems as they transcode a brief movie from 4K resolution down to 1080p. There was a problem. Both yield a proprietary numeric score; higher numbers are better. AC/DC’s “Back in Black,” which sounds distorted or tinny on lesser laptops, was clear and clean if not overly detailed. Options include models withup to a Core i7-10610U CPU, 16GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD and a 4K HDR display. Slick Ultraportables Face Off: 2020 Apple MacBook Air vs. Microsoft Surface Laptop 3, High-End Mac Showdown: Apple iMac vs. Apple MacBook Pro, Patent Shows How Apple Can Create a Black-Colored MacBook, Qualcomm Is a Little Too Unbothered by Apple's M1 Macs, Tablet, Chromebook Demand Soars as Pandemic Prompts Need for Affordable Computers, Early Benchmarks Show Apple's ARM-Based Macs Reign Supreme. CPU Performance: Intel Core i7-10510U . Because the lower-end panel is matte, I saw no reflections and image quality didn’t degrade at all even at a full 90 degrees to the left or right. On Geekbench 5, a synthetic benchmark that measures overall performance, the Core i7 config of the ThinkPad X1 Carbon (Gen 8) scored a bit less than some competitors, namely the Dell XPS 9300 (4,848) and the HP Spectre x360 (4,074), both of which have 10nm Ice Lake, Core i7-1065G7 CPUs. NY 10036. (See more about how we test laptops.). Maybe next year we'll get to review a fancy loaded version. The only real trialware we noticed on the two systems we tested was Microsoft Office 365, something a lot of people and companies already have a license for. You can swap out the ThinkPad X1 Carbon (Gen 8)’s M.2 NVMe SSD by simply loosening the five Philip’s head screws on the bottom panel, prying the panel off and then unscrewing and pulling out the drive. The display of third-party trademarks and trade names on this site does not necessarily indicate any affiliation or the endorsement of PCMag. The ultimate in lightweight productivity, the ThinkPad X1 Carbon (Gen 8) combines a best-in-class keyboard with a stunning screen and strong endurance. All five systems' SSD's flew through the PCMark 8 storage exercise. The ThinkPad X1 Carbon (Gen 8) delivers all day battery life with its 1080p non-touch screen, as it lasted 10 hours and 45 minutes on our battery test, which involves continuous web surfing, video streaming and OpenGL tests over Wi-Fi at 150 nits of brightness. Still, at 0.59 by 12.7 by 8.5 inches the Lenovo is impressively compact (the Acer TravelMate P6 measures 0.65 by 12.8 by 9.1 inches). Colors like the greens in a computer readout and the reds in a jacket were all extremely vibrant. The soft-touch palmrest added another level of comfort as I rested my wrists on it and racked up a strong 108 word-per-minute score (5 percent error rate) on the 10fastfingers.com typing test. If you don't need the LTE, you would see little difference with the starter machine. PCMark 10 and 8 are holistic performance suites developed by the PC benchmark specialists at UL (formerly Futuremark). The PCMark 10 test we run simulates different real-world productivity and content-creation workflows. Dolby Atmos Speaker System allows you to change audio profiles and adjust the equalizer. Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon design The X1 Carbon is a stylish, featherweight laptop that brilliantly balances modern aesthetics with practical features. New York, However, the tiny button is annoyingly hard to locate by feel and it’s so small that you have to be very deliberate about finding and pressing it. 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