Whether your main work is editing documents, consulting spreadsheets, writing code or surfing the Web, you need a notebook that feels good on your lap and allows you to get more done in less time. Over the past few years, Lenovo’s ThinkPad X1 Carbon series has led the way in productivity with its great keyboards, wide range of ports and long battery life.
Lenovo also optimized the display hinge, expanded the touchpad, improved speaker placement, and integrated the fingerprint reader into the power button. Inside, the notebook received Intel’s long-awaited upgrade to the manufacturer’s 11th-generation Tiger Lake chips. With a more spacious display and other improvements, the ThinkPad X1 Carbon remains one of the best choices for business users, even if its webcam is no longer updated.
It is still lighter than other flagship business laptops, and the soft-touch carbon fiber surfaces covering the chassis are a comfort departure from the mineral cold. Added to that are the legendary ThinkPad keyboard, modern security features, and enough ports so you don’t need adapters. Smart design improvements complete the overall package, were it not for the poor webcam and lack of a card reader.
Design
The ThinkPad X1 Carbon (Gen 9) has the classic rectangular and raven black ThinkPad aesthetic that we have come to expect from Lenovo over the years. The lightweight chassis is made from a combination of magnesium and carbon fiber and feels nice and soft in the palm of your hand. An optional carbon fiber fabric cover is available that adds an extra touch of class and a softer texture to the notebook, but it is only available for 3840 x 2400 display configurations.
Compared to the Gen 8 version of the ThinkPad X1 Carbon, there are some subtle but important design changes. The chassis is slightly longer and narrower (12.38 x 8.72 inches versus 12.7 x 8.5 inches) to accommodate a 16:10 aspect ratio screen, compared to the 16:9 panels previously used by the Carbon. This allows for more vertical screen space to be used for reading web pages or editing documents. Here are some excellent PDF editors for document editing.
Keyboard and Touchpad
Lenovo’s ThinkPads have snappy keyboards with easy-to-use, smile-inducing keys, and the latest X1 Carbon is no exception. The keys offer great feedback, while the soft-touch top gently caresses my wrists as I type. We managed to type 97 pages per minute, which is within my typical range, albeit with a slightly higher error rate than usual. Like other ThinkPads, the X1 Carbon has two different pointing devices: a TrackPoint stylus and a touchpad.
We always prefer the TrackPoint because it allows extremely precise desktop navigation and we do not have to lift our hands from the front row to stop typing. However, for those who dislike pointing sticks, the 4.3 x 2.4-inch glass precision touchpad is more than useful. It responded instantly and accurately to all my gestures, including pinch-to-zoom, two-finger scrolling and three-finger swipes.
Display
The ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9 does not deviate from the standard ThinkPad character. The matte black case is familiar to anyone who has worked in the office with Lenovo business devices. Made of aluminum, carbon fiber and magnesium, the case is solid and barely flexes. Lenovo monitors coated the surfaces with a rubberized varnish that provides a soft, grippy feel but makes the notebook a magnet for fingerprints and smudges.
The ThinkPad X1 Carbon is highly durable, so it is able to withstand the field. It has passed a series of MIL-SPEC tests against environmental hazards and extreme conditions. But it is not a bulky system. Quite the contrary. It weighs only 2.54 pounds. That’s a bit more than the 2.4-pound version of the X1 Carbon Gen 8, but the extra weight is definitely worth it for the more spacious 14-inch 16:10 display.
In addition, the 2.5-pound weight is that of a lightweight laptop among premium ultrabooks. For example, the 14-inch HP Envy 14 weighs 3.3 pounds and the 13.3-inch HP DragonFly Max is smaller but slightly heavier at 2.59 pounds.
Audio
The ThinkPad X1 Carbon and its quad speakers provide excellent audio output, enough to listen to music and loud enough to fill an average-sized room. The two up-facing speakers are located on either side of the keyboard (unlike the Gen 8, where they were above the keyboard), while the two down-facing speakers are located below the front edge. When we listened to AC/DC’s Back in Black, the sound was rich and layered, with the guitars seeming to come from the right side of the laptop while the drums came from the left. The result was similar when we played the bass-rich track “September” by Earth, Wind and Fire.
Graphics
3DMark measures relative graphics performance by rendering highly detailed, game-style 3D graphics sequences focused on particles and lighting. We run two different sub-tests of 3DMark, Sky Diver and Fire Strike. Both are DirectX 11 benchmarks, but Sky Diver is more suitable for laptops and mid-range PCs, while Fire Strike is more demanding and allows high-end PCs and gaming platforms to show off.
Another synthetic graphics test follows, this time from Unigine Corp. Like 3DMark, the Superposition test renders and scans a detailed 3D scene rendered with the Unigine engine of the same name to get a second opinion on the machine’s graphics capabilities. We present two Superposition results, run at the default 720p Low and 1080p High settings and reported in frames per second (fps), indicating the smoothness of the moving scene. For low-end systems, at least 30 frames per second is a realistic goal, while more powerful computers should ideally achieve at least 60 frames per second at the test resolution.
Performance
Our ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9 is powered by Intel’s 11th generation Core i7-1185G7 quad-core Tiger Lake processor family. It also has 16 GB of RAM and integrated Intel Iris Xe graphics. There is no GPU upgrade option, which makes the X1 Carbon more suitable for busy executives than creative professionals. We compared it with the HP Elite Dragonfly Max, which has the same Core i7-1185G7 CPU.
We also included the Razer Book 13 and the Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 9310, which both use a Core i7-1165G7 chip. We also compared it with the Core i7-1160G& chip in the 13-inch ThinkPad X1 Nano. Each of these Core i7 chips is a quad-core processor with eight threads. The HP Pavilion Aero 13 with its eight-core AMD Ryzen 7 5800U processor rounds out the rankings. All of these laptops have integrated graphics. Here are some HP monitors.
Battery Life
With its 57 Wh battery, the ThinkPad X1 Carbon offers truly epic endurance, among the longest we’ve seen in a notebook recently. In our battery test, surfing the web at 150 cd/m² and streaming video via Wi-Fi, the Lenovo ultrabook lasted 15 hours and 39 minutes. This is 4.5 hours longer than the Dell XPS 13 9310 (with standard panel), 2 hours longer than the Asus ZenBook 13, 3.5 hours longer than the ThinkPad X1 Nano, and about an hour longer than the ThinkPad X1 Yoga 2-in-1.
Heat
When we played HD video on the notebook for at least 15 minutes and then ran a heat gun over it, we found that the touchpad only reached 75 degrees Fahrenheit, while the keyboard reached 81.5 degrees and the general underside of the notebook 87.8 degrees. The hottest point we measured was the rear center underside, which reached 100 degrees. Although this figure seems a bit alarming, we personally did not encounter this problem during my testing of the laptop.
Conclusion
Overall, the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9 is a solid mid-range notebook, perfect for the average professional. It performs well, with an excellent battery and good ventilation. It also has very good speakers, especially considering its size. However, the webcam quality is only average, and the display is also a bit disappointing, since for the same price you can find competitive notebooks that offer more pixels and higher brightness than the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9.
