A lot of people are excited about Lenovo’s upcoming ThinkPad X1 Carbon. This sleek Ultrabook makes extensive use of carbon fiber to cut weight down, bringing the X1’s weight to around 1.35kg. A thin bezel, high resolution matte screen, and integrated 3G make this an Ultrabook you should definitely consider. The Lenovo team has produced and unboxing video which lets you get a look at the final product which should be gracing store shelves soon.
The X1 is in the 13″ Ultrabook class, but thanks to a thin bezel (that we know some of you will love), it actually manages to squeeze in a 14 inch screen which has satisfying 1600×900 resolution and is matte instead of glossy. The screen also tilts all the way back, capable of swinging parallel to the surface the machine is resting on which can be useful for certain situations. The reworked keyboard is backlit and has two brightness settings. Furthermore, the X1 has a quick charge feature which allows it to charge from 0% to 80% in just 35 minutes which is pretty awesome. Lenovo says that the X1 will last for 7 hours, but applying our classic 2/3 rule we expect it to last around 4 and a half hours for typical usage, not bad.
The ThinkPad X1 is one of a few Ultrabooks that you can find with integrated 3G which will appeal to some of the road-warriors out there. A biometric fingerprint scanner is also available which security minded business users will appreciate.
The X1 is one USB port short of what we’d prefer, having only 2 USB ports (1x 2.0, 1x 3.0). A mini-DisplayPort is the only output option which will mean carrying an adapter around with you.
The model in the unboxing is equipped with an Ivy Bridge Core i5 processor, though there will like an i7 option as well. Lenovo says that the X1 passed ‘milspec‘ tests for ruggedness and features a spill-resistant keyboard.
Pricing and availability for the X1 has not been announced yet, but given the unboxing video we expect to see it available in stores soon. Lenovo previously announced that the ThinkPad X1 would be available in “Summer 2012”.
Lenovo has been running a series of interviews with X1 engineers which you can find here if you’re interested:
What are the height and width dimensions? Any details on the MIL-SPEC testing? There’s a pretty broad range that can still be considered “passing.”
Height is around 18.9mm, not sure about the width yet. Also not sure which milspec tests they used. Hopefully we’ll get more info upon release.
I doubt it’ll survive me standing on it. I’m not sure the current Thinkpads will survive that either but I do know an old IBM Thinkpad I had definitely did.
What’s the deal with those mouse buttons? Do you have to get used to them being above the mouse pad or is there hidden ones below too? I’m not too sure I can envisage what the ergonomics are on this one.
The layout is typical of Thinkpads because of the trackpoint in the middle of the keyboad.
If you’re not familiar, the trackpoint is basically a nub like mouse joystick that lets you control the cursor without moving your hand away from the keyboard.
Depending on whether you type a lot will determine if you think it’s a good feature or not.
On larger systems Lenovo would place a extra set of mouse buttons below the touch pad but when conserving space then they only provide one set and the trackpoint takes priority because the touch pad is multi-touch and you can get by without physical buttons as long as you know the proper multi-touch gestures.
Thanks James. I guess with all these things you get used to them over time.
It’s a clickpad. The entire touchpad is a button. If it’s like my X230, a right click is registered by either a two finger tap or a click on the bottom right corner.
I read in another short unboxing review that the maximum supported RAM is 4GB…I really hope that was a mistake in the review…
This ultrabook was my other great hope before i bought my samsung series 9 because i could not wait any longer i wish my samsung had a bit more than 4GB ram by now but i wouldnt compromise on weight and for 99% of my tasks its more than enough:)
Hey guys! I have been waiting for the X1 Carbon since May. I’m so excited it is coming out so soon. I have also been worried that it is max 4GB of RAM BUUTTTTT…..
If you go to lenovo.com you will see that there is an option for 8GB of RAM. OH YEA!
Didn’t show most important part, the actual boot time!
Laptop Mag has their review up, quote…
“128GB SanDisk SSD booted into Windows 7 in a slow 56 seconds, 12 seconds behind the category average and way slower than ZenBook Prime (23 seconds) and the Fujitsu LifeBook U772 (27 seconds). The drive took a modest 1 minute to complete the LAPTOP File Transfer test, which involves copying 4.97GB of mixed-media files. That’s a rate of 84.8 MBps, which is about 50 percent faster than the 56 MBps category average, but slow for an SSD.”
Btw, back at CES they were indicating they’ll be coming out with a hybrid version of the X1 that could switch to a ARM powered custom Linux in less than 2 seconds…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffZpAc9Tn64
Is it really that important? How often do you reboot?
I got the Series 9, and with fast boot and all sorts of optimized settings it takes about 9-10 seconds to boot – never more than 15. Resume from hibernation below a second with the fast resume partition.
I rarely turn it off though, so it doesn’t really matter all that much to me.
You can’t really say what you do applies to everyone or even most people. I reboot/shutdown my notebook often.
I said nothing of the sort. #11 (you?) are the one that said that boot time was the most important part.
The tip that I was trying to give was that if it’s important to you you should look into Series 9, or at least Samsung’s fast boot system. It makes a huge difference.
Seems that the Thinkpad T430u is also coming out in August for budget conscious users ;)
Of course it is much inferior than the X1Carbon but it appears it will start from $779 which is reasonable
You need to test for Lenovo-enforced max ram limitations and SATA throughput limitations; both of which Lenovo has implemented repeatedly in the past. They implement CPUs, chipsets, and hardware that supports higher speeds and lower capacity and then intentionally cripple it in the BIOS in a non-user-defeatable manner. (My guess is to increase battery life.)
I loved, loved, loved everything about my old X60 except how ugly it was and a BS Lenovo-enforced 3GB ram and SATA perf limitation. (No reason for it; none.) -They’ll advertise SATA III support, which it technically does, and then enforce SATA II speeds.
I’m flabergasted to see this behavior repeated generation after generation with new consumers peeved every time… Hopefully those days are behind them but I’ll believe it when I see it.
Adam
If it’s like the MacBook Pro I had with a Core 2 Duo (Merom) then the 3 GB limit was a motherboard issue of not routing all the address lines between the RAM and the controller. There were other notebooks with the same controller and the same 3 GB limit. I don’t recall the reasoning why these manufacturers did this.
Are you sure the X60 had SATA III? The SATA III standard was only released in Spring of 2009. The X60 is pretty old.
I assume one of the reasons the manufacturers do this is to have common “platform” to build multiple variants without significant engineering(and costs). So when they need all the features, they go back to the common platform and enable what’s needed.
Did I forget that they sold TONS of these laptops with >3GB of ram and then disabled the ability to address that >3GB of RAM???
-Yes, I was on x64 Windows.
“We said we were selling you 4GB of RAM; you’re machine HAS 4 GB of RAM, we never said we’d let you actually USE that 4GB of RAM.” /end rant
What the F@#$# good is having virtualization support in your CPU if you can’t use more than 3GB of RAM??!?
/end rant for real this time.
i saw a comparison of screens of the x1 carbon and the macbook air on youtube … interesting
looks fine but not as good as the samsung 9 13 inch.
I was hoping Lenovo would have done something more different like user replaceable parts and extended batteries that their Thinkpad line is known for. Too bad it’s just like any other ultrabook. At least they kept the Trackpoint.