Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon 7th Gen review: updated business classic

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Lenovo ThinkPad laptop line has become one of the most popular in the corporate segment, and fans

among the "ordinary" audience a huge number. The main distinguishing features of the ThinkPad are a strict, practical and durable case, relatively small dimensions and weight, and, of course, a corporate red trackpoint with three buttons. Lenovo annually updates its current ThinkPad product line and only occasionally launches brand-new models. This approach is quite logical: if users like it, then why change a successful solution? One of the very popular models is the flagship ultrabook Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon, the seventh generation is already relevant. Today we will meet him.

What is it?
What makes him interesting?
What is included?
How does the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon 7th Gen look and assemble?
How convenient is it to use a laptop?
How good is the screen?
What about performance, autonomy and sound?
In the dry residue

What is it?

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon 7th Gen - Slim,lightweight and durable flagship ultrabook with a 14-inch IPS display, 8th generation Intel Core processors Whiskey Lake, 8 GB of RAM, fast solid state drive, backlit keyboard, proprietary trackpoint and fingerprint scanner.

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What makes him interesting?

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Externally, the laptop is practically no different frompredecessor. There are minor modifications, which we will talk about a little later. But overall, it's still the same rugged, sturdy laptop with a magnesium alloy and carbon fiber casing. It is certified by the military standard MIL-STD-810G, the thickness and weight have decreased slightly compared to the previous generation. It is equipped with a 14-inch IPS display, various options are available, up to the touch 4K. Inside - the Intel Core processors of the Whiskey Lake family (apparently, on the way and configuration with Comet Lake), from 8 GB of RAM LPDDR3 2133 MHz and a fast solid-state drive as storage. Despite its compact size and low weight, the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon 7th Gen has not lost an impressive set of ports, as in the previous generation. There is a pair of Type-C (Thunderbolt 3), 2xUSB 3.0, full-size HDMI, as well as the ability to connect proprietary docking stations. Of the useful security features, there is a fingerprint scanner and a ThinkShutter physical curtain for the webcam.

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What is included?

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Supplied Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon 7th Gen indouble box. External - made of simple mustard-colored packaging cardboard, with a minimum of inscriptions and information. The laptop itself is inside a smaller black box. The delivery set is almost “basic”: the laptop itself, a compact 65 W power supply, an Ethernet adapter and documentation.

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How does the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon 7th Gen look and assemble?

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Lenovo ThinkPad business line models are veryrecognizable: a characteristic strict, slightly angular design, black with red accents, a proprietary trackpoint and matte surfaces do not allow the ThinkPad to be confused with other laptops. At first glance, distinguishing the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon 7th Gen from the previous generation is very difficult. Minimal changes affected only some functional elements, and the dimensions, weight and design remained almost unchanged. The case is still made of magnesium alloy and carbon fiber with a nice, but fairly easily soiled soft-touch coating. The color is only black, but in top configurations the top cover is without soft-touch, just with carbon fiber patterns. The top cover has the traditional logos of the X1 model and the ThinkPad line with a red LED:

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Most features and portsmigrated from the past generation, but there are also small innovations. At the right end there are still large ventilation holes, one full-sized USB 3.0 and a Kensington lock slot. They also decided to move the power button with a built-in LED here. A controversial decision that is customary to see in transformers that can be used in the tablet version, rather than “ordinary” ultrabooks:

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On the back - only hinges in black. In nature, there are configurations with a tray for WWAN and MicroSD, which is located at the rear end:

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On the left side - almost the same set as inpast Carbon. Two USB Type-C 3.1 ports with support for Thunderbolt 3 and Power Delivery, there is a charging LED nearby. The second Type-C with proprietary Ethernet is located side by side, in a common recess. Signature docking stations are connected here. Judging by the information on the official website, there are already five of them. Next is another full-sized USB 3.0, HDMI and a combined 3.5 mm audio jack, which moved here from the right end:

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Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon 7th Gen received as many as four microphones and they are located on the end of the top cover of the laptop:

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The bottom of the laptop was left virtuallychanges. It has four rubberized legs, holes for the cooling system, a small hole in which (apparently) a reset button. A pair of larger rectangular holes and a square one closer to the left end are used to set the docking station in the required position. The speakers are bigger:

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The frames around the screen are not the thinnest. On the sides, the gaps are really very small, bottom and top - quite wide by the standards of modern ultraportable laptops. A LED indicator and a ThinkShutter camera with a physical shutter are located above the screen

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In the past generation, there was only a power button with a LED above the keyboard. In the ThinkPad X1 Carbon 7th Gen, two more speakers are placed above the keyboard.

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The laptop is lightweight, only 1.09 kg and carrying it with you daily is not a problem at all. The top cover and keyboard block bend just a little, but only if you do it consciously, there are no problems during operation. Otherwise, in terms of build quality and materials, everything is very good.

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How convenient is it to use a laptop?

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In the convenience of design and controlsabsolutely no changes have occurred compared to the previous generation. Everything is still cool. Hinges allow you to open the laptop 180 °, while the laptop opens without problems with one hand. On the lid there is no cutout familiar to other laptops, but the wedge-shaped shape compensates for this. The keyboard and its layout are similar to the previous model. Of the standard features for the line, there are separate Home, End and Delete buttons at the end of the top row, a slightly forward block of arrows, PgUp and PgDn on the sides of the up arrow, PrtSc between the right Alt and Ctrl buttons. And the only features to get used to are Fn and left Ctrl changed places:

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This is also a traditional feature of the ThinkPad,but earlier they could be swapped in the Lenovo Vantage proprietary application. Now only through the BIOS. In the application, you can still configure additional button combinations, enable Fn Lock:

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Very convenient buttons - another featurea ruler that is saved. They still have a recognizable shape with a rounded lower part and a tangible, pleasant stroke. There is a white keyboard backlight with two brightness levels:

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The touchpad and trackpoint with buttons were left withoutchanges. The touchpad is small, but the sensitivity is sufficient for comfortable operation. To his right is a fingerprint scanner. There were no questions to his work: it works quickly and accurately:

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How good is the screen?

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Diagonal of the screen of the laptop - 14 inches,IPS matrices are used. Depending on the configuration of the laptop, there are several options: including the simplest (as we review) with FullHD IPS, Low Power, 400 cd / m² with anti-reflective coating, 2560x1440 with a brightness of 400 cd / m² and top options with 4K resolution, support HDR 400 and a maximum declared brightness of 500 cd / m², including touch options. The screen even in our basic version is good: the picture is very nice, the brightness is enough and the viewing angles are excellent. But there is one oddity, perhaps it is peculiar precisely to similar IPS Low Power matrices: low response time. “Plumes” are really visible with the naked eye. In any case, the configuration of the laptop will not allow you to play something particularly dynamic. The maximum brightness is 379.201 cd / m², the black field brightness is 0.359 cd / m², and the static contrast is 1056: 1. Very sensible indicators. At the same time, the screen is calibrated very well: there is a slight lack of red, the color temperature is about 8000K, and the color gamut almost coincides with sRGB.

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If needed / desired, the Lenovo Vantage application can adjust the color temperature and enable eye protection.

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What about performance, autonomy and sound?

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Inside the laptop is a typical configurationlast year's laptops: 8th generation Whiskey Lake Intel Core processors, from 8 GB of RAM and a fast SSD drive. In this case, it cannot be said that this is bad: the 10th generation processors of the Comet Lake family are practically no different from Whiskey Lake (the main difference is slightly higher than the frequency), and the models on Ice Lake have just begun to appear and have not yet been to our editorial office. We visited the youngest model in the lineup, it is equipped with a very familiar configuration: Intel Core i5-8265U, 8 GB of RAM LPDDR3-2133 and SSD 256 GB. Just in case, recall: Intel Core i5-8265U - a 14-nanometer quad-core processor with a clock frequency of 1.6 GHz (up to 3.9 GHz Turbo Boost), there is support for 8 HyperThreading threads, 6 MB SmartCache, integrated Intel UHD Graphics 620 with a frequency of up to 1100 MHz . There are no options with discrete graphics. Wireless interfaces: Wi-Fi 802.11 AC (2 × 2) and Bluetooth 5.0.

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This is a typical “office” configuration for work.with documents, web surfing, basic editing and other not very resource-intensive tasks. With all this, the laptop does an excellent job. For 3D graphics, this filling is not particularly suitable:

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The drive uses the SSD WD NVMe PCIe 3.0 × 4 256 GB:

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The drive is very fast, especially when reading. When recording, the speed indicators are not record, but also very impressive:

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The cooling system in the laptop is a bitcontroversial: it works very quietly, even at peak loads. But it does not do too well with overheating: the processor heats up to almost 100 °, after which it significantly resets operating frequencies (throttling can reach 50%), cools to reasonable levels and returns to maximum performance. And this process is repeated with some periodicity. At the same time, the case above the keyboard heats up, and a noticeable stream of hot air is blown from the ventilation holes on the right side. On the other hand, the problem cannot be called critical: in real conditions, loading the laptop in this way will be extremely difficult.

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The battery has decreased from 57 Wh * h to 51 Wh * h. According to personal feelings, I did not notice any significant difference in autonomy compared to the previous generation. They promise up to 18.3 hours of battery life, the function of fast charging from a 65 W complete power supply is supported: formally, 80% per hour. In reality, it takes about an hour and a half to fully charge. The laptop is very “tenacious” and in office mode (browser, documents, low screen brightness) is able to withstand about 8 hours, that is, approximately a working day. If you add loads (Photoshop, music stream), then about 6.5 hours.

The laptop has four speakers: two below and two above the keyboard. The main work is performed by the lower ones, and a couple above the keyboard are more like additional “tweeters”. But overall, the sound is very good, as for an ultra-compact laptop. Yes, it does not strike the imagination with low frequencies, but it is definitely better than everything that I came across in the compact ThinkPad line. For tuning, there is a Dolby application with various ready-made sound presets and an equalizer.

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To configure the laptop, one general Lenovo Vantage utility is used, which contains all the essentials: system monitoring, driver updates, BIOS and other settings:

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In the dry residue

No incredible innovations ormodifications in the seventh generation of the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon did not happen, but all the main advantages for which they love the line remained in place. This is a reliable, practical and compact laptop with albeit not the most powerful, but quite appropriate to its tasks iron. It works for a long time on battery power, it is equipped with a convenient keyboard traditional for the line and a decent set of ports, which, if desired, can be further expanded with the help of docks. Of the controversial points, it is worth noting the most efficient cooling system, which works quietly, but does not always cope. And the “slow” matrix. Although perhaps this is a feature of IPS Low Power, there will be no such problem in more expensive configurations. The basic configuration (as we have in the review) costs about 40 000 UAH

5 reasons to buy Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon 7th Gen: