Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon 8th Gen Review: Timeless Business Classics

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The Lenovo ThinkPad line of notebooks is popular in the corporate segment. And Lenovo's flagship model

ThinkPad X1 Carbon in particular.Lenovo decided to take a completely correct approach: it makes no sense to radically change the model that users like and sells. And the new generation offers exactly what you can expect from it. All the same recognizable austere and lightweight carbon fiber and magnesium alloy body, a red trackpoint that has remained a distinctive feature of the line for decades and a very comfortable keyboard. At the same time, the insides were naturally updated, more relevant 10th generation processors are used. Although the approach to configurations remained the same: this is a laptop for office applications and web surfing, but not for working with graphics. The laptop has a maximum set of interfaces, including fast Wi-Fi 6, NFC, LTE modem and wired Ethernet via a complete adapter. The battery lasts for a working day under light loads, and the screen is bright enough to work in most conditions. Perhaps the main complaint is the cost of the laptop. This configuration costs about 60 000 UAH and for this price you can find many more powerful models, on the 11th generation Intel and with discrete video accelerators.

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon 8th Gen

Slim, light and durable flagship ultrabook with14-inch IPS-display, Intel Core 8th generation Whiskey Lake processors, 8 GB of RAM, fast SSD, backlit keyboard, proprietary trackpoint and fingerprint scanner.

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5 reasons to buy Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon 8th Gen:

Strong and lightweight body, austere recognizable design;
bright IPS-screen;
comfortable keyboard and touchpad;
long battery life;
maximum set of interfaces, including Wi-Fi 6, NFC and LTE.

2 reasons not to buy Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon 8th Gen:

you need a more productive laptop not only for working with documents;
traditionally high cost.

Fast passage:

What is included?
How does the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon 8th Gen look and build?
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 included?

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Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon 8th Gen packed indouble box. The outer is made of recyclable mustard-colored heavy cardboard. And the laptop is in a smaller box, already black with minimalistic, but presentable printing. The package is also minimalistic: a laptop, a compact 65 W power supply, an Ethernet adapter and documentation.

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How does the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon 8th Gen look and build?

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Lenovo prefers not to redesignwell-known and popular models, so if you've seen the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon from the previous few years, the updated model will be familiar. It seems that nothing has changed in the configuration and placement of all functional elements. The chassis is still magnesium and carbon fiber, which make the laptop lightweight yet strong enough. Black with soft-touch coating. Looks and feels good, but collects fingerprints instantly. The branded distinctive features of the line in the form of a red trackpoint and additional buttons above the touchpad are also present. Of the notable differences from the previous version - the X1 inscription on the top cover has moved from the lower right corner to the upper left, to the ThinkPad logo. This is where the visual differences end. The LED in the letter “i” remains in place.

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As already written above, all ports and so on onfamiliar places. On the right is the power button with LED indicator. An odd decision considering the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon 8th Gen is not a convertible. Immediately behind it is USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-A, air vents and a Kensington Lock slot:

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On the left side there is a pair of USB Type-C 3.2 Gen2 Thunderbolt 3 with LED charging indicator in between. The second Type-C is located in a common recess with a proprietary port for connecting a bundled Ethernet adapter. This is done to connect branded docking stations. Next - another USB 3.2 Type-A, HDMI and a combined 3.5 mm audio jack:

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On the back are hinges and a SIM card tray. Structurally, it is similar to a smartphone. We had a configuration with LTE support, although there are configurations without.

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As in the previous generation, the laptop is equipped with four microphones that are located at the end of the laptop's top cover:

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On the bottom cover there are four rubberized legs,cooling system holes, several holes for fixing docking stations, main speaker grilles and a small hole in which a reset button:

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The bezels on the sides of the screen are thin, on top - a littlewider. Above the screen is an LED indicator, an infrared camera for identifying the owner by face and a webcam with a ThinkShutter physical shutter.

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Above the keyboard is a pair of additional speakers.

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In terms of dimensions and weight, the laptop coincides withprevious version: 1.09 kg. It is compact, lightweight and is absolutely not problematic to carry it with you all the time. The build is excellent, the case is solid, and the company mentions MIL-STD-810G certification. Although this does not mean that the laptop should be dropped. This suggests that it will be more difficult to “kill” it than a regular laptop.

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How convenient is it to use a laptop?

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Hinges allow you to open Lenovo ThinkPad X1Carbon 8th Gen 180 °, and the laptop can be opened easily with one hand. The lid is fixed in the desired position very well and does not begin to hesitate at the slightest touch. There is no cutout on the lid, which is common on other laptops, but the wedge-shaped shape compensates for this. The keyboard itself and the layout are similar to all ThinkPads for many years, and fans of the line will not have to get used to it. For those who are planning to "move" from a laptop of another manufacturer, there will be a couple of surprises, although they are not critical and the addiction happens quickly. Separate Home, End and Delete buttons are located at the end of the top row, the block of arrows is slightly extended towards the user, PgUp and PgDn are placed on the sides of the up arrow, and PrtSc is placed between the right Alt and Ctrl buttons. But the most important thing is that the left Ctrl and Fn on the keyboard have changed places, which is not very usual: the left Ctrl is used constantly blindly.

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But there is no particular problem. In the proprietary software they can be swapped back:

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The buttons, traditionally for a line, are very comfortable to work: they have a moderately soft, at the same time noticeable movement. There is a white keyboard backlight with two brightness levels:

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Touchpad and trackpoint with buttons were left withoutchanges. The touchpad is small, but the sensitivity is sufficient for comfortable work. An NFC tag is located at its top. And to the right of it is a fingerprint scanner. So the user has access to unlock options using both an infrared camera and a fingerprint.

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How good is the screen?

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Laptop screen diagonal - 14 inches,IPS-matrices of different options are used. It can be FullHD with antiglare coating (as in the 20U90004RT we reviewed) or 4K 3840x2160 with support for HDR 400 and Dolby Vision. There are no options with 2560x1440, like last year, yet. "By eye" the screen is of good quality. Of course, the viewing angles are maximum, without color distortion and with a minimum drop in brightness. The maximum brightness is 331.822 cd / m², the black field brightness is 0.349 cd / m², and the static contrast is 951: 1. The calibration is not bad, but it could be better (and it usually happens in top-end ThinkPads). The color gamut is close to the sRGB color space, but the color rendition goes a little into cold shades:

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What about performance, autonomy and sound?

Lenovo's ThinkPad X1 Carbon line is alwaysdesigned to work with documents, a browser and other simple tasks. Not for heavy graphics. The eighth generation continues this tradition. Inside, a rather modest in performance, but energy efficient 10th generation Intel Core i5-10210U processor of the Comet Lake family is installed. It is manufactured according to the 14nm process technology, includes 4 cores, supports 8 HyperThreading threads and is equipped with 6 MB Intel Smart Cache. Base clock speed - 1.6 GHz, Turbo Boost - up to 4.2 GHz. The integrated solution Intel UHD Graphics 620 with a frequency of up to 1100 MHz is responsible for the graphics. There are no discrete graphics configurations available. RAM - 16 GB LPDDR3-2133, it is soldered on the board. Although for such a "business" solution 16 GB is quite enough. Wireless interfaces: Wi-Fi 802.11 ax (Wi-Fi 6), Bluetooth 5.0, NFC and 3G / 4G LTE, so if you have a SIM card, you won't have to run from one Wi-Fi point to another. And through the complete adapter, you can also connect via wire.

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In benchmarks, the laptop expectedly demonstratesmodest results, especially in graphics tests. This is not surprising given the configuration. But the performance is sufficient if you use the laptop "as intended". With office applications, everything is in perfect order, Chrome with 30+ tabs does not start to dull, and you can also crop / tweak the brightness, contrast in Photoshop without any problems.

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The drive is an NVMe PCIe 3.0 × 4 SSD manufactured by Samsung for 512 GB:

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This is one of the top-end OEM models, the speed is appropriate. When reading up to 3570 MB / s, while writing - up to 2985 MB / s. Only models with PCIe 4.0 are faster:

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The cooling system is quiet.But, judging by the stress test AIDA64, does not cope well with peak loads. The first minutes of the insides can heat up to 100 °, of course, the processor drops the frequencies, throttling reaches 42%. Further, the cooling system adapts to the load, the temperature ranges from 70 to 90 °, the processor does not throttles. In this case, the heating of the case is felt only above the keyboard, which in no way affects the usability. Although in everyday life, it simply will not work to load the laptop so much.

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The laptop is powered by a three-cell batteryby 51 Wh, as in the previous generation. Fast charging is supported from the included 65 W power supply: you can charge 80% in an hour, and a full charge takes about 1.5 hours. In office mode (a browser with a bunch of tabs, documents, Wi-Fi connection, low screen brightness), the laptop can withstand a little over 8 hours. So for a working day (including the lunch break) should be enough.

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The laptop uses an audio system with fourspeakers: two main ones at the bottom and two additional ones above the keyboard. Of course, you shouldn't expect the sound quality of a desktop computer acoustics. But, as for an ultra-compact laptop, the sound was very high quality and loud.

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To configure the laptop, a proprietaryLenovo Vantage application, which contains everything you need: system monitoring, driver updates, BIOS, power settings, screen night mode, and so on:

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Additionally installed the Glance application.The bottom line is that it tracks the gaze of the laptop owner, with the help of which it was possible to implement several useful functions. For example, a laptop is automatically locked if the owner has gone somewhere, or a notification appears on the screen that there is a person behind you who sees the content on the screen. There are also a couple of useful functions when working with two monitors: moving the cursor and windows using the look.

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In the dry residue. Three things to know about the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon 8th Gen.

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon 8th Gen is an ultra-compact business laptop with a durable and lightweight chassis.
The configuration of the laptop is suitable for comfortable work with documents and browsers, but not for working with graphics.
The laptop has the maximum set of modern wireless interfaces, including Wi-Fi 6, NFC and 3G / 4G LTE module.

Technical specifications Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon 8th Gen

Display
14 inches, 1920 × 1080, IPS, matte finish

Dimensions
323x217x14.95 mm

Weight
1.09 kg

operating system
64-bit Microsoft Windows 10 Pro

CPU
Intel Core i5-10210U (Comet Lake, 14nm), 4 cores / 8 threads, 1.6-4.2 GHz

Ram
16 GB LPDDR3 2133 MHz

Graphics
Intel UHD Graphics 620

Storage device
SSD 512 GB NVMe PCIe

Communications
Wi-Fi 802.11 a / b / g / n / ac / ax, 2.4 and 5 GHz, Bluetooth 5.0, NFC. 3G / 4G LTE

Connectors
2xType C 3.2 gen2 Thunderbolt, 2xUSB 3.2, audio combo, HDMI, Native Ethernet, Kensington Lock

Camera
there is HD