Lenovo X1 Carbon 6th Gen looks amazing. At a first glance, the sleek black lid with X1 and ThinkPad logos make quite an impression. Once you connect the power charger, a small dot in the ThinkPad logo lights off. A nice touch. And a godd thing is that fingermarks don't stick that much on the matte finish of the lid.
The keyboard is the most impressive feature in this machine. I previously had an Yoga 3 Pro, with a decent keyboard. But this one is amazing. Response, height, size, it all make for the best keyboard I've ever seen in a laptop.
My machine (Intel Core i7 8thGen vPro, 16 GB RAM, 512GB SSD, Windows 10 Pro, 20KH002JUS model) starts in seconds. Faster than my old Samsung Tablet. It is so fast to start and shut off that I no longer just close the lid. I put it on Hibernate mode.
Login became much faster due to the fingerprint reader as well. Just a touch in the reader and I'm logged in. One thing that my Yoga 3 Pro had, and it really bugged me, was a delay on connecting the wireless adapter. Every time I'd start the laptop - or wake it up from Hibernate - I had to wait a while for it to get the wireless on. With the X1 Carbon, it's instantaneous.
Screen resolution on my old Yoga was higher than on the X1 Carbon, but that was a choice I made. The screen on the Yoga was brighter and looked better as well. You can get higher res models (mine is 1920 x 1080), but I chose the Full HD version in order to be able to connect an outside monitor without the need to adjust the resolution on the laptop screen - which also bugged me on the Yoga 3 Pro.
I read some people complaining about fan noise before I settled for the X1 Carbon. When in full speed, it is noisy, but there is so much power available on the machine that it rarely goes full speed. Even running PowerBI graphs and dashboards, it rarely reaches a point when I hear the fan. When I was configuring the system, installing my stuff and things like that, I heard it. It is a bit noisy, but you will only hear it once in a while, when the processor is being highly demanded.
The charger is not too big, and for those who need carry the laptop around - my case - it is not a nuisance. The whole thing - computer and charger - are light enough to travel well. And, for the daily activities you can even chose to leave the charger at home. Unless you plug a lot of stuff on the computer, the battery will last a full work day. I've been using mine for more than five hours, on and off, today and still has 46% of juice left. Not bad at all. Yoga would be at 20~25%.
Touchpad is good enough and if you want, there is always the red thingy (not sure what to call it) in the middle of the keyboard. Never got used to it, even in the old days, when IBM ThinkPads had only that to move the pointer. There are three buttons, for those who like to click things, rather than just do multi finger moves on the touchpad.
Over all, despite being an expensive machine, X1 Carbon is a great computer. Hope it lasts even more than my Yoga (four years and still working well, just a bit outdated). I recommend for users who need processing power and a light computer to carry around.
| Standing screen display size | 14 Inches |
|---|---|
| Screen Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
| Max Screen Resolution | 1920 x 1080 Pixels |
| Processor | 1.9 GHz core_i7 |
| RAM | 16 GB DDR3 |
| Memory Speed | 2133 MHz |
| Hard Drive | SSD |
| Graphics Coprocessor | Intel UHD Graphics 620 |
| Chipset Brand | Intel |
| Card Description | Integrated |
| Graphics Card Ram Size | 16 GB |
| Wireless Type | 802.11g |
| Number of USB 3.0 Ports | 2 |
| Average Battery Life (in hours) | 15 Hours |
