Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon 2014 Review

An ultra-book such as the Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon is designed for portability first. This includes battery-life which means power consumption must be low. As such, it is available with a choice of CPU yet only comes with built-in graphics.

The Intel Core i7 and i5 CPUs are quite capable with speeds from 2.6 to 3.3 GHz. They also consume relatively little power which makes them highly suitable for laptops. For web-browsing, word-processing and document editing, any of these CPUs will be working far from its maximum load.

The base X1 Carbon comes with 4GB of RAM. That is a good start but anyone planning to use multimedia or other data-intensive applications should consider getting the 8 GB option. Windows itself takes at least 1.5GB, so going for 8GB almost triples free memory.

As for the Intel HD4400 built-in graphics, it is noticeably under-powered. This is a decent chip to use on most laptops, except that the X1 is not one of them. With its 4 megapixels display, the HD4400 is pushed to its limit. Even dragging Windows suffers from stuttering and lags when things like Desktop Composition or Aero Glass effects are enabled. Luckily, these are very easy to disable. However, consider it as a warning that this laptop cannot handle complex graphic-processing.

Disk options are all SSD. These disks are very fast, extremely reliable and consume little power. They are also not susceptible to altitude limits of traditional HDDs with moving parts. There are options from 128 to 512 GB. The 180 and 240 GB options provide full-disk encryption, other sizes do not. Unless you have sensitive data, it would not be necessary to go for the more costly encrypted (OPAL) disks.

Considering Lenovo's Windows 7 64-bits installation takes around 75 GB, the smallest option is tight. There is no SDXC slot either for additional storage, so consider adding $150 for the 256 GB option a minimum. The 512 GB option costs $450 more compared to the 128 GB SSD.

With Windows 7 Professional 64-bits, boot time is around 24 seconds, including time to load the BIOS which happens very quickly. The first logon after a cold boot takes 12s, while next ones take just 8s. Resuming from sleep takes an impressive 5 seconds. This is where SSDs really deliver as booting is quite intensive in terms of disk access.

Keep in mind the boot speed of any operating system is highly dependent on its configuration. The current installation used on the X1 Carbon being reviewed is quite light, yet it can be improved by turning off unneeded services. However, it is much easier for the opposite to happen and booting to take much longer. To maintain boot speed, make sure that programs being installed do not run anything on start-up.

The X1 Carbon 2014 can come with Windows 8.1 instead. Those who fancy it and do not mind an extra 0.4 lbs and thicker laptop can opt for a touchscreen. There is no logical reason to do this as it forces fingerprints onto the display which decreases readability. Speaking of fingerprints, the carbon-fiber body of the X1 is particularly prone to them since its matte finish contrasts easily with marks.

Battery-life is quote by Lenovo as up to 9 hours of awake time under light use. During testing, it achieved just short of 8 hours of web-browsing and document-editing, More intensive use lowers battery-life with constant video playback bringing it down to 6½ hours. This is certainly impressive yet some other ultra-books boast considerably higher numbers. It is not possible to compare absolutely since things like display brightness, radios, services, etc all impact power-consumption.