Review Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon (Gen 11) Review: 14-Inch Productivity Hound

[Admin]

The ThinkPad X1 Carbon’s strong build quality, excellent input devices, and long battery life propel it to the top of its class.

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon (Gen 11) Review: 14-Inch Productivity Hound : Read more

 

[healthy Pro-teen]

Imagine there was an option for a 7840U

 

[tlmiller76]

CPU	Intel Core i7-1355U (2 Performance cores, 10 Efficient cores, 5.0GHz Turbo Boost)

1355U doesn't have 10 efficiency cores, it has only 8...

 

[Sleepy_Hollowed]

Imagine there was an option for a 7840U

We wish, seems like all the current ones only have Intel options, for now.

 

[rluker5]

Imagine there was an option for a 7840U

These specs just show how different the priorities are in an office environment.

Having better gaming performance without better Teams/equivalent performance is a drawback.
When you are using a remote drive for your MS office files 2 faster cores are better than 8 nearly as fast ones.
Keeping these employer owned PCs completely locked into predictable performance and use is more important than not work related benchmarks.

For personal entertainment use, if I didn't have a better gaming option, I would prefer the 7840u. That chip is definitely stronger in some ways. If I were getting a work laptop for an employee that I wanted to use just for work (or for my kid going to college) I would get the 1355u.

 

[Cayman44]

Just bought an X1-Carbon-Gen11 and sent it back the next day. Have an X1-Yoga-Gen3 and an X1-Carbon Gen9, both with 400 nit touch displays. Ordered the Gen 11 with the 500 nit touch. It was the worst display ever - very blue and not IPS. Very bright in a 4 inch circle directly in front of your eyes and darkened quickly outside that circle. Put all three X1's side by side. Old yoga was the best, closely followed by the Gen9. The Gen 11 500 nit was just terrible - not even close - actually was painful to look at. dimming did not help. Everything else about the Gen11 was great.

 

[Will-H]

I'm looking at getting one of these with an OLED screen (WQUXGA no longer available) and an i7-1365U processor to tone down the power usage. I have an X1 Carbon 10th gen. Nice but extremely low battery life (i.e. 1hr 15min playing a movie on my A/V system via HDMI cable). It has an Intel i7-1270P and it is a power hog. I have 32GB memory and 2TB SSD and WQUXGA (3840x2400) display (great for my 4K monitor but only using a DP cable (not HDMI). Keyboard is awful (for those who don't touch-type any comments on the keyboard are irrelevant) but I don't use it much as I'm plugged into the Thunderbolt 4 docking station with a separate USB keyboard, monitor, and pre-amp for a sound system. I've been using Thinkpads for business for over twenty (20) years and have found them reliable and fast. Of course never buy a piece of electronics without the maximum extended warranty.

 

[NotADoctor82]

DO NOT BUY A LENOVO COMPUTER. I recently bought a Lenovo T16 G2 as an upgrade to a sturdy (but elderly) Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga that was reliable for 5+ years. 7 weeks out of the box, I've had major issues with the screen and the mousepad. About 6 weeks into its life, this computer suddenly pixelated the lower 25-30% of my screen, so that I could no longer see the toolbar across the bottom. I was shooting in the dark, so to speak, trying to open programs. Almost a week later, a technician installed a new screen, which seemed to fix that issue (temporarily? I have no idea how that happened in the first place...). TWO DAYS LATER, the mousepad on the laptop stopped working. I was on the phone with support trying to troubleshoot and they asked me to open a web browser for a remote assistance session. I was not able to do that because the mousepad does nothing. I cannot navigate to or open any programs. The computer is useless to me at this point. Because I didn't purchase the "premium" service package, I waited from Thursday morning until Monday afternoon for a scheduled appointment, which I just learned was cancelled and rescheduled for later this week without anyone even communicating that. It's unfortunate that older Lenovo's were high quality computers, because that's how I was convinced their new ones would be good too. Learn from my mistake and save yourself the headache.

 

[tlmiller76]

Just bought an X1-Carbon-Gen11 and sent it back the next day. Have an X1-Yoga-Gen3 and an X1-Carbon Gen9, both with 400 nit touch displays. Ordered the Gen 11 with the 500 nit touch. It was the worst display ever - very blue and not IPS. Very bright in a 4 inch circle directly in front of your eyes and darkened quickly outside that circle. Put all three X1's side by side. Old yoga was the best, closely followed by the Gen9. The Gen 11 500 nit was just terrible - not even close - actually was painful to look at. dimming did not help. Everything else about the Gen11 was great.

Unfortunately, the 500-nit panels that Lenovo uses (and this is true for nearly every model that has it) is the "privacy guard". While there are SOME people that like this display, the vast majority of folks hate it. Even with privacy guard turned off, it's far less bright, with muted, washed out colors that look NOWHERE near what the specs are rated for.