What'sup guys Matthew Moniz here and welcome to my review of the Lenovo X1 Carbon.
This is the 2018 model and in terms of design nothing has really changed from last year.
But the internals have been updated and a few other things have been improved to make
this business laptop even better.
The best thing about Lenovo X1 thinkpads that they're made of carbon magnesium so making
this product extremely light and also very great to touch.
The material doesn't feel like metal it actually feels more like rubber.
But it is very comfortable to use especially when you have your wrists on the deck.
This also goes through a bunch of tests the MIL-STD-810G test.
This is a military test that the US uses to test things like shock, absorption, drop tests,
altitude a bunch of stuff, so in terms of day-to-day use this thing is going to take
a lot more of a beating than a regular consumer business laptop like the Dell XPS 13.
In fact, it's actually even lighter than the Dell XPS 13 at 2.5 lbs.
It's a little bit thicker!
But it's definitely lighter.
When it comes to ports Lenovo did a fantastic job of including all the ports you need in
a business environment.
You got 2 USB type-c thunderbolt 3 ports with 4 PCIe lanes, so you can hook up an external
GPU, you can hook up a 4k monitor and you can also power the laptop.
You also have proprietary port for an RJ45 cable.
So if you want to wire it to the network you have that option as well.
There's a USB 3.0 port, a full size HDMI port and on the right side you have another USB
3.0 port, a kensington lock and an audio jack.
Plus, if you need extra storage, you have a microsd card slot that also combos with
a sim slot.
So you can pop in your sim card in here and use data while you're on the go without having
to connect to WIFI.
Getting inside is super easy, 5 screws and you're in.
Everything inside of here is not upgradeable or replaceable except for the NVME SSD.
The one in here is 256 GB and is super fast and does a good job with read and write speeds.
There's a big battery but I don't like the fact that there's only one fan.
On the i7 model, I think you need two still and especially with a thunderbolt 3 port and
you're game on it or lets say you're going to run intensive applications for a very long
time.
I'll talk to you guys about heat management later on in the video.
The display is one area that Lenovo has improved a lot.
I didn't review the 2017 model but I did review the 2016 version back then my biggest complaint
was the screen didn't get bright enough.
This year that's all been solved it gets really bright 302 nits of brightness so it's good.
Colours are very vibrant, they're punchy and the screen is very colour accurate.
Getting over 100% SRGB and 78% ARGB.
If you don't want a Full HD model.
The 1920 x 1080 version that I have here.
They do have a QHD version and also a QHD version with HDR.
I haven't seen it myself but I've heard it looks fantastic.
Another cool thing is that this display rotates 180 degrees, which is a lot more than most
traditional clamshell laptops.
Lenovo has also including a thing call the ThinkShutter, which is kind of clever!
Insteasd of putting a piece of tape over your webcam to protect yourself from potential
intrusions.
This just has a little shutter that goes back and forth to keep the webcam closed so you
don't have to worry about your privacy.
Speaking of webcams, this one is HD like the majority of Ultrabooks on the market.
It also looks pretty similar to other webcams on most Ultrabooks.
In fact, if you want the best web cam you're going to have to look at the Surface Book
2.
That one does a really good job.
But this is fine for streaming, the microphone sounds like this and if you're a business
person you'll be more than happy for your conference calls.
Sound is definitely one of the weaker points of this laptop.
There's two speakers on the bottom they get pretty loud but they sound distorted at max
volume and they sound tinny overall.
You're definitely going to want to carry a pair of headphones with you.
But inside is a bunch of far-field microphones, so you can yell to it across the room, use
Cortana and the laptop is going to answer you.
Also, very very soon Lenovo is going to push out an update enabling Alexa on this.
So if you like Amazon and you like Alexa this thing is going to be able to do it.
Now when it comes to keyboard the Lenovo X1 has one of my favourite keyboards on an Ultrabook.
I take this keyboard over the majority of Ultrabook keyboards any day of the week.
1.8 mm of travel distance over 2mm of actuation force.
Hands down one of best and most comfortable typing experience you can get on an Ultrabook.
I also like the trackpad.
It's very accurate this year.
My only complaints about it is the size because there is a trackpoint ball with buttons on
top of the trackpad some of that real estate is lost.
Now for those of you out there that use the trackpoint.
I know how important it is.
I used to use the trackpoint all the time.
You can be so much more precise with it than you can with the actual trackpad.
So I'm glad Lenovo is keeping those on their keyboards.
There's also 3 levels of back lighting, the arrow keys are a good size and overall the
typing experience is amazing.
The review unit that I have here is using the i7-8550U processor.
So that's the 8th gen Intel Kaby Lake-R refresh.
You get two more cores and a lower TDP compared to last years model.
So basically in day-to-day stuff like browsing the web, using productivity applications like
Microsoft and Google Docs.
You're not going to notice that much of a speed difference.
It's not until you start doing more demanding things that can utilize those 4-cores like
editing in photoshop, edit 4K video if you have an external GPU connected.
That's when you'll see those 4-cores come into play and offer about 40-50 percent speed
increase.
You can also game on this thing at very very low settings.
So you can play Overwatch on it, Fortnite, CSGO, you just got to drop settings very low.
In terms of heat, this laptop did not do well.
I was getting surface temperatures of 50 degrees celsius comparable ultrabooks using the exact
same CPU would only get up to about 40-43 degrees celsius.
Also, during my stress test after about 20-25 minutes the laptop would thermal throttle
and completely shutdown.
CPU temps would hit about 80 degrees celsius which is also about 15 degrees more than other
comparable ultrabooks.
Noise is really good I'm getting about 33 decibels when it's idle and about 35-38 decibels
when it's under full load.
So here's my closing thoughts.
The 2018 Lenovo X1 Carbon is still a great business ultrabook.
It has a beautiful screen.
It has all the ports you need for a business environment.
One of the best keyboards you can get on an ultrabook, a good touchpad, it has great security
features and of course microsd and sim slot if you need to be on the road and have some
extra storage space.
The only thing I don't like about it is the sound quality, so you're going to want to
carry some headphones and the overheating.
Now the overheating is not a big deal for most people.
People who use this laptop just to browse the net, stay connected, do presentations.
I wouldn't worry about it.
It's just for the few out there who hook up an external GPU, maybe want to edit video
on this or game for a long period of time.
Than I would be a little bit worried.
So that pretty much wraps up my review of the X1 Carbon 2018.
Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.
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