Still the king of business laptops

Don’t rock the boat. That’s Lenovo’s strategy for its 12th iteration of the ThinkPad X1 Carbon. Instead of messing with a winning formula, the company employed small tweaks throughout the laptop, delivering a system that’s even thinner and lighter than its predecessor. The keyboard has undergone a few updates with a larger touchpad.

However, the biggest changes are under the hood with the X1 Carbon rocking the latest 14th Gen Intel processors and integrated graphics. The notebook also offers expanded display options. The changes, in short, are pretty incremental. But sometimes a few tweaks and refinements are all that’s needed to get the job done.

The ThinkPad X1 Carbon’s design

The 12th-gen X1 Carbon looks pretty similar to its predecessor. It’s got a black matte finish that to my chagrin is very susceptible to fingerprints. If you’re familiar with the line, you know that the laptop is made of carbon fiber, but this time around there is recycled aluminum and magnesium in the mix along with some post-consumer materials. Honestly, the biggest design change you’ll notice is the brushed aluminum console at the top of the lid that houses an infrared (IR) camera with a physical shutter.

Weighing 2.4 pounds with a 0.6-inch profile, the X1 is thinner and lighter than previous models, which for a 14-inch system is always a good thing. The 2.6-pound ASUS Zenbook 14 OLED is just a tad lighter at 0.58 inches. And despite its slight form, the X1 Carbon is seriously durable, able to withstand drops, spills, dust and extreme temperatures as designated by its MIL-STD-810H certification.

Another good thing is the 14-inch display. The 1,920 x 1,200, 16:10 panel is a matte touchscreen, so unlike its chassis, it actually resists fingerprints. The finish virtually eliminates any glare and doesn’t wash out the color like I’ve seen on some similar displays. Is the color as vibrant as you’d get on a glossy screen? Not necessarily, but it’s far from a deal breaker.

Lenovo made the trackpad larger, increasing the glass touchpad’s size to 4.7 inches. Outside of a few minor tweaks to the spill-proof keyboard, this is your typical Lenovo Chiclet keyboard down to its iconic bright red pointing stick. I’m not a big fan of Lenovo moving the power key to the right side of the keyboard. It makes sense for a 2-in-1, but is unnecessary on a regular clamshell, and I’d prefer it on one of the company’s many Yoga series notebooks.

While we’re talking about the X1’s sides, there’s a healthy number of ports here, including two USB-A 3.2 Gen 1, two Thunderbolt 4, an HDMI 2.1 port, a headset jack and a Kensington lock slot.

Sitting above the display, the ThinkPad X1’s 1080p webcam takes solid still photos and will do fine in video conferencing sessions. It delivered really clear images on the Google Meet and Microsoft Teams calls I took, so much so I got a few compliments on my new hair color and style. As expected, things got overexposed when I sat in my yard at high noon. But I was pleasantly surprised at how well the camera adjusted to a low-light environment, maintaining color vibrancy and good detail.

The pair of speakers cleverly hidden beneath the keyboard did a good job conveying the voices of my meeting mates. You’ll want to grab a pair of headphones if you’re listening to music or watching a movie, though, as the low-end isn’t very strong despite the pre-installed Dolby Access software.

In use

Next-gen laptops means next-gen chips. For the 12th-gen X1 Carbon, that chip is a 14th-generation 1.7-GHz Intel Core Ultra 7 165U processor with 12 cores and 14 threads. According to Intel, it’s faster than last year’s silicon. In action, the ThinkPad X1 Carbon is pretty fast and powerful. I threw my usual workload at it, which means approximately 70 open Google Chrome tabs with a mix of G-Suite apps, social media, news and tech sites with a couple of YouTube videos for good measure. I even edited a video and played a few rounds of Hades II, but the notebook never slowed down.

The Lenovo notebook didn’t perform as well against similarly specced laptops. My review unit, with its Intel Core Ultra 7 CPU, 32GB of RAM, bested the Zenbook OLED 14 and XPS 14 on the PCMark 10 benchmark, but couldn’t topple this year’s model of the 14-inch HP Spectre x360 nor the Surface Laptop 6. The forecast wasn’t as rosy on the Cinebench R23 test, though, which saw the X1 Carbon fall short against every system.

The X1 Carbon’s integrated Intel GPU isn’t really made for gaming, but if you can find older or indie games that aren’t as taxing as current AAA titles, you can squeeze in some playtime. For example, I got 30 frames per second as I played Hades II, which is a smooth enough rate to run most titles.

The X1 Carbon’s 3,777 result on 3DMark Wild Life Extreme is no match for any of the competing systems. Keep in mind that those laptops have more powerful chips under the hood with the XPS 14, Zenbook OLED 14, and Surface Laptop 6 having Intel Arc Graphics. The XPS 14 also has a discrete Nvidia RTX 4050 GPU onboard.

Like most laptops this year, the X1 Carbon has an integrated NPU (Neural Processing Unit) which is there to take the load off your CPU and GPU when it comes to AI apps and tasks. For example, Windows Studio Effects during my video calls seamlessly blurred my background, keeping me in frame and ensuring it looked like I held eye contact, all without any hiccup.

When it comes to keyboards, Lenovo ThinkPads are the gold standard, delivering firm, springy feedback. The 12th-gen X1 Carbon continues the tradition. I spent hours using this super comfortable keyboard and throughout that time, my fingers never bottomed out. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the new tactile markings on specific keys (Fn, F, H, Insert, down arrow, Enter and volume down/up) to act as a guide. And of course, there’s the Copilot button if you want to give Microsoft’s AI a try. The white backlighting is bright enough to use in darkened environments, like when I used it in bed while my boyfriend slept.

The trackpad, which is 9.1 percent bigger than last year’s, has excellent palm rejection and didn’t send the cursor launching into the stratosphere. The glass surface was responsive and smooth to the touch, with near-instant results whether I was navigating a web page or pinch-zooming on a picture.

The best thing by far about the ThinkPad X1 Carbon is its battery life. The laptop lasted 13 hours and 2 minutes on the PCMark Modern Office battery test. That time was more than enough to outlast the Zenbook OLED 14 (12:43). During my regular use, I squeezed almost 10 hours out of the X1 Carbon before I needed to plug it in.

The ThinkPad X1 Carbon’s price and competition

The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon 12th starts at $1,449, which is about what you’d expect from a premium business laptop. That configuration gets you an Intel Core Ultra 5 125U processor with 16GB of RAM, 512GB SSD and Intel’s integrated graphics. You’ll need an extra $474 to upgrade to a Core Ultra 7 CPU, 32GB of RAM, and 512GB SSD. If you want a similar setup to my review model, it’ll cost you $2,285 as it has Intel’s vPro technology, which is more for IT admins and businesses.

For almost $500 cheaper, the ASUS Zenbook OLED 14 bested the ThinkPad X1 Carbon on performance, while offering comparable battery life and a stunning OLED display. But the Zenbook lacks the deep well of security features you’ll find on the business-centric X1 Carbon.

Consumers looking for more power, including a discrete GPU, should check out the Dell XPS 14. However, the laptop’s starting price is $250 higher than the X1 Carbon, and it only gets more exorbitant as you start adding more features such as the Nvidia GPU, vPro, RAM and storage.

Wrap-up

The 12th-gen Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon continues its reign as the king of business laptops for now. But the gap is definitely narrowing. While there are definitely more powerful alternatives out there, the X1 is one of the few to offer the same level of security, durability and longevity for a relatively reasonable price.