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日本[Video Review] Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 10 – the flagship ThinkPad
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon (10th Gen, 2022) in-depth review
Make way for the 10th generation Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon. It is one of the most established devices in the ThinkPad X1 portfolio. Undoubtedly, it is the one the majority of people associate this brand with. What originally made the brand special was the carbon fiber material, pristine build quality, and its super thin and light form factor.In 2022, however, neither of these qualities is a rarity. This means that Lenovo needs to rely on two things to remain competitive. First - the die-hard ThinkPad fans, which know what to expect, and are ready to pay any price for their notebook. And s[...]
Pros
- Great input devices
- Full DCI-P3 coverage and accurate color representation with our profile (Samsung ATNA40YK01-1)
- High maximum brightness and 16:10 aspect ratio (Samsung ATNA40YK01-1)
- Supports PCIe x4 Gen 4 drives
- Two Thunderbolt 4 connectors (both can be used for charging)
- Wi-Fi 6 support plus optional IR face recognition, fingerprint reader, and 5G support
- Quad-channel memory
Cons
- Lacks an SD card reader
- Memory is soldered to the motherboard
- Not great power management
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon (10th Gen, 2022) - Specs
- HDD/SSD
- up to 4000GB SSD
- M.2 Slot
- 1x 2280 PCIe NVMe 4.0 x4 See photo
- RAM
- up to 32GB
- OS
- Windows 10 Pro, Windows 11 Pro, Windows 11 Home, Windows 10 Home
- Battery
- 57Wh, 57Wh, 3-cell, 57Wh , 57.5Wh, 4-cell
- Body material
- Aluminum, Carbon
- Dimensions
- 315.6 x 222.5 x 14.95 - 15.36 mm (12.43" x 8.76" x 0.59")
- Weight
- 1.12 kg (2.5 lbs)
- Ports and connectivity
- 1x USB Type-A
- 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps)
- 1x USB Type-A
- 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps), Sleep and Charge
- 2x USB Type-C
- 4.0, Thunderbolt 4, Power Delivery (PD), DisplayPort
- HDMI
- 2.0b
- Card reader
- Ethernet LAN
- Wi-Fi
- 802.11ax
- Bluetooth
- 5.2
- Audio jack
- 3.5mm Combo Jack
- Nano SIM card tray with optional 5G connectivity
- Features
- Fingerprint reader
- Web camera
- HD / FHD / IR
- Backlit keyboard
- Microphone
- Quad-Array 360° far-field, Dolby Voice
- Speakers
- 2x 2W woofers + 2x 0.8W tweeters Stereo Speakers, Dolby Atmos
- Optical drive
- Security Lock slot
- Kensington Nano Lock
All Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon (10th Gen, 2022) configurations
Weight matters a lot in laptops, as manufacturers always strive to create lighter and lighter devices that are easy to move around. Lenovo’s business ThinkPad laptops have a special X1 sub-brand for their premium machines, of which we have the X1 Carbon Gen 10. It’s one of the lightest 14-inch laptops while providing the latest hardware from Intel.
[Intro]
The lid of the device is made of Carbon fiber, while the rest is aluminum, weighing only 1.12 kg and having a profile of 15.36 mm. This combination of materials also gives it a bit of toughness, as the laptop remains flex-free even after we tried twisting it. The lid is a bit bendy, but you’ll be fine as no one bends their screen on purpose on a daily basis. Additionally, you can pay extra to have a carbon fiber weave pattern on top of the lid.
[Input devices]
Regardless of how the lid looks, it opens with one hand, revealing the input devices, along with two speaker grills and the power button which doubles as a fingerprint reader. Lenovo managed to extract as much key travel as possible from the slim chassis, which when paired with the tactile feedback, makes for pretty comfortable typing. The touchpad has a glass cover which is very smooth, but the clicking mechanism is a bit uncomfortable, as the top portion can’t be clicked.
[Ports]
The ThinkPad has decent I/O coverage, with the left side housing two Thunderbolt 4 ports which can be used for charging, one full-sized 5-gigabit USB port, and an HDMI 2.0 port. On the right, there is one more full-sized USB port, a SIM card tray, and a 3.5 mm audio jack.
[Display]
On the front, we have a 2.8K OLED panel, which offers amazing colors and deep blacks. The screen covers 100% of the sRGB and DCI-P3 gamuts, while also showing high max brightness, reaching 435 nits. It’s excellent for productivity work, especially with our Design and Gaming profile, which improves the color accuracy of the display to a dE value of 1.4. You can purchase it using the link in the description.
[Battery]
The 57Wh battery pack doesn’t offer ideal battery life, lasting for 7 hours and 45 minutes of Web browsing or 6 hours and 20 minutes of video playback.
[Performance]
These results were with a configuration featuring the Core i7-1270P, a 12-core, 16-thread processor. It’s not the best performer, scoring lower in 3D Rendering than it should, being outperformed by the Ryzen 7 5800U and the Ryzen 7 Pro 6850. A bunch of U-series CPUs is also available.
For a GPU, you get the 96EU version of the Iris Xe Graphics G7, which is great for iGPU standards. Paired with the hardware encoding cores inside, you can use the ThinkPad for a fair bit of productivity work.
[Cooling]
We can quickly see why the CPU performs the way it does, as we move into the stress test. The laptop is cooled by one heat pipe, two fans, and some heat spreaders.
Lenovo is pretty conservative with the thermal management, dropping its clock speeds and the wattage to unreasonable levels, running at below 2.00 GHz for the majority of the test.
Lenovo probably wanted to give their consumers a more comfortable user experience, but the chassis still gets quite warm, reaching 48°C. On the other hand, it’s very silent, so at least noise won’t be an issue.
[Teardown and upgradeability]
This ThinkPad comes with soldered memory, but at least you can configure it with up to 32GB of LPDDR5 RAM, so you can spec the laptop well if you want. Storage-wise, there’s only one M.2 slot that supports the super fast Gen 4 drives.
We have a separate teardown video, which shows how to take apart the ThinkPad X1 Carbon. We’ll leave a link in the description, in case you want to give it a watch.
[Verdict]
The ThinkPad X1 Carbon is a feature-packed device with an amazing OLED panel and a great hardware selection. However, the same high-res display also staggers the battery life, while the performance isn’t ideal, thanks to the small cooling setup and poor thermal management on Lenovo’s part.
For further tests and a more thorough look at the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 10, check out our written review on our website.
