A powerhouse business laptop with portability

As with all of the Lenovo Thinkpad range, they are aiming for a certain type of market; the discerning business consumer, those that are looking for office type machines, packaged in portability and ‘set yourself up anywhere’ approaches.  The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 10 is expensive in terms of core components but then it’s meant to be. 32GB of RAM as standard; almost 4x as much as the average consumer who tends to have just 8GB puts it in the territory of users who demand an exceptional degree of power, think creative industries such as sports photographers, architects and designers, think special effects implementers think those utilising the 360 market.

What else does that price get you besides the power? There are so many areas. I could talk about the size of the machine; it still has a remarkably small footprint. The weight of it, barely 1.17kg yet balanced. The material used to make up the body; a mix of magnesium alloy, for the lid and carbon fibre-reinforced for the keyboard plate all give it this polished look.

Out of the box, it looks slick and refined. Compared to other laptops I have tested in the past; you just get this feeling that this is premiership quality. Connectivity wise the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 10 affords two ultra-fast USB-C Thunderbolt 4 sockets, one of which would normally be occupied by the power connector. Then there are two USB-A connectors, a full-size HDMI, and in models with mobile Internet, a Sim tray. According to Lenovo, HDMI only supports 4K/60 output, so it’s not HDMI 2.1 in terms of output but let’s be honest that is hardly problematic. The Carbon Gen 10 features a 1080p software rich webcam. The screen can dim if you walk away, and there’s an IR emitter for secure face unlock. Nice.

A week into use and I am still enjoying using the keyboard. The depth of the keys doesn’t feel tremendously deep but the keypresses feel sturdy and satisfactory as does the mouse pad and buttons. There is not separate number pad here but you don’t tend to find them on the 14 inch laptops anyway. Keys are well backlit in lowlight conditions and like most of the Thinkpads it has a TrackPoint; a red button in-between the keys which acts like a sort of mouse, although it has to be said, takes some getting used to.

Visuals

I found the X1 Carbon Gen 10’s screen to be very good. My model was the 14-inch 2880 x 1800 OLED display. It gave great colour, with fantastic contrast although I understand that is not the bog standard model. The laptop when fully opened lies completely flat on the surface, affording a maximum viewing range and making it even more compatible for those perhaps wanting to use a separate keyboard. Another thing that has to be said is great is the sound. Two speakers either side of the keyboard take great pleasure in taking care of the stereo meaning that presentations, movies, games and do I say meetings have a great level of sound quality.

Testing the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 10:

Testing of the Lenovo ThinkPad Carbon Gen10 was carried out with UserBenchmark software using their freely available speed test tool tests. The software not only tests each component such as graphics cards and processing chips individually but compares the results to other users with the same and similar components. This provides the extra benefit of being able to size up a machine, identify hardware problems and explore the best upgrades. The machine I reviewed is a very high-end spec, with 32GB RAM, an Intel Core i7-1260P CPU and 1TB SSD. This spec is high level and perhaps more than what is required for most people users looking to buy a laptop this portable and light. That amount of RAM also limits the number of competitors which could be be taken in comparison as bar just a couple (the Macbook’s, the enhanced versions of Dell’s and the HP’s) most will have lower RAM.

Areas Of Excel

This machine cleared the testing as you would expect. 32GB of RAM demolished every computing task set before it with ease, this included RAW photos and fast rendering times of 4K video used in both Adobe Premiere and After Effects software, the only two machines to beat it in terms of processing was the Dell XPS 15 (2022) and the HP Envy 16, the latter of which other reviewers have noted has a higher depreciation rate owing to the way the chips and processing power is configured within the system. It also handled most games although these were at normal, not enhanced settings. This should be expected; it is after all, not a dedicated gamers machine and is suited towards the business consumer with the needs of a casual gamers requirements being met as an added bonus.

Power consumption was average in the testing’s. The ThinkPad Carbon lasting nine hours off a single charge. Not as much as I would have liked, especially given that over time battery life tends to shorten with the age of the technology but for the business consumer this is not a dealbreaker and is more than enough to last most journeys and meetings combined before a recharge is required.

FINAL Verdict: A very capable machine

The ThinkPad series continues with the trend of delivering a premium quality at a requisite price tag, Here you have an ultra-transportable PC that appears delivers on power, prowess and is best for its desired market, that of commercial and enterprise staff who will require power on the go. Whilst you might spend more on a MacBook Pro, or a MacBook Air in in terms of purpose, the layout and power of the Thinkpad Carbon 10 puts it in a very similar league and with the connectivity that means it is slightly more mainstream.

There’s a lot here to like and love and for that it gets 4.5 out of 5 stars