The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon delivers outstanding performance in an incredibly thin, lightweight, and stylish package, showing once again why the X1 Carbon is one of the best Ultrabooks ever made – if you're willing to pay for the best.
Integrated graphics struggle with creative workloads
A little flexible
Very high price
Competitors and Related Products
Our editors hand-pick related products using a variety of criteria: direct competitors targeting the same market segment, or devices that are similar in size, performance, or feature sets.
The change to 11th-generation Intel processors is also a welcome upgrade. The model I tested featured the i7 chip with 16 gigabytes of RAM, and 512-gigabyte SSD (note that the RAM is soldered, so there are no upgrades down the road). The PCMark benchmarks that I ran put the X1 Carbon right beside the rest of the 11th-generation Intel Core processor laptops. It's fast, but there's no discrete GPU, so don't plan on using this for graphics-intensive games or rendering huge video files.
With 15+ hours of battery life, generous screen real estate and great usability, the ThinkPad X1 Carbon remains the ultrabook of choice for productivity on the go.
Lenovo’s new additions — particularly the 16:10 screen and the upward-firing speakers — are absolutely welcome, and they make the X1 Carbon Gen 9 unquestionably the best iteration of this device so far. It’s a formula Lenovo has perfected to a tee, combining the ThinkPad line’s world-class engineering with exactly the tweaks it needed to stay excellent in the modern market.
The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon delivers outstanding performance in an incredibly thin, lightweight, and stylish package, showing once again why the X1 Carbon is one of the best Ultrabooks ever made – if you're willing to pay for the best.
Starting at $1400 and listing for around $1900 and change as tested here, this new ThinkPad is a bit of a tall order. However, if you're in the market for one of the best all-around ultralight laptops out there currently, Lenovo's ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9 should definitely be in the running, and we consider it an Editor's Choice.
At the end of the day I feel like if you pick this laptop up you are going to be very happy with it. I was much happier taking it with my on my trip than my big 17-inch gaming laptop. It has enough power for most people’s needs in a thin and light form factor and is also packed with great security features.