Lenovo X1 Carbon Owner's Thread

I beg to differ, the X1C(T) is open in 1 minute if needed. I did an SSD swap and a keyboard swap for one of my customers, and except for the excessively high number of screws (7!) there really is nothing to it. 30 minutes to me indicates that the engineer never had seen an X1C(T) before, let alone ever serviced one ....


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

 

Hey guys, I'm interested in buying a X1. I'm worry that many things are soldered in like mbp.

What can up upgrade with this laptop? can upgrade the ram?
Is there a way to hook to to an external gpu?

 

LBHUANG42, were you able to solve this issue? I have the exact same challenge.
How did you resolve it? Thanks in advance!

Addendum:
Please ignore -- I found the post with the resolution many pages further down in this thread!

 

I am not satisfied with the screen brightness of the X1

Even at the maximum of 15, it still seems dark

Any way this can be made brighter?

 

Is adaptive brightness turned off in the power management profile?

 

Are you referring to the Dynamic Brightness Control on the Lenovo Power Manager?

If so, it is not enabled

 

Yes. The underlying setting is integral to Windows but I believe Lenovo Power Manager changes it. You should double check the Windows setting just to be sure. See the attachment for the Windows power profile location.

 

I have the same settings, i.e. Balanced[Active], but when I clicked the display button, I only have "Dimmed display brightness" as the last choice.

I do not have the "Enable adaptive brightness" button

 

That particular screenshot was from my Samsung Series 9 machine. The Windows 8 VM running on my Mac via Fusion shows the same thing. I thought it was present for all machines.

Are you running the Lenovo factory image or a custom installation of Windows 8?

 

I am running on the pre-installed Windows 7 Professional

 

None of this has to do with the X1 or the screen.

It has to do with Windows 8 and Explorer 10 (or more accurately HTML 5).

I posted about this in some other threads.

Quick review.

Do the Screen Calibration Built into Windows that sets BOTH the Gamma and the Clear Type. Right Click -> Personalize -> Display -> Calibrate Color (this can make a HUGE difference).

Try putting Explorer 10 into Compatibility Mode. It has to do with HTML 5 support in the latest generation of browsers and the state of development on various web sites.

I put most sites in Compatibility mode in IE10 (which I believe shuts down HTML 5), which also makes a HUGE difference in fonts on some sites.

I suspect it's similar issues in Chrome, but I wouldn't install Chrome if you paid me. There must be similar tools to deal with this in Chrome. You could try other browsers too, Firefox and IE10.

There is a slight degradation of Fonts in Windows 8, that there is nothing you can do except install Windows 7. Windows 8 uses Grey Scale anti aliasing and Windows 7 uses RGB Antialiasing (which is slightly better).

I had serious issues like your describing and I blamed on the screen and it had nothing to do with it.

 

Hi all,
I just got my X1 carbon through Lenovo outlet. It has an amazing build. However, I haven't figured out how to turn off the content adaptive brightness. It's annoying when the screen dims when I have a dark content page and go back to normal if I browse a white background page.

Any idea?

Thanks all

 

Hello everyone! I am actually awaiting a new X1 Carbon and have been reading up on it for quite some time. I am both excited and skeptical at the same time. Here is the run down. My old laptop is a T410, I have absolutely loved it but the resolution was killing me. Also, although these are not known as graphical powerhouses, the lack of even HD4000 was starting to be felt as well, so I decided to upgrade. Hence the mistake I made.....I decided to be bold and try an Ideapad. I went with the Y510p. I love the display and 1080p, but have had problem after problem with it. I have gone through 4 of them. SO, I decided to go back to old trusty. So my question is, how is everyone's experience with the X1 Carbon. I was also thinking about the new T431s, but have been torn between the two. Lenovo gave me an X1 Carbon (non-touch), with the i7, 8 GB of Ram and a 256 SSD for 1100 for the trouble that I have been having. Will the X1C be another mistake or should I have perhaps opted for the T431s or a different Thinkpad model? Thanks to anyone who responds!

 

I went to the X1C from a T410s and I am very happy with the X1C, and at the price you're getting, it would be hard to fault it.

My T410s was i5, 8GB RAM, 160GB SSD. The X1C i7, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD. The only thing you will likely need to do is apply a colour correction profile, but otherwise the machine is better all around and lighter than the T410s - and built more solidly.

 

Thank you for the reply s0dhi. I am awaiting it and am supposed to receive it today. I did notice that this one seems to have a 240GB FDE SSD instead of the 256 GB. To your knowledge, is this factor nothing to worry about? I can't wait to get it, although like I said earlier I have been spoiled by the 1080p display of the y510p here as of late. I am basically going to be deciding between either keeping the y510p or going the lighter/durable/familiar route of the Thinkpad. Your experience though does leave me optimistic though. Thanks!

 

I just got my XIC from the outlet and it came with the 240GB FDE SSD. The disk is blazing fast so nothing to worry about there. Having used a number of other laptops in the past including a MBA and a 420T I can tell you I am overall happy with my purchase. The carbon looks and feels great with a much better finish compared to the T420. The keyboard is great but the trackpad could be better (not as good a the one on the macbook). The battery is so-so, but the fast charging makes up for it.

The only disappointment as many have mentioned before is the screen. First of all I must say that I use a 27" Apple Thunderbolt display at work so I have been spoiled in that respect. However, even when I compare the screen side by side to that of the MBA it does look inferior. I have done all the color profile and cleartype calibrations and the contrast and color reproduction are pretty good (better than the MBA) but the high dot pitch and screen door effect is a constant annoyance. For me the resolution is perfect and I can appreciate the matte coating in some occasions but that does not change the fact that the pixel grid is so obvious (at least to my eye), I constantly notice it and get bothered by it. Even after a week I still haven't gotten used to it and it becomes especially pronounced when I get back to my Thinkpad after working on the Thunderbolt for a while. Personally I have made the conscious decision to live with it and keep the XIC but I feel that Lenovo missed the opportunity here to make a truly great laptop.

Hope you don't get discouraged with my comments and get to keep and love your XIC as much as I do now.

 

Can anyone recommend the best (but reasonably priced and therefore non-lenovo) external DVD drive for an X1 Carbon. I want to be able to boot from it if that might make a difference.

Thanks, Bob

 

I've been using a Samsung Ultra-Slim DVD Writer for the past few years and it works quite well and is only around $40 (locally in Canada).

Ultra-slim External DVD Writer

 

Thanks s0dhi. I've ordered one.

Bob

 

Hi all,
I have my X1c for 3 months now and everything is working fine (at least nothing different than what all of you reported before about quality and so on) except for a little issue with the trackpad buttons.

I'm not sure if this is the "loose clickpad" some had at the beginning, when I use the left button to click (the physical button with the red stripe, not the touchpad) it often act like a double click.
It's not something setup to work in this way, it's really more like an issue with the button itself. I can make 10 clicks in a row on different links, 6 will be normal "left-click", the other 4 will be like double clicks.

Anybody else with a similar issue? Is this the "loose clickpad" issue? (I'm not sure I perfectly understood what are the symptoms of this defect).

Thanks a lot

 

I had the loose clickpad issue, but easily fixed by taking the keyboard off and making some adjustments.

I don't think what you are describing is the same issue.

 

Thanks s0dhi, I'm scared just by thinking to contact the support and get somebody coming to open it and have a look inside (and break everything). Will see if it get worst with in the next week.

 

I did it myself. There is a recipe on this forum.

 

Is anybody here using the Lenovo Power Manager 6?

I need help. This was working fine until one time, the battery got drained and after I charged the battery, the power manager battery meter on my task bar is blank and could not read the battery power anymore. However, if I open the power manager program itself, the battery reads just fine.

I have unchecked and checked the power manager box on the task bar properties and no luck. Until now, the battery icon is a big fat --- on a white background.

Any solutions?

 

Hi,

I am a new owner of X1C. I got it delievered a week back. Over all I am very satisfied, only thing I noticed a day or so ago is, that the windows key on the keyboard, is not leveled i.e. if I look from the edge of X1C, I can see one side of the windows key little raised and the opposite side of that key, little depressed. From the top, it looks like any other key on the keyboard. I dont feel any issue with pressing that key. Do you people suggest that I should return it (as Lenovo was/is offering free return without any restocking fee), or is it something normal? as everything else on that machine works perfect.

Thanks!

 

Hey everyone, I just got a refurbished X1 Carbon for $840 with tax and a i5 processor,128 SSD, Win 7. The design is so sexy I'm in love. With just 3 pounds of weight this thing is a beauty. It is exactly what I need for medical school.
Anyone who is looking for deals on this laptop should check lenovo outlet daily. The X1 Carbons get snatched as soon as lenovo outlet put them for 800.
The only thing I am worried about is do these laptops tend to last for atleast 4 years? I am only going to use the laptop for school work which will be giving exams and studying powerpoints. No gaming whatsover and maybe some video playback. I know thinkpads are reliable but I have never used one.
Any tips from those who own this laptop?

 

hey everyone, any tips from previous owners of this laptop?

 

You need to remember this model is fairly new. But there are a large number of people still running X300, x301, t61 x61 etc. with are older models just fine.
my company uses these and a few other brands and we squeeze as many years as we can out of a notebook.
We just had a T40 returned for replacement and they came out in 2003. So there is that.

 

When are Lenovo going to release an X1C with Haswell and at least a 1080p screen? Do they know how many sales they are losing due to this delay? I just bought a Vaio Pro 13, which was a lost order for Lenovo but for the fact it arrived today DOA. Typical crappy Sony build quality. Will return it and hope that Lenovo come out with their model soon. They do make the best laptops.

 

I'm trying to decide whether I want to get the X1 Carbon and have some questions for the owners: Is the screen quality really mediocre? (For instance, for watching movies, Photoshop work, etc...I'll be using it for long hours so I need something that won't tire my eyes) Professional reviewers tend to remark on this issue, but from reading some of these posts, not many of you mention it.

Isn't 900p screen for a 14" considered pretty good? (Why is it that this model specifically has a lot of talk about its below expectation screen quality, compared to other brands with 900p?)

I'd appreciate your inputs!

 

While the resolution of the screen is excellent (1920x1080 would have smaller text, and 1366x768 is too low resolution), it's still a TN panel. Right after a reinstallation of Windows, the screen was downright terrible and actually gave me a headache. With a couple adjustments in the Intel graphics panel (reduce gamma to 0.8 for RGB and blue contrast to 42) and reducing the brightness by two notches, it's acceptable but still mediocre (I use IPS external monitors, and my E6220 has an IPS internal panel).

If you are considering the X1 Carbon Touch, its screen is even worse (has a yellow-green tint when viewed off-angle). However, the screen is not my biggest gripe with the system. Without actual buttons for left/right clicking, the touchpad is very unpredictable. There's no tactile feedback when clicking, and even with all of the fancy features disabled, it is still very hard to use so I usually use a USB mouse.

When I heard about the upcoming Dell Latitude E7440, I immediately regretted the X1 Carbon Touch. The E7440 has a docking connector, mouse buttons, more ports (3 x USB, RJ-45, HDMI), user-replaceable RAM/SSD, and a removeable battery. I'm not sure if the 1920x1080 LCD option is IPS, but the E7440 is better than the X1 Carbon in almost every possible aspect (it's slightly heavier, but that's a small tradeoff). If you don't need a laptop ASAP, I would highly recommend waiting for this one.

 

Woah, I was checking this thread periodically for hints of an X1C successor but this seems overall much closer to what I want, assuming it has a pointing stick of some sort. Curious about which version of the GPU the Latitude will have but the slides I can find say HD graphics and not Iris which means little improvement over Ivy bridge. Still not bad I suppose.

Edit: the T440s seems roughly comparable though, on second glance neither is amazing (ULV CPUs :-\) but both look pretty good if an X1C successor doesn't show up in another month or so.

 

It does have a pointing stick, but the graphics are Intel HD 4400. Thermal constraints require a 17W CPU, so you probably won't see Iris in an ultrabook.

http://partnerdirect.dell.com/sites/channel/Documents/Latitude-7000-Series-Technical-Guidebook.pdf

 

Thanks so much for your response! I guess I still have to keep searching... I do need one very soon. I've also heard that there are good Acer ultrabooks coming out, but I don't think they're selling them in the States yet...

(I just checked out Dell's latitude 6430 U specs...and it's the same deal with Carbon X1 - 900p TN Panel...I'm assuming the TN panel is the reason for the mediocre quality..?)

 

It's kind of surprising to me for a laptop of that size though, it seems thick enough to handle a hotter CPU but I'm sure there's good reasons for it. At least HD 5000 would have been nice if Iris is too hot but I'm guessing that also makes it a 28w TDP? Don't remember all the tiers off the top of my head.

Well I was set on the X1C before I decided to just wait till Haswell since I didn't actually need a new laptop just then so even HD 4400 is an improvement but I was hoping for more from Haswell. But I'm glad that these laptops have 14" FHD, I personally want more work space in the same size rather than finer resolution with the same effective work space as a lot of the new retina class ultrabooks are going with.

 

Thickness isn't the whole story. While a larger cooling system might be possible, you have a more power-hungry CPU and thus shorter battery life. Ultrabook battery life is "good" because even though they have 1/3 less battery capacity, the CPU uses half the power. If you replace the ULV CPU with an almost standard voltage CPU, battery life will be much shorter.

Personally, I wouldn't mind, but the ultrabook market expects thin and light with long battery life. There are many tasks that my three-year-old E6410 does much faster than my three-week-old X1 Carbon Touch, so I definately see your point about more performance

The only reason I have an ultrabook is because it was issued to me for work, and it's much lighter than bring my E6220 to meetings (and the battery lasts much longer). When I'm back at my desk, I immediately switch back to my workstation.

 

Up on this, anyone?

 

I'm planing on buying a x1 carbon to use at work for programming, watching movies, and playing light games and wanted to know how well minecraft runs on the ultrabook thanks for the help

Sent from a Dirty Unicorn

 

Guys, could someone please do me a huge favour? I'm undecided between getting x230s/x240s and getting the X1 Carbon. I would like to development work in Visual Studio.

Could someone with an X1 Carbon please post a print screen of what Visual Studio looks like in 1600 x 900 resolution?

 

Just got the Lenovo X1 Carbon. Got it used 2months for around half the retail price, so a pretty good price. So far I love it - the design, keyboard is just excellent. However, the battery life is just awful. I get arund 3.5-4hrs on normal use (power save mode in windows 8, medium screen brightness and wifi on) - that is simply not good enough and makes it kinda a dealbreaker for me. Gosh I am disappointed about that. Maybe 5 hours if turn all power settings on and reduce brightness to absolute minimum. I read a review somewhere where they got aorund 7hrs of usage - that I cannot understand is possible. Am I the only who is experiencing a awful battery life? What do you guys get on average and with what settings?

 

Is this with the i5 or the i7? I think I may opt for the i5 after seeing this...

 

It is for the one with i5 and 128gb ssd. 4 hours of battery life for a ultrabook in 2013. That's not good enough, Lenovo.

Sent from my LG-E975 using Tapatalk 4

 

Do you leave the bluetooth on? This could explain it if so....

 

You do realise this is a 1.3kg, incredibly thin ultrabook yeh?

 

Ok- how is everyone finding the battery life on this?

 

Someones has an idea when the Haswell update will arrive?

Thank you

 

Haswell update -> improves battery and IPS screen = bingo!

 

This is a typical case of "your mileage may vary". First off, the Carbon is a 1.3kg razor thin Ultrabook with a 4 cell 2800mah battery. Not a 6 cell or a whopping 7800mah 9 cell. Therefore its autonomy simply will be shorter. The fastcharge technology was introduced to compensate (somewhat) for that.

With those design constraints, what you may expect from the autonomy of the Carbon is heavily determined and influenced by the way you use the Carbon. Sure, if you only do word processing at medium brightness in battery saver mode, only switch on (any) wireless when needed, and put the Carbon into standby when you go grab a coffee, there is no doubt that you can expect to last almost a full working day on a single charge.

Most people however do not realise that in fact they give their machines more to do than they realise. Keeping wifi activated while streaming audio through spotify to provide your workday with some nice musical background, keeping your Outlook active in the background to make sure you do not miss that important mail, regularly saving large space consuming Powerpoint presentations, network traffic via the USB ethernet interface using up precious CPU cycles, (let alone running virtual machines, something that I do on a reguar base) all of that has a pretty big influence on what ultimately will be your real-life battery autonomy ...

The sad thing is that most reviewers simply do not take that into account. There are only few tests that provide true reliable real-life resuts, only approximizations of that. 7 hours of usage on the Carbon is by no means impossible, it is just highly unrealistic because the battery has not enough capacity to make that an *average* autonomy. Instead you should consider 7 hours the maximum autonomy. What you end up making possible as average autonomy is up to you.

Optimize your machine settings *and* your working habits to fit the type of machine that the Carbon is and you should do fine ... If you are not able to, then perhaps the Carbon should not be your platform of choice. In my case, even while running VMs on my Carbon, I have managed to adapt my working habits to such an extent that I can be sincerely happy with the Carbon. It ticks the right boxes, and the boxes that it doesn't tick, I gladly accept as trade-off

Note: With the introduction of Haswell CPUs you now see much improved battery autonomy on newly introduced Ultrabooks such as the Macbook Air. A word of warning though. Again, the listed battery autonomy should be considered as maximum, not average. Exactly the same reasoning as above applies. Put such a machine trough its paces and you will see battery autonomy drop just as fast as it does in current Ultrabooks ...



Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

 

Does the X1 Carbon have the red led in the thinkpad logo? (for the dot in the i)

 

Any news on the Haswell refresh, or an IPS panel? That would make it ideal for me, but otherwise I think I am off to the Sony Vaio Pro 13.

Either way, I guess it doesn't matter, even if they announced it was available today, decent units wouldn't likely be around till xmas (at least based on their bungling of the X1C and X1cT). Can't wait that long. But would be curious regardless of any rumored updates. This machine was so close to perfect, back in Oct of 2012....