Thinkpad X1 Carbon Gen 4

Here we go...

Spec sheets (thx @ikjadoon):

http://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/3zd6bn/_/

First pics and videos from CES:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9889/lenovo-refreshes-thinkpad-lineup-at-ces

http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/3/10706482/new-lenovo-x1-carbon-ultrabook-announced-ces-2016

http://www.laptopmag.com/articles/thinkpad-x1-yoga-handson

http://www.slashgear.com/lenovos-x1-pc-line-scores-new-thinkpads-and-more-03420325/

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016...top-editions-and-a-yoga-that-ditches-the-lcd/

Let's hope they FINALLY get the matte displays right...

 

Is this just for the Carbon or also for the X1 Yoga?

 

Specification sheets were posted here: http://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/3zd6bn/_/

 

X1 Yoga looks nice.

 

The OLED of the Yoga looks great, if you can live with non-matte display.

It looks as if the X1C won't come with touch screen anymore, that's what the Yoga is apparently for.

And of course the X1C does not get the OLED with non-touch & matte, just the Yoga.

Btw, is there a way to make a "reflective" screen into a matte display, by putting some foil on top of it?

 

The OLED apparently contains anti burn-in measures, too:



You can read the OLED Power Settings dialog box if you up the YouTube resolution to 1080p:

http://prntscr.com/9m5qtb

"It is also recommended to dim the task bar and other areas of the display that do not change frequently to prolong the overall life time of the display."

 

Its good to see all are IPS, looks like Lenovo is listening to the market with the displays, the card readers, additional USB 3 port. (would have been nice to see USB C 3.1 but hey are we ever satisfied?

OLED is only WQHD and touch I believe, the other 2 display options for the X1 yoga are non-OLED if I'm not mistaken.

Dimensions have changed, its now slightly taller and wider but thinner? it is lighter now, but wish they had gone with more than just a 2WHr increase in battery. That will be the biggest gripe for most for what would be a nearly perfect laptop, or am I jumping the gun?

 

3rd gen had "nice" displays, just too yellow and too dark. (as in it would strain your eyes in a well lighted room )

So I am really looking for the first reviews by "traumatized" users of the earlier versions.

Gen 1 screen door effect and bluish
Gen 2 same screen; plus f**cked up keyboard and mouse and idiotic touchpad fn keys,...
Gen 3 hooray no screen door effect, wait, let's close the curtains so I can see the screen, rest was ok
Gen 4 ???

I had overall 4x Gen 1 (bought replacements later on, also after dumping the Gen3) 1x Gen 3 (practically unused).

16GB is nice and the overall performance due to new chipsets and CPUs.
Seems they managed to not screw around with the keyboard this time.
Battery was never an issue for me, given rapid charge, which is great.

Holding my breath for the first reviews including LCD nits measurements.

 

I have confidence Lenovo FINALLY got this right. Looking forward to the IPS FHD screen.

 

Nice beast the oled!!!!


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

Yea, OLED would be tempting. But the FHD IPS screen will do me just fine.

 

FHD IPS is usually good enough on a 14" screen. As someone who has carried a notebook on a daily basis for years, I would be looking at these for a very portable notebook

1. weight (obviously)
2. a touch, semi-matte IPS screen ( it is convenient for reading a pdf file and can be used as a replacement for a mouse).
3. a stylus is convenient but not necessary, as often you can use your finger to write on the screen,
4. a good keyboard
5. sturdy (very important if one travels a lot).

 

6. Trackpad - as good as the trackpad on the Apple notebooks.

 

Anybody as disappointed by me about the lack of type-C? USB IF (head USB organization) predicts 2H16 will be the tipping point.

Outdated by a USB port in just months (especially if you go OLED).

I'm debating waiting on Kaby Lake later on this year. Looks like Skylake 2.0, hopefully with all of Windows 10 bugs and quirks fixed).

Maybe they'll have a second-gen OLED panel by then. Looks like 4 laptops will have OLED panels this spring: X1 Yoga, Spectre x360, Alienware 13, and the Galaxy TabPro S.

 

Kaby Lake is not going to come out until 2017.

 

Hi Benjamin, one reason I returned T450s was because of the poor AUO display.
Does generally speaking the quality of X1 display have better quality than that of T460s ? I know this is a subjective topic, but I would like to know your opinion on 2016 X1, including X1 Tablet. Thanks

 

Sorry, how could I tell you - never used any of those models, yet. They are not on the market yet.

What was wrong with the AUO screen in your T450s, if I may ask?

 

WHAT! Lenovo didn't send you a review unit! Sorry for my poor English - I meant for X1 in general, for example 2015 model, does it have better screen quality vs T450s? There is a MS store near me, and I really like the screen quality of Surface Book and even XPS 13. I really hope 2016 X1 ( including Yoga and Tablet ) is up to that level.

as to what is wrong with the T450s I received, well, it has very bad light breeding. Also I compared the screen to my X230 (and T500), in my opinion, it is not much better.

 

Where did you hear that? Kaby Lake, direct from Intel's Q2-2015 earnings call, will launch in "second half of 2016". From Intel's CEO, Brian Krzanich:

Of course, it's probably little delayed as usual (sources quoting mid-Q4), but Intel always launches -U products first and it's still 14nm, just like Skylake, so no process node delays. When will Lenovo jump on? Debateable. But, it'll line up just in time for USB type-C to go mainstream.

 

I was talking specifically about ThinkPads. I think Lenovo will try to keep to their 1 year rhythm, so Kaby Lake definitely should be a 2017 thing for ThinkPads.

 

Ohh, I see. Right, that might be true.

I was thinking there may be chance that it's simply a small refresh because it's unprecedented for Intel to stay on one process node for three generations. But, you could be right, too. I'm just being hopeful, haha.

 

I've waited 2 generations for Lenovo to get the kinks right and I'm ready to pull the trigger on the 4th Gen.

The only area I'm still undecided is the display. I'm moving from the x301, so basically everything on the market right now is going to feel oddly different. Considering all other factors are equal on the display apart from the resolution, I'm tending towards the FHD so that I'm not left squiting at the screen while bashing out emails, browsing or using telnet etc.

I watch the odd movie on the laptop here and there, so nothing really pushing me to the QHD especially with 3rd party scaling issues. Or am I wrong?

Other notes: I'm already hitting 8GB of Ram usage just with chrome, email clients and a few applications open which pushes me to get the top end 6600u to get the 16GB of RAM which should future proof the device. x301 has lasted me 6 years and still going strong. I'd like the next one to last at least 4-5 years hopefully!

Now there is a difference of 130$ between PCi-e and standard 256GB of storage. Roughly same difference between FHD and WQHD displays on the X1 yoga, so i'm assuming similar differences should show up for the carbon.

Any comments from the experts?

 

Hey there sheFs...

Not an expert, but given I have gone through X301(the last tpad I loved), Gen1 and Gen3, some notes

I am using Linux and the high DPIs and all the dirty hacks, made me rather just use a lower resolution instead of full resolution. Stability was an issue and also many applications are not yet fully adapted to it. Was a pain. Not sure about Windows. I will probably get the QHD and use it at a scaled down resolution, just because I like small fonts.

You answered the 16GB answer yourself. I think one should go for 16GB as a power user.
Chrome is a big memory hog and if you are using any VMs its a must, mine (8GB) always swaps madly.

The PCIe is crazy nice, but not a necessity, the normal SSDs today are fabulous already. But I will probably opt for it.

Wait for the first reviews to come in about the screens though, could well be that they messed it up again

 

Assuming new yoga X1 is just a modified Carbon X1, this review should basically stand:
http://www.mobiletechreview.com/notebooks/Lenovo-ThinkPad-X1-Yoga.htm

16gb is great but I'd personally try to postpone my own 16gb upgrade if I could. Unfortunately most ultrabooks don't have that user upgradable, X1 including. From that point I find 260 model more appealing. I'm not sure if screen quality is the same between them or not. 260 doesn't seem to come with QHD option if that matters.

 

Has anyone seen any definite release date?

 

You can order the X1 Carbon Gen 4 since this week here in Germany. I guess US release can´t be too far away now.

 

Thanks @ibmthink, this works too.

What is the English (Europe) keyboard layout, like US or like UK?

 

Available here in France as well.

Just waiting for a review before clicking the buy button

 

Any word on whether we'll be able to add our own M.2 ssd to the X1 Yoga? Or do these things tend to get white listed?

 

No. SSDs are not being whitelisted.

 

@ibmthink can you explain the difference between a US and an English (International) keyboard layout?

thx a lot!

 

I think the International ISO keyboard has the € symbol.

 

@ibmthink thx!

 

Does anyone have experience with Huawei and / or Sierra WWAN cards under Linux? Are they both well supported?

 

Do you know where to get user manual and hardware maintenance guide of 4th generation x1 carbon?

T.i.a.

 

Full Specs: http://psref.lenovo.com/syspool\Sys...X1_Carbon_4th_Gen_Platform_Specifications.pdf
User guide: https://download.lenovo.com/pccbbs/mobiles_pdf/x1carbon_mt20fb-20fc_x1yoga_ug_en.pdf
Support site: http://support.lenovo.com/products/...ies-laptops/thinkpad-x1-carbon-type-20fb-20fc

No hmm yet.

 

Any update on ETA for US Release? Thought this was supposed to ship in February?

Thank you

 

Hardware Maintenance Manual for X1 and X1 Yoga:
https://download.lenovo.com/pccbbs/mobiles_pdf/x1carbon_mt20fb-20fc_x1yoga_hmm_en_sp40j72016.pdf

 

X1 carbon is now live on US web!

 

Yes! Finally. Just placed my order for the i5 6300 / 1440p / base 128gb ssd model. Plan on swapping out the SSD upon receipt. I see they upgraded the battery from the Gen 3 model 50whr to 52whr in the new 4th Gen model. Hope it'll make at least a bit of difference. This will be replacing my 13" retina MBP, REALLY have missed the ThinkPad track point as great as the MBP touchpad is. Also matte screen FTW. Ships 5-7 business days for me. So excited!

 

Finally! Any reviews out on the x1 carbon specifically? They don't seem to have the 16GB RAM & vPro options available just yet. For me specifically, I hope to hit the button as soon as 16GB becomes available.

 

Any chance we could get a upgrade option for Intel 7-6560U Processor which has Iris Graphics?. Same TDP!

 

I would say no, as Thinkpad is the "business" branch of Lenovo.

 

Very true. Even as a "business" product, this thing is arguably the best laptop over all!! (Still debating between this and the XPS 13)

 

I previously owned the XPS 13 (9343), and after one complete change of machine, then 3 changes of motherboard, I decided to see at Lenovo if reliability was better. I'm very interested in the X1C, I'm just waiting for a complete review before buying...... And I hope the review won't be too long to come, as actually in France there's a 8% discount on all thinkpads !

 

I was also debating XPS 13 vs X1C 4th 3rd/4th Gen. Tried the Dell (Skylake update) and it was great. Screen is incredible but after having my MacBook Pro I'm sick of glossy screens. Thought about going for the matte 1080p version but held off. Also 13" 16:9 is so small for vertical scrolling through documents like PDF files. Lastly the touchpad, while good, gave me issues like jumping and very bad scrolling through PDF files. I scroll through 1000 page PDFs for work so I need a great touch pad, hence MBP for the past year. The touchpad on the X1C is "true" Synaptics and works with respective drivers. The Dell uses Microsoft signature touchpad, there's a way to install the Synaptics driver but it wasn't all that beneficial for me, still same scrolling issues.

There is nothing out there in any laptop that compares to the TrackPoint features of Thinkpads, if you use it. I really missed it over the past couple years. That combined with a large 14" QHD screen that happens to be non-touch and MATTE, and a little bit larger battery compared to X1C 3rd Gen, plus 2.6 pounds = game over / wallet threw itself at screen when I saw the X1C 4th Gen pop up.

 

You are saying the touchpad on the 4th gen Carbon is as good as the current MacBook Pro?

 

Quick Heads up. The i7-6600U CPU is now available as option which also enables the option for 16GB Ram!

 

as a Canadian I am disgusted at the mark up in Canada; for the same
configured x1 carbon (i7 / 16 gb / WQHD / 256gb nvme) after currency
conversion more than $400 more than on US site

 

Well, that was quick! The config I'm interested in comes to about $1830. Which is about the same as what I've paid for my now 6 year old X301. How times have changed!

Nearly trigger happy now but I'm really keen on FHD vs WQHD reviews. I really don't need high res even if its just a 70$ difference. Most would just say get the higher res. But if usability and battery life change for the better, I'd rather have FHD IPS vs WQHD.