Thinkpad X1 Carbon Gen 4

Got it. My x1c scheduled to be delivered on next Wednesday. I need to make a tough decision whether to sell my rMBP by then.

 

How many of you purchase the accidental damage warranty? I decided to get the 3 year onsite + sealed battery + accidental on my re-order a couple days ago. It was $100 to add so I figured may as well just in case. But in my history of laptops I've never dropped or damaged them. I like the battery warranty though, around the 3 year mark I will just call and request a replacement right before it expires.

 

Annnnd... it's shipped early. I should have it by Tuesday.

 

Never

 

Can anyone confirm what brand/model of NVMe SSD is offered with the X1?

 

TL,DR After using Gen1 when it came out, trying Gen2, Gen 3, buying a couple of old Gen1s to use till Gen4 comes out, I can recommend Gen4, for the first time after Gen1, as a workhorse for most environments. (unless super cpu/GPU intensive, but you knew that already).

===> happy


OK, though I wasn't able to spend my normal time with it 14+h per day, I am happy with the Gen4 and will use it.
So switching from Gen1 to it. The screen brightness is good enough, nothing like the XPS13, and seemingly a bit lower than Gen1, because not as bluish, but works outside and in car....

The fan, because people asked, is fab, at 3000rpm (default) you don't hear it at all, you have to put your ear to the "exhaust" to hear a small noise.
At 5500rpm when you put heavy load on the machine, you hear it, that's to be expected, I rather have that than her throttling.

No idea what is meant with screen wobble.

No flickering at the lowest brightness setting on the 1920x1080 display.


(On Linux, so drivers might not be as good as on Windows and full HD encryption.)
The NVMe SSD is just mental:

writing 50GB:
time dd if=/dev/zero of=testoooo bs=1G count=50
50+0 records in
50+0 records out
53687091200 bytes (54 GB) copied, 45,3467 s, 1,2 GB/s

real 0m45.352s
user 0m0.000s
sys 0m33.100s


reading 50GB:
time dd if=testoooo of=/dev/null bs=1G count=50
50+0 records in
50+0 records out
53687091200 bytes (54 GB) copied, 44,1176 s, 1,2 GB/s

real 0m44.141s
user 0m0.000s
sys 0m17.232s



The 16GB RAM is wonderful too, can have a vm open without swapping hell, a FF (3GB), three Chromes (4GB),.....hooray

Cannot compare speed to the Gen3, because that was unuable(goddamn screen), but for me, coming from Gen1, this is like heaven speed-wise.

Also nice, in bios you can switch off the Fn'Lk so you can have these mapped to F1 /F2/F3 by default not to their stupid vol up down keys, without having a bright light in your eyes.

 

Their retina screen and glass trackpad are still impressive.

 

@av676 - thanks for the report; which linux distribution are you running?

any problems installing / running / everything working?

 

How is the bottom heat with the i7 in your gen4???

 

@Thors.Hammer
heat-wise I do not notice a difference to my Gen1, nothing that stands out.
With my gen1 when like working on a duvet, it sometimes (film decoding) got too hot and started to stutter, the same will be the case here, but I work a lot with it resting on my bare legs and i notice no difference.

@albright
I currently run the latest Kubuntu.
No distro currently has a kernel that works out of the box supporting the new skylake powerstates yet, so you need to enter the option at boot time and later in your grub config:
intel_pstate=no_hwp

Don't ask me why the Intel engineers don't get these machines BEFORE the rest of us, in order to make sure that they work, but such is life of the Linux user.

Here is the relevant kernel bug:
Bug 110941 – Skylake / Intel i5-6200U hangs during boot on "HWP enabled" message

 

As said, the screen is good for what it is, nearly bright as a Gen1, not as blue, a world better than Gen3. But not comparable to eg XPS13. Which have like 400+ nits.

I have her now for a week and she works fine in all environments.

Sometimes I would still like it a bit brighter, but after waiting 3 years I am content, seems like the best X1C yet.

Battery life on Linux is not comparable to what you would get on Windows, especially as we have to disable certain powersaving states just to get the darn thing to boot.

In case I forgot to mention it, NO SCREENDOOR EFFECT, for all those that still remember that Gen1 "feature".

 

that's very interesting; can you give an estimate of battery life under linux, or compared to windows?

 

@Thors.Hammer

Just tested it a bit with running the 4 cores at full power.

So the only area that gets a bit hot, say 45C is from the F4 key to F10 key and to the top of the chassis.

But not an issue, for me at least, that area is resting on my bare leg while 4 "cat /dev/urandom >/dev/null"s are blazing away

Fan btw in rpm
6300 (4 cats resulted in this, with a bit of vent blocking )
5550 (2 cats)
5220 (1 cat. This of course you will hear, it's one core/tread on turbo)
3220 (at idle and you really don't hear that).

 

Depending on your workload and brightness, with relative light workload and full brightness, I guess 5h right now. That's not watching a video or so and that is without using many of the power save states, as these are not yet supported in the current kernel and will probably also not be in the next Ubuntu release, as afaik kernel already frozen in release cycle. You cna always compile one yourself though.

But it's not mystery, Windows has many more tricks, because the hardware vendors talk to MS, for disabling a lot of unused periphery automagically, which Linux doesn't do. So Windows battery endurance should always be superior to Linux's.

 

The ThinkPad subreddit had a post from a guy who was comparing an X1C-2016 to a T460s and mentioned that there are a few LCD part manufacturers, but LG is the one you want. It's supposed to be noticeably better than the others. ****ty that there's an LCD lottery in this day & age on such a flagship product.

 

Just ordered one yesterday, with specs maxed out. I'll give detailed impressions for those who would like to know.

 

Received my x1 carbon today, play for a few hours.
Pros:
The display is better than the last generation.
Keyboard feels great.
It is thin and light.
Cons:
Flex keyboard when you push it down.
The lid is kind of loose.

Overall, it is a good laptop, but I don't feel it worth $1100 dollars. I can't convince myself to sell the MBPr 13' 2015 for x1 carbon. I am sending the x1 carbon back tomorrow.

 

I'm growing impatient waiting on the skylake refresh of MBP (although I guess it should be soon..) What is the battery life like on the 1080p model? I'm debating trying one out.. on the lenovo site though it mentions a 15% restocking fee for a refund? Have any of you who have returned it been charged that?

It's annoying that you have to get the i7 to get 16GB of ram.. I sort of prefer i5's for better battery life and lower temps..

 

Looking at getting the Thinkpad X1 Carbon Gen 4 with WQHD screen. Does the scaling work well in Windows 10?

 

Good luck. Even the 1080p still has scaling issue. Not all the softwares though.

 

Got mine. Looks great. Keyboard is excellent. Bezel is huge. Hinges aren't as tight as I remember on my T60, but this LCD weighs a fraction. Will post pics.

Edit: Got the LG 2K panel. Looks like I won the lottery.

 

The hinge is way too loose in my opinion.

 

I assume it's engineered around the weight of the display assembly. I think that if the hinge were too stiff, they'd have a bunch of complaints of cracked cases and other stress issues.

 

What do you mean the hinge is loose? From the pictures it looks like the Gen4 has much larger hinges than the Gen3 (like twice as wide). Thoughts? Mine will be here on Tuesday. I'll update my thoughts on the machine then (i7, 8gb, WQHD).

 

I found another flaw, maybe it is a flaw.
When I opened the lid, I found the right bottom is not even. Probably due to unevenly weight distribution.

 

What do you mean?

Hinge is absolutely fine for me. Like I am in a taxi and work and the car goes over wobbly streets and the hinge doesn't move.

Still happy so far. Working whilst it's sunny outside, in car right now, so got my use cases covered

MBP is a fab machine, BUT, no trackpoint and stupid glossy screen, always distract me when reflections are moving around, as eg when you work in a car or train and the scenerey is reflected on the stupid screen.

 

I returned mine a week ago and the refund just posted to my credit card, no restocking fee. I did have tech issues though that required a tech to come out and returned for defects, so that is probably why I didn't get hit with the fee.

It is fine for general use I'd say. I only use internet, MS Office, remote desktop, and PDF viewing. Everything looks sharp and crisp. Totally depends on what programs you use.

My replacement arrives on Monday, fingers crossed.

 

A tip for those who want to avoid restocking fee: cancel your order before you receive the machines so that you may return without hassle.

Are you going to sell the MBPr?

 

Already sold it for $1000 on craigslist. Wanted to sell before the new models get announced and also didn't expect to have to return my 1st X1C. Monday can't come soon enough, it's sucked for the past week being laptop-less. 1st world problems...

 

Seems odd that there aren't many reviews on it other than the initial previews released when it was shown off at CES in january.. debating replacing a broadwell XPS 13 with one but wouldn't mind seeing more impressions on it, especially including the battery life of the 1080p model. Dell did a really good job on that front with this machine.

 

I was also wondering what the deal was with reviews. There are only a few unboxing videos, none of which tell you a whole lot. I've had an XPS in the past and X1's (I had a Gen2 and now have a Gen3). For what it's worth, I like the X1 a lot more. In particular I think the keyboard is much nicer (I write a lot on my laptops! And it may sound lame, but I really really like have standalone page/up down keys!). I also like the case on the X1 a lot more. Yes, the XPS has a nice aluminum case. But it's part silver and part black (why don't they make an all black aluminum version???).

 

New models?

 

The lack of reviews is probably due to the fact that the Yoga launched first and was effectively a variant on this model. Also, this version isn't all that exciting from an outsider's perspective, right? I mean, it's just Skylake and thinner. I'm personally blown away by the quality of this machine - it's heads and shoulders above the build quality of those rank-n-file T4XX models we see at work.

Nitpicking - I wish they'd do away with the slim-tip plug for models like this: U-class processor with integrated video feels like they could have used a custom USB port or even USB-C. It's not a thinness thing - I don't think they can go thinner without compromising the keyboard - but a convenience thing: one less adapter to think about. The other thing I wish they had done was to slim down the overall footprint via the bezel and keyboard frame.

 

Are the bezels and keyboard basically the same as the Gen3? Looking at the pictures they seem to be identical. If so, I'm happy with both. Yes, the bezels could be thinner. But how much thinner? The XPS is the only other laptop I can think of that has thinner bezels than the X1. Yes?

 

The keyboard is slightly different, not 100 % the same (for example, it has a CapsLock LED; which X1 Carbon Gen 3 lacked). But its close.

Bezels are almost the same, I think a few mm more, but not much. Its very close.

 

I've tried the XPS 13 keyboard in-store last year and I thought it was junk. I very much hope the X1 Carbon 4th gen keyboard is not like it.

I'm in the market for a new laptop and currently down to either the X1 Carbon 4th gen, or the HP Spectre x360 13" w/ 16 GB RAM (which hasn't been released yet...)

 

I have high hopes for the X14 keyboard. But if it's anything like the Gen3, it will be perfect. I, too, think the XPS keyboard feels cheap.

 

So it's light years better than the T460s? The T460s seems like a balanced choice.

 

Granted the keyboard on my xps 13 isn't very good; but the insanely small footprint and strong battery life (and great matte display which I think is brighter than the x1) all make a tough choice to replace it.. The bezels on literally every other machine look so big and goofy to me now..

 

XPS 13 is a good one, but I am concerned about the palm rest and the keyboard. I heard that it attracts oil and dust easily.

 

I've had the latest XPS 13 for about a week. It's an excellent laptop. If you don't mind its coil whine issue then it's an excellent choice IMHO. I couldn't stand it (c/w that is) and ended up returning it.

 

Yeah I've heard about coil whine on some of them, that's why I returned my second XPS 15 skylake in fact (the first one had a mushy space bar that missed presses). I guess I was lucky with my xps 13 which I had since last january, it's been almost perfect. After installing win10 on it sometimes it randomly seems to have a slow mouse cursor on sleep resume, but that's about the only problem. Still can't get over how small it is.

 

Received my replacement X1C 4th Gen today, perfect. Screen ID is VVX14T058J00 (EDIT- it is Panasonic thanks to explanation from ibmthink) Screen looks very crisp and as great as my 1st one.

I did some testing of the 512gb NVMe SSD. For those who are curious the Samsung 950 Pro driver DOES work with the Samsung NVMe SSD in the X1C. Here are my benchmarks. Quite similar performance. I included screenshots of device manager to show that both the standard MS driver and Samsung driver work.

 

That's so fast.

 

Thats the Panasonic screen, LG screens always have a model number beginning with "LP1".

 

Hmm, OK. I just assumed since the last digits were different from the Panasonic WQHD display in that thread. Oh well. Display still looks fantastic to my eyes.

Has anyone received an X1C with the WQHD LG display? I'm curious if it too uses PWM dimming. I've never been affected by PWM in past monitors, but if the LG doesn't use it that's a piss poor decision by Lenovo. So sick of tech lotteries.

 

Do you guys prefer to max out the specs? 16G Ram and 512SSD?

Do you suggest to replace the SSD by myself?

 

RAM you definitely should, as its soldered on the mobo and can't be upgraded later on. For the SSD, it all depends on what you can get it for. I've read they have huge markups on SSD's through the regular site, but if you have access to the corporate/student discount portal, some of the upgrades come with massive discounts on pretty much every upgrade. I was able to get mine through a corporate perks portal with huge discounts, so that's why I specced mine to the hilt.

Just keep in mind that this year Intel will release its new Optane memory format, instantly making all other NAND-based SSD's obsolete. If you'd rather wait for that, you can order a small SSD now and wait for the upgrade to Optane later on.

 

If you actually have use for 16gb RAM then go for it. You can't replace it later on. As for the SSD, for me it made sense to order the 512gb NVMe drive since it was only $85 more than the 256gb NVMe drive. On my previous X1C that I had to return I easily swapped SSD's, it's so easy. If you can get a good discount go with the 512gb.

 

Mine has the LG panel and I don't know what PWM dimming is, but it definitely dims when you have a high contrast white-on-black situation being displayed. I figure it's software that's doing it dynamically to reduce eye strain.