aNThis Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9 ($1,229 starting price) is a good mid-range business laptop that’s a little pricey for what you get.
Despite the fact that it lacks the processing speed to be a true gaming laptop, it is capable of handling numerous professional projects without slowing you down. It also has excellent speakers for one business laptop, little bloatware, a snappy keyboard, and long battery life.
However, the display leaves something to desire, the 720p webcam is subpar, and there are too few USB ports. Despite its excellent attributes, these flaws, together with the expensive price, make it ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9 a difficult sell. You’ll show you why that is, and help you decide whether this is the right laptop for you.
What you will see here?
Design
This Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon features a beautiful carbon fiber and magnesium design that is incredibly thin and lightweight. This model is slimmer & lighter than laptops like the HP Spectre x360 14, Dell XPS 15 OLED, Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano, as well as the MacBook Pro 2021, measuring 0.59 x 12.38 x 8.72 inches and weighing 2.5 pounds (14-inch).
The ThinkPad X1 Carbon’s 14-inch display is improved by the small bezel that surrounds it, maximizing screen space. Its webcam, which has a hardware switch to preserve privacy, is also located on the top bezel.
The X1 Carbon, like the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano, has a keyboard that spans nearly the whole width of the notebook, with two speakers on either side. Lenovo’s characteristic red TrackPoint nub is embedded in the center of the keyboard for pointer control, but beneath the keyboard is a touchpad with a fingerprint reader to a right.
Display
The X1 Carbon features a 14-inch HD (1,920×1,200 pixels) anti-glare display. It’s a great show, but it still falls well short of the competitors, which is a concern given the price.
According to the X1, Carbon generated 98.6 percent of the sRGB spectrum, which is somewhat higher than non-Dell XPS 13 (97.9%), but lower than the XPS 13 OLED (117.3 percent), XPS 15 OLED (120.1 percent), and even the X1 Nano (98.6 percent) (101.1 percent).
The display on the X1 Carbon had an average brightness of 335.8 nits, peaking at 349 nits in the middle, according to the testing. This X1 Nano (430 nits), as well as the HP Spectre x360 14 both, have substantially lesser brightness (365 nits).
Ports
The X1 Carbon, unlike the X1 Nano, features a good number of ports. There are two Thunderbolt 4/USB-C connections on the left side, one of which is used to charge the laptop, and a USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 port as well as an HDMI out.
On the right side, there’s another USB-A connector, a headphone jack, as well as a nano-SIM compartment that you may ignore if you don’t intend to use this laptop with a SIM card.
Keyboard and touchpad
Despite its compact size, the keyboard has plenty of room. Coming from a much larger gaming laptop, You found that You were able to rapidly acclimatize to this keyboard & type normally for both work & play. The only thing that was missed was the numerical pad, but you were able to compensate quickly.
Its touchpad beneath it is snappy, smooth, and simple to operate. Two-finger scrolling as well as other Windows gesture capabilities are also supported. The left & right mouse buttons are on the top of the pad rather than the bottom, which takes some getting used to. As with previous Thinkpad models, the TrackPoint is located in the center of the keyboard and is as snappy as you’d expect.
Performance
A Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon with an Intel Core i7-1185G7 processor and 16 GB of RAM & was found to be more than adequate for daily use, including work. Even a test run with over ten YouTube tabs open and constantly playing videos failed to slow the system down.
The X1 Carbon took 14 mins and 11 seconds in the video encoding, which measured how long it took the laptop to encode a 4K video to 1080p using Handbrake. That result exceeds the X1 Nano (16:15) as well as the HP Spectre x360 14 (17:00). But it’s about twice as slow also as Dell XPS 15 OLED (8:10) and more than four times slower than the 16-inch MacBook Pro 2021. (4:48).
Audio
This Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9‘s speakers provided excellent sound volume and quality. You put both while listening to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra perform Beethoven 9, and the level of clarity & volume made you feel like you were listening to the performance live. The major and minor instruments were both perfectly audible, with no sound muffle or smothered out.
That sounds a lot better than the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano’s speakers, which were found to dull and narrow.
Webcam
The 720p webcam is adequate for work-related applications like the average Zoom meeting. But still, it lacks the sharpness and color quality of its competitors. Furthermore, the focus is poor, resulting in a little hazy image quality. If you require a higher-quality webcam, it is preferable to invest in one of the best webcams.
Software and Graphics
For years, Lenovo laptops known for their lack of bloatware. So it’s no surprise that the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9 comes with no pre-installed software. This adds to a faster performance by freeing up more memory & storage space for programs that you actually need.
OneDrive, a trial edition of the Microsoft Office Suite, as well as other conventional fare are among the pre-installed programs. The Lenovo Quick Clean app, which lets healthcare providers lock the keyboard while wiping it and that the keyboard down, is also back.
If you want to play games, the X1 Carbon is up to the task as long as it stays away from demanding 3D games. Many games will run with the Intel Iris Xe integrated GPU. However more demanding current or 3D titles, such as Dragonball FighterZ, would struggle to hit a steady 30 frames per second (FPS) even at medium settings. The graphics, on the other hand, remain crisp and attractive.
Civilization VI: Gathering Storm, by Sid Meier, struggled to run properly on this laptop, averaging 24 frames per second at 1080p resolution and 26 frames per second at the native 1,920×1,200 resolution. If you plan on doing a lot of gaming, this isn’t the laptop for you.
Battery life
The ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9’s battery is one of its finest characteristics, lasting nearly 14 hours of battery life. Its ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9 stays 14 hours and 25 mins in the battery test. That measures how long it takes a laptop to run out of juice while surfing the web over Wi-Fi with the screen set to 150 nits of brightness. Most of its competitors, like the X1 Nano (12:00), and the Dell XPS 15 OLED (6:50). As well as the HP Spectre x360 is 14 inches pale in comparison (12:11). Just the MacBook Pro 2021 (15:31) comes close to the battery life of the X1 Carbon.
That makes the X1 Carbon great for long workdays and complements its portability. Since you can actually carry it around all day without needing to plug it in.
Price and availability
This Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9 is currently available for purchase on Lenovo’s website. As well as in third-party shops such as Walmart. The Intel Core i5 CPU is there in the base model. But you may upgrade to a Core i7 for an additional fee. You won’t be able to install a discrete graphics card inside this laptop. So you’ll have to make do with Intel Iris Xe integrated graphics. The base model has 8 GB of memory & 256 GB of storage. But you can increase it to 1 TB and 36 GB of memory.
Intel Core i7-1185G7 processor, 16GB RAM, and 512GB SSD at the time of publication. The same laptop would cost around $2,153 if purchased directly from Lenovo.
Conclusion
Overall, this Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9 is a capable mid-range laptop that’s ideal for the ordinary office worker. Its overall performance is superb, with excellent battery and airflow. It also has impressive speakers, especially considering its small.
However, the webcam quality is average, and the display is a bit disappointing. Given that it is for around the same price. You can obtain rival laptops with more pixels and higher brightness than the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9. For example, a Dell XPS 15 with a brilliant OLED display & competitive specs can have for around $2,400. That isn’t much more than a fully loaded ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9.
When it comes to business laptops, though, it’s difficult to defeat a Lenovo ThinkPad. This is a terrific pick if you want an ultraportable with such a comfortable keyboard, good speakers, and long battery life.
