Lenovo Carbon X1 Review: Raising the Bar on Ultrabooks

August 8, 2012 | by Tim Scannell

Critics of Lenovo’s earlier strategy to ‘consumerize’ its popular ThinkPad line of business notebooks were worried that the venerable line would be downsized to a mere shadow of its former self. Especially when the company unveiled the ThinkPad X1 last year that took a serious turn toward ‘thin and light’ with an Ultrabook-like format.

Now, however, those critics may be silenced for a while with the release of the ThinkPad X1 Carbon – a slick and lightweight system that delivers some super serious business performance features.

Lenovo added some significant improvements in the design of the new system, including a spectacular 14-inch display that nicely fits into the format of a 13-inch Ultrabook. The size and weight of the X1 Carbon also just fits within the Ultrabook specs and guidelines established by Intel.

The company kept the weight of the system down by switching from a magnesium alloy roll cage to one that uses carbon fiber – which is just as strong as aluminum but with only a third of the weight.In fact, Lenovo claims the new design is up to 50 percent stronger than magnesium alloy and has a slew of MIL spec tests (humidity, low temperature, high temperature, extreme temperatures, sand, altitude, vibration and mechanical shock) to back up that claim.

Okay, the ThinkPad Carbon X1 does not have as many available ports as the earlier X1, but is that really a big deal when you are eliminating a little weight throwing in some serious durability? It does have a 4-in-1 media card reader, headset jack mini DisplayPort, USB 3.0 port, and USB 2.0 port. This is a lot better than other competing Ultrabooks on the mark

For more details and a drill down into specifics, check out the full review of the ThinkPad X1 Carbon on NotebookReview.com.

Source: NotebookReview.com