The New Ultra-Thin Thinkpad Is Here

Lenovo has updated the Thinkpad X1 Carbon. The new X1 Carbon 7th generation features a 4K UHD display, improved audio performance and exposed carbon fiber.

Premium laptops like the XPS 15 and ZenBook Pro 15 are coming out of the metalworks with vivid 4K displays and discrete GPUs. Not to be undone, Lenovo is coming out of IFA guns blazing with the ThinkPad X1 Extreme. What makes this so extreme is that it’s the first in Lenovo’s X series to get outfitted with a discrete graphics card and a 15-inch screen.

Lenovo’s 15.6-inch extreme machine starts at $1,859 and certainly lives up to its name by packing up to an 8th Gen Intel Core i9 processor, up to 64GB of RAM, up to two 1TB SSDs and an Nvidia GeForce 1050 Ti Max-Q GPU with 4GB of VRAM. The ThinkPad X1 Extreme Core i7 version is slated to launch in September, and the Core i9 version is expected to land sometime in December.

The 15.6-inch display comes in two flavors: a non-touch 1920 x 1080 panel with 300 nits of brightness as well as a 4K (3,840 x 2,160) touchscreen at 400 nits.

The ThinkPad X1 Extreme stays true to its predecessors’ visual design, with black soft-touch material covering the interior and exterior, accompanied by ThinkPad logos, and accented in red. While the ThinkPad design is neat, it would have been nice to see some change. It measures in at 14.2 x 9.7 x 0.7 (0.74 with touchscreen) and weighs 3.8 pounds (4 pounds with touchscreen), making it just as thin and even lighter than the aforementioned premium laptops.

It also comes with a solid amount of ports as well, including two USB 3.1 ports (1 powered), two Thunderbolt 3 ports, an SD card slot and an HDMI 2.0 port. Additionally, the battery is meant to last up to 15 hours on a charge.

If you don’t need the X1 Carbon’s durability, its helpful TrackPoint, and business-friendly features like dTPM encryption, a consumer laptop like the HP Spectre x360 13-inch is worth considering. The Spectre x360 starts at $1,099, lasts over 12 hours on a charge and is a 2-in-1 with pen support. However, if you want the best laptop for overall productivity, the ThinkPad X1 Carbon is hard to beat.