Last month, I decided that I need a new laptop that does not require me to bring dongles and USB hubs everywhere, powerful enough for work, and would not hurt my shoulder when it is in my backpack (under 1.2 kgs). After several weeks of reading, I was torn between Surface Laptop 5 or this Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon. I like Surface laptop because of past good experience with first gen Surface Laptop and that magnetic charging allow me to have an additional USB C port free to use. For context, my previous work laptop had served me well for 2+ years. My biggest problem with it was the weight (almost 2 kgs). Since my job allows me to choose a new laptop every 2 years, I decided to use my upgrade cycle to find something lightweight.

My decision to choose Lenovo over Surface Laptop came down to the ports. Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon (gen 11) has 2 USB-C ports (Thunderbolt 4), 2 USB-A 3.0 ports (USB 3.2 gen 1), HDMI port (HDMI 2.1, up to 4K/60Hz) and 3.5mm headphones jack. That means I do not need USB hub at home and will not need to carry any dongle when I use it somewhere else. It is hard to find a combination of high-specs lightweight laptop (1.12 kgs) with the ports that I need. Most ultraportable laptops in today’s market have limited number of ports.

Moving on to the specs, my Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon is powered by Intel Core i7-1355U (13th gen) 10C (2P + 8E) / 12T, P-core 1.7 / 5.0GHz, E-core 1.2 / 3.7GHz, 12MB, Integrated Intel Iris Xe Graphics, 16 GB LPDDR5-6400 RAM, 512 GB SSD M.2 2280 PCIe Gen4 Performance TLC Opal. For display, it has 14.0″ WUXGA (1920 x 1200) display with IPS, Anti-Glare, Non-Touch, 100%sRGB, 400 nits, 60Hz. I did have the option to choose a touch display (14″ 2.8K (2880×1800) OLED 400nits Anti-glare / Anti-reflection / Anti-smudge, 100% DCI-P3, DisplayHDR True Black 500, Dolby Vision) but decided not to because I rarely touch the screen on any laptop. It is just not part of my usage habit. Plus, I usually get annoyed when I need to clean the screen.

The 1080P FHD IR Hybrid front camera with Privacy Shutter is compatible with Windows Hello. On the connectivity side, it has Wi-Fi 6E AX211 2×2 AX vPro and Bluetooth 5.1. Carbon fiber case (the top part) and aluminium base help to keep this laptop lightweight at 1.12 kgs. The keyboard has LED backlight and is said to be spill resistant. It has multimedia Fn keys, which can be easily configured to be do F1-12 keys or the multimedia function by default. It is worth to note that Lenovo puts its Fn key at the bottom left and the Ctrl key is next to it. This is different from every laptop I used in the last 10 years has the Ctrl key at the bottom left corner, so I could easily press wrong key because of habit. Thankfully, Lenovo also makes it easy to swap these keys from configuration. If there is one thing I could not get used to, it is the red dot a.k.a. trackpoint in the middle of the keyboard. I know it is supposed to be a legacy thing and it has its strongly dedicated fans, but I have to admit that I was a bit annoyed with it in the first few days. After a week or so, I forgot that thing is even there.

The trackpad comes with 3 physical buttons, which are configurable. There is a ThinkPad logo at the bottom right corner and the back of the screen. The logo at the back of the screen has a small red LED. It actually looks pretty cool. One of the USB-A ports is always on, so it can be used to charge something else even when the laptop is off. The power button also doubles as fingerprint reader, but I do not think it is a good placement for a fingerprint sensor, to be honest.

Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon (gen 11) performs fast and smooth as expected. So far, it never got too hot to the point of worrying. I could hear the fan kicks in sometimes, but it is not loud and I do not find it annoying. Wake up time is almost instant. 16 GB RAM is probably a minimum point in 2024, but so far I find it adequate for most things I need to do. The built-in speaker is decent, I could use it for group meeting with a few colleagues in a meeting room and everyone can hear the conversation clearly. The microphone, however, is not that good. Meeting participants from Teams call said that the voice from our side sounded a bit unclear.

I use my laptop with two external monitors. In one occasion, I noticed that the laptop display seems to flicker a bit for a few seconds, but I did not see it again after that one time. I will keep an eye on this, could be a Windows issue.

Overall, I am quite happy with my new work machine. It is capable enough to perform in everything I need to do at work, it is lightweight and it has the ports that I need without dongles and hubs.