It’s review time again here at TechGuySmartBuy and we are back with another computer from our good friends at Lenovo. I have been testing the X1 Carbon Touch ultrabook for about one month now. The Carbon Touch is a slight refresh from the company’s flagship laptop that adds touchscreen support and Windows 8. Poised to be Lenovo’s new flagship model, I’ll let you know past the break.
As he name suggests, the X1 Carbon Touch is comprised entirely of satellite-grade carbon fiber which WILL pick up fingerprints if you hands are greasy or wet. This does help make the X1 Touch more durable and sheds some of the weight off of this ultrabook. Helping this machine weigh in at 3.41lbs and not too heavy to carry around in a bag all day. Underneath lies your usual ultrabook innards which I will dive into a bit later.
If there is one thing Lenovo is synonymous with is, its the best keyboards on their computers. Offering a 6-row keyboard but has no number pad on the right side as other full-keyboards. Lenovo made sure to make this flagship keyboard backlit for the being productive in dim environments. In short, this has ideal spacing between keys, natural feel in its design per key, just an absolute pleasure to type on.
The Carbon Touch is armed with a gorgeous 14inch Premium HD+ LED display w/ 1600 x 900 resolution. At first glance, the screen may appear to mute the colors on standard icons, browsers, etc. but on media if works just fine as the resolution lies just in between 1080p & 720p. Can’t have a workstation you can’t view media on, right? New to the Carbon is 10-point, multitouch support for you to put fingerprints on your screen by using it as a touchscreen. They made sure to make the display super-responsive and it is a great main or secondary means of navigation. A great touch (no pun intended) to an already great ultrabook.
Back to the innards of the X1 Touch, inside is a 1.8GHz Intel Core i5 dual-core processor + 4GB of RAM to take on whatever you throw at it. On the storage side of things lies a 150GB SSD w/ 120GB available. It’s bit skimpy on the port side with only 1: mini DP, USB 2.0, USB 3.0, combo audio, & 4-in-1 SD card reader. It’s enough to get you by though. This easily helps me maintain a Twitter app along with anywhere from 9 to 20 internet tabs open any given time of the day. No hiccups just fast processing, as it should be.
Inside, keeping this touchscreen machine nourished is a 45Wh battery with a claim of up to 8.2 hours of juice. I got somewhat close to that. On my days off, I would push it to the limits of gaming, streaming music, & watching plenty of YouTube videos to get around over 6 hours of juice. Not bad, not bad at all. Also Lenovo’s Rapid Charge technology which declares to bring your dead battery up to 80% within a little over 30 minutes and does so rightfully. You can get a low battery back to full in just under one hour.
The non-touchscreen version of the Carbon still ran Windows 7 but this updated model offers the top-of-the-line Windows 8 Pro. Microsoft’s new OS offers a much needed pizazz to the aging platform. You get Live Tiles on your redesigned Start screen which acts like the homescreen on Windows Phone. An improved mobile-like way to handle notifications.
Swiping through settings along with menu screens, & multitasking is a breeze on this touch-friendly OS. And you can still access the (now older) Windows desktop with some light bloatware from Lenovo. Windows 8 offers lots of improvement and innovation as it touchscreen support adds to navigation & productivity.
The Carbon Touch has a pair of stereo speakers armed coupled with Dolby’s Home Theater v4 software. Which offers pretty good audio quality, not as loud as I’d like it to be but good enough to share the sounds of a new song on SoundCloud in a small space. I’d like it to be a bit louder but I like my sounds turned up. That’s just me though.
There is definitely noticeable heat after a bit of usage, OK a lot of heat. Not scorching but enough maybe got out some light wrinkles of your jeans/pants. We recommend not to use this on your lap for long periods of time.
“This is definitely the Windows version of a MacBook Pro (non-retina) beautifully crafted by Lenovo w/ optimal performance.”
Lenovo does a lot of things right when putting together their Windows PCs with very little wrong too. This is definitely the Windows version of a MacBook Pro (non-retina). The X1 Carbon was already slated as a leader of premium ultrabooks and now it has the latest version of Windows plus a touchscreen to go hand-in-hand. Unfortunately, the price goes up with these two added features. Pricing is a matter of your perspective. You could spend that on other ultrabooks or even a MacBook Air or Pro. Options for consumers can be a wonderful thing. But if you not into the Mac OS, aim your sights at this fine machine from Lenovo.
The X1 Carbon Touch is easily an ideal machine for the enterprise users or upscale consumers. But it’s hard to digest the price tag starting at $1,499. If you can afford it or get your company to splurge on it, then go for it.
You can pick it up now for only just under $1,410 at Lenovo on sale, otherwise pricing starts at $1,500 as stated above.
