Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch Review

No fancy box for the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch. It ships in a simple brown box. Inside is a universal power supply and a single sheet of paper which explains how to get started, alongside button functionality.

The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch looks very similar to previous Lenovo machines we have had in for review. The surface is actually quite resistant to fingerprints and is a breeze to clean, thanks to the materials the company use on the chassis.

The famous ThinkPad logo with red dot is displayed bottom right on the front of the lid.

The underside of the laptop is kept clear, with only a couple of vents at the side to exhaust the hot air.

The left side of the laptop has a USB 2.0 port, a vent, a wireless radio switch (on/off), and the power adapter connector. Along the right side is a single USB 3.0 port, a mini Display port connector, 4 in 1 card reader and a headphone jack.

The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch is a beautifully understated laptop, very slim to fit the Intel Ultraportable profile, with an antiglare screen covering. The touch screen implementation is excellent, especially as the system is using Windows 8. The 10 finger touch system is easy to use and works extremely well.

I must admit I am not a believer in a touch screen on a laptop as I hate seeing fingermarks in front of the important text and images I would be looking at for work. I could very well be in the minority however. A tablet? sure, but a laptop? I am still not sold.

The screen quality isn't the greatest we have seen and another couple of brightness levels would be beneficial, especially in direct sunlight as it was hard to read small text. Colour saturation is above average. Off angle viewing is not great, although with such a small laptop it shouldn't prove too much of a problem. The touchscreen layer is sadly not invisible and can be seen, displaying a little grain across all the images.

The ThinkPad X1 keyboards really are the cream of the crop and easily the best on any laptop regardless of price. The curved edges help improve feedback of the individual keys and it is a pleasure to use. The little red joystick may seem a pointless inclusion, but having used one for years I find it much more intuitive than a trackpad.

The keyboard is also backlit, with two intensity settings on offer.

Bottom right of the wrist rest area is another ThinkPad logo and a fingerprint reader, meaning you can protect the start up sequence without having to remember a password.

On the left of the wrist rest area are a couple of stickers, which can be easily removed.

The trackpad is oversized and is easy enough to use. I hate trackpads so I much prefer using the red joystick above the ‘b' key. Above the trackpad is a left and right button, as well as a center button which can be used in conjunction with the red joystick for scrolling and other tasks.

Top left, above the keyboard are buttons for speaker mute, volume controls, microphone mute and a black button which can be used for specific tasks. Top right is the system power button, this glows when the machine is on.

The onboard audio is reasonable … it can hit quite a loud volume level, but there is little bass response meaning the audio is always tinny. We would expect this anyway, especially from such a small laptop.


We think the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch looks great from all angles. The slim line design is attractive and the build quality and standard of finish are exceptionally high.

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