Review: Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon (Gen 12, 2024)

Lenovo’s ThinkPad X1 Carbon line dates back to 2012, and now, in its 12th incarnation, the laptop has reached a level of maturity few other brands can boast. Today’s X1 Carbon has been honed to a fine point—yet it would be legitimately difficult to distinguish from the original. I’d know, because I reviewed it for WIRED way back when.

The song writ large remains the same as ever. This is Lenovo’s flagship ultralight, the business laptop designed to kill all others. It retains the same size 14-inch LCD (with 16:10 aspect ratio, now at 2,880 x 1,800 pixels) that it has always had, with the weight now hitting 2.2 pounds— exhibiting a healthy and steady weight loss over the years.

I measured the thickness at 21 millimeters, largely owing to a sizable rubber foot that runs along the back of the base to prop the keyboard up a bit. The current chassis, in Lenovo’s words, is made from “recycled aluminum, magnesium, aerospace-grade carbon fiber, as well as post-consumer materials that are used throughout its construction.”

Many other innovations here are incremental at best. I mean, when the brand starts talking about “new tactile markings” on the keyboard—those little bumps on the F and J keys—you know we’re getting close to an innovation terminus. There’s also a small ridge that juts out at the top of the screen where the webcam (featuring a manual shutter) appears, plus a relocated fingerprint reader, but any other cosmetic changes are tough to suss out.

The big news is under the hood, with the inclusion of the new Intel Core Ultra CPU, this model featuring an Ultra 7 155H chip running at 1.4 GHz. A small brigade of manufacturers is dropping machines with Ultra chips this month, with the big pitch being around artificial intelligence performance, better power efficiency, and improved integrated graphics. AI-driven benchmarks are still a new thing, so until I have a decent base of results to draw from, I’m reporting on my standard battery of tests that mix various business apps and graphics benchmarks.

With a name like Ultra, you're probably expecting the moon when it comes to performance—but for now, those expectations may need to be tempered. (My test unit included 32 GB of RAM and a 1-TB solid state drive.) After running the Carbon through the gauntlet, I didn’t see any kind of earth-shaking improvement over the 2023-era Intel-based ultralight.

General business app performance was fine if far from exemplary, though graphics scores showed a modest improvement over prior machines that were similarly outfitted with integrated GPUs—10 to 20 percent being typical. With just shy of nine hours of battery life (on a standard YouTube video playback at full brightness), power efficiency didn’t seem especially great either.

Maybe I’m being overly critical here; everything else about the laptop is first-rate. The keyboard remains second to none (especially with those new tactile markings), the wide touchpad is responsive and silky smooth, and you can still opt to use the iconic red pointing nub should you prefer that input method. (No touchscreen here, by the way.)

The laptop features plenty of ports, including two Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports (one is used for charging), two USB-A ports, and a full-size HDMI port. There’s no SD card slot, but a SIM card slot is available as an option. The OLED screen is incredibly bright, the audio is crisp and loud, and the fans are restrained in volume, even under load.

The price, however, is something of a problem. The X1 Carbon has always been expensive, but now things are getting downright silly, with the unit I reviewed running $2,703 as tested—and that’s one of the cheaper specs. That’s dramatically more expensive than most other ultralights on the market and a tough pill to swallow in today’s era of business (and personal) belt-tightening. If the X1 had performance through the roof, then I might be able to justify the outlay—but only if I were on the corporate dime.