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Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 3 - Premium, Lightweight Business Ultrabook

2015-04-08
I can't remember who it was and I'm actually not sure where this particular viewer got the idea from but someone got it in his or her head that I'm somehow professional enough to review a business laptop and suggested that I take a look at the lenovo x1 carbon gen 3 a premium lightweight business ultra book by the way if you enjoyed our cherian sennheiser factory tours stay tuned because assuming this video gets posted on schedule I just got back from touring the omron Factory in Japan and that's coming very soon the Coolermaster Nova touch tkl is powered by Topor hybrid capacitive switches for the ultimate typing experience and is now available for a reduced price click my face to learn more now the specs of ultra books aren't really that variable so when I went on the Novo site and saw that my CPU choices ranged from a Core i5 dual core with hyper threading to a slightly faster Core i5 to a slightly faster than that core i7 dual core with some extra cash to go along with its hyper threading with the only performance differences being slightly different clock speeds I wasn't surprised what did surprise me was the completely unnecessary limitation on the 5200 you equipped model where it can only be configured with 4 gigs of RAM with $100 5300 you option being required to upgrade it I mean first of all 4 gigs is pathetic for any modern computer and second of all those CPUs literally cost the same with the 5200 you have in no place in a business grade laptop anyway since aside from being the same as the 5300 you or worse across the board it lacks business grade features like Vee Pro and trusted execution technology so the entry-level starting at 1199 Bottle is a total laughs anyway this is what Apple does right instead of offering their customers stupid options that make no sense just to have a lower advertised two starting price point they build computers that will please their customers and slap a price tag to match on them but that's not to say that Apple does everything right either and Lenovo didn't send me one of the asinine configurations of the x1 anyway so let's take a look at what we do have in front of us today it's got a Core i5 5300 u 8 gigs of ram HD graphics 5500 clocked at 900 megahertz a 256 gig solid-state drive intel 7265 AC wireless with Bluetooth 4.0 a 50 watt battery that managed about four and a half hours in my standard PC market test although it should be noted that when you're not pushing it really hard it can run a lot longer than that but of course people don't buy think pads for their specs since lots of portable computing devices that offer great battery life in specs they buy them for the legendary quality something that Lenovo hasn't seemed to mix up since buying IBM's computer division and the back to business basics style something that the last generation x1 carbon actually did kind of mess up with those bizarre adaptive capacitive buttons along the top but the gen 3 x1 carbon features none of that nonsense the screen lid which is surprisingly strong for being so thin by the way is plain scratch resistant black with a single red LED dotting the eye in the ThinkPad logo and the underside is pretty much the same with only the intake for the single cooling fan which is satisfactorily quiet even under heavy load and kept my CPU under 65 degrees Celsius by the way and the shockingly bad bottom mounted speakers they actually get reasonably loud but I had to double check if there was an audio control panel with like an auditorium preset enabled or something since music had this distant sound as if it was being played on a super loud Bluetooth speaker from the other end of a football field io is fairly run-of-the-mill the right side consisting of a vent a proprietary mini Ethernet port and a USB 3.0 port with the left side having power and dock connector side by side HDMI and mini display port another USB 3.0 and a 4-pole audio jack but things get more interesting once we flip the screen up on this puppy because it's 2560 by 1440 matte IPS touchscreen display is unlike any that I've ever used before I've seen some reviews online say it's not the brightest to display on the market and this is true but it's brighter than I needed in any situation where I used it and I really liked both the resolution choice 1440p looks great at the size and requires less dramatic text scaling which makes the issues associated with it less noticeable than some of the 3k displays on the market and the matte finish that feels nice on my fingertips and helps reject fingerprint smudges from using the touchscreen as much as it helps reduce glare from nearby light sources so kudos on the display lenovo and while we're singing this notebooks praises holy crap this keyboard rocks the key caps are a little bit slippery er than I prefer but considering how thin this thing is like 1.8 centimeters they have an astonishingly long travel and typing on the rounded chiclet keys on the x1 carbon is the second best typing experience I've had on a notebook with the one notable exception being the msi gt80 Titan with its full-size mechanical keyboard and the layout is with the exception of the why on earth did you do that swapping of the function and control keys very good - with full size up and down arrow keys dedicated page up and down in print screen keys and some useful Windows 8 shortcuts from f8 to f12 so there a fingerprint reader along the right-hand side just super handy and fast to use by the way I've never had a PC with one before and the function control swap that I mentioned before are pretty much the only unusual thing oh sorry did I say only unusual things I guess I forgot to mention the big red swollen nipple in the middle of the keyboard the young kids might not remember the days when track pads were unusual partly because they totally sucked and the most nubbin reigned supreme but this laptop and I guess this leads pretty well into the conclusion for this product was made for people who want high-end performance in a superlight carbon-fiber design but do remember the days of nubbins with dedicated buttons for them positioned right below the keyboard and unfortunately no one else the touch pad on the x1 carbon is so close to being awesome but has one deal breaking flaw for me the glass surface feels great and it tracks very accurately but right and left click rely on having a finger pressed down on the top surface of the trackpad so my casual leaning against the bottom of the touchpad use would cause frequent miss clicks if the kind of thing I could get used to but I feel like I shouldn't have to dedicated right and left switches under the pad next time please Lenovo and while we're at it where the actual heck is the 16 gig configuration option it's like you and Dell got together in our back room somewhere with cigars and decided the best way to sell the 2016 models of the x1 carbon and XPS 13 was to cripple this years with gigs of RAM max so I guess that's pretty much it for the x1 carbon thanks for watching guys like the video if you liked it dislike it if you thought it just plain shocked leave a comment on in the forum link that is linked in the video description if you have feelings that are more complicated than either of those things also down there is a link to our merchandise where you can buy a cool t-shirt like this one a place where you can give us a contribution if you like our content and you want us to keep on eating and I'll link where you can change your Amazon bookmarked one with our affiliate code so your going to buy one of these or something else please do click through our affiliate link because we get a small kickback and it costs you nothing other than a little bit of your time which I know is precious so that is actually asking a lot but we appreciate it when you do it and as always don't forget to subscribe and follow and all that good stuff if you want to see more of our videos
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