Gadgetory

the ThinkPad x1 carbon is the suit of laptops with its thin tailored bezels and stark black back with a logo pocket square accent bringing it out of your bag says you don't have time for someone to be late and that the meeting notes you take will be both somehow exceptionally thorough and concise but is the x1 just a suit or is there more substance behind it like the substance bringing you this video though tacks MEK 1 gaming pc its ultra slim and features a sleek robotic styled design check it out at the link below to learn more that's not really good substance is it tomorrow product the build quality of the ThinkPad x1 carbon is exceptional with a very stiff chassis especially considering how light it is and it's got plastics that feel soft and good on the hands the overall feel of it is more like a tool or a piece of equipment which might not appeal to folks who gravitate towards prettier devices like the surface laptop or Dell XPS but will to others and you know who you are you're the kind of person who wants a thin in light but also still wants to plug stuff into it and that's what we've got a smattering of type A and type C USBs Thunderbolt 3 HDMI and Ethernet with pass-through to their proprietary dock a very important feature for accessing your corporate network when you are docked performance-wise you've got the pick of the litter with 8th gen Intel you series processors from a core i5 all the way up to the core i7 8650 you although it should be noted that lenovo tuned the cpu in their top config to 15 watts so Dells XPS 13 actually performs better with a lower tier processor though not by much over a half hour stress test but ThinkPad x1 carbon reached around 90 degrees which is a little on the hot side but wasn't enough for it to thermal throttle putting it ahead in performance of basically every other thin enlight that we've tested and the keyboard that's another strong point with its long 18 millimeter key travel and super satisfying tactile bump it's a solid contender for best notebook keyboard on the market compared to say the MacBook Pro and don't think I can actually hit the same peak speed for short burst e messages but if I had to type for hours I would much rather use the x1 which I can easily do with it's over 6 hours of battery life and while we're praising the keyboard isn't it about time that somebody put snipping tool' on the Print Screen button now the trackpad this is also good but maybe not as excellent the tracking and feel is solid and satisfying but pulling out the macbook pro for comparison reminded me how nice it would be if I could click on the whole thing and how small it is like I realized that the options are either a small trackpad or a mouse nipple so it's not a simple choice but I'm personally not a TrackPoint guy so yes sorry sorry everyone but I would actually like to see that vertical space used another way now there are two screen options that really stick out with the X one with the most interesting being the new 2560 by 1440 glossy finish with HDR side by side even dang this thing is nice to look at at this size you really don't need 4k but the extra sharpness at 1440p is more than welcome than the colors brightness and black levels all blew me away which is all fine and good if you're buying a laptop for watching movies but given how how do I put this gently a bad yeah yeah that's the word I was looking for bad the speaker sound movies are probably not what you want this for you want it to use between nine and five so actually out of the two displays we tried the 1080p with touch is the one that got the most use it's matte finish is great when you have to work under fluorescent lights and I'm never going to turn down the opportunity to navigate using my screen unfortunately I do really like unlocking my computer with my face and facial recognition sign in is only available on the higher res model forcing me to use the fingerprint reader to the right of the trackpad which by the way is the wrong place anywhere but the power button these days is the wrong place though to lenovo's credit while their reader isn't as fast as the dell XPS or the LG gram it uses match on chip technology for an additional layer of security so I won't be docking any points what I will be docking points for though is the webcam I do like the additional security of being able to just flip it shut so that no one can be spying on me in the event that my computer is compromised but when it isn't disabled quite frankly it is just not good enough for a webcam in 2018 especially on a business SKU that is presumably going to be used for conference calls taking apart the ThinkPad x1 carbon is pretty easy but doesn't give you access to a whole lot of upgrade options the storage is upgradable which is nice but the RAM is not so make sure you grab enough when you're buying though hmm now that I think about it should you buy one of these the pricing makes a clear recommendation here actually kind of difficult at regular price it is a big fat no but lenovo was really cagey about whether the promotional prices on their website were actually promos or if they were just attempts to make you feel like you're getting a special deal every day so if the price you pay is closer to what was on the site when we were shooting this about 1350 to start that is still more than an XPS but for business use the sim slot could massively improve productivity in the field and then back in the office the x1 will make the IT department happy as a clam to when it's connected to the dock MAC address pass-through PXE boot and wake-on-lan along with all of the additional security features superfish notwithstanding will allow your company to be productive during the day and sleep well at night speaking of being productive during the day Skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of classes in design business technology and more their premium membership gives you unlimited access to high quality classes on must know topics so you can improve your skills unlock new opportunities and do the work that you love Taryn has actually been using Skillshare a bunch he's done courses on logo design mastering Adobe Illustrator and is currently working through Duncan rogoff's mastering Adobe After Effects course Skillshare is also more affordable than most learning platforms out there an annual subscription is less than $10 a month so since Skillshare are sponsoring this video the first 250 people to use the promo link in the description will get their first two months $4.99 our prompter doesn't support all characters I'm going to guess that sense so go check that out so thanks for watching guys if this video sucked you know what to do but if it was awesome get subscribed hit that like button or check out the link to buy the stuff we featured in the video description also down there is our merch store which has cool shirts like this one and our community forum which you should totally join