Gadgetory

well this is David with the verge and this is the Lenovo ThinkPad x1 carbon it's the company's premium ultra book and you'll pay for it it starts at thirteen hundred ninety nine dollars but it looks and feels like a premium laptop - it's made of carbon fiber hence the name and it's really thin and light it weighs less than three pounds and is one of the thinnest ultra books we've seen it's really sleek and good-looking but it's obviously a thick pad with the same color scheme that we've seen for years and years there aren't a ton of ports on the machine there's a USB 3.0 port and a USB 2.0 port plus a display port an SD card slot and a SIM card slot that you can use for internet access the x1 carbon has a 14 inch display but it's chassis is basically the same size as a 13-inch MacBook Air the 1600 by 900 display is good but it's not as impressive as some of the 1080p screens we've seen from other high-end ultra books it's a good screen and since its matte you'll actually be able to use it and see it outdoors one of the things the Nova does best is make keyboards and the x1 carbons is really really good it has the same curved smile design as some of the company's other ultrabooks and it looks weird but it works really well and it's just a really good keyboard the trackpad too is something lenovo is finally starting to get good at the x1 carbon's trackpad is really glassy really smooth and responsive and everything from two finger scrolling to pinch and zoom works pretty well it's not as good as a MacBook mostly because gestures lag a little bit but that seems to be primarily a Windows problem if you're not into the trackpad the x1 carbon also has lenovo's classic TrackPoint nub and mouse buttons I never use them personally but plenty of people do there are two stereo speakers on the bottom of the computer which aren't exactly world-beating but are perfectly solid for a laptop they put out decent stereo sound and are relatively loud the base model the x1 carbon comes with a Core i5 processor four gigs of ram and intel's integrated graphics if you pay more you can get more processing power and more SSD storage but a lot of the specs stay the same even up to the eighteen hundred and forty nine dollar model performance in general is good more than enough for things like browsing the web and watching movies but this definitely isn't a gaming machine by any stretch and games are almost unplayable the computer can boot in a little under 30 seconds and resumes virtually instantly it's almost like an iPad in its speed coming back from sleep the biggest frustration with the computer is its software it runs Windows 7 but there's a ton of bloatware on the machine and lenovo also redesigned a lot of apps and settings menus that just don't look very good or work very well and at points it actually harms the experience of using the computer the computer also tends to get really hot when it's working hard and the fans aren't very loud even when they're working hard but you can actually feel them worrying underneath the computer as you rest your palms on it which is kind of an odd effect the excellent carbons battery life is relatively short for an ultrabook but it has Lenovo's rapid charge technology which actually charges from dead to about 50% in only about 20 minutes and can charge fully in under an hour overall the x1 carbon is one of the best windows ultrabooks yet it's great looking really light and thanks to good performance and a great keyboard is a really good work machine but it's really really expensive it's $200 more than a 13-inch MacBook Air and hundreds of dollars more than a number of other ultrabooks that we've tested and because of that will sadly likely only be for people with deep pockets through their companies if you can afford it though and don't mind keeping a charger handy for a quick top off every few hours the x1 carbon is a really good Windows Ultrabook