(Part 2) **You make what you need. **

So how do you actually make the Thinkpad X1 Yoga Gen 7 a better device? I’ve put together the following so others can follow the steps I used to make the Gen 7 a far more useable device IMHO. To be fair, these are tweaks for my specific use case which is light to medium workloads, often plugged in, but for hours a day with the laptop in my hands or on my lap and around other people. So comfort, smooth performance, relative power efficiency, and quiet are priorities. I’m not running long compile sessions on this thing, I’m not running heavy transcoding, I’m not running significant multithreaded workloads most of the time. I want a baseline cool, quiet, well built device that in the rare scenarios where I need higher performance CAN push itself much harder if allowed to.

CPU
-For some ungodly reason Lenovo has defaulted the computer into “Maximum Performance” mode when plugged in, this is actually almost counterproductive, with the CPU bursting to 4+Ghz with almost no demand and creating a ton of heat which leads to immediate throttling of the CPU, a burning hot top-left corner of the chassis (which is occasionally where you’re holding it, which is unpleasant) and a fan that sounds like a jet engine. Thankfully, if you go into the bios and change the performance setting to “Balanced” when plugged in as well as when on battery much of this terrible behavior is improved, at least when light only doing light work. After changing that setting the CPU doesn’t seem to boost nearly so aggressively, with the CPU staying much cooler on low-intensity workloads, though it can still get quite hot if you have consistent workloads that push the CPU consistently for more than a few minutes. -If you want the CPU to stay even cooler when you are actually working the computer a bit harder, you’ll have to do a bit more legwork. Throttlestop, while unable to underclock the CPU (thanks Intel for taking the most annoyingly lazy route to “fixing” plundervolt by just disabling undervolting completely), can still adjust the speed shift parameters and boost behavior of the device. You can set speed shift EPP to 176 from the baseline 128 and it really reduces the amount of unnecessary boosting with mild to moderate CPU demand.
-If you really want to damp down the production of heat though, you should really disable Turbo boost and set speed shift really high (I use 196). With this setting the CPU rarely uses more than 12watts even when stressed, and usually is sitting around 5-10 Watts. Despite this I barely notice any change in responsiveness or performance in tasks. This may be because my experience is with a X1 Yoga Gen 7, and even throttled like this the 1280P still does a TON more work overall. I have checked (cursorily) the performance in this mode and you get a multicore performance score of 7348 on Cinebench R23, which isn’t that much worse than baseline, but you have a single core score of only 696 (versus my baseline of 1383). While this sounds terrible, this is still equivalent according to Cinebench with a i7-4850HQ (I’m assuming also unthrottled in any way and a CPU that used to be used for hot and heavy desktop replacement laptops) while not getting hotter than 55 degrees and with whisper quiet fans. To me this is a huge win, I now have a laptop that can run whisper quiet at a performance level above that of my previous 2nd gen device when it was running jet engine loud.

Fans
-I’m really not sure why Lenovo has such a strange fan curve for the Gen 7, the fan does these weird bursts of work, or ramps up to incredibly loud levels when the CPU is really not that hot.
-To fix this annoyance I installed TPFanControl, specifically the 2 fan version by Shugzengz (you have to install the original TPFanControl first, then you can have the Shugzengz version run) and set a smart fan curve that isn’t so objectionable (see below for the settings I used, I do not guarantee these will be good for everyone, I am still tweaking them but they are keeping the darned thing at levels 0-2 effectively all the time and avoiding the terribly unpleasant “spikes” of fan ramp-up that the bios control causes). With the CPU tweaks listed above you can really get to a near silent fan profile almost all the time. Level=50 0
Level=52 1
Level=58 2
Level=62 3
Level=65 4
Level=68 5
Level=70 6
Level=75 7

OLED Screen
-I find that in a dark room the minimum brightness is still quite bright. You can download the Dimmer application can make things darker however, and the OLED nature of the screen keeps backlight bleed from being an issue. -I can get ~4 hours of work at 2nd to lowest brightness settings on battery, and it’s still quite visible even when reflecting the sky. Not direct sunlight good, but indirect window lighting is fine.

Conclusion of Part 2
-So now I have a quiet, relatively efficient and cool laptop that is still about an order of magnitude more performant than my old X1 Yoga 2nd gen, with relatively few comparative compromises. And if I really want to max out performance for some reason, I always have some Throttlestop profiles that allow the CPU to boost closer to the 1280P’s true peak performance. Yes, it is a waste to have such a high power CPU in a chassis that can’t really take advantage of it, but ultimately that’s not something someone with my use case ever really wanted. What I did want was Thinkpad grade laptop construction, with near peak performance components like the screen/camera/sound/memory and acceptable CPU and graphics performance, in a light 2 in 1 package, which is exactly what the X1 Yoga Gen7 OLED gets you, if you spend some time tweaking things and tuning down to a performance band that is more reasonable (and still more than acceptable compared to really nice previous generations). -TLDR: Change the bios settings for performance plugged in, get Throttlestop and turn down the boosting profile, and get TPFanControl2 to smooth out the Bios’ horrible fancurves, it changes this device radically.

Hi everyone,
I’m a student, but I’m trying to buy a laptop that will last me around 5 years. I’ll also be working in media (photo + video editing, content creation, etc.). I can’t decide between keeping a X1 Yoga Gen 6 or switching to a X1 Carbon Gen 8. Both are refurbished!

470€ - X1 Yoga Gen 6 - Core i7-1165G7, 16 GB RAM, 512 GB SSD

(why I want to keep it):

• The display is honestly fantastic (4K) and the 16:10 aspect ratio is great for studying/reading.

My concerns with the Yoga G6:

• I’ve read about USB-C ports failing on some models. I could live with one port dying, but I’m worried about ending up in a situation where charging becomes unreliable.

• Since it’s 4K + i7, the battery life isn’t amazing

440€ - X1 Carbon Gen 8 (why it’s tempting) - Core i7-10610U, 16 GB RAM, 512 GB SSD:

• The keyboard is better and it seems like the Carbon might have the better long-term durability/lifetime overall.

But the Carbon’s big problem for me:

• The display is awful (at least on my unit). I feel like I would have to replace it (100€+).

• In darker environments especially, the screen (especially whites) hurts my eyes, which makes studying unpleasant.

So I’m stuck choosing between:

• Great screen + some worries (Yoga G6) vs

• Better keyboard/longevity but bad screen (Carbon G8)

What would you do in my situation?

Hey Everyone,

I am looking for a refurbished unit of X1 Yoga Model. I have had my eyes on gen 4 that a friend is trying to sell, but curious what people consider the 'best' generations for these laptops?

NOTE: I am quite a power user so I'll take no less than 16 gb, i5/i7 and faster ports. Plan on running Windows + Linux in dual-boot fashion. Also want to experience this 'awesome' Thinkpad keyboard experience with the Yoga form-factor.

suggest away. thank you.