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Really worried about the new issues rising in the X1 series, like thermal throttling, paint peeling, etc.
so i am looking for a thinkpad and i am kinda lost with the naming series of all of the thinkpads , can anyone pls break it down for me? i did some reserch and found the x1 is considerd the best but i cant find much info weather the T/E series r good, or if which is better than the other. Can anyone help me out ?
I recieved the machine about a week ago with i5-1240P, 16gb RAM, 512GB SSD and a FHD display. After testing and some normal usage, I returned it earlier today and decide to write what I experienced and my thoughts on this machine.
Design
The design of this machine is mostly the same with the previous gen 9 despite the reverse notch. The notch is well hidden when lid closed, but is clearly noticable when you open it. It looks pretty strange, and I hope that Lenovo could redesign it in the next generation.
The top cover has three different logos: a traditional black thinkpad logo, a printed X1 logo and a Lenovo logo. In my personal opinion, I think it is too messy and unnecessarily over-complicated. I would rather prefer the clean design on the P1 gen 2/3 with only the ThinkPad on it.
The palmrest area is also a problem for me. The ThinkPad and X1 logo on the bottom-right corner are taking too much space on such a thin machine, and when I move my right hand across during typing, the concaved X1 logo creates a strange feeling on my hand.
I do not have anything else to complain on this machine. It is mostly still a traditionally designed thinkpad, as it is used to be.
2. Build
The build quality is pretty decent. The machine is extremely lightweight but does not feel cheap. The build is sturdy. I tried to bend the keyboard area and the screen with some force, but the machine is rigid without any noticable twisting. I do not find any crack or dent on the machine. It feels different than the aluminium laptops I have owned previously - the unibody razerbook and macbook, but I would not be hesitated to call it one of the best ultrabooks regarding to build quality.
3. Ports & inputs
The machine has 2 USB type-c and 2 type-a as well as a HDMI output and a headphone jack. It is a ton more than what you can find on the other thin & light ultrabooks. I personally do not like the layout of the ports, as I would be more comfortable to have the headphone jack on my left and HDMI & type-a on my right. But I can clearly see the reason of the layout design as they are reserving space for the sim card slot on the right with the LTE modules.
The keyboard is clearly worse than my current P1 gen 2, but mostly comparable with my previous P1 gen 4. The travel is still pretty deep and firm, but the key caps are slightly unstable on the corners compared with the new macbook pro.
The trackpoint is nice. I do not have any issue with it, and I do not find the cursor floating around as in some older machines. The trackpad is something you find in all modern high-end thinkpads with nice glass surface. It feels pretty good, but not as good as the one on macbooks or the x1 titanium.
4. Performance
The performance of this machine is bad and incapable, both based on the sole experience and comparasions with other ultrabooks.
The machine runs at a maximum of ~19W under full load when I recieved it, and it was not capable of holding even such a small power consumption as the curves bounced back and forth between 17-19W. I suspected that it would be due to the bad thermal paste Lenovo used on the thinkpads, so I repasted it with my own. It was able to maintain ~20W after my repaste with a CPU temp at around 83C. I was also able to get it running at a sustained 25W under prime95 with quite some manual tweakings, but the CPU would stay at more than 95C.
On the other hand, the machine gets pretty hot when used, even under just a small load while I was viewing youtube videos. The top side is extremely hot and feels like burning when touched. The top-left of keyboard area is also ridiculously hot and my hands feels uncomfortable. The corner to the top-left of the escape key can get to something around 60C which I simply cannot understand.
I had a bios update later in the week, and found that Lenovo did something to change the performance and overheating issue by simply locking the peak consumption to 15-18W. It helped a bit on the heating issue, but the keyboard still feels hot and not comfortable to use. And the fan curve is still not managed properly. It is also getting loud even under small load. Fortunately there is not coil whine in my machine, but the loudness still gets annoying.
At this time, I would conclude that the thermal of this machine is one of the worst I have ever used. It is hot, loud, and still not able to even maintain a consistant 20W. Lenovo has completely failed on the performance and thermal side of this machine. It is fine if I only do some web browersing or word editing, but once I want something even a little bit more than this like video viewing, I feel uncomfortable with this machine.
For reference, I can get ~28W on the new XPS 13 Plus with ~87C, while a consistant 35W on the razer book 13 of last years model. Framework has also been doing something 30W, but there is also problem with their fan curve which gets pretty loud. None of these machines get hot as the new X1 carbon gen 10.
5. Battery
The battery life of this machine is not very bad, but nor can it be called any good. I have performed some tests under Fedora 36 with kernel 5.18. With 20% brightness, power saving profile and no WIFI/Bluetooth, I got a ~4.2W under idle, which is considered way too high on such a model. I was getting ~9W with WIFI only and light usage like web browsing and document editing, for which I would only get about 6 hours on such a FHD model. Users may expect even worse battery life with higher resolution displays.
6. Others
There is an annoying issue with this machine which did not get resolved even before I returned it. The boot time is ridiculously long as booting into Windows will stuck at Lenovo's logo for 40-60 secs. Other users have also got the same issue as I was aware of. I have some suspections, but am not interested to further analyze it on a machine that I am not going to keep.
Edit：I forgot to write about the speakers and camera. The camera is good and clear. However I could only get it at 30 fps while expecting 60. On the other hand, the speakers are incredibly high quality. It is not as that good as the macbook pro, but is reasonably clear and been configured well for both high pitch and bass. It is even much noticeably louder than the mbp14. I like the sound quality of it, although I would still go for my headsets if I was really trying to enjoy music.
Conclusions
Lenovo has failed to keep up with even its flagship ultrabook. The X1 Carbon gen 10 in my opinion is a bad machine, with messy design, poor performance, overheating, loud fan and bugs here and there. I would look forward to the gen 11 as there is going to be a model refresh, but would rather consider something like framework if I am in urgent need of a 12th gen intel ultrabook this year.