Been rocking Thinkpads since my T600 in the late 90s. At some point I switched to Carbon X1 models, getting the very first model, then a Gen 3, a Gen 6, and now typing on a Gen 10.

Perhaps this is old news, but I just wanted to provide my personal opinion on this disappointing machine:

I actually wasn't dissatisfied with my Carbon X1 Gen 6. For the work I do which is mostly web browsing and having a couple Office apps open, it kept up pretty well. That said, I would have to keep a very close eye on how many tabs my browser had open.

Going for the new gadget high and hoping I could pay more attention to my computing work and leisure and less attention to RAM usage, I got a top of the line Carbon X1 Gen 10 about 6 months ago.

First off, contrary to what I assumed would be true, the Carbon X1 is thicker and heavier than my Gen 6 - noticeably so. I mistakenly thought newer = lighter and thinner. Not so.

The performance is not that much better then my Gen 6 - especially considering it has 32GB of RAM instead of 16GB. I maybe pay a little less attention to the number of tabs I have open but I still have to restart Chome every so often.

The trackpoint drift is HORRIBLE. I wonder how many hours I've wasted waiting for the trackpoint to settle down so I could start using it again. It's particularly aggravating when you are doing detailed pointer work - say, entering things in a spreadsheet or checking off items in a QuickBooks reconciliation screen. The trackpoint will not stay still for any length of time. And, yes, I've tried all the "solves" listed on the internet.

The laptop has a serious cooling challenge. It's 74F in my house right now and it just shut down due to thermal overload an hour ago. I assure you, the laptop is either on a table or on a book when I'm using it so the fan intake is able to operate without obstruction.

I will say, the laptop takes a lot of abuse. If I am angry, I can type with as much force as I can muster and the keyboard doesn't give an millimeter. The thing has been knocked off my side table a couple times and has come up unscathed. The touchscreen comes in handy when I want to magnify something (getting old and my vision is getting worse).

All that said, I sorta want my $2K back. I expected more.

Warning: English is not my native language, so I asked an AI to rephrase my text a bit while keeping the original as much as possible. Sorry if this annoys anyone

Background: I bought a new Thinkpad X1 Carbon Gen10 model on March 10, 2023, for ~2700 USD. Before this model, I owned a MacBook Pro 2019 and an ASUS Rog Strix G513 gaming laptop. This was my first and likely last model from Lenovo. Initially, I was very happy with this product.

My use cases for the laptop: Mostly software development, Browse the internet. Nothing out of the ordinary, just a workhorse that should handle things like:

• Support for modern code editors like vscode and Jetbrains (Goland, Rider, Android Studio), often multiple instances along with testing programs.

• Containers, emulators, and virtual machines (WSL/Hyper-V, Docker, Android emulators).

• Browsers, messengers, and related productivity tools.

Pros:

• The best keyboard on the market, IMHO. Even external mechanical keyboards like Keychron can't compare to the comfort and pleasant feel of working with the native one.

• Ergonomic body. 14 inches, pleasant to the touch, light, and thin. The dream and ideal of what a laptop should be.

• Many smart features like fingerprint reader and Face ID.

• Security features thanks to integration with Lenovo enterprise services.

• Compliance with protection standards (at least on paper, like water and dust resistance, etc.).

Cons:

• TERRIBLE, SILLY processor. It's literally incapable of doing anything. Under minimal load, it operates within 75-95 degrees Celsius, causing constant throttling.

• TERRIBLE battery life. Don't even dream of working for more than 2.5-3 hours on battery under MEDIUM load.

• AWFUL cooling performance. The fans practically don't cope even with medium load.

• Ultimately, the build quality didn't meet the expectations of reliability and quality that everyone praised so much. When opening the display, it creaks. The physical buttons above the touchpad can also sometimes make creaking sounds. After 2 years of use, the fan started making sounds similar to a duck quacking, and then completely failed.

• Awful speaker sound.

• Display brightness is insufficient, especially after the Retina screen on the MacBook Pro.

In the end, I am completely disappointed with this product. The CPU overheating issues are killing me... it has become a huge blocker for me and stopping my work, effectively turning the laptop from a "workhorse" into an "anchor" that, instead of performing its tasks and making my life productive, only poisons it.

The maximum it's good for is doing various tasks in a browser and watching videos. only then it can compete with other laptops from the cheap segment.

Analyzing the cost I paid for it, I get tilted and feel like I was scammed. For the same price now, I could have bought Apple products with ARM chips and gotten a performance increase of several hundred times, be able to work using battery at least 6h and it wouldn't burn my hands/legs. I would have excellent sound quality and could even run LLMs locally or play modern games on maximum settings (spoiler: the Thinkpad can't even launch simple indie games like Raft or Liar's Bar).

Who is to blame for this? I don't know. Maybe other Lenovo models are far better, and the main problem is the HORRIFIC Intel processors that have pissed me off so much that I will never buy their products again, no matter what they are. I've seen reviews that older Thinkpad X1 models with AMD processors work much better and more stably.

so finally conclusion: I've had enough suffering, and likely in the very near future, I will try to buy a new MacBook Pro with an M4 processor and forget all this like a bad dream. But for now, I am deeply disappointed.

P.S.: Yes, guys, I changed the thermal paste, perform regular cleanings, the laptop does not operate on unstable surfaces like in the bed.

I also tested all possible OS, including Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, and Chrome OS Flex. The last two performed particularly well, these problems weren't as obvious with them. But due to work, I am temporarily forced to use Windows.

Thanks to those who read this far. Share your experiences with the X1 line, it's very interesting to hear about

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.

1. 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.