ThinkPad X1 Carbon And Miix 630 Hands-On At Lenovo CES 2018 Suite Tour

Lenovo had a lot of new products on display at CES 2018, and we were on hand to get a hands-on look at what the company has in store for the first half of the year. Of course, the stars of the show were no doubt the newest members of the ThinkPad X1 family. These include the X1 Carbon, X1 Yoga and X1 Tablet. All of the systems have been upgraded with 8^th generation Intel Core processors (up to a Core i7) and feature both USB Type-C (3.1) and Thunderbolt 3 connectivity. The X1 Carbon and X1 Yoga can be had with 14-inch displays with up to 4K resolution, while the X1 Tablet's display measures 13 inches across (3000x2000).

We should note that all three machines have PCIe NVMe storage, USB-C charging, and far-field microphones for integrated Amazon Alexa support (which is a growing trend among Windows 10 PCs being announced this year at CES 2018).

To complement the new ThinkPad X1 family is a new $399 Thunderbolt Graphics Dock, which allows you to pass-through power to your notebook/tablet using a single Thunderbolt 3 cable, and provides an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 GPU. It's an incredibly small box that is much smaller than other Thunderbolt docks that we've seen in the past. Other "Think" branded devices on display included the $1,349 ThinkVision P32u (32-inch, 4K resolution) with Thunderbolt 3 daisy-chaining support. There are also refreshed ThinkVision X1 (27-inches, 4K) and ThinkVision X24 (24-inches, Full HD) monitors that will be available shortly priced at $249 and $799 respectively. 

Our Lenovo suite tour also gave us a nice good look at the Miix 630, which is the company's first foray into an ARM-powered Windows 10 device. In this case, the Miix 630 features a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor, which was the SoC of choice for most of 2017's flagship Android smartphones.

The Miix 630 also includes a Snapdragon X16 LTE modem to always keep you connected, and weighs in at a mere 2.93 pounds with its keyboard attached (you can also detach the keyboard and use the device in tablet mode). As for battery life, the reliance on ARM architecture means that the Miix is targeted at 20 hours of runtime with Windows 10 S installed.

Lenovo isn't quite ready to talk about performance at this point, but we were overall impressed with system fluidity when navigating through Windows 10 S on a prototype system. However, we should get an idea of how the Miix 630 stacks up to its Intel-based counterparts when it launches during the second quarter.

We also got a chance to get our hands on the Mirage Solo VR headset and the Mirage Camera. The former is the first standalone Google Daydream VR headset is powered by the Snapdragon 835 VR platform. The fully self-contained unit provides each eye with a 1280x1440 resolution viewpoint, 64GB of internal storage is included, as is a separate Daydream controller. Lenovo is targeting seven hours of battery life for the Mirage Solo.

The Mirage Camera, on the other hand, is one way to create your very own VR content thanks to its dual 13MP cameras with fish-eye lenses. The Mirage Camera supports the VR180 video format and can wirelessly upload content to Google Photos or YouTube.

Overall, Lenovo looks to have a pretty impressive lineup in store for 2018 and we can't wait for these devices to start filtering into our workbenches for review.

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