Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 10 Review: Sleek And Premium

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The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 10 is a well-built laptop aimed at business professionals and students who are on the go and require a device that is both powerful, dependable and light weight. With a 12th Gen Intel Core vPro processor built on Intel's Evo platform, it has the horsepower to run the apps both business professionals and students need, with the manageability features IT pros are looking for as well. 

ThinkPad laptops have been a longtime favorite with business professionals for their durability and solid keyboard features, such as Lenovo's red trackpoint button and shaped key caps, rather than the mundane chiclet. Built to MIL-SPEC 810H standards, the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 10 is designed to withstand the harsh environments, shock and vibe, and still keep going. Equipped with a 12th Gen Intel Core i7-1260P CPU with integrated Intel Iris Xe graphics, this laptop should be powerful enough for most business and school use cases. With a 57Whr battery and Lenovo's Rapid Charge tech, you should be able to get all the work done you need without to much of a hassle looking for a power jack. However, those are Lenovo's claims so let's get into this review and find out how this new flagship ThinkPad stands up to the competition... 

The keyboard on the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 10 has undergone a bit of an overhaul. The underside has been redesigned for better air intake for better airflow to the the system's cooling solution. The new design, combined with the dual fan and rear venting, should allow for better overall thermal performance. All of this should provide the user with hours of work and/or play, without having to worry about the laptop getting uncomfortably warm. We will take a more in depth look at the thermals later.

Typing on the keyboard is a very comfortable experience. The key caps here are slightly larger than on a typical laptop chiclet keyboard, which makes typing more forgiving in general. Key travel feels generous for this class of machine and provides reasonably good tactile feedback. As for backlighting, you can choose between two brightness levels, both of which are sufficient for typing in a dimly-lit or dark settings.


On the right side of the laptop you will find a Kensington lock slot, a USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 port, and a headphone/microphone port. Missing from the landscape on the model sent to us for review is an optional Nano SIM slot.
The unit we tested came with a 1920x1200 resolution touch display that provides accurate color and deep blacks. You can opt for up to a 4K WQUXGA touch screen, or a 2.8K OLED WUXGA panel if you need a higher resolution display. All the panels are equipped with a 16:10 aspect ratio with narrow bezels. Most also include Eyesafe certification in order to reduce offensive blue-light emission.
The latest ThinkPads also have an updated Communications Bar, which houses the 1080p resolution FHD camera, with an optional infrared (IR) and Computer Vision features. We applaud Lenovo for the FHD webcam in this era of video conferences, versus the 720p camera onboard Dell's new XPS 13 Plus. All the models also come with a handy webcam privacy shutter, which can be slid to the left to cover the webcam when not in use. Also on the Communications Bar are 4x360-degree mics with integrated AI-based noise cancellation and Dolby Voice. All of these features should provide for a clear picture while video chatting, and crisp audio with minimal background noise coming through.

Finally, the new X1 Carbon comes with a fingerprint reader built-in to the power button. Setup was quick and easy to complete and the sensor performed very well during our testing. We only experienced one instance where we felt as though I placed a digit on the sensor in the correct manner and it did not recognize it. The rest of the time it recognized fingerprints quickly and drop us to the desktop in a very timely manner.

It's clear that Lenovo's new ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 10 delivers in terms of both build quality and features that mainstream users are looking for, but how does Intel's 12th Gen Core i7-1260P CPU and Lenovo's thermal solution and chassis design hold up to testing? Let's find out...