An Overall Improvement: Living With the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 11 (2023)

For years, Lenovo’s ThinkPad X1 Carbon series has been the perfect example of a thin-and-light business notebook—lightweight, durable, with plenty of power and a good selection of ports. I’ve spent the last few weeks using the current generation, dubbed Gen 11, and the experience is almost identical to the previous Gen 10 version, with the exception of a step up to the Intel 13th Generation (Raptor Lake) processor.

It looks virtually identical, with a 14-inch display, carbon fiber and magnesium alloy body, the black matte paint and the TrackPoint pointing stick (along with a decent track pad) that distinguish the ThinkPad line. It still measures 0.6 by 12.4 by 8.8 inches and weighs 2.57 pounds by itself and 3.25 pounds with the included 65-watt charger. That’s still very light for a 14-inch machine, even if other models like the X1 Nano are a bit lighter.

The biggest change this year is the processor. The unit I tested came with an Intel Core i7-1355U (Raptor Lake) processor with 2 performance cores (each offering two threads each) and eight efficient cores, thus a total of 10 cores and 12 threads. This has a base power of 15 watts, with a maximum frequency of 5GHz on the performance cores. Compared to the machine I tested last year, which had an Intel Core i7-1260P (Alder Lake) processor, it has two fewer performance core and thus four fewer threads, along with less cache (12MB vs 18 MB), lower base power, but a faster turbo for the CPU– up to 5GHz. The processor is manufactured on the same Intel 7 process(Opens in a new window) and has the same Iris Xe graphics with 96 execution cores and vPro support for enterprise manageability. In other words, the basic processor isn’t much different, but it has fewer cores running at higher speeds.

This results in some interesting benchmark numbers. I saw improvements of about 10% in tests such as PCMark 10 and a bit more in Cinebench, but many graphics benchmarks in the 3D Mark suite were slower. (The latest machines I’ve tested with AMD’s Ryzen chips such as the HP Dragonfly Pro or the ThinkPad 13 Z1, continue to do much better in graphics). Note that all the tested machines had 16GB of memory and a 512GB SSD.

On my tougher tests, a big portfolio simulation in MatLab took a bit more than 38 minutes, nearly identical to last year’s version, and notably slower than the Dragonfly Pro (which took under 34 minutes). Converting a large file in Handbrake video conversion took an hour and 50 minutes, about 20 minutes less than on last year’s X1 Carbon but the Dragonfly Pro did this in an hour and 9 minutes, much faster.

On the other hand, a big Excel spreadsheet ran in 35 minutes, better than the 41 minutes on the Alder-Lake-based ThinkPad, and far better than the 47 minutes it took on a Dragonfly Pro. I believe this is because Excel doesn’t take advantage of the extra cores, but does take advantage of the higher clock speeds.

In any case, this year’s model is an improvement on last year’s, and performance overall was quite good.

Battery life seemed a bit better than last year’s model. On PCMark’s Modern Office test, it lasted more than 15 hours for me, a step up. On PCMag’s video playback test, it lasted a little less than 13 hours, good but not quite best in class.

In other respects, this year’s ThinkPad X1 Carbon isn’t much changed.

As before, the left side of the machine has two USB-C/Thunderbolt 4 ports (which can be used for charging), a USB-A port and an HDMI connector. The right side has a lock slot, another USB-A port, and a headphone/microphone jack. I’m very happy with the ports – better than on many lightweight machines – but it would be more convenient if charging ports were on both sides of the machine. 

As usual, it features the ThinkPad keyboard, with a red TrackPoint pointing stick in the middle, along with a moderately-sized trackpad. I continue to find the ThinkPad keyboards to be the best among lightweight laptops.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

It has a 1080p webcam, which I found to be good, but a little soft. It’s not nearly as sharp as the best webcams I’ve tested. It comes with Lenovo Commercial Vantage software that lets you adjust things like brightness and contrast. As usual with ThinkPad’s, it has a physical privacy switch. The camera also worked well with Windows Hello, and the machine has a fingerprint reader built into the power button. Still, security and cameras are an area where the ThinkPad line could improve.

For sound, it continues to have two upward firing speakers on either side of the keyboard and two downward firing features with Dolby Atmos, plus a quad-array microphone system. Dolby Voice lets you suppress outside sounds from a video call and provides nice options. Overall, I thought the sound quality was good for an enterprise laptop.

The model I used had a 14-inch 1920-by-1200 IPS touch display, in the modern 16:10 ratio that is now used on most laptops, with Eyesafe anti-blue light certification. I generally like touch screens on laptops a lot, finding them very good for things like hitting buttons to mute or unmute in a video conference (where you might not have your fingers on the keyboard). The screen looked very nice. Lenovo offers a variety of upgrades, including a version with a privacy guard, or one with a 2880-by-1800 OLED display. Other options include LTE and 5G WWAN modems, but I didn’t test these.

On Lenovo’s web site, the X1 Carbon Gen 11 starts at $1,275 for a version with an Intel i5-1335U processor, non-touch screen, and 256GB of storage. A model similar to what I tested configured for $1,650. This seems quite reasonable, better than the prices I saw a year ago for the Gen 10 (current prices for the Gen 10 are a bit more than $100 less than the Gen 11).

In general, I remain very happy with the ThinkPad X1 Carbon series. I’ve tested machines that have had better webcams or audio, or better performance on some tasks, but they tend to be heavier and often more expensive. I’ve tested machines that are lighter, but they tend to have fewer ports and often worse battery life and/or smaller screens. Again, my biggest gripe is the webcam, but even that isn’t bad just a little soft. For general business use, the X1 Carbon remains a top-notch 14-inch enterprise laptop.