ThinkPad X1 Carbon 2018 review: The only laptop in a professional’s paradise | Hacker News Reader

ThinkPad X1 Carbon 2018 review: The only laptop in a professional’s paradise

arstechnica.com

126 pointsb5140 comments

I've been lurking at the X1 carbon for years, but now I'm finally considering getting one I can't decide between the T480s this year!

On one side, the light weight and light size of the X1 is really appealing, on the other the larger ram, graphic chip and lower heat of the T480s makes it look like a wiser choice...

At this price, it is a hard decision. I unfortunately can't get my hand on both machines before buying one in the part of the world I am in, did anyone had the chance to compare them both side by side? Is the difference of size/weight noticeable in hand?

Another aspect is the display. The new 500nits HDR screen looks awesome, but I've been thinking a mate, 300nits display would be better for programming? I don't think I have seen a mate screen on a laptop for years... Is it really better for outdoor use? Would it make sense to privilege it, even being 200nits lower?

The X1 Carbon has low power LPDDR RAM which means it can sleep for a lot longer with minimal battery drain. This is a very useful feature for me, as my laptop is almost permanently sleeping.

Why sleep when you have 2read 1write GB/s SSD in there? suspend is couple of seconds.

I previously had an X1 Carbon, but have been using a T460s for the past two years. This is exactly my situation as well. I still haven't decided yet. I've been quite happy with both.

I'm typing this on an X1 Carbon and have to say that if I was going to love a computer, this would be the one. Battery life, ruggedness, weight ... it's all just perfect (and I'm a firm believer in the adage that 90% is generally good enough).

Have a look at the Notebookcheck reviews, they’re very thorough and test things like thermal throttling/efficacy of the cooling system which aren’t mentioned in most other reviews.

I was in the same position last year (T470, T470s, X1C5?), but ruled out the T470s rather quickly because its cooling system was barely better than the X1C5’s, nowhere near that of the T470. I have no idea if the T480s was improved in this regard so don’t apply last year’s reasoning to this year’s lineup :) I went for the X1C5 because of the much nicer screens vs the T470 and because it seemed more future proof (2x TB3/USB-C instead of 1x and more PCIe lanes to the Thunderbolt controller). Plus, a year later and I’m still fascinated how light it is. Overall I’m extremely happy with mine.

I /just/ got mine in the mail (i7, 16GB, WQHD non-touch, non-IR webcam, 1TB SSD). My comparison is a 15" Macbook Pro Retina (2014). Some initial impressions: Build quality is good, it feels solid yet light. Minor nitpick is that the screen doesn't retain its position well if you hold it in your hand. I'm not known to be gentle with my equipment, and it gets thrown in bags, used in the freezing cold, etc; it's a consumer device with limited life span, I know that going in. The trackpad is one of the best I've seen on a Windows laptop, but still no match for the Macbook (although could be my muscle memory). Also I love the aesthetics of the thing, it looks and feels professional and doesn't have any of the frills "gaming" stuff usually has. There was only one Intel sticker, which I managed to peel off without residue (what's up with those stickers...). The white backlit keyboard is a nice touch, which is overall amazing to type on. I still can't deal with Windows though (it just feels so sloooow), but I'm reluctant to install Linux right now because of a bug in the trackpad drivers (it becomes unresponsive) if you have the NFC option (which I do). I'll wait a couple more months for that to get sorted out. Right now I'm running Linux (Ubuntu 17.10) in VMWare Workstation 14, but that's also very slow (noticeable input lag when typing or dragging windows). But that's all software, I'm sure that will become better over time. The bad though: the audio quality is awful, I mean a 2014 Macbook Pro is bad ... but this is a whole new level. The case even vibrates/resonates with the volume turned up a little bit, and the whole thing sounds like a tin can. Also it gets REALLY hot, as in uncomfortable to use on my lap. The fan curves probably could also use some tuning, it goes on and off often, which I dislike over a continuous sound and would probably help the thermals too. Although, I haven't done any benchmarks yet to check for throttling. I was hoping it would replace my aging Macbook, but it'll probably end up in a drawer until I squeeze the last bit of life out of a 2014 machine, which is in my opinion still the best laptop ever build. The new Macbooks are not really an option (even if I could justify the ridiculous costs) due to lack of USB type A/B ports (which I need for astrophotography), and the annoying sound of the keyboard.

Not sure if the Carbon suffers from this, I've had awful Wi-Fi experience with ThinkPads (edit: same Wi-Fi module as in the Carbon). 5GHz connections just drop randomly and take a minute or two to be willing to reconnect. Pretty sure it's not the AP's problem since I've never had this problem with my USB Wi-Fi module connecting to the same network, only the built-in one. Anybody had a better experience (or know how to get a better experience)? I'm forever in shock at how they've let this happen without fixing it; it's extremely frustrating.

EDIT 1: Judging from the quick upvotes I suspect I'm not alone... (but actually, this was obvious just from my earlier Googling).

EDIT 2: Funny, I'm getting downvotes now :-) confused what the message is, but whatever floats your boat!

I have last year’s X1 Carbon and have had no issues with WiFi (using Debian unstable). Certainly no connection drops. Maybe it’s a bad combination of AP and WiFi module?

Question. Is it possible to buy a Lenovo and not fork out for a copy of Windows if you're immediately going to install your preferred distro of Linux onto it?

If you're a student in Germany, yes. other countries might have similar deals.

Yeah, I bought mine without Windows. It’s a special SKU for edu users. Great discount vs regular price and no Windows included :)

In UK, they all ship with Windows it looks like. The only laptops I found that don't shove the cost of a license down your throat are the build-your-own ones, like pcspecialist.co.uk / novatech.co.uk / scan.co.uk / ebuyer.com etc. But you're not gonna get thin portable laptops by building your own.

It's perplexing how we've let it come to a state where you can't buy a laptop device without Microsoft taking a cut for the license.

And I'm still not over the way we let them have their OS logo on all keyboards, either.

What do you think of System76?

Haven't heard of it before, but they look decent. I think the price difference with brand laptops becomes less impressive if you go for the higher specs and also want it shipped internationally (20% UK VAT).

The base weight for their portable 14.1" one is 1.6kg, but switching from i3 to i7, adding more RAM and choosing a bigger SSD would probably bring it closer to 2kg (compared to ~1.2kg on the x1).

I think the x1 does things like soldering the RAM to the motherboard, which makes upgrading hard, but also makes it really thin (1.5cm compared to 2.2cm for the System76 one).

Since the number of possible configurations on a build your own is quite high, I imagine it's more likely that you'll run into issues on getting everything to work on Linux.

+1, I have last year X1 Carbon as well, no problems with WiFi. But I am running Windows 10.

I've never had trouble with WiFi on my old T430s, but I'll absolutely not be purchasing another Lenovo product after their rootkit debacle.

Ive got a x250 and no WiFi issues ever, fwiw, but I'm running Linux as well. Have you tried windows vs Linux, or checking drivers etc?

Haven't tried Linux, just Windows. Not sure how to "check" drivers, but I've tried uninstalling/reinstalling/updating/downgrading/etc. and nothing has helped. And I've had this problem with multiple ThinkPad generations. Lots of people have this problem [1] [2], just nobody seems to have a solution.

[1] https://askubuntu.com/q/964477

[2] https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-X-Series-Laptops/Carbo...

Commenting on upvotes/downvotes is usually unproductive on HN. From your first edit, you probably invited some the people that didn't agree with you to downvote (who would otherwise have ignored your comment)

Yeah I was just amused (and confused), I didn't care one way or the other...

I have trouble with my T450's wifi adapter too - from time to time, after waking up from sleep mode the wifi module just disappear - It's even missing from the list that appears after you pressing the [Fn + F8] key, as if the laptop never had a wifi adpter... The quick fix would be rebooting the computer.

I have last year's X1 Yoga (2nd gen), which has a lot in common with the X1 Carbon. On that one, I can't get 2.4GHz wifi to hold if I'm also using bluetooth (i.e., watching a youtube video using headphones). Soon as I switch over to 5GHz, no problem. This is under Linux -- with Windows 10, it starts off disconnecting a couple times, then it will eventually hold the connection.

Never had this issue with my X230.

I'm reticent to get a ThinkPad because of Lenovo and it's history of malware/bloatware.

To my knowledge it has not affected the Thinkpad line.

But would you really trust the same company? This is the company that put their malware into the BIOS so that even if you reinstalled OS, the BIOS would go into your hard drive and reinstall itself.

I would. The OEM bundle reinstall practice you mention is standard Windows functionality, not some scheme they came up with nor BIOS related. Most popular manufacturers use it, it's just that for the crapware funded models, the crapware is part of the OEM bundle.

Even if scummy, I think the root kit thing was blown out of proportion. It was surely a slip up by people who don't care on a product line that's on a completely different league than the high end for home users, let alone the business line. Hanlon's razor clearly applies from where I see it.

Do anyone related to tech really use out-of-the box software?

I'm always installing a Linux distro of my choice or a clean fresh windows image if i need it

Lenovo products have been known to come with rootkits to prevent a fresh Windows install from clearing the malware.

> out-of-the box

the box has a false bottom

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Management_Mode https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Management_Engine

Those are not Lenovo-specific backdoors, though

If you don't live in China then buy a Huawei.

You can assume it's compromised, but China won't share what they get with your government.

Immediately boot into my Linux distro of choice and wipe the MBR & Partion table with gdisk.

OSX seems fine out of box.

Putting out a new professional-grade (and thinking developer-style laptop) in 2018 without at least a 24GB or 32GB RAM option is a non-starter in my mind. Apple is also notorious for this having had 16GB RAM be the maximum for literally years now.

For a lot of engineering work, where you may need to deal with virtualization and heavy duty tooling like IDEs (XCode, Visual Studio, etc), simulators (like the iOS Simulators or Android emulator), dozens of browser tabs, multiple browsers for testing and viewing, etc etc., 16GB of RAM just doesn't cut it anymore.

then you should look at a different, workstation line of a laptop. (W series, dell 7XXX series etc).

Or just the T-series: T480 (32GB) or T480s (24GB).

I'm writing this with a T25 that has the maximum of 32GB of RAM. An excellent developer's laptop.

An alternative: Dell 7520 line. Runs Linux nicely out of the box.

* No camera or mic is an option (I took it)

* No HiDPI display is an option (I took it)

* 32 GB ram

* 1TB very fast class of ssd

* Legit quad core Xeon

* Discrete GPU (decent)

* Real keyboard

* Charger is approximately size of an actual red brick (blah)

* Laptop is bulky

* I love it, best Linux and Laptop I have ever owned. Let's just leave it tied with my 2015 MacBook.

I like the options but with its weight of 2.8kg I don't consider this a competitor to the X1.

I am sure it is something of a competitor, but if you want a sleeker laptop and size is your constraint then, no, they don't compete. If price and performance are more important then I think the Dell definitely "competes" in the same way 13" MBP competes with 15" MBP

I run last year’s X1 Carbon and it worked flawlessly with Debian out of the box. Battery life is excellent (3.5W isle with medium brightness) and the only thing that doesn’t work with Linux is the fingerprint scanner. It’s a great device that I would definitely recommend. ThinkPads generally do really well with Linux. And the keyboards are even better than Dell’s ;)

When you `lsusb' what device id and description does it give for the fingerprint reader?

I don’t have the device at hand but I’m pretty sure it’s a Validity Sensor 138a:0097. There’s an effort to reverse engineer the Windows drivers for this class of fingerprint sensors at https://github.com/nmikhailov/Validity90 but honestly I don’t care much about fingerprint readers on a laptop.

For the record, I checked and 138a:0097 is in fact the correct vendor/product ID.

+1. Also using Debian on a X1 Carbon 5th gen (2017). Everything except the fingerprint reader (which I don't much care for) works perfectly.

You forgot one important detail: Dell gives you an ability to have ECC memory.

Ooooh yeah. I have that. Not a thing you notice, but I got it.

XPS 13 also a fantastic choice for linux. Everything works out of the box.

As does the precision line. I have a 5520 and it's absolutely rock solid.

I don't think Dell get enough credit for how compatible their systems are in the high end and what kind of build quality you get.

In my opinion Dell stuff is the only thing on the market that could take over Thinkpads mantle as "Best laptops on the market".

I agree. This is my Thinkpad killer. HiDPI screen is gorgeous, keyboard and touchpad are fine, battery life is 10-11 hours in Arch, all of my media keys work, build quality is phenomenal. I haven't been able to get tear free video working, but I haven't ventured past xf86-intel-video yet on this machine.

Dell has really been impressing me. Their monitors are great and so are their laptops.

Try to use vaapi decoders. mpv has some flags for this and you need some packages but thats how I got tear free video (and lower resource usage on video too)

I started with an XPS 13 Developer edition. It had some minor issues, but I generally agree it was a good Linux experience.

Thinkpads are great, I just wish they'd update the design to make it look less 2006ish. Also a bigger trackpad with responsiveness that can compete with the macs. It's been so many years, I don't know why other manufacturers trackpads haven't caught up with Apple's trackpads. Even the XPS one is Meh. I think the surface book comes closest.

They have been making the trackpad bigger. But the Apple MacBook trackpads keep getting bigger also, perhaps because a trackpad can never be big enough? Rather than try to copy Apple, I would rather they keep the design as-is.

I meant the feel and responsiveness of the trackpad rather than size.

Almost all of Apple's "responsiveness" advantage is from careful software tuning. You could get a windows trackpad to feel as good as Apple's if you tuned the acceleration curves and added better palm detection.

So why isn’t it done? I think it’s not controversial to say that the trackpads (or “trackpad experience”) on MB*s are just plain superior than anything Windows has access to.

You should use one of the newer machines with the precision trackpads. They are pretty good, and keep getting better with windows updates.

A lot of it is priority; the trackpad working well is a low priority for most manufacturers in the face of other things like better looking benchmarks etc.

That attitude, the holistic view of the experience, is what people are willing to pay more for with Apple, that not everyone values.

It doesn't look 2006ish, it looks like straight from the 1990s and I love that. And the first thing I do on a Thinkpad is disabling the trackpad.

I quite like the Thinkpad look. The design is somewhat iconic and it does put function over form (my T450 has a battery butt on the underside, it's ugly as heck but I can work for 8 hours uninterrupted no problem)

I wish they made the trackpad smaller. They used to have (T420 and older) a smaller trackpad and a wonderful 7 row keyboard but they've since switched to a 6 row keyboard to have a bigger trackpad.

That means I'm stuck on the T420s for the foreseeable future.

I’ve got a T430. Had an X201 before that. It took a month to get used to it but I’ll be honest and say that I’m happy with it now. I dismantled it and wedged some paper under the trackpad though to stop it being pressed. That helps.

I feel you. You can look at [0] to use a t430 with the old keyboard and hand rest.

[0] http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Install_Classic_Keyboard_on_xx...

ThinkPad doesn't need a trackpad, the trackpoint with three mouse buttons underneath are the perfect way of using the computer. No need to move your hands off from the keyboard.

And please, never change the classic black and red design.

How do you use that darn stick accurately and efficiently? :-) It's straight velocity control, there's no position control at all. How do people aim with that?

You get the hang of it pretty quickly by just using it for a few days. I don’t even have a mouse on my desk at work (Desktop + ThinkPad external keyboard), my hands never have to leave the keyboard’s home row :)

About one day of training does the trick.

I find it much more accurate than a trackpad. When I was younger, I actually played some games purely with it. Index finger to control the direction and thumb for the buttons. I have been using thinkpads almost exclusively since 2003 or so though.

I never had any trouble when I discovered the trackpoint.

Issues:

- at least on pre 2010 thinkpads, the sensor may recalibrate weirdly once a week and the pointer will fight you for 2 seconds (annoying but rare enough so you don't smash the laptop)

- Aiming is not very precise, but I'm a keyboard head, so the less movement my wrists do, the better... trackpads are hell for me, and I rarely need precise (by that I mean, photoshop or real time analog control precise) positioning.

Also I find it way easier to drag and drop with a trackpoint, on a trackpad the frontier between single click, long press and drag, release is so thin.. I lost track(sic) of the amount of times I triggered false positives of every cases (who never dragged something while hovering or resting his thumb too close to the pad surface ?)

I had a T440s for a while. It had a very thin LCD cover, I don't think it would have liked being sat on, the screen would be crushed down onto the trackpoint. Didn't feel confident with it, went back to a X230, and still keep a rigid plate in my laptop sleeve on the screen side. Some of the older thinkpads had very robust screen covers (at least they looked that way), the T500 in particular, with some kind of honeycomb 'rollcage' in the screen.

This machine might also have a funny SSD connector, that makes it difficult to upgrade. Maybe not.

Wish they would make a machine with a 3:2 screen.

I am typing on an older X1 Carbon, and it truly is a pleasure to work with. The thinness of the chassis helps with ergonomics as you do not have to bend your wrist to place your hands on the keyboard. With the quality keys that ThinkPad is known for, I enjoy typing on this machine as much as I enjoy typing on Cherry/Outemu mechanical keyboards.

Any experience on how well these things run Linux?

I have a 5th gen (previous) Thinkpad. Everything works out of the box. Don’t know how the latest fares, though. They’ve jacked up the price a lot. At that price point MBP becomes more attractive IMO.

Full sleep state is currently a bit of an issue apparently:

https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Linux-Discussion/X1-Carbon-Gen-...

There are work-arounds by building IASL with a patch to restore S3 state.

Extremely well. Everything works except for the fingerprint sensor.

Depends a bit. The cheaper variants usually not so well but Thinkpads in general have outstanding Linux support compared to most other laptops.

exceptionally well, the only other comparable manufacturer would be Dell that offers some native Linux/Ubuntu machines. You can expect huge issues with all other vendors.

Everything up to the 2017 model is very well supported.

A friend of mine has the 2018 model and spent some time getting the touchpad/trackpoint to work (did not work out of the box with Debian unstable). Also there seem to be issues with suspend to ram/disk.

I’d recommend to wait a little while if you want a good out-of-the-box experience.

I bought a Carbon X1 in 2015 and it was so awful on Linux that I was grateful to unload the thing for $500 after a couple years (cost $1500). Issues:

* Palm detection. Good luck with that. Constant clicking when typing basically made the machine unusable. I tried really hard to improve it, got deep into X11 config, tried all sorts of libinput (Wayland) setups, nothing worked. Eventually I had to set it up so that typing disabled the trackpad for a half second or so, even that wasn't foolproof. Permanently disabling the trackpad would've been an option if they didn't turn the pointer nub into an unusable little flat disc.

* Display: Awful! I exported a color profile in Windows and it still looked like crap. Low contrast and barely gets as bright at 100% brightness as a MBP at 50%. Colors looked like crap no matter what I did.

* External monitors: Nope. Tried with Unity, KDE, GNOME, Xfce, new distros, old distros, all had issues waking from sleep with an external monitor. So if you suspend with the lid shut, you had to force power off (hold power button), lose work... Oh yea, and I had to manually disable the laptop screen whenever I shut the lid while on an external monitor or else something coming from the display would be seen as trackpad input (haywire cursor).

It was an embarrassingly bad experience and I felt totally ripped off. For comparison, a T43 years ago performed beautifully with pretty much every distro once you got the Atheros wifi working.

So yea, I'm still on a Mac now like everybody else.

* Palm detection: disable the trackpad, use the trackpoint like a boss.

* Display: did you have the WQHD IPS option? Did you calibrate it on Linux using DisplayCal and a calibrator, such as Datacolor Spyder? Mine (T25) is really nice even though it got some negative reviews. Doing a calibration really fixed lots of issues.

* External monitors: I'm using i3-gaps and xrandr setup, but can't really help because most of the time I don't need an external monitor with my laptop.

Linux is such a no-brainer for me as a development OS that there is no going back to OSX or Windows. A tiling window manager, minimal installation of software and the magic combo of Emacs + st + Firefox is a deal braker for me.

* See my note about the trackpoint ... it's sort of terrible now. Matter of taste, granted.

* Yep. Never got good results.

* Yep, the issue was not with display layout (I did configure with arandr and then xrandr directly, but that had more to do with some distros supporting old pre-display config Xfce).

And yep, agreed, that's why I'm just using a desktop tower now. I'm not saying the issues I experienced are truly intractable, but I've been using desktop Linux at a low level for a while now and got to the point where I threw up my hands... ymmv.

> Emacs + st + Firefox

What's "st"?

My money's on Simple Terminal: https://st.suckless.org

I switched to a Razer Blade Stealth, its around 400€ cheaper with the same specs except a QHD+ display (glossy, touch, 3200x1800). I'm wondering why Thinkpad only offers their WQHD (highest available resolution, 2560x1440) glossy? Also still no 4K/QHD+ display, still no 32GB RAM support. I don't really see much of a advantage anymore, they only reason for me to stay with thinkpad would've been the keyboard that is just fantastic in comparison with _any_ other manufacturer.

/edit clarified resolution/ fixed grammar

I can't imagine bringing a Razor Stealth to work

Why not? It'd be cool.

I agree, however check out the gunmetal grey version, its very professional and modern looking. But I agree with the normal black one with this obnoxious lime green lid logo on the front. The razor logo is just horrible.

X1 Carbon uses LPDDR3 (as does the MacBook Pro), but the CPUs don’t support more than 16GB of it, so this is kinda Intel’s fault. LPDDR3 uses very little power in standby so both idle power usage and suspend time are improved.

For non-LP RAM (DDR3/DDR4), the power consumption impact of going from 16 to 32 GB is definitely not negligible. It’s an upgrade that makes sense only for few people. Have you looked at the T480/T480s if you need the 32GB? If you have CPU intensive workloads, they may be a better fit anyway.

My Toshiba Portege X-30D has 32GB and I get 6-8hours of actual work out of it easily. Loving it although I regret not having waited for 8th Gen CPUs that are available now.

I get much higher battery life out of my X1 Carbon 2017 (with the 1080p screen) and its 57Wh battery, to the point where I configured it not to charge above 90% to improve battery longevity (tlp can set charging limits on Linux). But without knowing your workload that’s a meaningless comparison, of course.

Idle power consumption at medium brightness is around 3.5W for me (connected to WiFi with Chrome open but idle), maybe 5W when actively browsing. It’s amazing.

I prefer being able to do more, have more VMs running than being able to be off the grid for longer than 6 hours.

look into the P or W series aswell, i currently use a w541 as my main machine, with 32GB of ram. (which i need for virtualization purposes)

> I'm wondering why Thinkpad only offers their WQHD (highest available resolution, 2560x1440) glossy?

I'm writing this on a T480s with a matte WQHD screen.

Might be against terms but it pisses me the fuck off that Superfish[0] incident has been forgotten, by people that should know better. No, Ars Technica, it's not professionals' paradise as long as it's being produced by the same gangsters.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfish#Lenovo_security_inci...

  > Lenovo's lightweight ThinkPad ticks all the boxes of a great work notebook.

Except one, keyboard.

The ThinkPad 25 Anniversary Edition is the only real proffessional laptop available because it also has proffessionnal keyboard.

I'm wondering what the max sustained TDP of the CPU on this is like. On a MacBook Pro (13,2), the Intel processor package can pull 42-45W of power for an indefinitely long time without throttling down below that power level, even on batteries iirc. I'd hope that PC laptops get this at some point; this is one of the main reasons I still buy Mac

I have been using it for years. No complain except the screen. As a dev. I would prefer it to be 16/10. I cannot understand the use case for a 16/9 in the pro world. Little detail: when I wear a formal shirt, the sleeve tends to get "stucked" (due to the border having a high angle ">" ).

No 16:10 (or preferably even taller, like 4:3) screen, no buy.

I really wish there was an alternative for the 16:10 mac I am using now, but there isn't anymore (apart from old ThinkPads, which I have many of[1]).

I tried some Microsoft Surface stuff but they felt very flimsy.

[1] https://lobste.rs/s/txuvvs/lenovo_new_linux_desktop_experien...

> I tried some Microsoft Surface stuff but they felt very flimsy.

Even the Book? Flimsy is not a criticism I've ever heard about it.

Yes, in my opinion it's flimsy and feels cheap, not as bad as some cheap Asus laptops, but worse even than a Dell Latitude, and the Dell is way worse than a Macbook or a ThinkPad.

This is too bad, because the screen is excellent.

My understanding though is that it runs Linux poorly, which makes all this moot.

Can someone explain to me why a ThinkPad is preferable to an XPS 15 besides nostalgia?

The keyboard is not even a different league - it's a whole different ball game.

This is the type of stuff I want to hear (I'm replacing my 4 year old laptop in the next two months)... what's so good about thinkpad keyboards?

You can type, you feel that you're typing, and you kind of start to understand why typing might even be considered fun.

It's a bit hard to explain, the travel on the keys is just really good, comfortable size and shape, etc. See if you can borrow one for a day and type on it, it took me an hour or so to get used to but now any other laptop keyboard feels wrong.

I've had great desktop keyboards, but never a good laptop keyboard. I'll check it out.

After switching to a MacBook the keyboard is the thing I miss the most.

I have been using the XPS 15inch version for more than 2 years, and I have hated the keyboard so much that I regularily carry a mechanical keyboard (+about 1kg). Also, the build quality / QA of the xps 15 is questionable... I had problems with the laptop randomly turning on during sleep mode and overheating, along with major throttling issues (mostly when running games). Most recently the battery has expanded and bulged up so the the trackpad became unclickable. (And they refused to change the battery for free because I was out of the standard 2-year warranty, which is quite disappointing because this is a potential safety issue.) Definitely going to try a Thinkpad for my next laptop after all this mess...

My current XPS 15 is almost 4 years old... so definitely looking for a replacement. I've had problems with the keyboard, but not the ones you mention. A few keys have fallen off, but a bit of super-glue have seemed to do the trick.

I did run into other problems with the keyboard (some keys would not depress), but I took apart the entire system, removed the keyboard and cleaned it off with an airgun, which solved the problem. Basically food and other gunk got caught between the keys. Not a perfect product, but given how much I use it, not totally unreasonable either.

How's it still ddr3?

It's LPDDR3 (low power). I'm guessing the Intel chipset does not support LPDDR4.

Because there still isn't any LPDDR4 support in the Intel line, these laptops are intended to move around a lot and thus need good standby life, and you can't have 32GB of LPDDR3.

Is there a convertible "Yoga"-kind version available?

yes, the 3rd gen yoga is out...that said i got the 6th gen carbon and it’s brilliant

I have the 2017 X1 Carbon Yoga. As a laptop itself it's great, excellent keyboard and ergonomics, fast enough, good battery. What I didn't expect was to make so much use of its touch screen or "tent" form. It is very useful when collaborating on something with another person next to you, as it brings the screen closer.

The only negative is the endless finger blotches all over the laptop's body. I feel I'm constantly cleaning it.

I am considering buying it. Thank you for sharing the experience! By the way, have you tried using a stylus to minimize the amount of finger fat you leave on the screen? Or are the blotches on the cover actually so visible?

Yes, it's very similar to the X1 Carbon. There are small differences, such as the bezel size and the cooling. There are a few quirks that will hopefully be fixed with driver updates, but apart from that, I'm quite satisfied.

I am a late time convert to stinkpads, But they changed my perspective on what a work machine should be - trackpoint, or you don’t get my money.

Now on a second X1... the only thing I miss is Ryzen option in the current lineup

Now change the aspect ratio to 3:2

Maybe check the Matebook X pro (Which is a MacBook pro copycat by Huawei): https://consumer.huawei.com/en/tablets/matebook-x-pro/

It costs $1500 - $2600, but it still has a basic integrated graphics card?

The specs do not make this seem worth it...

Why do you need a more powerfull graphic card? This laptop is not targetting video editing.

1) A dedicated GPU in a laptop, specially a thin one like the X1 Carbon, is a bit of a nightmare. It consums a lot energy, it needs a lot of heat dissipation, and it can even reduce the life span and robustness of the laptop.

2) The X1 carbon is not targeted at video games/video editing. It's targeted at usages like programming or word/excel editing. For these use cases, integrated GPUs are more than good enough.

3) Dedicated GPUs tends also to be a little bit of a nightmare, specially around managing drivers. This is particularly true under Linux. On one hand you have Intel GPUs with open sourced drivers directly in the main line kernel. On the other you have the Nvidia drivers, which are proprietary, requires DKMS and can stop supporting older models, and the ATI version is about the same.

4) if you really need a dedicated GPU, the W serie is for you (and maybe some T serie laptop as well).

Given that the X1C'18 has a proper 4 PCIE Lane Thunderbolt, just buy an e-GPU if you need decent gaming - e.g. go to a LAN party, that kind of thing.

Considering it has a proper quad core CPU in such a thin frame, it's the best of both worlds really. The external GPUs really sort out the thermal issues when gaming on a laptop.

I have the OG X1 Carbon, still going well - glad I got the i7/8/256ssd model which was top of the line when it first was released (i7 was actually only avail with 4gb so bought i5, but then I had to return it due to a chassis issue; by the time that was sorted, the i7/8 was available!).

I run Win10 on it now which is perfect; had to disable the trackpad when I used Linux a few years ago. Love the Trackpoint, can't see myself upgrading to something that doesn't.

Honestly I would still buy the Macbook 15" over this. Regardless of only USB-C and silly touchbar. Better screen, better OS, better service ...

I'm so sorry to see that they're still pushing the clamshell design. By that I mean that the lower portion of the laptop is thinner at the front. Extremely unflattering and no less than an attack on their design legacy. Looks like every other laptop out there. Visible here: https://i.imgur.com/1ddfJ1Y.jpg

(Writing this on X220.)

I wish they would drop the Trackpoint and the physical mouse buttons and make the touchpad bigger. I carry a usb trackball for that.

My beater laptop that I carry everywhere is a Thinkpad 11e. I deal with the terrible screen so I can have the wonderful keyboard and trackpad. A faster cpu and a 1920x1200 IPS screen would make the little 11e my perfect laptop...

You'll have to take the trackpoint from my cold dead hands... I find it superior to a trackpad, as I don't have to take my hands off the keyboard.

Haven't had a Thinkpad in over a decade and I'm still mourning the loss of the trackpoint.

Lol. I know people like you in real life. They're on old thinkpad but dread buying new one.

Ha - I'd prefer the opposite! - get rid of the trackpad :)

I love the trackpoint as well - when I'm on my own system I have configured hotkeys, a launcher, and qutebrowser, so I can do almost anything without needing a mouse.

Unfortunately, the company I work at is a huge MS fan, and I've found it very hard to use a workflow that does not depend on fast and precise movements with the cursor - so I switched back to the mouse, unfortunately.

Have you tried a trackball? I use a Kensington Slimblade with my multi-monitor setup at work and I find it far superior to a mouse.

The one thing I like about the trackpoint is that I don't really have to move my hands to use it.

I agree, but a trackball will give you the fast and precise movements you say a trackpoint doesn't give you. You'll also be able to move your hands less compared to using a mouse.

Some old models (X201 or X201s iirc, so around 2011) could be configured without a trackpad. A 12-inch notebook with a 7-row keyboard and trackpoint is fantastic!

It wasn't even an option on the older ones like my 2005 X41. But indeed the keyboard/trackpoint combination on the X201 was perfect.

They tried that a few generations ago with the X240 etc. It was a complete disaster. The buttons are critical. Many people, myself included, find every aspect of the Mac poor ergonomics, including the touchpad. The trackpoint buttons work great along the top. Especially to easily hit middle button. I'd have to see someone in action to understand why they need even more space.

Same issue here. I had a generation of the X1 Carbon where they had removed the physical mouse buttons, and it's the only laptop I've ever had to return.

I'm sitting at an 11e right now. Maybe I'm odd, but I miss the physical buttons. Other than that, it's a great little machine to keep in the family room (armored against my 3 year old's attacks ;-) ) And the trackpad's certainly better than the one on the more powerful HP I've got in the other room.

The only reason why I just bought a (used) Thinkpad instead of another manufacturer is the Trackpoint. I find it so much easier to use while typing, especially when sitting with the laptop on your lap.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com