Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9 – Top 5 Pros and Cons

The ThinkPad X1 series from Lenovo is all about experimentation and offering new and exciting materials to consumers that are willing to pay top dollar for it. So far we have tested titanium and carbon laptops from the brand, and we are sure that Lenovo is experimenting with even crazier substances, to find the next big thing in laptops.

For today we have the ninth gen ThinkBook X1 Carbon, which uses carbon fiber as its name suggests. What we can expect is a thin and light device, with good durability and reliable performance thanks to the Tiger Lake U-series CPUs.

Today we are presenting you with LaptopMedia’s top 5 picks about the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9.

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9: Full Specs / In-depth Review


4 reasons to BUY the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9

1. I/O

The I/O offers great coverage, with two Thunderbolt 4 ports, two USB Type-A 3.2 (Gen. 1) ports, an HDMI 2.0 connector, a SIM card tray, and a 3.5 mm audio jack.


2. Input devices

For such a portable laptop with a profile of only 14.9 mm, the keyboard that it offers has very good key travel, while the feedback is exceptionally clicky. It also has a backlight and is spill-resistant. This also wouldn’t be a ThinkPad without the signature TrackPoint, with its three physical buttons above the touchpad. Speak of the devil, the touchpad has a glass cover and a smooth rubberized finish. It isn’t the largest but makes up for it with its feedback and clicking mechanism.


3. Battery life

The notebook comes with a 57Wh battery pack, which is enough for a laptop with chips that are as power-efficient as the Tiger Lake U-series units. The laptop lasted for 9 hours and 5 minutes of Web browsing, or 6 hours and 34 minutes of video playback, which isn’t that impressive, but you have to factor in the 4K UHD+ panel, which draws a lot more power. Now, we conduct the battery tests with Windows Better performance setting turned on, screen brightness adjusted to 120 nits, and all other programs turned off except for the one we are testing the notebook with.


4. Display quality

There are two display options, each with a 14-inch diagonal, a 16:10 aspect ratio, and IPS panels. The base model has an FHD+ panel, which we haven’t tested, but according to Lenovo, it brings 100% sRGB coverage, and a max brightness of 500 nits, which is great for a Creator laptop.

The panel that we tested had 4K UHD+ resolution, which at 14-inches provided a very detailed image. Furthermore, it showed comfortable viewing angles, a max brightness of 518 nits in the middle of the screen, and 503 nits average across the surface with a maximum deviation of 19%. The lower right corner is way out of line in terms of brightness uniformity, but otherwise, the panel is ready for professional work, especially when you factor in the 100% sRGB and 99% DCI-P3 coverage.

The accuracy improved significantly when we applied our Design and Gaming profile, giving us a dE value of 2.5. Here are the results with (right) and without (left) our profile.

When we tested the accuracy in the DCI-P3 color space with a D65 white point, the accuracy was fantastic, with a dE value of 0.6.


Buy our profiles

Since our profiles are tailored for each individual display model, this article and its respective profile package are meant for Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon 9th Gen configurations with 14″ AUO B140ZAN02.1 (LEN4038) (UHD, 3840 x 2400) IPS panel.

*Should you have problems with downloading the purchased file, try using a different browser to open the link you’ll receive via e-mail. If the download target is a .php file instead of an archive, change the file extension to .zip or contact us at [email protected].

Read more about the profiles HERE.

In addition to receiving efficient and health-friendly profiles, by buying LaptopMedia's products you also support the development of our labs, where we test devices in order to produce the most objective reviews possible.

Office Work

Office Work should be used mostly by users who spend most of the time looking at pieces of text, tables or just surfing. This profile aims to deliver better distinctness and clarity by keeping a flat gamma curve (2.20), native color temperature and perceptually accurate colors.

Design and Gaming

This profile is aimed at designers who work with colors professionally, and for games and movies as well. Design and Gaming takes display panels to their limits, making them as accurate as possible in the sRGB IEC61966-2-1 standard for Web and HDTV, at white point D65.

Health-Guard

Health-Guard eliminates the harmful Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM) and reduces the negative Blue Light which affects our eyes and body. Since it’s custom tailored for every panel, it manages to keep the colors perceptually accurate. Health-Guard simulates paper so the pressure on the eyes is greatly reduced.

Get all 3 profiles with 33% discount


1 reason NOT to buy the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9

1. Upgradeability

As expected from a thin device like this one, the RAM is soldered onto the motherboard, leaving no option for upgrades down the line. You can outfit the device with up to 32GB of DDR4 memory in quad-channel mode. For storage, you get a single M.2 PCIe x4 drive.

 

Here is our teardown video, which gives you a step-by-step process of how to disassemble the laptop, in order to access its storage, battery, and cooling.


All Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9 configurations:

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