Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 4 – Top 5 Pros and Cons

The standard 16:9 aspect ratio is slowly getting kicked to the curb, with smartphones now mainly using wider displays. This has been the trend for some years now, and it has created taller and better-looking smartphones.

On the laptop side, manufacturers are going for a different approach, with 16:10 displays taking over the productivity field. The extra room is helpful, but we wouldn’t call it a deal-breaker.

One of the premier Lenovo laptops to implement this is the ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 4, which is a heavy-duty Creator device with very capable components from Intel and NVIDIA.

Today we are presenting you with LaptopMedia’s top 5 picks about the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 4.

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 4: Full Specs / In-depth Review


4 reasons to BUY the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 4

1. Design and build quality

Being part of the X1 sub-brand, the device gets premium materials through and through. The lid is made from carbon fiber, with there also being an exposed Weave option, which adds a bit to the cost, but you’re spending an arm and a leg anyway so you might as well make the laptop appear as you would want it. The rest of the body uses aluminum, which means you have a sturdy structure for a larger 16-inch laptop. In terms of weight and height, the laptop stops the scales at 1.81 kg and has a profile of 18.2 mm at the thickest point. The design itself uses simple lines, a black exterior, and ThinkPad X1 branding on the lid and base.

The lid opens easily with one hand, revealing a centered keyboard with no NumPad, front-facing stereo speakers, and a red TrackPoint with corresponding buttons above the touchpad. The keyboard itself is a dream come true, with long key travel, clicky feedback, a backlight, and spill-resistance. The touchpad is covered in glass, which provides smooth gliding and accurate tracking.


2. I/O and Upgradeability

The I/O consists of a proprietary power plug, two Thunderbolt 4 ports, two USB Type-A 3.2 (Gen. 1) ports, an HDMI 2.0 port, a 3.5 mm audio jack, and an SD card reader.

The laptop has great upgradeability as well, featuring two SODIMM slots and two M.2 PCIe x4 slots.

Here is our teardown video, which shows how to access both the RAM and SSD slots.


3. Battery life

The 90Wh battery pairs well with the high-powered Core i7-11800H, making the laptop last for 13 hours and 58 minutes of Web browsing, or 10 hours and 22 minutes of video playback. 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

The laptop offers two 16-inch displays with either a QHD+ or a UHD+ IPS display. We tested the former option, which comes with comfortable viewing angles, a max brightness of  398 nits in the middle of the screen, 386 nits as an average for the whole area, and a maximum deviation of 7%. The contrast ratio is also very high – around 1800:1. In terms of coverage, the laptop covers 91% of the sRGB color gamut, which is enough for professional work.

The IPS panel also has good accuracy, with a dE value of 1.7 after we apply our Design and Gaming profile. Here are the results before (left) and after (right) our profile application.


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 Extreme Gen 4 configurations with 16″ WQXGA IPS MNG007DA1-4.

*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 Extreme Gen 4

1. Temperatures

With a cooling solution that consists of only two heat pipes, we couldn’t expect great temperatures and we didn’t get them.


Max CPU load

Intel Core i7-11800H (45W TDP)0:02 – 0:10 sec0:15 – 0:30 sec10:00 – 15:00 minMax Fans
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 43.74 GHz (B+63%) @ 96°C @ 99W3.51 GHz (B+52%) @ 96°C @ 83W3.03 GHz (B+32%) @ 93°C @ 60W

The CPU got very hot very quickly, with clock speeds dropping steadily, while the temps remained similar.

Real-life gaming

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 TiGPU frequency/ Core temp (after 2 min)GPU frequency/ Core temp (after 30 min)GPU frequency/ Core temp (Max fan)
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 41576 MHz @ 77°C @ 60W1586 MHz @ 76°C @ 60W

The same could be said about the GPU, but you can’t ask for a lot out of a 60W GPU.

All Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 4 configurations:

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