The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Review (2015)
by Brett Howse on May 21, 2015 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
- Lenovo
- ThinkPad
- Ultrabook
- Broadwell-U
Display
Lenovo offers two display choices in the X1 Carbon, with a 1920x1080 model as the base option, and a 2560x1440 available with or without touch. While the resolution of the base panel is fine, the fact that it is a TN panel is not, so I would avoid that if at all possible. Thankfully the step up to the higher resolution model for $150 also gets you an IPS panel. With many devices that I see, there are some questionable decisions made, and I think the TN panel on a $1000+ Ultrabook is the one on this device.
Luckily Lenovo shipped the IPS panel for review. It is a 14-inch panel with a full RGB stripe. In the hardware ID the panel is just labeled as Lenovo, so I can’t say for sure who makes this panel. This model also has the touch digitizer. Despite that, it has almost a matte coating applied to it, or at least the anti-reflective coating is quite effective. This display also came with a built in ICC profile, so it was tested with that ICC being used.
To test the display characteristics, we use SpectraCal's CalMAN 5 suite along with the X-Rite i1Display Pro colorimeter for brightness and contrast readings, and the X-Rite i1Pro spectrophotometer for color accuracy testing.
Brightness and Contrast
At 250 nits, the X1 Carbon does not get as bright as much of the competition. In fact, to do the color calibration steps, we set the display to 200 nits which is 92% in the power settings of this device. However black levels are quite good, so the overall contrast ratio is still a respectable 1100:1.
Grayscale
With an average score under three, the grayscale on the X1 Carbon is quite good. The errors do get a bit higher though as the brightness increases, and 100% white actually has a dE of over 5. Gamma drops down quite a bit at the higher brightness levels, and the overall gamma is just 2.0, and the target is 2.2.
Saturation
Saturation accuracy was decent on this display with an overall error level of 3.5, as an average over all of the readings. It is not the best display, but it is far from the worst. It is really the reds that drift off the most.
GMB
The Gretag Macbeth is the most comprehensive of the tests, and it tests quite a few colors including a lot of the flesh tones. The overall score is once again a good, but not great result, at 3.66.
The overall display is really just average, with no really standout features. The brightness is a bit low, but the contrast is good. Colors are off, but not dramatically. Out of curiosity, I also tested the display without the ICC profile as well, and surprisingly it did not have much of a change in the results. When a generic ICC profile is used, it can’t take into account variability in the individual panels.
Generally ICC profiles are the most help to grayscale, so I ran through our calibration to see how much we could improve the panel.
The grayscale sees a significant improvement, with a dE2000 of just 0.454 and gamma is almost spot on a 2.2. This is what calibration should do, so it was great to see the improvement. Unfortunately this only had a mild effect on the color related scores. Without a 3D LUT, there is only so much you can do.
One other thing that I need to mention about the display is that, at least on the sample I received, there was a bit of a twinkle in the display, which was more noticeable on light colors like white. All displays have a bit of this due to the glue and coatings applied, but on the X1 Carbon it was a bit more noticeable than I was used to.
So overall the display is just OK. Back in 2013 when the X1 Carbon first launched, a display of this quality would have been quite welcomed, but as with all things, progress moves forward and expectations get higher with the competition.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
103 Comments
View All Comments
Valantar - Thursday, May 21, 2015 - link
An IBM design? In... 2012, if Google serves me right? After Lenovo bought IBMs whole PC division in 2005? I'd like to see some kind of corroboration, please.While it's true that my experience is limited, my X201 is doing fine after long years of hard usage - the only issue I ever had was an SD reader with slightly subpar performance, which Lenovo promptly replaced as soon as I reported it. Great end-user customer service. The battery even has around 80% of its capacity after all that time.
Compared with the HP ProBook I bought for my mother around the same time, that had constant firmware/driver issues, and failed after about three years of very light usage (display failure). I've heard similar experiences from colleagues using ProBooks and EliteBooks too.
I see a lot of 'ThinkPads suck ever since Lenovo' going around, but I can't help seeing that as a combination of bad luck (getting your first faulty unit after the ownership change) and just plain resistance to change. YMMV.
Samus - Thursday, May 21, 2015 - link
Everyone in my IT circle avoid Lenovo equipment like the plague among all their clients. The one guy who did use Lenovo, exclusively, is in the process of closing his business and dissolving his corporation because of super fish fallout and generally unhappy customers due to poor Lenovo support. Reliability is indeed s YMMV but with hp elitebook a they come the next day to your door and rebuild the thing in front of you for 3 years.sandy105 - Friday, May 22, 2015 - link
funny guy ..T2k - Friday, May 22, 2015 - link
Oh PLEAHHSE. I literally don't know ANYONE with an HP laptop in my immediate circles but every AWS, Rackspace, SIGGRAPH etc conference I still see a LOT OF Thinkpads, even regular Lenovo laptops, stop spreading BS, please.Samus - Friday, May 22, 2015 - link
You obviously do not realize that HP Corporate is twice as large as Lenovo's Corporate presence. HP commands around 70% of the world server market where as about 15 other companies make up the remaining 30%. Proliants literally run the world.As far as laptops, the US military has used Elitebooks exclusively for years...and very few healthcare sectors use Lenovo for the same reason: they're a Chinese company.
But there is no real debating that Elitebooks are better than Thinkpads dollar for dollar. Stop thinking of Best Buy when you think of HP equipment. Best Buy sells to suckers, not enterprise. I I can't find the article right now and I'm pretty sure it was Forbes or WSJ but I read nearly half of fortune 500 companies are exclusively HP houses. It also helps HP is in the printer business so companies can keep their accounts in one place.
Does any of this make HP better than Lenovo? No. But if you've ever actually disected an Elitebook next to a modern day Thinkpad you'd quickly realize, if you have any concept of quality, that the Elitebook was designed by brighter minds with less cut corners.
The only reason Lenovo has overtaken HP in sales over the past two years comes down to economies of scale: Lenovo can mass produce more crap than HP can, so they are cheaper. In this economy people are buying based on price, not quality. Look how many KIA's and Chrysler's are on the road.
CoolRunnings - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link
Actually the army uses Dell Latitudes last I saw... I've got hundreds of Thinkpad T420 and T430 laptops in my customers hands and have had the fewest number of issues with those of any series of laptop I've used. They're not perfect by any stretch but all those griping about Lenovo having ruined the Thinkpad brand since 2006 must have forgotten the terrors of the T40-T42 series and their GPU from hell problems or the brittle plastic on the T20 series. I've worked on Thinkpads since the T20 came out and the T420-T430 series have by far been the best built in my experience. The keyboard in the T60's was better in some ways though. Now when you start talking of the T440+, yep, agreed, they tend to suck in comparison...T2k - Friday, May 22, 2015 - link
Same thing here, my ~5 years old X201 is still working (sans a loose power connector and the Thinklight that usually refuses to turn on.) I would never trade it for any HP, sorry. Heck, I'd rather get a VAIO with their hybrid graphics any day than an overpriced, bloatware-ridden HP, that's for sure.Samus - Thursday, May 21, 2015 - link
Casualuker, you are an idiot. The last ibm design were the T40 and X40 series. Lenovo was allowed to use the IBM logo on the abysmal T60 series under license but the 60 series were Lenovo design and had chronic reliability problems ranging from failing cathod inverters to warped cooling fans.The T43 and X41 were the last good thinkpads. I still see them in use on occasion...15 years later. Some X40 series machines even have 60gb ssd's.
CasualUker - Friday, May 22, 2015 - link
@Samus, if you say so. The truly last bit of IBM imprints where the Tx30 series. If you don't believe me that's fine.Samus - Friday, May 22, 2015 - link
I don't need to believe you, because you are wrong.http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=72128
Lenovo hasn't had license to use the IBM logo since 2005. You are confusing the IBM logo with a Thinkpad logo or something...because there are NO IBM LOGO'S on the last decade of Lenovo Thinkpad, ThinkCentre, ThinkServer, and so on...