The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch is a Windows 8 Ultrabook with a touchscreen. We put it to the test in this ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch touchscreen Ultrabook video review. See all laptop reviews. (Video filmed and edited by Domink Tomaszewski, narrated by Jim Martin.)
ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch: Design and build
With lid closed the top of the chassis is a uniform sheet of black with just a Lenovo logo bottom right, and a ThinkPad badge bottom right - the dot of the i in ThinkPad glows red when your laptop is working.
Open up and the design is similarly minimalist. The well-sized scrabble-tile keyboard is black out of black - the keys a slightly more shiny black than the carbon body.
The ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch lid folds back so the laptop sits flat on the desk.
We really like the keyboard. As with other Lenovo keyboards the bottom of the scrabble tile keys is curved, giving you extra space when typing. And the size is good anyway.
The trackpad is smooth, responsive, and well sized.
The ThinkPad is constructed of carbon fibre, the finish feeling strokably smooth to the touch but not picking up fingerprints. With the lid folded down the Carbon Touch is almost MacBook Air-like in its slim profile.
At 1.54kg the Carbon Touch is not a heavy laptop, and it's only 2.2 centimetres thick at its widest point.
Connection options include 3G, WiFi, and USB 3.0. There's an SD card slot and a fingerprint scanner.
The charger cable uses a connector the likes of which we haven't seen elsewhere, even on lower-end Lenovo laptops.
ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch: Performance
The model we tested had an Intel Core i5 chip running with 4 GigaBytes of RAM. There's also a 128 GigaByte SSD, although we could see only 111 GigaBytes.
The Touch is a zippy performer that boots up quickly. This was born out by our PCMark7 benchmark score of 4,783. The best-performing Ultrabooks score around 4,900 so the X1 Carbon Touch is in good company.
But with integrated graphics it's not a gaming rig.
ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch: Battery life
The Touch charges quickly. Use it for five and a half hours and you should have no problems. On standby it lasts for days.
ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch: Display
The Touch has a 14in 1600 by 900 matt display - perfectly usable under bright lights and outdoors. Viewing angles are pretty good. It's a 10-finger multitouch panel, responsive to gestures as well as taps.
ThinkPad X1 Carbon touch: verdict
The Carbon Touch offers decent performance in a portable package. We love the build and design, and the screen is great. Performance is solid. If you need a portable touchscreen laptop for your working life, this is a great option. But like all Ultrabooks it is far from cheap.
