The ThinkPad X1 Carbon gets a kick in the Cores but not much else
LENOVO HAS SHOVED Intel’s latest 10th-gen Comet Lake processors into its ThinkPad X1 Carbon and X1 Yoga laptops.
Much like Dell’s doing with its XPS 13 and Inspiron laptops, Lenovo is opting for Intel’s refreshed 14-nanometre Core processors over the 10nm Ice Lake CPUs, which also happened to be 10th-gen parts as Intel seems to relish making its processor line-up confusing.
For the ThinkPad X1 Carbon, Lenovo is offering CPUs in Core i5 and Core i7 guises, with the latter now serving up six cores on its die. It’s also been branded by Intel as a Project Athena machine, which is Intel’s programme to ensure hardware meets certain performance and power standards, including promising battery life that’ll last at least nine hours.
With Comet Lake, Lenovo reckons it’ll get 18.5 hours out of the ThinkPad X1 Carbon, which is four hours extra over its predecessor. Aside from that, the ThinkPad X1 Carbon is the same as the seventh-gen model revealed earlier this year, and as such the processor refresh fall into that family. It’ll pop up in September for $1,479 (around £1,200).
It’s the same story for the ThinkPad X1 Yoga, which is also the same externally as the current model, but beneath the chassis, Lenovo is offering Comet Lake CPUs. There’s no Project Athena battery endurance here, however. Also coming in September, the high-end Yoga will start at $1,609, around £1,300.
Lenovo is also throwing Comet Lake at the ThinkPad T490, ThinkPad X390, ThinkPad L13, ThinkPad L13 Yoga. The first two are expected to arrive in October and will start at $1,129 (£920) and $1,019 (£830) respectively. While the second two will arrive in the same month, starting at $749 (£610) and $919 (£748) respectively.
All in all, the whole line-up gets spec boost and nothing much else. That’s fine if you’re after a new laptop for 2019, but it won’t get pulses racing for people who might have been expecting something a bit special from Lenovo’s use of the Comet lake CPUs.
Expect that to be the same for a lot of laptop makers who opt for Comet Lake. The more interesting machines are likely to come from those that make use of Intel’s Ice Lake processors… at least we hope so. µ