Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga review: Very thin, light, premium-priced 2-in-1 Review

Lenovo’s quality, business-focused ThinkPad X1 range proceeds to expand. Intended to marry superior-spec performance with fantastic style, X1 laptops can be high-priced — the final ThinkPad X1 I reviewed, The ThinkPad X1 Nano, has a starting off price tag of £1,739.99 (inc. VAT), or $1,487.40 in the US. This is closely matched by the convertible ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga, reviewed right here, which starts at £1,669.99 in the British isles, or $1,474.50 in the US. 

At just eleven.5mm thick, this Intel Evo-branded system is Lenovo’s thinnest-ever ThinkPad. It may well not be the lightest ThinkPad, but at 1.15kg it is really hardly burdensome to have. The titanium, carbon fibre and magnesium alloy elements employed in the chassis make this a hard system: I couldn’t flex the lid in my palms plenty of to induce any worry, and the foundation feels sound far too. But even even though it has passed MIL-STD 810H testing, I’d nevertheless be tempted to use a protecting sleeve to keep and transportation the ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga. Apart from just about anything else, the marginally textured complete on the lid is attractive, and I’d dislike to scratch it. 

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The thirteen.five-inch ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga is a slimline (eleven.5mm) convertible laptop functioning on 11th-generation Intel Main i5 or i7 processors with built-in Iris Xe Graphics, 8GB or 16GB of RAM and up to 1TB of SSD storage.


Graphic: Lenovo

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The branding on the lid displays the ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga’s quality standing.


Graphic: Sandra Vogel / ZDNet  

The silver chassis is eye-catching, and the ThinkPad marque on the lid, with its illuminated dot about the ‘i’, is lifted from the foundation metal as if it has been stamped on the wrist rest within the chassis it is really indented, and fashioned from a far more apparent, brighter silver than its encompass. If you want your high-priced kit to look the part, this branding will tick that box. 

The ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga occupies 297.5mm by 232.2mm on the desktop, which is somewhat narrower and further than you may be expecting thanks to the thirteen.five-inch screen’s 3:2 aspect ratio. And what a excellent display it is. The QHD (2,256 x 1,504, 201ppi) IPS panel can supply up to 450 nits of brightness, which is far more than plenty of for indoor settings and ample for use outside the house far too. It’s also contact responsive — a necessity for doing the job in pill method — and supports one hundred% of the sRGB color place and seventy two% of NTSC. 

Supplied all this goodness, it is really a pity that the display bezels are somewhat wider than they need to be for a quality laptop. The brief bezels I measured at close to 4mm, even though the top rated and bottom bezels are close to 10mm and 18mm respectively. For the document, the screen to entire body ratio is 78.four%. 

There is place earlier mentioned the display for a 720p IR webcam with Lenovo’s sliding privacy cover. As perfectly as supporting Windows Hello face recognition, the digital camera can be employed to offer an inform if a person is standing guiding the person and able to study the display — so referred to as ‘shoulder surfing’. Nevertheless, there is no display-obscuring alternative to protect against anybody sitting to the still left or proper from examining written content and viewing angles on both of those horizontal and vertical planes are great.  

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When doing the job in laptop method a pair of speakers sitting still left and proper of the keyboard direct audio upwards. They labored perfectly for video calls and for spoken-phrase audio, but if you want to just take gain of the superior-top quality display for article-operate entertainment, you may well rue the deficiency of bass. I did not notice any muffling when working with the speakers in pill method. 

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Even though the keyboard looks like a standard Lenovo ThinkPad supplying, vital journey and action go away some thing to be preferred.


Graphic: Sandra Vogel / ZDNet  

The backlit keyboard has Lenovo’s distinct pot-bellied most important keys, place has been created for a huge double-peak Enter vital, and the cursor keys are relatively huge. Travel is a little shallow, and even though the keys spring back again properly the action feels significantly less sleek than I’ve occur to be expecting from Lenovo. These troubles did not cease me acquiring my usual contact-typing pace, and I could certainly dwell with this keyboard, but Lenovo has not really lived up to its usual exemplary regular right here. 

The signature TrackPoint sitting between the G, H and B keys is responsive, and the three buttons earlier mentioned the trackpad operate perfectly with it. The touchpad also labored great. 

The Fn row keys are relatively compact and deficiency the pot-tummy style of the most important keys. They include things like a pair of contact administration keys along with keys for brightness, quantity, microphone administration, next display administration, and toggling Wi-Fi on and off. There is a narrow lozenge-formed fingerprint sensor earlier mentioned the keyboard.   

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The 3:2 QHD (2256×1504, 201ppi, 450 nits) IPS contact display is great, though the bezels could be narrower.


Graphic: Sandra Vogel / ZDNet  

My £2,069.99 (inc. VAT) review sample of the ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga was a ‘ready to ship’ design functioning Windows ten Professional on an 11th generation Intel Main i7-1160G7 processor with Iris Xe built-in graphics, 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD. Wi-Fi six (802.11ax) and Bluetooth five.2 have been current, but not cellular broadband. Nevertheless, there are two ‘build your own’ models — both of those Main i5-centered — exactly where you can specify 4G LTE (Fibocom L850-GL) for £130 added, or 5G (Snapdragon X55) for £330. 

There are 4 present-day models in the British isles, two prepared-to-ship and two establish-your-individual, with prices ranging from £1,669.99 to £2,069.99 (inc. VAT). There’s more decision in the US — seven models in all, a single establish-your-individual, with prices ranging from $1,474.50 to $2,429.40. US clients also get the Lenovo Precision Pen as regular across all models, which is just not the case in the British isles. 

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Ports on the ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga: 2x USB-C Thunderbolt four on the still left, in addition a 3.5mm audio jack on the proper.


Graphic: Sandra Vogel / ZDNet

Actual physical connections are limited to just two USB-C Thunderbolt four ports and a 3.5mm headset jack. The thinness of the foundation may well mitigate towards fitting in USB-A or HDMI ports, but the point remains that with just USB-C on-board, a docking hub or adapter(s) will be essential. It’s also truly worth noting that when the ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga is getting charged, there is just a single accessible port (except if you devote in a docking station). 

On its UK web site, Lenovo states the ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga’s forty four.5Wh battery need to final for up to eight.9 several hours, even though the datasheet quotes a far more optimistic eleven.5h. Under my typical workload of composing into net applications, browsing and streaming media, the entirely charged battery fell to 50% right after three several hours. This suggests a a lot far more modest mainstream efficiency uptime of close to six several hours. Base line: know-how personnel shouldn’t be expecting to get all-working day battery lifetime from this laptop. 

Lenovo will not mention rapidly charging. In a single test session with the battery at 34% I applied a thirty-moment cost via the 64W adapter, whereupon the battery rose to fifty two%. Charging at this level may be plenty of to offer plenty of added doing the job time in extremis. 

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Graphic: Lenovo

Conclusions

As the thinnest ever ThinkPad, the X1 Titanium Yoga is a standout laptop. It has some top rated-notch specifications, and the QHD IPS display is exceptional. But it is really not without the need of downsides, and arguably, its quality price tag suggests there need to be less of them.  

The speakers are frustratingly brief of bass, the keyboard is just not really up to Lenovo’s usual superior criteria, battery lifetime is disappointing, and the display bezels could be narrower. Anybody doing the job with legacy connectors will have the extra cost of attaining a USB-C hub or adapters.  

Over-all, though this is an remarkable convertible laptop, you can get better worth in other places, both of those from Lenovo and other suppliers. We are on the lookout forward to Gen 2 even though.

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