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Computer buyers who think the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon is the pinnacle of thin and light business laptops will have to think again. The new ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga ($ 1,899) reinvents the classic executive laptop. This svelte looker is the thinnest ThinkPad to date, standing just over 0.4 inches from the corner desk. But based on the first look Lenovo gave us, before the ThinkPad X1 Titanium debuted at CES 2021 (we had a preliminary sample in hand), we found that its redesigned keyboard could keep it from the stardom of the. company.
Any color, as long as it’s titanium
Companies like ThinkPads in part because their rugged black chassis has changed so little over the years. Lately, however, the current owner of the ThinkPad line, Lenovo, has been shaking things up. The X1 Yoga Titanium is the tech giant’s latest effort. The new laptop is only available in a light titanium color scheme, removing the black finishes of the X1 Carbon and other previous ThinkPad flagships.
It’s yoga, which means it has a 360-degree rotating hinge that lets you turn it into an easel, tent, or tablet. This has been the standard rate for some ThinkPads for some time; there’s already a ThinkPad X1 Yoga for sale, now in its fifth generation, with a sixth generation announced alongside the Titanium.
As well as being much thinner and lighter (it weighs 2.5 pounds) than the X1 Yoga and X1 Carbon, the X1 Yoga Titanium’s unique screen sets it apart. It’s a 13.5-inch touchscreen with 450 nit backlight and 3: 2 aspect ratio, which makes it taller and narrower than the 16: 9 widescreen orientation on most current ThinkPads. The extra height allows you to show more of a text document or web page before you have to scroll, a boon for overworked executives reviewing memos all day.
The 3: 2 aspect ratio is also making a comeback on other ultraportable laptops; we’ve seen a handful of these models introduced over the past year or so. Before the advent of widescreen video, the 3: 2 aspect ratio was more common on laptops.
Cutting-edge business features
The ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga has many cutting edge business features that you would expect from a laptop that costs that much. They include user-friendly innovations like a webcam that includes both infrared sensors for facial recognition logins through Windows Hello and a reassuring shutter for privacy. These components require a bit of extra space between the top of the screen and the edge of the laptop, meaning the interior feels a bit less technologically advanced than, say, the iterations. more recent Dell XPS 13 (whose pixels practically flow down the sides of the laptop).
Inside the X1 Titanium Yoga, there are many features that IT staff will appreciate, including the option for the all-new 11th Generation Core processors with remote management and vPro security features. The unit that Lenovo has tested has 8GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD, although buyers can order configurations with double those amounts. Adding vPro processors is often the key to adoption by Fortune 500 companies and other large enterprises that deploy and manage large fleets of laptops. Intel says the new 11th Gen Core processors with vPro deliver 20% better overall performance than the 10th Gen they replace.
Despite all the professional features, the X1 Titanium Yoga Is have, there are still a few missing. Chief among the missing is a full-size HDMI port for physical connections to A / V systems in conference rooms and auditoriums. (The chassis is far too thin for such a large port.) Instead, the only physical connections offered by the X1 Titanium are two USB Type-C ports, a SIM card slot for the optional 5G / LTE modem, and a headphone jack.
Of course, you can easily order a USB-C-to-HDMI adapter or cable, but that’s another thing to remember before embarking on your next business trip (which, judging by the COVID pandemic -19 still raging, might not be for a while).
Hey, what happened to the keyboard?
By far the most controversial features of the X1 Titanium Yoga are the keyboard and touchpad. Both of these traditional input methods are important to ThinkPad users, and Lenovo has drastically changed them in this new laptop, starting with the touchpad. It ditches the traditional physical click switch, opting instead for haptic feedback that simulates physical clicks with tiny vibrations.
This technology has been around for a few years in Apple laptops, where it works quite well. But based on the brief time I’ve spent with the X1 Titanium, Lenovo’s implementation seems more awkward. It’s based on technology from a small company called Sensel, whose design integrates the haptic engine sensors, and all of the other touchpad components, into a single package. This compact design is one of the main reasons the X1 Titanium could be made so thin.
Sensel, which launched its next-generation haptic touchpad prototype at CES on Monday, offers a few settings in a standalone app on the X1 Titanium. They include setting the finger and click detection threshold, as well as setting the intensity of haptic feedback or turning it off completely. These are similar to the options offered by MacBooks, but in general I found the tapping and haptic clicks to be a little less precise on the X1 Titanium. This is based on just a few minutes of use, however, I may not yet have crossed the required learning curve.
Equally unusual and potentially more controversial is the X1 Titanium’s keyboard. It ditches the luxurious keys and distance traveled that are endemic to ThinkPads in favor of a shallower, more rigid keyboard. I find this to be an unequivocal negative aspect. The keys are full-sized, but they just aren’t as comfortable as the ones on the X1 Yoga or X1 Carbon, or any other ThinkPad laptop I’ve tried.
The overall feel is closer to the typing feel on the XPS 13 or previous generation MacBook Pros and MacBook Airs with butterfly-type switches. It’s about typing, not typing.
Of course, we’ll have to wait to deliver our full verdict until we can further test the keyboard and the rest of the X1 Titanium, but it’s clear now that the new keyboard isn’t a definite step forward in ThinkPad design. .
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