Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 4 - Review 2022
If nosotros hadn't just reviewed the latest Dell XPS 15 OLED, we'd be raving nigh the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen iv (starts at $1,639; $2,498 as tested). A brilliant OLED display was i of our favorite features of concluding yr's X1 Extreme Gen iii. The new Lenovo swaps the familiar 15.6-inch diagonal and 16:nine aspect ratio for a 16-inch panel with a slightly taller 16:x contour, but dissimilar with the sixteen:ten Dell, Lenovo doesn't offer an OLED version, just a choice of 3 IPS screens. That's disappointing in a premium laptop, only the X1 Extreme is still a sleek, loaded speedster that will tempt execs seeking a deluxe desktop replacement.
Lighten Upward: Blend and Carbon Cobweb
Similar rivals including the XPS fifteen, the 16-inch Apple tree MacBook Pro, and the Gigabyte Aero xv OLED XC, the ThinkPad X1 Extreme is an aristocracy laptop for digital content makers who don't demand the independent software vendor (ISV) certifications of a full-fledged mobile workstation. It'southward non inexpensive, but fifty-fifty the base model has an 8-core, 11th Generation Intel Core i7-11800H CPU and Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 Ti graphics.
Our $2,498 review unit (the cost our Lenovo rep quoted, though I configured it for $ii,131 at the company's website) keeps that arrangement's two.3GHz processor and 2,560-past-one,600-pixel non-touch on screen but steps upwardly to 16GB of RAM, a 512GB PCIe 4.0 solid-land drive, and Nvidia's 6GB GeForce RTX 3060 GPU. You tin can escalate to a Core i9-11950H, 64GB of retentivity, and two 2TB drives as well as a iii,840-past-two,400 brandish with 600 nits of effulgence, available in bear on or non-touch flavors.
The X1 Farthermost Gen 4'due south aluminum alloy lesser and carbon-fiber top cover wear the same matte-blackness hue and have passed the same MIL-STD 810G tests for shock, vibration, and environmental extremes as other ThinkPads. At 0.7 by xiv.2 by 10 inches, it's slightly bulkier than the Dell XPS 15 (0.71 by 13.6 past ix.1 inches) and Razer Blade 15 Advanced Edition (0.67 past fourteen past 9.3 inches), merely a bit lighter at 4 pounds to the Dell's 4.three and the Razer's 4.4.
Medium-thick bezels surround the screen, making room up peak for a webcam with a sliding privacy shutter; our Extreme didn't have the optional face up recognition camera but had a Windows Hello fingerprint reader integrated with the power push button. The latest Wi-Fi 6E joins Bluetooth 5.2 wireless; the spec sheet lists 5G mobile broadband as an pick but I didn't see it in the online configurator.
Except for an sound jack, the only ports on the XPS xv and MacBook Pro are USB-C Thunderbolt ports. The Lenovo has two Thunderbolt four ports on its left flank, but yous'll also find an HDMI port at that place (forth with sound and ability connectors), so you can plug in an external monitor without needing a DisplayPort dongle. Two USB 3.2 Type-A ports (one always on) join an SD card slot and security lock slot on the right.
Memo to Other Manufacturers: Re-create This Keyboard
Laptop keyboards don't get any better than the ones you lot'll detect on high-finish Lenovo ThinkPads. The X1 Extreme'south keyboard has the familiar ThinkPad layout with Home and End keys on the top row and Folio Up and Page Downwards at lesser right. The top-row shortcut keys permit y'all place and end video calls, equally well as adjust book and brightness and toggle airplane mode. The Fn and Command keys are arguably in each other's places at lower left, but yous tin can swap them with the supplied Lenovo Vantage software.
The backlit keyboard has a snappy typing experience. Information technology wants a slightly harder touch or firmer rap to avoid missed keystrokes than I'm used to from my Logitech desktop keyboard, simply it is quiet and comfy. In that location are two cursor controllers, Lenovo's trademark TrackPoint mini joystick embedded in the keyboard (with three buttons beneath the space bar), plus a good-size touchpad that takes just the right corporeality of pressure for a repose click.
The screen offers plenty of brightness, with pristine white backgrounds and first-class contrast. Viewing angles are broad, and fine details and the edges of letters are sharp. Colors are rich and well saturated—perhaps a touch duller than the vivid hues and darker-than-ink blacks of an OLED panel, but about equally good as an IPS screen gets.
The webcam offers 1080p instead of the usual, minimal 720p resolution; it captures well-lit and colorful images with nigh no dissonance or static. Speakers flanking the keyboard produce loud and clear sound, with a surprising corporeality of bass and virtually no baloney; information technology's easy to hear overlapping tracks. Dolby Access software offers music, movie, game, voice, and dynamic presets and an adjustable equalizer with surround virtualizer and volume leveler. The above-mentioned Lenovo Vantage handles system updates and Wi-Fi security every bit well as device settings.
Testing the X1 Extreme: Running With a Fast Crowd
Besides the high-end Razer Blade xv Advanced Edition and Dell XPS fifteen, I compared the ThinkPad X1 Farthermost Gen four's benchmark functioning to that of ii under-$1,500 alternatives, the Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 and Dell Inspiron 16 Plus. All iv have won PCMag Editors' Selection awards, so the Lenovo has its work cutting out for it.
Productivity Tests
The main benchmark of UL's PCMark 10 simulates a variety of real-world productivity and content-cosmos workflows to measure out overall performance for office-axial tasks such as word processing, spreadsheeting, web browsing, and videoconferencing. Nosotros likewise run PCMark 10'south Full System Drive test to assess the load time and throughput of a laptop'due south storage. (See more about how we test laptops.)
3 benchmarks focus on the CPU, using all available cores and threads, to rate a PC'southward suitability for processor-intensive workloads. Maxon's Cinebench R23 uses that company's Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene, while Primate Labs' Geekbench 5.4 Pro simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning. Finally, we use the open up-source video transcoder HandBrake one.4 to catechumen a 12-infinitesimal video clip from 4K to 1080p resolution (lower times are ameliorate).
Our last productivity test is Puget Systems' PugetBench for Photoshop, which uses the Creative Cloud version 22 of Adobe's famous image editor to rate a PC's performance for content creation and multimedia applications. It'south an automated extension that executes a variety of general and GPU-accelerated Photoshop tasks ranging from opening, rotating, resizing, and saving an image to applying masks, gradient fills, and filters.
The X1 Farthermost led the pack in our earth-shaking PCMark 10 criterion, though all five systems scored way in a higher place the 4,000 points that indicate stellar productivity—Microsoft Office and Google Docs are easy peasy for these PCs. The Lenovo aced our storage and CPU tests besides, and did well in a very competitive field in Adobe Photoshop.
Graphics Tests
Nosotros examination Windows PCs' graphics with two DirectX 12 gaming simulations from UL'southward 3DMark, Nighttime Raid (more modest, suitable for laptops with integrated graphics) and Time Spy (more than demanding, suitable for gaming rigs with discrete GPUs).
We also run two tests from the cantankerous-platform GPU benchmark GFXBench 5, which stresses both low-level routines like texturing and high-level, game-similar image rendering. The 1440p Aztec Ruins and 1080p Car Chase tests, rendered offscreen to accommodate dissimilar display resolutions, exercise graphics and compute shaders using the OpenGL programming interface and hardware tessellation respectively. The more frames per 2nd (fps), the better.
The Razer'due south top-of-the-line GeForce RTX 3080 predictably led the way in these benchmarks (though it balked at 3DMark'southward Fourth dimension Spy subtest), but the ThinkPad took 2nd identify. It'southward not intended to be a gaming laptop, simply information technology can certainly indulge you in some shooting or racing action later working hours. More important, information technology's a fine choice for image or video editing or other creative content tasks.
Battery and Display Tests
We test laptops' battery life by playing a locally stored 720p video file (the open-source Blender movie Tears of SteelTears of Steel) with brandish effulgence at 50% and sound volume at 100%. We make sure the battery is fully charged before the test, with Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting turned off.
We also use a Datacolor SpyderX Aristocracy monitor calibration sensor and its Windows software to measure a laptop screen'southward color saturation—what percentage of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 color gamuts or palettes the brandish can show—and its 50% and peak brightness in nits (candelas per foursquare meter).
The Lenovo finished side by side to last in bombardment life, but its nine-60 minutes runtime is perfectly acceptable for a powerful desktop replacement, specially since it'due south light plenty to take on aeroplane trips. The Dell's OLED panel and the Razer'south high-refresh-rate 1440p screen showed the well-nigh vivid colors, but the Extreme wasn't far behind, and its peak brightness was exceptional, exceeding its rated 400 nits.
Sensational, But Sans OLED
The ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen iv is a sensational desktop replacement for power users. Information technology barely misses an Editors' Choice nod, mainly because its contest is so formidable—the Dell XPS 15 is nearly flawless, and the Gigabyte Aero 15 offers an OLED brandish for hundreds less. But if you're shopping for a first-class creative platform that can double as a gaming laptop or workstation, you're doing yourself a disservice if yous don't include the Lenovo.
Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/laptops/45997/lenovo-thinkpad-x1-extreme-gen-4
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