The Best Business Laptop

What'sup guys Matthew Moniz here and welcome
to my review of the Lenovo X1 Carbon. This is the 2018 model and in terms of design
nothing has really changed from last year. But the internals have been updated and a
few other things have been improved to make this business laptop even better. The best thing about Lenovo X1 thinkpads that
they're made of carbon magnesium so making this product extremely light and also very
great to touch.

The material doesn't feel like metal it actually
feels more like rubber. But it is very comfortable to use especially
when you have your wrists on the deck. This also goes through a bunch of tests the
MIL-STD-810G test. This is a military test that the US uses to
test things like shock, absorption, drop tests, altitude a bunch of stuff, so in terms of
day-to-day use this thing is going to take a lot more of a beating than a regular consumer
business laptop like the Dell XPS 13.

In fact, it's actually even lighter than the
Dell XPS 13 at 2.5 Lbs. It's a little bit thicker! But it's definitely lighter. When it comes to ports Lenovo did a fantastic
job of including all the ports you need in a business environment. You got 2 USB type-c thunderbolt 3 ports with
4 PCIe lanes, so you can hook up an external GPU, you can hook up a 4k monitor and you
can also power the laptop.

You also have proprietary port for an RJ45
cable. So if you want to wire it to the network you
have that option as well. There's a USB 3.0 Port, a full size HDMI port
and on the right side you have another USB. 3.0 Port, a kensington lock and an audio jack.

Plus, if you need extra storage, you have
a microsd card slot that also combos with a sim slot. So you can pop in your sim card in here and
use data while you're on the go without having to connect to WIFI. Getting inside is super easy, 5 screws and
you're in. Everything inside of here is not upgradeable
or replaceable except for the NVME SSD.

The one in here is 256 GB and is super fast
and does a good job with read and write speeds. There's a big battery but I don't like the
fact that there's only one fan. On the i7 model, I think you need two still
and especially with a thunderbolt 3 port and you're game on it or lets say you're going
to run intensive applications for a very long time. I'll talk to you guys about heat management
later on in the video.

The display is one area that Lenovo has improved
a lot. I didn't review the 2017 model but I did review
the 2016 version back then my biggest complaint was the screen didn't get bright enough. This year that's all been solved it gets really
bright 302 nits of brightness so it's good. Colours are very vibrant, they're punchy and
the screen is very colour accurate.

Getting over 100% SRGB and 78% ARGB. If you don't want a Full HD model. The 1920 x 1080 version that I have here. They do have a QHD version and also a QHD
version with HDR.

I haven't seen it myself but I've heard it
looks fantastic. Another cool thing is that this display rotates
180 degrees, which is a lot more than most traditional clamshell laptops. Lenovo has also including a thing call the
ThinkShutter, which is kind of clever! Insteasd of putting a piece of tape over your
webcam to protect yourself from potential intrusions. This just has a little shutter that goes back
and forth to keep the webcam closed so you don't have to worry about your privacy.

Speaking of webcams, this one is HD like the
majority of Ultrabooks on the market. It also looks pretty similar to other webcams
on most Ultrabooks. In fact, if you want the best web cam you're
going to have to look at the Surface Book 2. That one does a really good job.

But this is fine for streaming, the microphone
sounds like this and if you're a business person you'll be more than happy for your
conference calls. Sound is definitely one of the weaker points
of this laptop. There's two speakers on the bottom they get
pretty loud but they sound distorted at max volume and they sound tinny overall. You're definitely going to want to carry a
pair of headphones with you.

But inside is a bunch of far-field microphones,
so you can yell to it across the room, use Cortana and the laptop is going to answer
you. Also, very very soon Lenovo is going to push
out an update enabling Alexa on this. So if you like Amazon and you like Alexa this
thing is going to be able to do it. Now when it comes to keyboard the Lenovo X1
has one of my favourite keyboards on an Ultrabook.

I take this keyboard over the majority of
Ultrabook keyboards any day of the week. 1.8 Mm of travel distance over 2mm of actuation
force. Hands down one of best and most comfortable
typing experience you can get on an Ultrabook. I also like the trackpad.

It's very accurate this year. My only complaints about it is the size because
there is a trackpoint ball with buttons on top of the trackpad some of that real estate
is lost. Now for those of you out there that use the
trackpoint. I know how important it is.

I used to use the trackpoint all the time. You can be so much more precise with it than
you can with the actual trackpad. So I'm glad Lenovo is keeping those on their
keyboards. There's also 3 levels of back lighting, the
arrow keys are a good size and overall the typing experience is amazing.

The review unit that I have here is using
the i7-8550U processor. So that's the 8th gen Intel Kaby Lake-R refresh. You get two more cores and a lower TDP compared
to last years model. So basically in day-to-day stuff like browsing
the web, using productivity applications like Microsoft and Google Docs.

You're not going to notice that much of a
speed difference. It's not until you start doing more demanding
things that can utilize those 4-cores like editing in photoshop, edit 4K video if you
have an external GPU connected. That's when you'll see those 4-cores come
into play and offer about 40-50 percent speed increase. You can also game on this thing at very very
low settings.

So you can play Overwatch on it, Fortnite,
CSGO, you just got to drop settings very low. In terms of heat, this laptop did not do well. I was getting surface temperatures of 50 degrees
celsius comparable ultrabooks using the exact same CPU would only get up to about 40-43
degrees celsius. Also, during my stress test after about 20-25
minutes the laptop would thermal throttle and completely shutdown.

CPU temps would hit about 80 degrees celsius
which is also about 15 degrees more than other comparable ultrabooks. Noise is really good I'm getting about 33
decibels when it's idle and about 35-38 decibels when it's under full load. So here's my closing thoughts. The 2018 Lenovo X1 Carbon is still a great
business ultrabook.

It has a beautiful screen. It has all the ports you need for a business
environment. One of the best keyboards you can get on an
ultrabook, a good touchpad, it has great security features and of course microsd and sim slot
if you need to be on the road and have some extra storage space. The only thing I don't like about it is the
sound quality, so you're going to want to carry some headphones and the overheating.

Now the overheating is not a big deal for
most people. People who use this laptop just to browse
the net, stay connected, do presentations. I wouldn't worry about it. It's just for the few out there who hook up
an external GPU, maybe want to edit video on this or game for a long period of time.

Than I would be a little bit worried. So that pretty much wraps up my review of
the X1 Carbon 2018. Let me know your thoughts in the comments
below. If you have enjoyed this video feel free to
hit the like button, if you're new to the channel subscribe and I'll talk to you in
the next video!.