Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 6, hands on: A premium 14-inch 2-in-1 for business

Lenovo’s ThinkPad X1 laptops are ideal up there with the very best on the industry. Generally very well constructed with prime-conclusion components and fantastic usability, they can be tough to defeat. The most current in the two-in-1 ThinkPad X1 Yoga series, now in its 6th generation, is affordable only to those people with deep pockets, even at its starting off price tag of £1,849.99 (inc. VAT £1,541.sixty six ex. VAT) in the British isles — whilst products are at this time readily available from $1,393.84 in the US. But splash out, and you can get a beautifully transportable, effective and usable notebook. 

The style of the ThinkPad X1 Yoga is very well set up and proceeds to impress. The chassis is compact taking into consideration it homes a fourteen-inch monitor, measuring 313mm large by 223mm deep by fourteen.9mm thick (twelve.32in. x eight.77in. x .59in.). It did not difficulty even the smallest of my have bags. The ‘starting at’ bodyweight is quoted incredibly specifically on Lenovo’s British isles web site at 1.399kg, whilst the US web page just settles for 3lbs, which converts to 1.36kg. It can be not as gentle as some two-in-1s, but the exceptionally stable build – the X1 Yoga passes MIL-STD-810H testing — justifies each individual gram or ounce. Neither the lid nor the foundation exhibit any flex, so there is no mechanical want for a protecting sleeve. Even now, if this were my day to day notebook I’d likely want to guard the scratchable metallic outer shell. 

The deep grey chassis colour is really eye-catching, and Lenovo’s familiar ThinkPad X1 logo on the lid is unique. This is repeated on the bottom ideal corner of the wrist relaxation — to some degree unnecessarily, in my perspective, as the silver, purple and black colour plan is a very little distracting. 

As with all Lenovo Yoga equipment, the 360-degree monitor hinges assist pill as very well as notebook method, and factors in concerning these kinds of as ‘tent’ and ‘presentation’ method. All products have a touch monitor, and Lenovo provides a stylus which is housed on the chassis. The AAAA-powered ThinkPad Pen Pro is tension sensitive, giving command in excess of line thickness. It has two buttons, which can be configured to launch apps or accomplish capabilities in the on-board Lenovo Pen Options app. The stylus rates while in its housing, and battery daily life can be shown in the options app and on the taskbar. The inclusion of the stylus and its on-unit housing are large in addition factors. Although the pen is really little and lightweight, I found it fine for hand-prepared enter.  

The keyboard is incredibly cozy to use. You will find not a large amount of resistance on the downward stroke, and keys bounce back again with vigour, making typing experience effortless. The ‘click-clack’ audio that accompanies typing is not distracting. The major keys all have Lenovo’s regular pot-bellied style, while the Fn critical row and arrow keys are squared off. The Enter critical is tall and large. I experienced no difficulty touch-typing at my usual pace. 

Lenovo’s trademark purple TrackPoint sits concerning the G, H and B keys, with 3 buttons above the trackpad for use with it. The TrackPoint is responsive and easy to use, but those people buttons do necessarily mean significantly less area for the touchpad. It can be usable sufficient, but Lenovo are unable to adhere to the craze for huge touchpads right here. 

Biometric authentication is catered for by a fingerprint sensor built-in into the lozenge-formed electric power button that sits on the ideal facet of the gap concerning keyboard and monitor. The 720p webcam above the monitor has a sliding privacy include, and IR assist is readily available as an solution if you want to use Windows Hi there deal with authentication. 

My assessment device experienced a prime-conclusion UHD+ (3,840 x two,four hundred, 323.5ppi) IPS touch panel whose brightness (five hundred nits), sharpness and clarity were all outstanding. It also supports ninety% of the DCI-P3 colour gamut. A reduced resolution FHD+ (1,920 x 1,200, 161.7ppi) IPS touch panel is also readily available, with possibly four hundred nits or five hundred nits brightness (the latter also arrives with a PrivacyGuard filter). A reduced-resolution monitor will make feeling if you want to maximise battery daily life. 

A fantastic monitor justifies fantastic speakers, and which is specifically what Lenovo provides right here. You will find lots of quantity, bass is punchy, classical songs is very well-defined, and voice is obvious and sharp. Lenovo provides two strategies of tweaking audio. Its own Lenovo Commerical Vantage application provides Dolby Audio options for different situations: dynamic, motion picture, songs, match and voice, and permits users to automatically optimise audio voice calling. The Dolby Access app provides finer-grained controls for those people five situations, in addition 3 presets. It can be really an expansive range of options if you like to fiddle and tweak. 

There are at this time eight ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen six products on Lenovo’s British isles web site — 3 ‘build your own’ and five ‘ready to ship’. The starting off price tag is £1,849.99 (inc. VAT £1,541.sixty six ex. VAT), for which you get an Intel Main i5-1145G7 processor, built-in Iris Xe Graphics, 8GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD and a fourteen-inch FHD+ (1920 x 1200) IPS touch monitor with four hundred nits brightness. Configurable options go up to a Main i7-1185G7 CPU (+£210), 32GB of RAM (+£180), a 2TB SSD (+£410) and a UHD+ (3,840 x two,four hundred) IPS touch monitor with five hundred nits brightness (+£150). 

Cellular broadband is provided with some of the preconfigured products and is readily available as a customisation solution: 4G LTE will insert £140 to the price tag, while 5G is a £400 addition. 

In the US, as mentioned above, rates start out at $1,393.84, which buys you a Main i5-1135G7, 8GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD and an FHD+ monitor. The prime-conclusion preconfigured model in the US (Main i7, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD, UHD+ monitor) expenditures $two,393.40. 

Lenovo, and other manufacturers, can be stingy with ports and connectors on their large-conclusion laptops, but not right here. It can be fantastic to see a pair of USB-A ports in addition to two Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports, entire-size HDMI and a 3.5mm combo audio in/out slot. 1 of the USB-C ports is used for charging, leaving just a person cost-free for a peripheral or hub when the battery is staying replenished. Even so, Lenovo reveals that it can be achievable to deliver a superior array of ports on a compact notebook chassis.

Lenovo statements up to fifteen several hours of daily life for the 57Wh battery on its web site, whilst the data sheet has estimates ranging from sixteen.1h to 23.9h. My assessment unit’s UHD+ (3840 x 2400) monitor may well be liable for a to some degree poorer demonstrating, which observed the entirely billed battery fall to just forty nine% in the course of a 3-hour session managing mainstream workloads — composing into world wide web apps, world wide web surfing and media streaming. That is effective out at all around six several hours on a linear extrapolation, and I’d hoped for better. It can be achievable there was an situation with my assessment device, since on the to start with endeavor at a rundown check the battery attained 82% soon after a person hour and then crashed ideal down to six% in the next fifty percent hour. If I get a next assessment device from Lenovo, I will retest the battery.

Speedy charging (which calls for a 65W electric power provide or higher) labored fine, though. With the battery at six% a fifteen-minute cost observed it increase to 27%, a even more fifteen minutes took it to forty four% and soon after a complete of forty five minutes it experienced risen to 62%.

Conclusions 

The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen six is a gem of a two-in-1 notebook, albeit an high-priced a person. It can be compact and very well-manufactured, with a superb keyboard, a large-resolution monitor and an outstanding audio subsystem. The bundled, garaged stylus and superior range of ports are additional in addition factors, and the means to configure the notebook to meet up with your precise requirements, which include up to 2TB of SSD storage, is welcome.

You will find a issue mark in excess of battery daily life, but this may well be a glitch with my assessment device. If my battery challenge proves to be a a person-off, then the ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen six is a premium fourteen-inch two-in-1 to be reckoned with.

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