It makes me feel very old to say this, but we are on the ninth generation of Lenovo’s ThinkPad X1 Carbon. And there have been nine of these for a re

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9 review: ninth time’s the charm

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2021-09-27 19:30:09

It makes me feel very old to say this, but we are on the ninth generation of Lenovo’s ThinkPad X1 Carbon. And there have been nine of these for a reason. The X1 Carbon has historically been one of the best business laptops you can get. And that remains the case with its newest iteration. Lenovo has made a few tweaks, but otherwise, it’s the same ThinkPad excellence we’ve come to expect.

Before we get into the pricing, I need to make the usual caveat that Lenovo loves to put absurdly high MSRPs on all of its ThinkPads, but they’re usually available for significantly less. So the base X1 Carbon (the Linux model) has an MSRP of $2,336 but is currently available for $1,401.60. That model includes a Core i5-1135G7, 8GB of RAM (soldered), 256GB of storage, and a 1920 x 1200, 14-inch, 400-nit, non-touch display. Prebuilt models run up to a Core i7-1185G7, 32GB of RAM, and 512GB of storage for $3,479 (listed at $2,249.40). You can add an infrared camera, as well as a touchscreen with Lenovo’s Privacy Guard or a UHD+ panel, but those options are only available with the IR webcam. The IR camera can also come with human presence detection.

The specific model I tested is currently listed for $1,829.40 if you construct it on Lenovo’s site ($3.049 MSRP). As a full package, it’s listed for $2,251.99 at CDW but is currently sold out there. It has a Core i7-1165G7 (a step down from the most expensive chip), 16GB of memory, 512GB of storage, a non-touch display, no vPro, and no IR camera. It is verified through Evo, which is the program Intel uses to certify top-performing models.

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