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Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga review: A first-class 2-in-1 for business travelers
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga review: A first-class 2-in-1 for business travelers
The X1 Titanium Yoga is the thinnest ThinkPad ever. At 11.5 millimeters (0.45 inch) and with a 13.5-inch 2K-resolution 450-nit display with a 3:2 aspect ratio, it doesn't take up much more space in a backpack than a spiral-bound single-subject notebook. It also weighs just 2.5 pounds (1.1 kilograms), which is barely more than the X1 Nano, Lenovo's lightest ThinkPad to date at 2 pounds (907 grams). Despite the thin-and-light frame, though, the X1 feels solid enough to hold up to being banged around on flights or an everyday transit commute. And that tall screen means you're getting more vertical space to work but the laptop is no wider than a 13.3-inch laptop. My point is, this is a great design for frequent business travelers and I didn't even mention all the privacy and security features yet. The X 1 Titanium Yoga is a first-gen model, however, and while it's good, there's some room for improvement.
Like
Thin, strong 2-in-1 body
High-quality 3:2 display
Lots of security and privacy features
Lenovo Precision Pen included
Don't Like
Performance, battery life are nothing special for the price
Prices for the ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga currently start at $1,355, £1,670 in the UK and AU$2,949 in Australia. The configuration I tested, which you can see in the chart below, is $1,440, which is more than reasonable for what you're getting. But that's the price as I'm writing this. A few days ago it was $2,147, making this a much more difficult laptop to recommend. Needless to say, if you're interested in buying this laptop, you'll want to look for a sale or contact Lenovo directly to get the best pricing.
Business laptops are typically more expensive than consumer models, though, because of things like better security and remote IT features, repairability and greater durability. For the X1 Titanium Yoga that means a Mil-Spec-tested chassis constructed of titanium and carbon fiber for the lid and magnesium-aluminum alloy on the bottom; a match-on-chip fingerprint reader (the biometric info is stored on the reader, not the computer) with anti-spoofing technology; and an IR camera for facial recognition. The BIOS is self-healing, too, meaning it can repair itself from a backup in case of a malicious attack or a failed or interrupted update.
The titanium lid is new to ThinkPads.
Josh Goldman/CNET
The X1 Titanium Yoga also has an ultrawideband radar sensor that can tell when you walk away from it and quickly lock the laptop. It can also sense when you return and automatically wake and unlock it. Called Human-Presence Detection, it's simultaneously awesome and a tad creepy. This setting and many more can be controlled through the laptop's Commercial Vantage app.
In the app, you'll find everything from battery and power settings to audio tweaks for its mics and speakers to turning on and off the keyboard's various hotkeys. As you might expect, the controls are designed to improve your work experience, such as setting the laptop's mics -- there are four of them -- and speakers to improve your VoIP call quality while also suppressing keyboard noise.
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga
Price as reviewed
$1,440
Display size/resolution
13.5-inch 2,256x1,504-pixel touch display
CPU
2.1GHz Intel Core i7-1160G7
Memory
16GB 4267MHz LPDDR4X (onboard)
Graphics
128MB Intel Iris Xe Graphics
Storage
512GB PCIe NVMe SSD
Networking
802.11ax wireless, Bluetooth 5.1
Connections
Thunderbolt 4 USB-C (x2), 3.5mm audio jack
Operating system
Windows 10 Pro (2H02)
There are always trade-offs when you make a laptop this thin and light but Lenovo manages to keep things comfortable. For instance, it has a 13.5-inch display that gives you some extra vertical room to work compared to a 16:9 display. Also, its 2K resolution is a fair compromise between full HD and 4K, and it can hit a 450-nit brightness level (for working in bright conditions) and covers 100% of the sRGB color gamut. The display looks good right out of the box.
The keyboard is good, but the haptic touchpad needed some adjustment.
Josh Goldman/CNET
Also, despite its thinness, the keyboard is comfortable. I've seen user complaints about how this model's keyboard isn't as good as past ThinkPads and to some extent that's true. However, those better keyboards were in far thicker bodies. Again, given what Lenovo was working with here, it's a good keyboard.
The touchpad, on the other hand, could be better. It's small, partly because this model has the familiar ThinkPad TrackPoint nub and its associated mouse buttons above the touchpad. It also matches the display ratio, so it's simply not that wide. Lenovo also used a haptic touchpad made by Sensel that eliminates moving parts but also means the click is simulated. The out-of-the-box settings caused me some frustration with tracking and click detection. But the touchpad has its own control panel, and once I adjusted it some, it worked just fine.
The laptop's body is barely thicker than the included active pen.
Josh Goldman/CNET
The port assortment on the X1 Titanium Yoga is limited to two Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports and a 3.5mm headset jack -- though Thunderbolt 4 handles all your connection needs and power with a single cable and the right USB-C hub. Plus, it charges fast using Thunderbolt 4, too, but I wish the two ports were split up so you could charge from the left or right. Speaking of charging, battery life is a little disappointing at 9 hours, 29 minutes on our streaming video test.
This laptop isn't quite the workhorse you might expect for a premium device either -- a cost of being so thin, perhaps -- but it is snappy for typical office productivity. Like the X1 Nano, the value in the X1 Titanium Yoga is in its durable lightweight design, high-quality display and all those extra features that make it easier to pick up and start using fast. Not to mention the security and privacy options. Also, the two-in-one design gives it an edge over the Nano, in my opinion, so if you're choosing between the two, the Yoga wins.
The X1 Titanium Yoga stays thin even in tablet mode.
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Lenovo launches less-expensive ThinkBook laptops
Lenovo launches less-expensive ThinkBook laptops
For its new small-business-focused ThinkBook S line, Lenovo has jettisoned much of the traditional ThinkPad baggage in favor of a consumer-friendly but relatively durable clamshell laptop design. The ThinkBook S comes with a subset of the security and support options that differentiate Lenovo's enterprise from its mainstream hardware. There's an extended warranty, better service and some of the company's ThinkShield features, plus a physical shutter over the camera.
Its prices are now more approachable: The ThinkBook 13s starts at $729, while the ThinkBook 14s starts at $749, and both will ship this month. We don't know pricing or availability for other regions, but those directly convert to approx £559 and AU$1,045 for the 13s and £575 and AU$1,075 for the 14s.
The ThinkBook doesn't have a typical ThinkPad keyboard.
Sarah Tew/CNET
The ThinkPad's carbon black exterior gives way to silvery aluminum for the ThinkBooks. And the ThinkBook breaks with the past in a way the ThinkPad can't without causing a riot: The keyboard has the same sculpted keys, but it puts the ctrl and fn keys in more familiar locations (they're swapped on the ThinkPad keyboard). It also has a mainstream touchpad instead of the TrackPad, and there's no Trackpoint stick.
Why two models in such similar sizes and prices? Variations in regional demands.
Comparative specifications
ThinkBook 13s
ThinkBook 14s
CPU
Up to 8th-gen Core i7
Up to 8th-gen Core i7
Graphics
AMD Radeon 540X or Intel UHD 620 integrated
AMD Radeon 540X
Memory
4, 8 or 16GB DDR4
8, 16GB DDR4
Storage
up to 512GB SSD
up to 512GB SSD
Battery
Up to 11 hours
Up to 10 hours
Display
13.3-inch 1,920 x 1,080 300 nits 72% NTSC gamut
14-inch 1,920 x 1,080 250 nits
Size
12.1x8.5x0.6 in. (308x216x16mm)
12.7x8.8x0.7 in. (323x223x17mm)
Weight
3.1 lbs. (1.4kg)
3.3 lbs. (1.5kg)
Connections
1 x USB-C 3.1 Gen 2, 2 x USB-A 3.1 Gen 1, 1 x HDMI 1.4b, 1 x combo audio
1 x USB-C 3.1 Gen 2, 2 x USB-A 3.1 Gen 1, 1 x HDMI 1.4b, 1 x combo audio
Starting price
$729
$749
They're the same except in a few key ways: The 14s' base configuration has more memory and comes with the AMD discrete graphics. But it also has a lesser screen -- it's bigger but dimmer and with a smaller color gamut -- and the battery life is slightly lower, likely because of the discrete graphics.
On the other end of the spectrum, Lenovo also refreshed its ThinkPad X1 Extreme, its business laptop for people who need a little more power under the hood. The X1 Extreme Gen 2 will be getting an option for a 4K OLED touch display and processor choices up to a ninth-gen Core i9 (8 cores).
Lenovo's also upgrading the discrete graphics from the current Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti to the newer GTX 1650 Max-Q, which should offer a small bump in performance, though it still feels underpowered for a system that starts at $1,500 (directly converted, £1,150 and AU$2,150). And it will seem especially low-rent if you configure the system with the pricier i9 and OLED panel. But Lenovo's 'real' prices tend to be 10% lower than its nominal prices, so do the math.
The updated model is slated to ship in July, though the OLED option won't appear until closer to the end of August.
Manufacturers are all over the place when it comes to OLED price premiums; the price bump can range from $150 on an Alienware m15 or HP Spectre x360 to about $700 on a Dell XPS 15; that's because an OLED display sometimes only comes on a slightly higher configuration, so you end up paying more than you otherwise would have. And while some are only available on the higher-end models, like Razer's GeForce RTX 2080- or Quadro RTX 5000-equipped Blades, you can get OLED on Lenovo's GTX 1650-based ThinkPad X1 Extreme and the Gigabyte Aero 15 with a GTX 1660 Ti.
So sometimes it's a low enough amount that it inspires serious consideration, but can also be high enough that it's not a no-brainer. And 15-inch OLED models are a lot more common now than they were when 13-inchers like the Alienware 13 R3 debuted in 2016, which means prices should come down. Most major manufacturers have at least one OLED configuration option in their stable.
The TL;DR: If the extra bucks are within your budget, then OLED's high contrast can make working easier on your eyes, especially if you're in bright environments. And the saturated colors are definitely pleasing to look at. But if the model you want only has an OLED option that will require spending more than you'd like just for higher contrast and brighter colors, for creative work, or specifically to watch HDR content, then you probably have some more research ahead of you. A good IPS display can be equally satisfying.
Why OLED screens are great
Since OLED produces primary colors by running electricity through organic compounds rather than layers of various materials, the colors have tighter spectral responses. The primaries can hit higher saturations, which means they can more easily produce a lot more colors. Fewer layers -- because of the lack of a backlight -- means thinner screens too.
The spectral power distribution of the Razer Blade Advanced's OLED screen. Measured with CalMAN 5 Ultimate by SpectraCal and a Konica Minolta CS-2000 spectroradiometer. Pointy is good for color accuracy.
Screenshot by Lori Grunin/CNET
And because an OLED pixel can be completely off, it can produce effectively perfect blacks, and a glowing pixel next to a black one bleeds less light, which would make the black look lighter. That means you get higher contrast. With a backlight, at best you can turn off zones of LEDs to get better blacks and control light bleed -- a technology called local dimming -- and it's never quite as contrasty.
Varying the backlight also increases the time it takes to change a pixel's brightness, and the bigger the difference between the brightness of side-by-side pixels, the longer it takes. That lag, called "response time" is important for gaming, where pixel states need to change as fast as possible to prevent blurring where you don't want it.
OLED's response time is as close to instantaneous as you can get with current technologies, though it's still subject to moving picture response time blur. To get even closer with an LCD you have to use TN (twisted nematic), which otherwise is a real drop in quality over other options, such as the more common IPS (in-plane switching).
And why they're not so great
A laptop faces some significant drawbacks that a TV or phone doesn't. Such as:
Battery life: Since it can individually control pixel brightness values, OLED is more power efficient overall than LCD for mixed content. But for a mostly white screen, like when you're shopping on white-background Amazon or working in white-background background Google docs, firing up all those OLED pixels to a comparable brightness takes a lot more power. It does make them easier on the eyes, though, despite the battery life hit.
Windows: TVs and phones don't have to run Windows, either. Their displays are tightly integrated with the software and the best ones are factory calibrated with selectable color profiles. Microsoft doesn't require custom color profiles for monitors, and most end up with the Generic PnP profile, which makes assumptions that don't necessarily apply to OLED. So no matter how accurate the screen is -- and OLED can be very, very accurate -- if a video says to the graphics subsystem "give me a saturated red," the default profile shouts back, "You want red? I'LL SHOW YOU RED!!!" It doesn't know how to optimally map the broader range of colors properly or how to not crush all the detail in the dark shadows.
Gaming: While OLED has a fast response time, the screens only come in 4K, so you run into a fixed 60Hz refresh-rate limit; 4K laptop displays have just starting reaching refresh rates of 120Hz, but none in OLED. Depending upon the games you play, ugly frame-rate sync artifacts like tearing and stutter may overshadow the OLED's pleasing pop and fast pixel response times. RTX 2080-based systems are fast, but not fast enough for consistent 60fps 4K gameplay, And if you drop to a lower resolution for better frame rates, you'll need to use software-based vsync or cap the frame rate to get best results.
But, it's great for HDR, right? RIGHT?
If you're contemplating an OLED display because you want to watch high dynamic range content on your laptop, well, buckle up.
On one hand, OLED displays have a native wide-color gamut that covers 100% of the Apple-popularized P3 color space, necessary for decent HDR viewing and currently the de facto broadest color coverage generally available. But that's only one piece of the HDR equation, which also includes:
Luminance -- how bright the screen or at least a small portion of the screen can physically get as well as how bright it can get with power management settings
Tone mapping curve -- how the HDR content's brightness range is mapped to the narrower brightness range of the screen
display drivers and color management -- these inform the operating system about the capabilities of the screen and how to best map the colors of the content to the screen, along with the internal metadata stored in the display
Windows' interface for HDR-related settings
DRM and IP -- digital rights management and business-model driven intellectual property protections define what you can or can't stream in 4K and/or HDR, and not all DRM schemes are supported by Windows and vice versa
DirectX -- Windows' graphics programming interface, which ties all the previous pieces together
Viewing HDR content and playing games in HDR on your laptop requires that all those pieces fit together seamlessly. Under Windows, that means it takes some fiddling at best and defies solution at worst -- and not just for OLED. But in a laptop, OLED screens can't get very bright: The maximum I've measured has been just under 600 nits (the rated peak the panel is capable of), but most are under 500 nits; that's notably lower than OLED TVs.
Furthermore, given the variables listed above, simply using OLED technology isn't a sufficient condition for HDR support; at the very least, the manufacturer also has to flag to DirectX that it supports the necessary basic tone-mapping algorithm (HDR10). Without that, you don't get the Windows HDR options in the Display settings.
So, for example, some laptops fully support Windows HDR -- by "fully," I mean they send the "yes" flag to the OS for supporting streaming video, gaming and wide color gamut -- while some only support it for streaming.
The same, but different
The only manufacturer of OLED laptop panels is Samsung, and it only makes one panel at the moment. There's some variation across the executions, though not as much as I expected. Unsurprisingly, all displays cover the same gamut: over 100% of D65 P3, with the primaries (the colors at the vertices of the triangle which roughly defines the color space) reaching well beyond the edges. They also have good gray-scale tracking -- that's the ability to maintain a consistent white point across grays, and one of the most important factors when looking for a color-accurate display -- though not as good in the very dark areas.
While Samsung's panel is technically capable of reaching a maximum brightness of 600 nits, that doesn't mean the manufacturer has to drive it that high -- that's one of the ways executions can vary. For full-screen use -- you know, when you're doing laptoppy things -- they all settle around in the 380-400 nit range. But at 70% brightness, which I consider a good working level, it's closer to 200-230. While that's the same as newer LCD screens, that brightness looks a lot better on OLED because of the contrast.
Sarah Tew/CNET
Though not as robust as the color management of a mobile workstation, which generally has profiles stored in hardware, it's one of the broader systems I've seen in a prosumer laptop. For example, it comes with a Pantone-certified software profile for print work, plus four color temperature software-calibration profiles (D5800, D6000, D6500 and D6800), which you can swap among via the ControlCenter rather than using Windows' system. Oddly, the Native profile it loads is sRGB rather than just a full-monitor gamut, which is what "native" usually means in this context.
As tested (using Portrait Displays' Calman 5 Ultimate and an X-Rite i1Display Pro), the display is very accurate for a nonpro screen. It covers 100% of DCI-P3 and about 93% of the Adobe RGB color gamuts, all the white points come within 250K of their targets, gamma is very consistently close to 2.2 above 20% gray (OLED gamma has a discontinuity roughly below 20% because it has different shadow-detail characteristics than monitors with less perfect blacks, for which a gamma of 2.2 became standard) and the gray scale is reasonably neutral. For colors, it's very accurate at maximum brightness -- I was told it was calibrated to 100% brightness for Adobe RGB and it might be even better at lower brightness levels -- and with just a little tweaking could probably hit anyone's accuracy threshold.
It hit a peak brightness of over 600 nits for a 10% window in HDR mode, though most often that will be closer to about 415 nits, and full-screen maximum brightness for normal work is around 350 nits.
Read our Gigabyte Aero 15 OLED review.
Sarah Tew/CNET
The Asus' OLED screen is Pantone Validated -- it comes with two undocumented software profiles -- and uses the same Samsung panel as all the current models. It's slightly dimmer than the others at a peak full-screen brightness of about 356 nits, but offers the same full P3 gamut coverage -- only 93% of Adobe RGB, though. (It's listed as DisplayHDR 500 True Black compliant, so I'm not entirely confident of my peak brightness result of 416 nits for a 10% window. Consider my results a work in progress.) I think it uses the same touch overlay as the HP Spectre x360, because it has the same grainy look up close, and like that system it supports Windows HDR for everything. Asus' recommended brightness when working on battery is 40%, which is definitely too dim.
Read our Asus ZenBook Pro Duo review.
Sarah Tew/CNET
I think some of the differences in the HP's screen performance -- slightly less bright with a warmer white point than the other two -- stem from the antiglare coating. The screen also has a visible dither-like pattern on white, which appears on other models, but is a little more pronounced on this model. And viewed from the side, the coating also produces faint rainbows.
But that coating makes looking at the screen a lot more pleasant than the mirror-like surface of the Razer. The battery life is also relatively good (for a 4K laptop), lasting 8.6 hours. Our tests don't use a lot of white screens, however.
The opportunity to watch videos side-by-side on the OLED and non-OLED HPs was educational: I learned the non-OLED display was a lot better than I thought. Standard definition video looked more saturated and contrasty on the OLED, but it also crushed the blacks and pushed reds to a disturbing degree. Skin tones were not great.
HDR video streaming as SDR to the LCD sometimes looked better than the same content streaming as HDR to the OLED, which had muddy shadows.
Though the laptop supports HDR for games, the MX150 can't really run any games that support HDR. (Though HDR by itself shouldn't impact performance, it usually comes with some other visual baggage that does.) But the dark blacks and bright colors pep up any game, as long as you don't need to search the shadows.
Read more.
Sarah Tew/CNET
Razer Blade Advanced
The Blade also comes with a touchscreen version of the OLED display, which is novel for a gaming system (though more common than it used to be). While it pushed the brightness higher than the other laptops, it also had an odd gamma curve that reminded me of film's with a knee and a shoulder, as if it's intended to bring out more detail in the highlights, but less in the shadows.
That, and the high brightness, is probably why it doesn't result in as compressed a tonal range as the HP in HDR mode when you're not viewing HDR content. Still, though, I had trouble getting any HDR with really bright zones to look good. It just doesn't map gracefully to the lower brightness.
Plus, it was kind of hard to see the shadows or appreciate the blacks, because the screen is so reflective. I couldn't find an angle where I wasn't staring at the overhead lights or myself (even in the dark).
However, the Razer also seemed to get "stuck" halfway between HDR and SDR modes when switching back and forth, in that HDR video would occasionally look like it was crushed into the smaller SDR space -- low brightness, desaturated colors and whites clipped to gray.
Games, of course, look great. But the lights in HDR mode that look searing in Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice on a 1,000-nit display, didn't sear quite as much.
Read our Razer Blade 15 Advanced review.
Sarah Tew/CNET
I tested the OLED display for the m15 on an old model before the latest generation design was available. You can read my impressions about it, but because so much of the display's performance depends on implementation, I don't consider those final.
Read more.
Sarah Tew/CNET
The model of the XPS 15 I tested delivered good general-purpose performance -- it wasn't terribly color accurate and only came with a single general color profile, but Dell tends to reserve its color-accurate options for its professional Precision models. For full-screen (i.e., everyday) work, it gets decently bright at around 400 nits.
