When a series reaches its tenth year — ThinkPad X1 Carbon review
Tell users about brands, history, and even feelings. In fact, most consumers don’t care, because history does not represent current products, but it has to be said that the products made by brands with history are indeed in various It should be more perfect in all aspects, because it has long enough technical accumulation and market feedback to continuously improve the product.
Just like the ThinkPad X1 Carbon, this series has come to its tenth generation, which is very rare for a brand's series products.
I think the biggest change in this year's X1 Carbon 2022 is that the performance has become stronger. The 9th-generation Carbon has almost achieved the extreme lightness and thinness of this size, and the interface has also achieved enough. This year, it maximized its performance on the basis of the original, thus bringing about a substantial increase in efficiency.
Design and Experience
In fact, since 2014, it is difficult for you to see some drastic changes on the ThinkPad, because the product development design since then has changed from the original radical "product-centric" to "user-centric", so you are More detailed optimizations and functional iterative improvements are seen in subsequent products.
For example, the biggest change in the design of the X1 Carbon this year is the convex bangs design. It can be seen that the bangs are not really protruding outside the fuselage, but the upper edge is beveled to make it visually prominent.
The main purpose of this is to achieve one-handed opening and closing more accurately. On the other hand, it can be seen from the text on Liu Hai that it is equipped with a higher-definition camera module and is compatible with Computer Vision, but this requires subsequent software updates to achieve Better applications, such as "detecting the eyes behind you" are very practical.
This generation of camera interface type is also changed from USB serial to MIPI interface usually used on mobile phones to meet the high bandwidth requirements of high-definition images, so theoretically X1 Carbon 2022 will experience a significant improvement in video conferencing.
Another major change is the keyboard. The keyboard has new air holes to assist the fan to enter the air, so as to achieve better heat dissipation. Of course, the feel of the keyboard itself is still very good, and the 1.5mm keystroke has not been reduced. Although the trackpad is huge, I still disable the trackpad more often and keep the habit of using the small red dot + three buttons.
Other aspects of the design have not changed much compared to the previous generation, the material is still a combination of high-strength carbon fiber + magnesium alloy, the keyboard still supports the splash-proof design, and the MIL-STD-810H test that has passed the past practice. Carbon 2022 has a lot on it. The workmanship quality and feel are also not faulty, and the reliable and stable performance is not wrong. This is one of the important reasons why Carbon can be updated to the 10th generation.
The optional specifications of the X1 Carbon 2022 screen in China this time have increased:
4K level 3840*2400 LCD
2.8K level 2880*1800 new OLED
2.2K level 2400*1400 LCD for domestic special supply
However, the final release date of the touch screen version is still uncertain. This one in my hand is a 2.2K LCD version, the screen is from AUO (B140QAN05.0), the actual measurement can also achieve close to 100% sRGB color gamut coverage, and the brightness is around 300nit. Because it is a matte screen, its reflectivity is also Very low, so it can meet the needs of most business scenarios.
I personally recommend the 2.2K version or the 2.8K OLED version. These two resolutions are more suitable for 14-inch screens. I usually open the zoom to 125% or 150%. Their text details and screen utilization are the best. , while the OLED version will have higher brightness and resolution, and more stunning colors.
The interface specification and layout are not much different from the previous generation, with two high-spec Thunderbolt 4, two USB 3.2 and HDMI, Nano SIM card slot and audio interface. As a commercial version, it is essential to be equipped with USB A and HDMI at this stage. This will also be an important selling point of Carbon, which can be suitable for multi-scenario business use without switching.
In fact, most USB-A ports of ThinkPad support power off to charge digital products, but for Carbon, there is an alternative function that is P-to-P 2.0 charging method, one C port adapter is connected to the computer, and the other is connected to C through C to C The connection can achieve simultaneous charging and high-speed data transfer, which is very useful in some specific situations. If you want to turn it on, you can enable Always On USB and Charge in Battery Mode in the BISO.
On the other hand, the X1 Carbon in my hand is equipped with LTE (all versions currently on sale are standard), and it comes with a 1-year data package at random. Compared with searching for WIFI everywhere, the built-in cellular data is connected immediately after booting. The sliding experience is very suitable for travel personnel or mobile business people. Of course, even if you buy a non-LTE version, it is very convenient to install it yourself, and the cost will be relatively more cost-effective.
Internal Design:
The structure of the X1 Carbon 2022 has not changed much, so the disassembly is the same as the previous generation, and the bottom case can be easily removed by loosening the 5 anti-lost screws at the bottom:
In fact, it is often heard that the interior of the ThinkPad is not high-end and not beautiful, and it is indeed undeniable. But it is difficult to see on other notebooks that the front and back of the motherboard are covered with electrostatic shielding layers, it is difficult to see the black dust-proof and anti-turbulent sponge sticking around the fan, and it is difficult to see that the heat pipe and the air outlet are affixed with silver thermal pads. It is even more difficult to see that there are so many WiFi and LTE contacts on the fuselage. At most, a heat dissipation copper plate on the hard disk is amazing. Therefore, although the interior of the ThinkPad is not eye-catching, it is more practical.
In terms of heat dissipation, the X1 Carbon 2022 adopts a dual fan and single heat pipe rear air outlet design, and the heat dissipation design is 20W, which is the same as the previous generation. Every time I mention ThinkPad cooling, I will mention the eagle-wing fan, because the technology it covers is indeed ahead of its opponents, and the performance of previous tests is also very good, so I look forward to the performance of X1 Carbon 2022.
In terms of scalability, the memory in my hand is onboard 16G LPDDR5, and the hard disk is from Samsung PM9A1. Its measured read and write speeds are as follows:
The maximum read is 6.72G/s, and the maximum write is about 4.86G/s. The read and write rate is good, which belongs to the PCIe 4.0 level. At the same time, the long-term read and write performance of the hard disk is also very good.
Heat dissipation and noise performance:
The X1 Carbon 2022 processor in my hand uses Intel's latest Alder Lake P28 series standard pressure processor and Intel Iris Xe graphics card, and many configurations have passed the Intel EVO certification, so we are also curious about its performance release and Stability performance. According to the usual practice, we first pass 30 R15 continuous tests to see the power consumption performance of the CPU under long-term load. Through continuous running score analysis, we can intuitively see its performance changes:
It can be seen from the data that the X1 Carbon 2022's continuous running score is at a peak state of 1638cb at the beginning. This peak performance is still good, but after 30 runs, it can only stabilize at about 1202cb, which is relatively quite satisfactory.
The purpose of continuous running points is to record the whole process of running points. We also have an exclusive test, which is to record the temperature of the air outlet of the machine. You can see the temperature change of the air outlet of the fuselage during the whole test process from the yellow line in the figure below, and more importantly, we can calculate the heat dissipation efficiency K of the whole machine through it.
It can be seen that the first peak power consumption of X1 Carbon R15 has reached about 54W, and it can be stabilized at 26W in the future. The stable frequency of the CPU is 2.15GHz, and the internal temperature is around 91 °C.
In the end, we calculated that the ThinkPad X1 Carbon 2022 K value reached 0.66, which is between 0.5 for thin and light notebooks and 1.5 for gaming notebooks, which shows that its heat dissipation performance is relatively good.
In order to better record the surface temperature and noise of the keyboard, let's look at the performance of Carbon after the temperature is stable under the stress test:
From the recorded K value data sheet, the actual power consumption of the X1 Carbon has exceeded the value set by the cooling system, so its surface temperature performance is not ideal, which should be related to the engineering test machine we obtained in advance. The Bios should be updated in the future.
The result of the noise test is much more normal. When fully loaded, it only reaches about 33.4dBA, which is 3dBA lower than the previous generation. This noise performance can only be perceived in a relatively quiet environment, so even in the dead of night, it is only the basics. For light office use, the presence of noise will be completely ignored.
* It should be noted that the product we tested is still an early engineering prototype, and the final production version may have some differences in temperature control strategy.
Theoretical performance and productivity:
This time, the X1 Carbon 2022 has a lot of optional specifications for the processor. There are two series of U and P series of Intel 12th generation Core to choose from. The positioning of the P series can be simply understood as between the H standard pressure and the U low pressure, so its The performance is stronger than U. The i7-1260P in my hand uses a combination of 4P+8E 12 cores and 16 threads. Let's first see how its performance is through R23:
This generation of X1 Carbon has a higher power consumption release than the previous generation, so the R23 performance is indeed better than the previous generation, with a single-core score of 1647 pst and a multi-core score of 9680 pst. The other two i5-1240P and i5 The power consumption of -1235U is similar to Carbon, and we also simply ran a 3DMARK data for reference:
Type Spy：1925
Night Raid：17244
CPU Profile: max core 4468
It can be seen from here that the P28 Xe core display is better than the previous generation U series with the same power consumption, so theoretically, there is not much pressure on online games such as lol and CS:GO, and smooth operation should not be a problem. Of course, the most important thing as a business book is productivity:
In the productivity environment simulated by PCMARK10, the X1 Carbon 2022 can achieve a score of 5507, and the common basic functions, spreadsheets and documents, and digital content creation are significantly improved compared to the previous generation.
In the application test of the Office office scene, it can also reach a score of 11777. If you look at the application score, you can see that whether it is the application startup or the complex operation in Excel, the results can be achieved in seconds, which is very important for office efficiency. and experience will be greatly improved.
The most surprising thing is the performance of the Photo Editing Benchmark that requires a higher load. This performance has surpassed some of the i7-11800H/ 5800H with higher power consumption, which means that the X1 Carbon can be used to deal with some not-so-complicated things. Compared with the previous generation, the efficiency will be qualitatively improved.
For the more demanding PR editing related content, the X1 Carbon's performance is relatively normal, and the 2347 can basically meet the simple needs of daily video cutting and subtitles.
Ten years of sharpening a sword:
I still remember the X300 that was released in 2008, which is the predecessor of the current X1 Carbon series. At that time, it was hailed as the "perfect laptop", and its core revolved around "full function + ultra-thin", which can Seeing the follow-up Carbon has also followed this design concept.
This year, it has been 14 years since the release of the X300, and it is also the 10th year of the X1 Carbon series. The 2022 version of Carbon has almost achieved the extreme of "full function + ultra-thin" in a 14-inch notebook of the same specification, remember The regret I wrote in the X1 Carbon 2021 review is: the temperature is a bit conservative + there is no QHD-level screen selection, and the 2022 version solves these two problems perfectly, even if you forget to update the Bios later or make the power consumption slightly lower, or adjust The number of fan revolutions increases the noise a little bit, and as far as the current data is concerned, there is a lot of room for adjustment and redundancy.
The most important point is that due to the replacement of the new intel 12th generation P/U platform, its productivity performance has been substantially improved compared to the previous generation, not only the basic Office applications, but also the performance improvement in picture editing is very obvious. This has met most of the needs of high-performance thin and light notebooks. After 10 generations of updates, I think the X1 Carbon Gen10 may be able to hold the top of the annual flagship of the commercial PC in 2022. As for the market feedback, let us wait and see.
