Review: Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon Touch

Computing gets its hands on the new touchscreen Ultrabook from Lenovo, and puts it through its paces with the enterprise user in mind

Processor: Core i5 1.8GHz
RAM: 4GB RAM

The Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon Touch is basically a Thinkpad X1 Carbon, with a touchscreen. But far from being an unnecessary gimmick, the added touch capability is a fantastic addition to what was already a very capable machine.

Being the latest addition to a mature and proven range, it's unsurprising that the general look and feel are excellent. Corners are rounded, surfaces are soft and pleasant to hold, and though light, in no way does it feel flimsy. The hinge operates smoothly, but feels robust enough to stand up to long-term use, and it's generally very comfortable all round.

The 1600 x 900 screen is bright and crisp, but best of all is its new ability to respond to touch. Before using the device, my expectation was that touch would be a ‘nice to have', rather than something I'd actually use. But touch has now completely replaced the mouse for me.

It's so much easier to swipe a finger across the screen rather than fiddle with the on-board mouse. There's nothing wrong with the trademark red button mouse embedded in the keyboard, and in fact the touchpad is smooth and responsive, but both pale before the convenience of direct interaction with the screen.

The experience is also beautifully smooth, with the screen responding immediately to all your taps, swipes, pinches and flicks. And it has just the right level of texture to give you the feedback you need without actually feeling like dragging your finger across gravel.

System performance is similarly smooth, with the Intel Core i5 1.8GHz processor perfectly capable for most enterprise-grade functions, and its 4GB of RAM able to keep several applications running concurrently without system slowdown. It won't be up to the major number crunching some analytics tools demand, but it will whizz through the standard office functions.

The backlit keyboard is rugged and comfortable, and passed my crumb test of eating a biscuit over it without little morsels finding their way into any cracks. It sports the usual volume buttons, including a microphone mute that can be useful when on a conference call, or perhaps when playing an online game and not wanting people to hear your partner shouting at you to do the washing up.

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Review: Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon Touch

Computing gets its hands on the new touchscreen Ultrabook from Lenovo, and puts it through its paces with the enterprise user in mind

Elsewhere it has two USB ports (2.0 and 3.0), which may not sound a lot, but then this is an Ultrabook - which means ‘light and thin' rather than ‘fully featured'. It also has an SD card reader, a headphone jack and a Mini Display Port.

Besides being light and thin, being an Ultrabook and hence blessed with an SSD rather than spinning disk, it's pleasingly fast at shutting down and booting up, managing both at well under 10 seconds (including the time to force-close Word documents which hadn't been saved).

Sound is perfectly adequate for voice conferences and YouTube type activity, but I wouldn't attempt to use it as my main music system for a house party. It has a reasonable depth to it, being less tinny than similar models, but is unable to produce the volume to be heard from any distance. Which is fine, unless you want to use it play a video at a meeting.

While Computing didn't run exhaustive tests on the battery life, the system was left on standby for over a week, and only lost about a third of its power in that time. Pleasingly, it includes a power setting to extend battery life by only charging when needed, even when left plugged in. Of course this risks the owner taking it away to a conference with less than half of its charge remaining - which could be both irritating and embarrassing - but this is more of a potential user error rather than one of design. After all, you don't have to use that setting.

Having said that, I now find it impossible to make the machine actually charge once plugged in - unless it's running very low. I've tried changing power plans, but I always get the same message: ‘Plugged in, not charging'. It remains stubbornly locked at 46 per cent charged. I'm sure there's a way to get it to accept power, but wherever it is, it's hidden away somewhere unintuitive.

Also, having a bright, responsive touchscreen means that the battery won't last long under intensive use. You'll get around five to six hours if you're lucky. But that's true of every similar device out there currently, and is a criticism more generally of battery technology, rather than this specific model.

So that's one negative comment. The others mostly relate to the software, specifically the Windows 8 operating system. Anyone who has read my review of Microsoft's foray into the tablet market with Surface, will be aware of my dismay at how easily Windows 8 gives up the ghost and dumps the user back into what is for all intents and purposes Windows 7.

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Review: Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon Touch

Computing gets its hands on the new touchscreen Ultrabook from Lenovo, and puts it through its paces with the enterprise user in mind

While testing the Surface, and attempting to troubleshoot its reluctance to connect to the internet, I had to navigate the control panel, wireless adaptor settings, and driver menus. All of this shunted me out into a Windows 7 desktop, which at the native Surface resolution required fingers far thinner than mine to usefully tap the correct icons.

While the X1 essentially does the same thing - it's the same OS after all - this is far less of a problem on an Ultrabook, since it has a keyboard and mouse. It feels like Windows 8 finally has a proper home in a device with a touchscreen and proper keyboard. Yes the Surface has the optional cover with in-built keyboard, but it also displays an empty program list under ‘programs and features' (because it runs apps, not Win32 programs), and says things like ‘Windows can't find a network adaptor', because it's clearly running software that hasn't been tailored to its needs.

This very much isn't the case with Ultrabooks, where you can happily switch between standard desktop and the Modern UI depending on your needs. One minor gripe is that the on-screen keyboard pops up when you need to type, for instance when you open up a Word document. Much like when Surface dumps you into a screen clearly designed for a desktop or laptop, this feels like part of the OS that was specifically designed for a tablet device, and as such has no place on an Ultrabook. But it's easily dismissible with a simple click, so the annoyance is at least short-lived.

We experienced minor problems also with some apps appearing reluctant to run, with no indications as to what the problem might be. Wordament, the Window 8 Store word game, was initially happy enough to run, but now just hangs, saying that it's attempting to contact the server.

Similarly, the Facebook app states that it needs to update, but then refuses to, providing an unhelpful error code at the end of each failed attempt.

Again, these are fairly minor issues, and are all the fault of the software, rather than the hardware, which is excellent overall.

But excellence comes at a price. At the time of writing it's listed at £1,599 on Amazon. Oddly, it's not even listed on Lenovo's own UK site yet, although its older, non-touch cousin is. Either way, it's not a budget machine, but if you're looking for a quality enterprise-grade Ultrabook and don't mind paying, this could be the one.