The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano takes the idea of a thin and light Ultrabook to a new extreme, and I mean it in a good way.
My literal first impression of the X1 Nano came when I lifted it out of its box. Was it really this light? As it turns out, yes: the ThinkPad X1 Nano weighs just 2 pounds despite its 13.3-inch screen panel. It’s about 1 pound lighter than the typical Ultrabook, so it’s about 30 percent lighter than most of its competition. It’s also the lightest ThinkPad Lenovo has ever made.
If you shave so much weight off a laptop, of course you have to give. And sure enough, the keyboard and wrist strap are both a bit smaller than the full size, though they look perfect for the job. The screen does not support multi-touch or smartpens, which is good on a computer with a laptop. And there are only two USB-C / Thunderbolt 4 ports, both on the left side of the computer, as with the Apple MacBook Air.
This is not ideal, but Lenovo is probably making a good bet that there is a thin and light laptop for a laptop and that they will tolerate the absence of the old ports. And ThinkPads buyers, unlike Apple fans, have at least as many choices with the ports as this is what they need.
Aside from the epic thinness and lightness, there is much more of the Nano. The screen has a desirable 16:10 aspect ratio, making it ideal for productivity work than more typical 16: 9 screens. And it has a very high, if unusual, resolution of 2160 x 1350. Oddly enough, the rings are larger than I would expect on such a computer.
The build quality is also exactly what we expected from ThinkPad, and with its carbon fiber bottom and magnesium alloy bottom, it also offers the same durability promises.
Internally, the Nano is modern. It is powered by 11th-generation Intel Core processors – a Corei7-1160G7 in the case of the review unit – up to 16 GB of RAM and up to 512 GB of PCIe NVMe SSD-based storage. As an Intel Evo computer, the Nano also plays Intel Iris Xe Graphics, which is perhaps the biggest step in comparing this processor generation to the previous one. It also has Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.1.
The Nano also supports Windows Hello fingerprint recognition via a small, square sensor on the right wrist support, and Windows Hello face recognition via the 720p webcam, which even has a privacy guide.
The ThinkPad X1 Nano starts at around $ 950 for a configuration with a Core i5 processor, 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage. That’s reasonable, but the review unit with its Core i7 processor, 16 GB of RAM and 512 GB of storage is currently about double the cost, which seems excessive.
More to come soon.
Tagged with Lenovo, Lenovo ThinkPad, ThinkPad X1 Nano