Our favorite business laptop is about to get even better.
Lenovo announced today a new ThinkPad X1 Carbon with 10th Gen Comet Lake processors. The ThinkPad X1 Carbon with 10th Gen CPUs will be available in September with a starting price of $1,479.
ThinkPad X1 Carbon Specs
| Row 0 - Cell 0 | Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon |
| Starting Price | $1,479 |
| Display | 14-inch, 1080p or 2560 x 1440-pixels |
| CPU | Up to 10th Gen Core i7 (Comet Lake) |
| RAM | 8GB, 16GB |
| Graphics | Intel UHD 620 |
| Storage | Up to 2TB SSD |
| Ports | 2 Thunderbolt 3, 2 USB 3.1 (Type-A), HDMI, headphone |
| Size | 12.7 x 8.5 x 0.6 inches |
| Weight | 2.4 pounds |
We often see these types of minor upgrades and they're typically pretty boring, but the craziness around Intel's new 10th Gen chips adds some spice to this announcement.
While Lenovo hasn't revealed which exact CPUs are coming to the 7th Gen ThinkPad X1 Carbon, the company did say the laptop could be configured with up to six cores. Take a close look and you'll notice that the only six-core 10th Gen chip is the Intel Core i7-10710U, a Comet Lake chip.
With a max single-core turbo frequency of 4.7Ghz, the Core i7-10710U is the most powerful 14-nanometer U-series chip Intel offers. In terms of real-world performance, that processor will supposedly be 16% faster than 8th Gen chips and 40% better at exporting Office 365 files. The new chips also appear to have improved battery life as Lenovo has bumped the X1 Carbon's expected runtime to 18.5 hours (we'll test that claim once we have a review unit).
10th Gen Comet Lake CPUs shouldn't only offer better performance, but also a number of useful features, including Wi-Fi 6 (Gig+), integrated Thunderbolt 3 and support for LPDDR4x memory.
Apart from the new 10th Gen CPUs, nothing else has changed from the ThinkPad X1 Carbon unveiled earlier this year at CES 2019. That means you'll get the new design with a weaved texture on the lid that highlights the laptop's carbon fiber materials. The X1 Carbon's chassis was also trimmed down to just 0.6 inches and weighs just 2.4 pounds.
Other major changes include a new 14-inch, 4K HDR display option and two additional speakers (for a total of four), which should improve the X1 Carbon's audio quality --- one of the very few complaints we had about the last-gen machine.
We sympathize with anyone who purchased the short-lived ThinkPad X1 Carbon with 8th Gen CPUs, but Lenovo needed to update its flagship laptop or risk falling behind the competition. Now the ThinkPad X1 Carbon is on a level playing field with the likes of Dell's new XPS 13, and we're excited to find out which device comes out on top.
