(Credit: Michael J. Miller)
I've long been a fan of Lenovo's ThinkPad X1 2-in-1, the company's high-end convertible PC, and this year's version, known as an Aura Edition, is no exception. It adds Intel's Core Ultra 200V (Lunar Lake) processors and some interesting AI features to the X1 2-in-1 form factor, resulting in a machine that is relatively lightweight while offering great performance and excellent battery life.
A Solid Design That Builds on Previous X1s
In some ways, the X1 2-in-1 feels like a cross between last year's X1 2-in-1 Gen 9 and the X1 Carbon Gen 13 I tested a few months ago. Like last year's model, the ThinkPad X1 2-in-1 has a 14-inch display with a raised bar for the webcam in a brushed metal, "Luna Grey" aluminum case.
Of course, it's a convertible, meaning you can use it as a standard laptop, flip the screen over 180 degrees to use it as a tablet, or stand the machine on edge for display. It has a 1,920-by-1,200 touch IPS display and comes with a stylus.
Measuring 12.31 by 8.57 by 0.61 inches, it's a bit deeper and thicker than the current ThinkPad X1 Carbon (Gen 13) to accommodate the hinge that lets you flip the screen completely over. At 3.04 pounds (3.54 pounds with the included small 65-watt charger), it's a little lighter than last year's model, which weighed 3.16 pounds by itself and 3.75 with a somewhat bigger 65-watt charger. By design, 2-in-1s are always a bit heavier than standard clamshell laptops, but this is a very good weight for such a system.
(Credit: Michael J. Miller)Port selection is decent. The X1 2-in-1 has two USB-C/Thunderbolt 4 ports rated at 40Gbps, a USB-A port on the left-hand side (when open as a laptop), an HDMI port on the left, and a locking port, HDMI connector, second USB-A port, and an audio jack on the right. This is a good selection of ports, but it's not quite as convenient as having USB-C on both sides, if you're charging someplace where your outlet is to your right.
The touch display runs at 60Hz with up to 500 nits of brightness, and I found it quite good, though obviously not as striking as the 2.8K OLED screens I've seen on some other machines. (I won't be surprised to see Lenovo add more choices eventually, but as of now, this is the only screen offered.)
(Credit: Michael J. Miller)It has the traditional ThinkPad TrackPoint pointing stick and a 120mm touch pad with buttons (optionally, you can get it with a haptic touchpad without buttons). Lenovo swapped the control and function keys in this year's models, now conforming more to the industry standard. The keyboard includes tactile marking and now has a separate fingerprint reader on the bottom row.
As with other recent ThinkPads, double-tapping the TrackPoint brings up a special menu that lets you control the audio (setting center or spatial mode), change the audio output, and enable voice typing. Of course, the keyboard feels like a ThinkPad, which I always appreciate.
This year's Yoga Pen is larger and offers 4,096 levels of sensitivity with a new tip. It magnetically attaches to the left side of the machine, though this covers up the power button, which seems a bit awkward. (A minor nit, but I prefer designs with the power button on the keyboard rather than on the side.) I'm no artist, but it worked well for me.
As with other recent ThinkPads, a bar on the top of the screen holds the camera. The X1 has a 1080p sensor—not the best I've seen, but certainly a big step up from last year's model. It has stereo speakers and a dual microphone array, and worked just fine in video-conferencing calls.
I'm Not Sure We Need Aura Edition AI Software
Like the X1 Carbon, this is an "Aura Edition," meaning it comes with AI software designed specifically for Intel processors.
The highlight of these is Smart Modes, a set of options within Lenovo's Commercial Vantage software or accessible through the F8 key. They are designed to do things like change the power settings, alert you when someone is looking over your shoulder, silence notifications, and remind you to take a break—nice to have, though not particularly useful. (The Lenovo Commercial Vantage software continues to have other features, including firmware updates, details about the device, and management tools for the display and power.)
Other features include Smart Share, a version of Intel's Unison software you can download to easily transfer photos between the machine and your phone. (Intel announced it is discontinuing this, but Microsoft and others offer similar functions.)
This is the first machine I've tested with Lenovo's AI Now application, which comes preloaded in the taskbar. This includes both local and cloud chat features, with the cloud chat one offering the use of OpenAI's GPT-4o (up to 10 times a day) or GPT-4o mini (up to 30 times a day) "for a limited time." You can upload files for comparison, and also create your own knowledge library, either locally or in the cloud, with documents up to 500MB and images up to 50MB.
These features reminded me a lot of HP's limited AI Companion (I wish Lenovo were clearer about privacy in these searches). As with most of the local AI solutions today, I think they are more an example of where things are headed than a particularly useful tool yet.
AI Now also offers a PC Assistant that helps you do specific things on your device, such as changing power modes or pulling up specific settings. In most cases, I didn't find it much better than traditional search for the features.
Lunar Lake Systems Offers Great Performance
(Credit: Michael J. Miller)The model I had was based on the Intel Core Ultra 7 258V (Lunar Lake), the same processor I tested in the X1 Carbon Gen 13.
The main processing parts of the chip are made on TSMC's N3B (3nm) process, a big departure from previous generations of chips made by Intel itself. It has four performance cores and four efficiency cores, but no multi-threading, so a total of eight threads, notably less than the previous (Meteor Lake) generation. Still, it runs at a base frequency of 2.2GHz, with turbo speeds up to 4.8GHz, requires 17 to 35 watts of power, has Intel Arc Graphics 140V with eight Xe cores, an NPU that Intel rates at 47 Int8 TOPS, and includes 32GB of RAM.
For comparison, the step-up processor, which Lenovo also offers but I did not test, is the Core Ultra 7 268V (found in the Dell Pro 14 Premium and the HP EliteBook Ultra G1i). It has a maximum CPU turbo of 5GHz and 48 Int8 TOPS, but more importantly, supports vPro, Intel's enterprise management platform with additional security features. The unit I tested had a 512GB SSD.
Like all of the Lunar Lake-based systems I've tested, the X1 outperforms last year's Meteor Lake-based model at most things.
On the basic benchmarks, it was slightly better than the Lunar Lake-based systems from Dell and HP in a few tests, and slightly worse in others. My guess is that most users won't be able to tell the difference. (Systems with AMD's Ryzen AI 9 HX375, known as Strix Point, tend to do significantly better on graphics tests using multiple cores. But for just about all typical tasks, today's systems seem to run them quite well.)
On my tougher tests, running a large model in MatLab took just over 26 minutes on X1, a bit better than I saw on the HP Elitebook G1i but not quite as good as the 25 minutes I saw on the Dell Pro 14 and X1 Carbon. (I wonder if the additional security software HP includes on the EliteBook slows things down a bit.) Both times are much better than the 36 minutes it took on the HP EliteBook X G1a based on AMD's Strix Point or the 34.5 minutes I saw last year's X1 2-in-1.
It finished a huge Excel model with a lot of data tables in 39 minutes, slower than the 34 minutes it took on the X1 Carbon, but still competitive compared with other Lunar Lake systems. Last year's X1 2-in-1 took 47 minutes, so this is a big step forward.
On AI tests, the X1 2-in-1 was among the best Lunar Lake systems I've tested, slightly faster than the other systems on Procyon's AI computer vision and image generation tests, but slightly slower when running a local version of Llama 3.1 8 B. (Note that the Strix Point-based EliteBook X G1a was much faster on the computer vision test, but much slower on the image generation test.)
Amazing Battery Life
The X1 2-in-1 has a 57-watt-hour battery, just like the X1 Carbon, but I got much better battery results. On PCMark's 10's Modern Office, I was able to run the new system for 29 hours and 29 minutes at 40 nits, and 28 hours and 18 minutes at 100 nits. While the Dell Pro 14 Premium, which had scores of over 30 hours, is still the winner on this test, this was the second-longest-lasting laptop I've ever used. Pretty amazing. And in actual use, it still had more than half the battery left after a day of reasonably heavy use.
A model with a Core Ultra 2 258V, 32GB of RAM, and 1TB SSD, including the pen, is selling for $2,336 on Lenovo's website as I write this, so this is a relatively expensive machine. But for that, you're getting all the features you'd expect in a 2-in-1, the best performance and battery life I've seen in the category, plus some notable, if unessential, AI features in a very portable machine.