UPDATE: See the comments for a brief note from me on my impressions after a week.
The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch dropped at my office yesterday and I had a couple hours to give it a look. After months of pointlessly reaching up to touch the non-touchscreen of my current Ultrabook, I wanted to check out a machine that actually responded to all those hopeless stabs. Near the end of 2012, Lenovo announced that they were upgrading the X1 Carbon Ultrabook to include a multi-touch monitor and Windows 8 out of the box and it’s exactly what you wanted.
I took a video of my first reaction to the machine so you can see it in action a little bit. Beyond that, I want to take note of a couple things that excite me the most.
The Touch Screen
It’s what makes this version different than last year’s. And it’s what you’d expect from an Ultrabook made for touch. It’s just like using a Surface or any other Windows 8 Tablet except attached to a traditional Ultrabook form factor. I love the Windows 8 Ultrabook ethos: super light, solid state hard drives, crazy fast boot times, etc. This takes that to the next level and attaches a 10 point multi-touch display up top. In my tests, the display is extremely responsive. I’ve got a Microsoft Surface RT and the touch on this Lenovo will take no getting used to as the experience feels identical.
In the video, I complain about how much the screen bounces when you touch it. However, if you’ve got the computer on your lap and you reach up to touch, it’s much less noticeable. Essentially, because the machine is so light, it doesn’t have a counter balance to work against your finger. If the machine’s in your lap, your arms are probably holding it down and that creates the necessary counter balance.
Keyboard
The keyboard is spectacular. I’ve gotten so used to the keyboard on my Asus Zenbook UX31E which, if you recall, has one of the most hated keyboards of early Ultrabooks. Asus greatly improved it in later versions, but I’ve used it for nearly a year and have gotten used to it. By comparison, the keyboard on the Carbon Touch is like getting in a luxury vehicle after driving a Cavalier around all day. Great size, great key travel, great sound. The keys are solid and a joy to type on.
Battle Ready
I have no qualms about taking this machine into battle as soon as I get all the software installed. I’ll do a post soon on how to remove all the unnecessary bits. I’ll use this machine for all my coding when not at the office, and I’m excited to work remotely one day just to put it through its paces. Hopefully it’ll hold up over time.