We review products independently, but we may earn affiliate commissions from buying links on this page. Terms of use.

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 12

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 12

The new best laptop for work is this one...or last year's model

4.5 Excellent
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 12 - Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 12
4.5 Excellent

Bottom Line

You'll still find no finer business ultraportable than Lenovo's 12th-generation ThinkPad X1 Carbon, but the latest model suffers from terminal sticker shock for simply decent performance.

Buy It Now

  • Pros

    • Elegant and light design
    • Fabulous keyboard
    • Sharp, vivid OLED screen
    • USB-A, HDMI, and USB-C ports
  • Cons

    • Sky-high price
    • Decent but not class-leading performance and battery life
    • No SD or microSD card slot

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 12 Specs

Boot Drive Capacity (as Tested) 1
Boot Drive Type SSD
Class Business
Class Ultraportable
Dimensions (HWD) 0.59 by 12.3 by 8.5 inches
Graphics Processor Intel Arc Graphics
Native Display Resolution 2880 by 1800
Operating System Windows 11 Home
Panel Technology OLED
Processor Intel Core Ultra 7 155H
RAM (as Tested) 32
Screen Refresh Rate 120
Screen Size 14
Tested Battery Life (Hours:Minutes) 13:51
Variable Refresh Support Manual
Weight 2.47
Wireless Networking Bluetooth
Wireless Networking Wi-Fi 6E

The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon is the dictionary definition of a hard act to follow. Both the 2022 Gen 10 and 2023 Gen 11 models earned not only PCMag Editors' Choice awards but even rarer five-star reviews and our pick as the world's best laptop (at least for users who don't need a mobile workstation or gaming rig) each time. Now, the turn of the calendar has brought another upgraded ultraportable, the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 12 ($2,703.20 as tested). It is, again, the best work laptop on the market, making it still an Editors' Choice honoree for which we'd gladly pay $200 or $300 more than a comparably equipped competitor. At more than a thousand dollars extra, however, we're subtracting half a star and reminding you that we named the HP Dragonfly G4 a very able alternative.


Configurations: Losing Our Religion 

Indeed, business laptops like ThinkPads are usually bought at volume discounts rather than singularly. It's also true that pricing on Lenovo.com fluctuates—the X1 Carbon Gen 12's starting price was $2,989 when it debuted in January, fell to $2,043 during this review, but again rose to $2,335.20 at press time.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

The base unit combines Intel's new Core Ultra 7 155H processor, 16GB of memory, a 512GB NVMe solid-state drive, Windows 11 Home, and a 2,880-by-1,800-pixel OLED non-touch screen. Our review unit (model 21KC0005US) doubles the RAM to 32GB and storage to 1TB for $2,703.20.

Uncharacteristically for Lenovo, at this writing the Gen 12 is available in no other configurations with different CPUs or screens—though a SIM slot promises a mobile broadband option by spring—and it hasn't reached resellers like Best Buy, Newegg, or CDW. That brings you face to face, or punches you in the face, with the fact that the identically equipped (plus Windows 11 Pro and a touch screen) Asus Zenbook 14 OLED UX3405 we just reviewed costs $1,403 less—and, as you'll see below, has longer battery life. If you'd like to skip to the end of this review, it repeats our recommendation of the superb X1 Carbon Gen 11.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

Design: Not a Radical Revision 

Like past models, the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 12 is a 14-inch business slimline crafted from magnesium, aluminum, and carbon fiber. The matte black finish is now accented by a rounded "communications bar" or notch for the webcam and mics above the 16:10 aspect ratio display. (It makes the laptop easier to open with one hand.) The system has passed MIL-STD 810H tests for travel hazards like shock, vibration, and extreme temperatures; you'll feel only slight flex if you grasp the screen corners or press the keyboard deck. 

At 0.59 by 12.3 by 8.5 inches, the Lenovo basically matches the Zenbook UX3405 but is lighter (2.47 pounds versus 2.82 pounds), while it undercuts the 13.6-inch Apple MacBook Air (2.7 pounds). The keyboard follows the latest ThinkPad Z models in correctly placing the Ctrl key to the left instead of the right of the Fn key at the lower left, as well as moving the fingerprint reader from the power button to the bottom row. But, happily, it keeps the TrackPoint cursor controller's three mouse buttons below the space bar instead of replacing them with a haptic strip atop the touchpad as in the Lenovo ThinkPad Z13 and Lenovo ThinkPad Z16.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

More exciting news is that Lenovo hasn't followed Dell and Apple in limiting its ultraportable to only USB Type-C ports: While you will find two USB-C Thunderbolt 4 ports on the Carbon's left side, you'll also notice a USB 3.2 Type-A port on each side plus an HDMI monitor port and audio jack on the right. Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth are standard.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

Using the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 12: Exemplary Design and Execution

I've already cited the improved Ctrl and Fn key placement of the Gen 12's backlit keyboard, but haven't mentioned that the Fn, Enter, Insert, and volume up and down (F2 and F3) keys have grown tiny ridges, like those of the F and J home keys, to help visually impaired users get their bearings. The justly famous ThinkPad layout, with dedicated Home and End keys on the top row and Page Up and Page Down keys at the lower right, is unchanged. So is the shallow but snappy and responsive typing feel, which assures swift, quiet input with minimal mistakes. 

We've often praised ThinkPad keyboards as the best in the laptop biz even though we're not among the loyalists of the TrackPoint cursor controller mounted at the intersection of the G, H, and B keys. The mini-joystick nubbin works as smoothly as ever but has gained a customizable double-tap menu providing functions such as voice dictation, microphone modes, noise suppression, and audio as well as webcam settings. It serves up three quiet, comfortable mouse buttons above a smooth rectangular touchpad that takes just the right amount of pressure for a precise click.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

The webcam provides a sliding privacy shutter, face recognition for Windows Hello logins if you'd rather skip the fingerprint sensor, and a 1080p resolution. It supports Windows Camera's new auto framing and background blur options, and it captures reasonably well-lit and colorful images without noise or static. Lenovo View software lets you fine-tune light, intensity, and color settings.

Upward-firing speakers beneath the keyboard pump out loud and clear sound, not harsh or tinny even at top volume. The bass is thin, but the vocals and instrumentals are crisp, and it's easy to make out overlapping tracks. Dolby Access software provides dynamic, music, movie, game, and voice presets and an equalizer.

As for included software, the familiar Lenovo Vantage app (called Commercial Vantage on business systems) centralizes system updates, Wi-Fi security, and microphone, webcam, and keyboard settings. It can also freeze input for a minute while you apply a cleaning wipe.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

You can switch the 2,880-by-1,800-pixel OLED display from a 60Hz to 120Hz refresh rate for smoother video viewing, but it's gorgeous at either setting. The colors are rich and deeply saturated; blacks are India ink, and white backgrounds are whiteouts. Viewing angles are broad, and fine details are razor-sharp, with zero pixelation around the edges of letters. The screen tilts as far back as you like, and it is more than bright enough for any environment short of outdoor sun.


Testing the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 12: Business Bustle on the Go 

Besides the abovementioned Asus Zenbook 14 OLED UX3405, we compared the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 12's performance with that of a deluxe OLED convertible, the HP Spectre x360 14, and the 14-inch, M3 Pro-powered Apple MacBook Pro. Since we haven't tested a comparable HP EliteBook or Dell Latitude lately, the last slot goes to Lenovo's mainstream rather than premium business slimline, the Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 4.

Productivity Tests 

We run the same general productivity benchmarks across both mobile and desktop systems. Our first test is UL's PCMark 10, which simulates a variety of real-world productivity and office workflows to measure overall system performance and also includes a storage subtest for the primary drive.

Three other benchmarks focus on the CPU, using all available cores and threads, to rate a PC's suitability for processor-intensive workloads. Maxon's Cinebench R23 uses that company's Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene, while Geekbench 5.5 Pro from Primate Labs simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning. We also use the open-source video transcoder HandBrake 1.4 to convert a 12-minute video clip from 4K to 1080p resolution (lower times are better). 

Finally, we run PugetBench for Photoshop by workstation maker Puget Systems, which uses the Creative Cloud version 22 of Adobe's famous image editor to rate a PC's performance for content creation and multimedia applications. It's an automated extension that executes a variety of general and GPU-accelerated Photoshop tasks ranging from opening, rotating, resizing, and saving an image to applying masks, gradient fills, and filters.

The Carbon easily cleared the 4,000-point hurdle that indicates excellent everyday productivity in PCMark 10 and posted a decent score in Photoshop, but landed in the lower half of the pack generally. It wasn't the fastest Core Ultra 7 155H system, let alone a match for Apple's M3 Pro. That's a tough situation for the new Carbon given its inflated price, but it will still handle every work task you throw at it short of workstation-level jobs.

Graphics Tests 

We test Windows PCs' graphics with two DirectX 12 gaming simulations from UL's 3DMark, Night Raid (more modest, suitable for laptops with integrated graphics) and Time Spy (more demanding, suitable for gaming rigs with discrete GPUs). 

We also run two tests from the cross-platform GPU benchmark GFXBench 5, which stresses both low-level routines like texturing and high-level, game-like image rendering. The 1440p Aztec Ruins and 1080p Car Chase tests are rendered off-screen to accommodate different display resolutions, exercising graphics and compute shaders using the OpenGL programming interface and hardware tessellation respectively. The more frames per second (fps), the better.

No ultraportable with integrated graphics will ever come close to a gaming laptop with a discrete GPU, but the X1 Carbon Gen 12 ate the MacBook Pro's dust, surpassing only the ThinkPad T14s and its older Intel Iris Xe silicon here. It's fine for solitaire and video streaming, but serious video work or CGI rendering is out of the question. 

Battery and Display Tests 

We test each laptop's battery life by playing a locally stored 720p video file (the open-source Blender movie Tears of Steel) with display brightness at 50% and audio volume at 100%. We make sure the battery is fully charged before the test, with Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting turned off. 

To gauge display performance, we also use a Datacolor SpyderX Elite monitor calibration sensor and its Windows software to measure a laptop screen's color saturation—what percentage of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 color gamuts or palettes the display can show—and its 50% and peak brightness in nits (candelas per square meter).

The ThinkPad X1 Carbon's OLED panel showed unbeatable brightness and color coverage; it's truly a pleasure to look at and work with. On the other hand, the Gen 12's battery life, though certainly acceptable, was the worst in the group, more than three hours shy of the next shortest runtime and less than half the incredible stamina of the MacBook Pro. A steeper price makes that result sting that much more.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

Verdict: Still Tops for Business, But Too Rich for Our Blood 

Like its predecessors, the Editors' Choice award-worthy ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 12 is simply as effective as a lightweight productivity laptop gets, with an unbeatable keyboard, a gorgeous screen, and a wide array of ports. But its current price has us urging you to seek a better deal on a Gen 11 unit, which lacks only Intel's Core Ultra AI enhancements and which we configured for $700 less online. Otherwise, consider another stellar ultraportable, like the HP Dragonfly G4, the Asus Zenbook 14 OLED, or the ThinkPad maker's consumer-oriented Lenovo Slim Pro 9i. We yield to no one in our admiration of the Carbon, but we're also not blind.

About Eric Grevstad