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| https://www.ultrabookreview.com |
Testing the Lenovo’s ThinkPad X1 Fold 16 Gen 1, I was initially regretting my dual-display Yoga Book 9i purchase. Having bought it several months ago, and changing my life in countless unexpected ways, I resolved that I would never buy another laptop that comes with only a single screen again. However, this attitude completely changed when the X1 Fold arrived which comes with its folding OLED screen and made me turn into that Distracted Boyfriend meme as I raised it from the level of a twelve-inch netbook to a sixteen inch sketchpad while calling upstairs, “The laptop is here!”
We then performed a little bit of folding and unfolding of the laptop; sticking the bent midsection close to our faces so as to judge how good a job had been done on seam finish. In no time we stopped thinking about its central fold as we played games and watched films unfolded. Finally, I realized what it means being myself but also why ThinkPad X1 Fold is everything right for a convertible device, thus definitely yes let me have it
Lenovo released the first X1 Fold in 2020, but it was too far ahead of its time.
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| https://www.ultrabookreview.com |
Though Lenovo still wants at least $2,500 for one, but this time they give more reasons to justify the price tag.
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| https://www.ruthdelacruz.com |
It irritates me that I would have to purchase Lenovo's “optional” keyboard and folio in order to maximize my experience from this foldable laptop; besides the touchpad was difficult to use. If I didn't clean my finger oil off of that track pad often enough it would miss so many swipes. That’s really unfortunate, given how pleasant typing on its keyboard is just like you’d expect from a ThinkPad or any other Lenovo notebook.
It’s fortunate that, just like the Yoga Book 9i I make use of the ThinkPad X1 Fold most of the time: it is connected to my monitor via a standalone keyboard and mouse.
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| https://www.xda-developers.com |
The Folding mode proved more effective than the Yoga Book in some aspects. The hinge on the other hand in this case was not visible meaning it could not divide any paragraph into two as opposed to how it happens with most devices such as Yoga Book; well, what else can I say to emphasize that no screen gap haunted me all those days.
In both landscape and portrait orientations, however, my Yoga Book 9i’s two physical displays of 13.3 inches each offer more space to work with compared to the Fold. Besides changing the angle of my top screen according to my external display of choice, I find this feature better in yoga book. If there are one or two windows open, for example when running multiple applications, since its central hinge is noticeable unlike with ThinkPad Fold where it may seem like warping occurs at the center of its screen only because an app starts from left side or right side pane respectively.
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| https://techcrunch.com |
For this reason, while I used the Fold— which was a bit weird but after some time I almost forgot about it—I had to keep that device slanted at roughly same degree as lower display angle of Yoga Book. This is where my criticism of the Fold ends. Among my favorite attributes of the fold is how it opens up into a desktop. With a magnetic hinge that joins to the keyboard, you just open the ThinkPad Fold like a book until it’s completely flat, prop it up against its stand and voila! You only require a Starfleet uniform and an LCARS wallpaper and there you go where few laptops have gone before. (No? Just me?)
The outer surfaces of the laptop are covered in thin woven lines of recycled black synthetic fiber (PET), which feel nice when touched.
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| https://www.tomsguide.com |
It feels lighter when carried in one hand or tucked into the crook of your arm because its dimensions are well balanced.
It is as light as a MacBook Air; it’s only 0.68 inches thick and weighs 2.82 pounds (without the folio keyboard) making it one of the lightest laptops on the market.
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| https://www.thestreet.com |
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| https://www.laptopmag.com |
I also liked how the magnetic stylus conveniently attaches to the bottom-right side in laptop mode.
Because this device is an amazingly big drawing tablet, I’m glad that Lenovo sends a stylus with this laptop. On the desk, unfolded it was more than 16 inches of oled canvas that did not make me feel like my desk was crowded. I am not an artist but I tried out drawing and painting with the Fold and didn’t have a lot to gripe about.
It felt almost exactly like the Lenovo 2-in-1s, and other brands’ convertible laptops I’ve tested over the years, hence allowing me to nearly reproduce Bob Ross’s chosen colors in his videos when he mixed paint because the screen boasts a resolution of 2560 x 2024 pixels that cover 96% of dci-p3 color gamut. It has happened sometimes that there were long thin lumps along the length of the middle crease which is quite normal for folding screens. However once whole device warmed up it evened out so it dint affect my writing and drawing abilities. The stylus itself is what gave me most problem.
The display’s color gamut made watching movies and playing ray tracing cloud games awesome, despite the 4:3 aspect ratio.
Although I had to tweak the in-game resolution settings so nothing looked too squished, Cyberpunk 2077 (I’m finally playing Phantom Liberty) looked even better on my Fold than my Gigabyte M28U gaming monitor did.
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| https://9to5toys.com |
Unlike Intel Core i5-L16G7’s five-core and five thread processor with only 7W TDP designed for low-loads, Intel Core i5-1230U has two performance cores with hyperthreading (10-core, 12-thread) and eight efficiency cores which greatly contributed to doubling battery life of New Fold. With the display brightness set to its maximum level while playing Cyberpunk 2077 on GeForce Now (446 nits as tested), I averaged about five hours but it hit around nine to ten hours at like between fifty and sixty percent brightness when I was just using my laptop for work purposes.
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| https://www.nvidia.com |
The Fold can be covered by the stylus in laptop mode (it attaches magnetically only at one place and that is it) even if only one of its three vents is blocked. The CPU’s power draw is capped at 26W, despite being made to pull up to 29W. Moreover, the entire chassis did not exceed 31 degrees Celsius, so for an hour I could comfortably have it resting on my thigh as Bob Ross helped me with painting digitally.
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold 16 Gen 1 has set a benchmark in the world of foldable laptops although keyboards and folio are critical add-ons to a laptop that was never cheap in the first place.
HP’s Spectre Fold or LG Gram Fold may provide similar experience but the latter is available only in South Korea and we haven’t tested the former– let alone the fact that Spectre Fold costs twice as much as ThinkPad Fold.
However, if this Lenovo folding device indicates where other laptop designs are going I am all for it. If they were able to make a folding laptop as small as their Yoga Book incorporating a keyboard and folio into it later on even if it still costs $2,500, I would purchase them.