Unboxing My New Toy: ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 11

I originally wanted to order the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 12 straight from Lenovo’s website, but the launch prices here are astronomical and there are no custom build (CTO) options yet, so I couldn’t bring myself to pull the trigger. Even though I missed out on the insane 2023 Black Friday ThinkPad deals, I recently spotted Lenovo slashing prices on the X1C by up to 50% off again, and I started getting the itch. I’ve been wanting a thin-and-light laptop just for browsing on the go—lugging my 1.6 kg MacBook Pro around every day was killing my shoulders—so I bit the bullet and went for it! Time to go look busy at Starbucks.

Here are the specs for my build:

Unboxing

After an agonizing week-long wait, it finally shipped! The laptop shipped out from Hefei and traveled halfway across the globe to get to me. Maybe I was a little too hyped, because when UPS emailed me the delivery notice, I actually went downstairs to wait for the truck in person. The UPS guy laughed and said, “Perfect timing!” 😂. Without further ado, let’s get to the unboxing!

What’s inside the shipping box is super minimalist: just the sleek retail laptop box and a 65W power adapter.

Lenovo has been pushing eco-friendly packaging hard over the past few years, so everything is made from recycled paper, sugarcane, and bamboo fibers.

Cracking open the retail box, there are only a few slips of paper inside. Since I spec’d mine with 5G WWAN, they threw in an instruction sheet on how to set up cellular data.

Design & Exterior

The whole reason I upgraded to the 2.8K OLED display was to unlock this carbon fiber weave top lid—it looks gorgeous.

The bottom cover is pretty standard, printed with the serial number and usual regulatory info. The little “C” in the bottom-left corner gives away its pedigree, indicating the chassis is crafted from carbon fiber and magnesium alloy.

Popping open the lid, the first thing that catches your eye is that 2.8K OLED screen. Under the light, the OLED panel casts a subtle bluish sheen that looks super slick.

Up top on the bezel, you’ve got the webcam, the physical ThinkShutter privacy switch, and the IR sensors for facial recognition.

One feature really worth shouting out is the ThinkPad X1 Carbon’s Computer Vision, which automatically wakes the screen as soon as you walk up to it. Right out of the box on default settings, it works like a charm and is dead accurate.

Layout-wise, the X1 Carbon sticks to the classic ThinkPad keyboard layout. Above the keyboard sit two upward-firing speaker grilles, which pair up with two bottom speakers to form a quad-speaker setup (just like on the ThinkPad X1 Nano).

I still miss the keyboard on the X395 I bought back in 2020—typing on that thing was an absolute dream. This X1 Carbon features the exact same 1.5 mm key travel as my old X395. The overall tactile feel and snappy feedback easily put it in the top tier of thin-and-light laptops. Unlike the MacBook Air with its measly ~0.9mm key travel.

Using the TrackPoint feels totally natural in day-to-day use, and the precision is spot-on. I wouldn’t call myself a die-hard TrackPoint purist, but whenever I take the X1 Carbon out, I never bother packing a mouse—the little red nub plus the three physical buttons get the job done effortlessly.

Display

This panel nails color accuracy, color gamut, and anti-reflection. I tested it out at a coffee shop, and even with direct sunlight hitting the screen, it was still totally readable. Coming from the 1080P screen on my old X395, this 2.8K panel is easily a two- or three-tier jump in visual quality and sharpness—definitely worthy of a flagship machine.

Weight & Portability

Because I tacked on a few optional upgrades, my unit tips the scales at 1.15 kg, which isn’t far off from Lenovo’s advertised 1.12 kg. Carrying this weight around is a breeze—and miles ahead of hauling my 2021 14-inch MacBook Pro. MacBook Pros have been turning into absolute bricks over the past few years; seriously, can’t Apple use some new materials to shave off a little weight?

The bundled power brick plus cords weighs in at around 300 g, which is pretty average. Personally, I just pack a multi-port Anker GaN charger, which is way more convenient to carry around.

First Impressions & Thoughts

There’s a ton of debate online about this generation, but from my own hands-on experience, it’s a joy to use overall. Since I could customize the specs, I skipped the overpriced i7-1355U (which barely outperforms my i5-1335U while costing over $200 more). Another huge perk of being able to pick a U15-series CPU is avoiding the crazy thermal issues that plague the P28-series processors forced on the Chinese domestic models of the 2023 X1.

Battery Life: Decent, nothing crazy. The U15-series models definitely hold up better than the P28-equipped Chinese retail units; with light use, I easily get a solid 5 hours, and stretching it to 7 hours shouldn’t be an issue. Of course, if all-day battery life is your top priority and you don’t mind the extra heft, a MacBook is still the way to go.

Storage: Since I plan on keeping this machine for at least three years, 512 GB is the bare minimum for me. Lenovo charges an arm and a leg to upgrade to a 512 GB SSD from the factory, so I just bought a 512 GB Solidigm P44 Pro separately to swap in myself.

2.8K Display: Exceeded expectations. The colors and crispness on this panel are easily upper-echelon for Windows ultrabooks, blowing right past what I expected—though that might just be because the low-power 1080P screen on my old X395 was so painfully mediocre 😂.

Thermals & Fan Noise: Since my daily workflow is pretty light—web browsing (under 30 Chrome tabs at a time), SSHing into my home server on VS Code, and writing—the fans barely make a peep during normal use. That said, knowing ThinkPad’s notorious stock thermal paste job, I’m already planning to repaste it myself with a Honeywell PTM7950 phase-change pad.

All in all, if you can get the overseas CTO version of the X1 Carbon Gen 11 and pick your own specs, it’s a solid machine. The battery gets me through roughly a day of light work, the screen looks fantastic, and the price is a way better deal than the pre-configured models in China. That wraps it up for the laptop itself—stay tuned for my next post where I’ll walk through swapping the SSD and thermal pad!