X1 Carbon Gen 4 -- the best lenovo?

[micrex22]

Eons ago I bought my X1 Carbon Gen 4 when it was a current machine and I used it a lot on-the-go. Besides the weird glitch it has with the Intel CPU (yes, it suffers a bizarre CPU cycle leak problem when executing HTML5 on both Windows and Linux, I can only chalk it up to a microcode bug), it was one of my favourites that Lenovo ever made. Especially compared to some of Lenovo's latest offerings and how bad their screens are -- some panels display red as pink --, or the fact they keep making the keyboard worse (thanks for swapping Fn and Ctrl Lenovo, my 15+ years of muscle memory loves you. Not).

In my opinion the X1 Carbon Gen 4 probably shined as one of the better machines Lenovo ever made; the only other one that really stood out to me was the X300, those had AMAZING keyboards and portability when they came out, wow! But the X1 Carbon Gen 4 has a snappy keyboard (much better than the T495 and beyond), its display was actually decent for colour, decent thermal management so it doesn't roar at you all the time (you can also adjust it so that the CPU throttles below needing to trigger the fan), and the hinges were really nice because they aren't the nasty 'fold over' ones that are completely static and move with the lid.

I think about this machine often whenever I see or use some of the newer Lenovo models. It's now relegated as a kind of remote app server sitting in my rack with the lid closed (to run some Windows applications that I can just access over macOS or Linux). It's more convenient doing it that way than virtualizing locally (and no, the application in question hates crossover).

Of course it ain't no T43 or A31 or T60p, but as far as modern Lenovos go, it was nice.


P.S. can't not reference this video when bringing up the X300 again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hnOCUkbix0

[dr_st]

I haven't used an X1C4, but I really liked the X1C5/X1C6 generation - with the greatly reduced footprint and weight, impressive battery life, and still many usable ports, and decent keyboard travel.

[micrex22]

I haven't used an X1C4, but I really liked the X1C5/X1C6 generation - with the greatly reduced footprint and weight, impressive battery life, and still many usable ports, and decent keyboard travel.

Well if you ever find one be sure to try it, you'll probably be pleasantly more impressed by it than its successors (not in performance though, that's for sure!)