Lenovo ThinkPad X1 2-in-1 review: A ThinkPad with a pen

The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 2-in-1 is a 14-inch 2-in-1 premium business laptop from Lenovo, complete with a 360-degree hinge and optional stylus. This is part of the legendary ThinkPad line of laptops, so it’s a high-end machine – with a high-end price, too.

If you want a ThinkPad and you want it to be a 2-in-1 machine with a touchscreen and a stylus, this is definitely the laptop for you. It delivered serious battery life in our benchmarks, but it’s not a performance-focused beast of a machine.

Here’s the inconvenient thing about this PC: A potential future version of this laptop with Intel’s upcoming Lunar Lake hardware should have even better battery life and improved performance — and it would support all those Copilot+ PC features Microsoft just announced, which this laptop (and other Meteor Lake-powered laptops) will never get. Now that Intel has announced Lunar Lake hardware coming later this year, battery-life-focused laptops with Meteor Lake hardware already feel a little dated.

Further reading: Best laptops 2024: Premium, budget, gaming, 2-in-1s, and more

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 2-in-1: Specs

The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 2-in-1 (Gen 9) is a 14-inch laptop that comes with an Intel Meteor Lake CPU. This is a 2-in-1 laptop with a touchscreen and an optional pen. Our review model had an Intel Core Ultra 7 155U CPU, but you can also configure this laptop with an Intel Core Ultra 5 125U, an Intel Core Ultra 5 135U, or an Intel Core Ultra 7 165U processor.

Either way, you’re getting an Intel Meteor Lake CPU, so it has more of a focus on power efficiency than Intel’s previous Raptor Lake CPUs. However, it looks like Meteor Lake pales in comparison to the Lunar Lake hardware that’s right around the corner. This laptop also comes with an “Intel Evo” badge.

This machine uses Intel graphics – not the higher-end Intel Arc graphics, which means it’s not great for gaming, even by integrated laptop graphics standards. Our review model included 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM, and you can get up to 64GB of RAM – but the memory is soldered to the motherboard. Our review model had a 1TB SSD, but you can configure this laptop with up to 2TB of storage.

Since this is a Meteor Lake laptop with a Meteor Lake neural processing unit (NPU,) it will never run any of those new Copilot+ PC features. You should wait for a Lunar Lake laptop if those are important to you.

• CPU: Intel Core Ultra 7 155U
• Memory: 16GB LPDDR5X
• Graphics/GPU: Intel graphics
• Display: 14-inch 1920×1200 IPS touch screen with 60Hz refresh rate
• Storage: 1TB M.2 PCIE 4 SSD
• Webcam: 1080p webcam
• Connectivity: 2x Thunderbolt 4 (USB4 with DisplayPort 2.1 Alt Mode and Power Delivery 3.0), 2x USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-A, 1x HDMI 2.,1, 1x combo headset jack, 1x Kensington nano security slot
• Networking: Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3
• Biometrics: IR camera for facial recognition and fingerprint sensor
• Battery capacity: 57 Watt-hours
• Dimensions: 12.3 x 8.6 x 0.6 inches
• Weight: 2.98 pounds
• MSRP: $2,761 as tested

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 2-in-1: Design and build quality

The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 2-in-1 has great build quality. That’s no surprise: Lenovo uses the prestigious ThinkPad name for its high-end business laptops. Of course, they also come at a high-end price compared to Lenovo’s ThinkBook line of laptops.

The laptop is made of metal – aluminum and magnesium – and it’s all grays and silvers with a black bezel around the screen. In the center of the keyboard, you’ve got that classic red TrackPoint “nub,” which you can use to move the cursor around.

The “communications bar” containing the webcams and microphone at the top of the display juts out a bit and sticks out on the back. On the lid of the laptop, the dot at the top of the “i” in “ThinkPad” lights up red when the laptop is on.

It’s a great, business-like look. The metal makes it feel premium to touch, and the build quality is great with no creaking bits. The hinge works smoothly and solidly, which is obviously critical for a 2-in-1. At a hair under three pounds, it’s not as lightweight as a ThinkPad X1 Carbon with that carbon fiber, but it’s a good weight.

This is a 2-in-1 laptop, so it has a touch screen and a 360-degree hinge that lets you rotate the laptop into a variety of shapes, lying it flat, using it in “tent mode,” or rotating it all the way so that the keyboard is at the back of the screen and turning it into a tablet. The screen also has a digitizer that works well with the Lenovo Slim Pen, which is an optional accessory our review model included.

Lenovo chose not to have the ThinkPad’s optional pen – the Lenovo Slim Pen – insert into a slot on the laptop for storage. Instead, it attaches magnetically to side of the ThinkPad X1 2-in-1. Lenovo says that it it is larger and “attaches to the side of the keyboard frame magnetically, so it’s always at arm’s reach.” Some people will prefer this approach to storing the pen. Although the magnetic attachment is strong and the pen does attach securely to the laptop, it’s also easy to see how the pen could get bumped and become detached in a bag.

While the pen connects to the laptop magnetically for storage, it doesn’t charge wirelessly from the laptop. You will have to plug a USB-C cable to a port under the cap on top of the pen to charge it.

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 2-in-1: Keyboard and trackpad

The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 2-in-1 has a great full-size keyboard that feels pleasantly snappy. There’s nothing “mushy” about the keys here. I also like some of the little touches, like the “Delete” key at the top-right corner of the keyboard being wider than other nearby keys.

There’s also the red TrackPoint “nub,” of course – this is a ThinkPad – but the ThinkPad X1 2-in-1 also has a solid touchpad. Our review model had a touchpad with three physical buttons above it, but you can also get a haptic touchpad with customizable haptic feedback. The touchpad was nice and response to the touch, the click action felt good, and you have those three physical mouse buttons above the touchpad if you want them.

Of course, this is also a touch screen laptop, so you have the full touchscreen experience available to you. And that optional Lenovo Slim Pen seems like a great stylus, too. I’m no artist, but it offered a responsive experience when writing notes in OneNote.

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 2-in-1: Display and speakers

The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 2-in-1 offers a variety of 14-inch display options. Our review model had a 1920×1200 IPS display with a touch screen, a 60 Hz refresh rate and 400 nits of brightness. It looks good and has a nice anti-reflective coating that doesn’t produce as much glare in direct sunlight as I see on some laptops.

The ThinkPad X1 2-in-1 is also available with a 2880×1800 OLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate.

I’d recommend the lower-resolution display. It delivered amazing battery life in our benchmarks (and normal computer usage,) while the choice of an OLED display dragged down the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon in our battery benchmarks. Yes, the OLED display is probably beautiful – the OLED display on the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon certainly was when I reviewed it. But, for a machine like this, all-day battery life is probably your priority.

This laptop’s speakers are decent and can put out surprisingly loud audio with clear sound. As usual with thin-and-light laptops — or most laptops of any weight — the speakers are lacking bass. Everything else sounds good, though — and you can make it quite loud, if you like.

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 2-in-1: Webcam, microphone, biometrics

The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 2-in-1 has a high-quality 1080p webcam. For a business laptop like this one, that’s table stakes – you don’t want to spend this much only to drag a low-resolution 720p webcam into meetings! The webcam looks good and worked well both indoors and outdoors, and you also have access to Windows Studio Effects for tricks like faking eye contact and removing your background on the fly thanks to the neural processing unit (NPU) included with Intel’s Meteor Lake platform.

In addition, the webcam includes a nice physical price shutter on the communications bar itself. Just slide the shutter closed with your finger and you’ll physically block the webcam for added privacy.

The microphone setup also works nicely, picking up your voice clearly. Between the webcam and microphone, this is a capable laptop for online meetings.

This laptop includes both an IR camera and fingerprint sensor, so you can use Windows Hello to sign in with either facial recognition or your fingerprint. Facial recognition worked well in a variety of lighting conditions, and the fingerprint reader also does a good job. It’s located to the left of the arrow keys on the keyboard.

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 2-in-1: Connectivity

The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 2-in-1 offers a decent selection of ports for a laptop this size. You get two Thunderbolt 4 (USB4 Type-C) ports on the left side of the laptop – but bear in mind you’ll use one of them to charge the laptop.

In addition, you get two USB Type-A ports – one on the left side of the laptop, and one on the right side. On the right side, you also have HDMI 2.1, a combo audio jack, and a Kensington nano security slot.

You’re not getting a microSD card reader of any sort, so you’ll have to connect a dongle if you want to access an SD card, connect to Ethernet, or do anything else these ports don’t offer. For the size, it’s a good selection of ports – although some people might want a third USB Type-C port or an SD card reader of some sort.

This laptop also includes Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 radios. That’s not the end of the world as Wi-Fi 7 routers aren’t widespread yet, but there’s a reason the next-generation Lunar Lake hardware will come with Wi-Fi 7 support as standard. Now that we’re getting into the middle of 2024, it would be nice to have. You can get Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4, if you like – but that’ll cost you extra.

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 2-in-1: Performance

The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 2-in-1 delivered solid, speedy performance in day-to-day work tasks like browsing the web with a lot of tabs open and working with Microsoft Office documents. That’s table stakes these days for a laptop with an Intel Core Ultra CPU, 16GB of RAM, and fast solid-state storage.

As always, we ran the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 2-in-1 through our standard benchmarks to see how it performs.

First, we run PCMark 10 to get an idea of overall system performance. The ThinkPad X1 2-in-1 delivered an overall score of 6,226, in the middle of the pack. It’s not quite as fast as a ThinkPad X1 Carbon, and interestingly enough Lenovo’s dual-screen Yoga Book 9i actually beats it on performance in this benchmark, despite both systems having the same CPU. However, this ThinkPad did deliver stronger performance than the HP Spectre x360.

That’s a surprise because that HP 2-in-1 has an H-series chip, which should deliver higher performance than the U-series ship in this laptop, which is more focused on power efficiency. It’s another reminder that the specs sheet isn’t what’s important — HP’s Spectre x360 is likely being constrained by its thermals (cooling performance).

Next, we run Cinebench R20. This is a heavily multithreaded benchmark that focuses on overall CPU performance. It’s a quick benchmark, so cooling under extended workloads isn’t a factor. But, since it’s heavily multithreaded, CPUs with more cores have a huge advantage.

The ThinkPad’s score of 2,915 was in the bottom of the pack here. That’s not a huge surprise because this has a U-series Core Ultra chip from Intel, which is more focused on long battery life than performance. However, it’s interesting to see that Lenovo’s dual-screen Yoga Book 9i — which has the same CPU — beat the ThinkPad X1 2-in-1 on performance again.

We also run an encode with Handbrake. This is another heavily multithreaded benchmark, but it runs over an extended period of time. This demands the laptop’s cooling kick in, and many laptops will throttle and slow down under load.

The ThinkPad X1 2-in-1 completed the encode process in an average of 1,902 seconds — that’s nearly 32 minutes. It’s a long time in comparison to other laptops with more performance-focused CPUs. This laptop isn’t optimized for delivering sustained power in heavy workloads like this — it’s more focused on power efficiency and battery life than computing performance.

Next, we run a graphical benchmark. This isn’t a gaming laptop, but it’s still good to check how the GPU performs. Professional 3D rendering applications that use the system’s GPU will also benefit from a good score here. We run 3Dmark Time Spy, a graphical benchmark that focuses on GPU performance.

With a score of 2,169, the Lenovo ThinkPad 2-in-1 was in the bottom of the pack as far as Intel Meteor Lake-powered laptops. That’s because the U-series processors come with the lower-end “Intel graphics,” which isn’t as fast as the Intel Arc graphics you can get with Intel H-series CPUs.

However, this machine’s integrated Intel graphics were still much faster than the previous-generation Intel Iris Xe graphics found in the older Asus ZenBook 14 Flip OLED we compared it to.

Overall, the results paint a clear picture. This laptop isn’t a speed demon, and if you’re looking for a machine to run heavy computing workloads, this is the wrong system for you. Its hardware is optimized for long battery life and power efficiency. Luckily, as we saw in our battery life benchmark below, this machine delivers.

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 2-in-1: Battery life

The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 2-in-1 includes a 57 Watt-hour battery. That feels like it’s a little on the low side, so it’s extra surprising that the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 2-in-1 delivered amazing numbers in our battery life benchmarks. Yes, this looks like it should deliver all-day battery life – thank the display. If you opt for a model with an OLED display, bear in mind you won’t get the same battery life results.

To benchmark the battery life, we play a 4K copy of Tears of Steel on repeat in the Movies & TV app on Windows 11 with airplane mode enabled until the laptop suspends itself. We set the screen to 250 nits of brightness for our battery benchmarks. This is a best-case scenario for any laptop since local video playback is so efficient, and real battery life in day-to-day use is always going to be less than the number you see here.

In our video rundown benchmark, the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 2-in-1 lasted for an impressive 1055 minutes before powering itself off. That’s seventeen and a half hours, and it outshined all the other laptops we compared it against. We benchmarked a ThinkPad X1 Carbon with an OLED display, so keep that in mind when you look at the results here — the ThinkPad X1 2-in-1’s OLED display option will likely cut hours off your battery life, although I imagine it looks stunning.

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 2-in-1: Conclusion

ThinkPads aren’t targeted at the average PC user. They’re premium business laptops, and Lenovo gives them a price that matches – thankfully, Lenovo also gives them a premium build quality. (But ThinkPads also go on pretty deep sales sometimes – especially previous-generation ones. You may be able to find this PC at quite a large discount someday).

At $2,761, our review model is seriously expensive for a laptop, especially one that trades so much performance for battery life. However, it also does have serious battery life. For people who use a computer for light tasks rather than heavy local computing workloads — and who want a pen with their high-end business laptop — this is a good option.

After considering the benchmarks above, you should have a pretty good idea of whether this machine is for you. Other 2-in-1 options include Lenovo’s Yoga Book 9i, which takes the concept even further, delivering two separate displays – at a lower price, but without the ThinkPad branding and with much lower battery life. (After all, it’s powering two separate screens). Or you could go for a competing 2-in-1 like the much less expensive HP Spectre x360, although it doesn’t have anywhere near the battery life and its performance was inconsistent in our benchmarks. Plus, none of those are competing laptops are ThinkPads. That lineage and high-end design is important to a lot of people.

If you don’t need a laptop right now, you may want to wait for the next generation. Intel’s Lunar Lake hardware sounds like it will be a huge leap over Meteor Lake and deliver much more power efficiency along with improved performance – and it will support all those Copilot+ PC features Microsoft announced, which laptops like this one won’t receive. From what Intel is saying, that next-generation hardware will be a big upgrade to battery life-focused laptops like this one.