Lenovo ThinkPad X1 2-in-1 Gen 10 Aura Edition Review: Better Than A Surface?

The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 2 in 1 Gen 10 is a premium and robust business laptop with a ridiculous starting price of $2500. But let’s say you’re not worried about budget and you just want the best laptop money can buy with a rotating touchscreen and pen support: Well, is this the one to get?

We tested the ThinkPad for over a month for work in the office, on the go and also for plenty of gaming and entertainment. Many things are awesome but not everything is sunshine and rainbows. Let’s get into it.

Design

If you’re thinking about getting a Lenovo Thinkpad, you likely already know that these are some of the best built Windows laptops. Features like the US military MIL-STD-810H certification, a spill-proof keyboard and overall robust build quality are things that you just come to expect. 

But visually, we think that Lenovo has done a good job as well. This ThinkPad X1 comes in a silver-grey colour. The chassis is made of a softer, matte and fingerprint-repellent aluminium that feels high end to the touch. On the back, you’ll find a ThinkPad Logo on the top left corner, alongside a red LED indicating whether the laptop is on or asleep. Overall, everything about this laptop just looks and feels high quality. It weighs 1.3KG, similar to a MacBook Air and comes with a 14’’ touch display. At the top of the display, there’s a slight protruding notch containing the webcam.

More uniquely, this “2 in 1” laptop has hinges that allow the display to extend almost 360°, allowing you to convert it into a tablet form factor. When flipped, the ThinkPad looks just like a thicker Microsoft Surface. You can also use it in a “tent mode” for watching video content. 

You’ll find the power button on the right side rather than the keyboard. That way it’s also reachable in tablet mode. A small LED indicates the power and charging status on top of the button. 

Hardware & Performance

Let’s talk about its performance – here it gets a bit convoluted: You can find the ThinkPad X1 2 in 1 with 2 different CPU series. One of them has the U suffix, the other with V. 

Our ThinkPad comes with the Core Ultra 7 258V and 32GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD. You can also get a similar spec with 16 or 64GB RAM and 512GB of storage.

However, if you want to save some cash, you can spend around $2,200 for one configured with the Core Ultra 5 225U. That chip also comes with 32GB RAM but features the older and less efficient Intel 3 manufacturing and a slower Arc 140T GPU.

We recommend sticking with the V series if you want the best battery life and GPU performance. 

But let’s talk about the processor we have. In Geekbench, results are on par or better than other Intel Lunar Laked based laptops in CPU single core. Notably, it’s also around 10% faster than the Snapdragon X Elite Surface Pro 11 in single core. The Snapdragon Chip does better in the Multi-Core test thanks to having 10 cores instead of 8.

The ThinkPad truly shines in GPU benchmarks though, with a whopping 20% lead over the Acer Swift 14 AI which has the same chipset. It’s also an entire 35% faster than the Microsoft Surface Pro 11 with the Snapdragon chip. 

Gaming Test

Nobody’s buying this laptop for gaming, but with its 120Hz refresh screen and decent GPU performance, a bit of light gaming on the side shouldn’t be an issue.

And that’s pretty much exactly what we find. In The Finals with the low preset, we can get above 80FPS on average with “performance” XeSS upscaling, which is Intel’s own image upscaler for games. This result was achieved with the display resolution set to 1920 x 1080p, so native resolution will probably be a lot more challenging. 

Using the same resolution, we tested DOOM 2016. Surprisingly, the Arc 140V iGPU is a bit underwhelming here. With the ultra settings preset, we can get a solid 60FPS average, again on 1080p. Setting everything to low can yield around 100FPS. 

Fortnite is another title that features Intel’s AI upscaling. At 1080p, the game can easily reach 120FPS on lower settings with quality upscaling. Strangely, after the most recent Windows update, Fortnite doesn’t start anymore and we haven’t found a fix for it. That’s why we don’t have any footage of the game.

The ThinkPad gets pretty warm in games, and we actually saw core temperatures peak at around 95° when using the Windows performance power profile. We recommend sticking to the balanced mode to avoid throttling and fan noise. 

There seems to be a bit of driver instability considering the mediocre performance in Doom and Fortnite refusing to launch, but overall gaming performance is very acceptable. 

Ports & Connectivity

You’ll find a practical selection of ports across this laptop. There are 2 classic USB-A ports, one on each side, and 2 USB-C Thunderbolt 4 ports with support for charging and display output. Since these are the only charging ports on the laptop, it’s unfortunate that they’re both on the left side. The DisplayPort 2.1 output worked perfectly when we connected it to an external 1440p monitor. 

You’ll also find a Sim card slot on the left side, but you can set up an E-SIM if you prefer that. This allows you to use your data plan on the go, but making phone calls is not possible despite the SIM support. 

The right side has an additional full sized HDMI 2.1 port with up to 4k 60Hz output and a 3.5mm headphone jack. You’ll also find a Kensington Nano Security Slot for theft protection. An SD card reader would obviously be a welcome addition here, but since this is a business laptop, it can be forgiven. 

Battery Life

A 57Watt-hour battery is pretty average for a 14’’ laptop, but thanks to the efficient Intel Ultra 7 258V chip you can expect a lot more juice out of this laptop compared to previous generations. In our YouTube HD-Video playback test, the Thinkpad lasts a respectable 10 hours at max brightness. This result is pretty in-line with other current gen laptops we’ve tested. The Acer Swift 14 AI lasted 20% longer, and the Surface Pro 15%.

The battery life on this laptop will vary heavily depending on your configuration, but you can expect any configuration to last a full day for lighter work. 

Camera & Unlock

This ThinkPad has one of the sharpest webcams we’ve seen on a laptop. Selfies look sharp and crisp at a 4k resolution, and videos can be recorded at up to 1440p 30 FPS. Even video calling in a dark environment is not a problem. If you’re concerned about privacy, the camera can be fully blocked via a shutter on the top notch.

Windows Hello is also supported and you can find the 3D face scanning hardware next to the webcam. Alternatively, you can also unlock the laptop with the on-keyboard fingerprint scanner. Both unlock options work super reliably and the camera can even detect when you’re looking away to automatically dim the display.

Read: CMF Phone 2 Pro Review: Amazing Sub $250 Camera?

Keyboard & Trackpad

Let’s talk about that famous ThinkPad keyboard. It’s good. The keys are tactile, have long travel distance and don’t feel mushy unlike on many cheaper windows laptops. You can type on this keyboard for hours without feeling any fatigue – which we did while writing this review.

In the very center of the keyboard you’ll find the iconic ThinkPad TrackPoint. Although we didn’t use this feature much, we know that it has a lot of fans and it’s a nice design feature regardless.

The dedicated Windows Copilot button next to the right alt is our biggest complaint. When you’re typing normally and want to input a special character, 3 out of 10 times you’ll accidentally mash the copilot button. This slowly brings up an ai chatbot menu which only gets in the way.

There’s second trackpad option when you order the laptop; either a traditional thinkpad style trackpad with 3 physical buttons for left and right click and one for the scrolling with the trackpoint, or you can order a haptic trackpad without the buttons. Our model has the haptic trackpad, which feels super accurate and premium. It could be just a tad bigger.

Display

The X1 2 in 1 comes with a matte 1920 x 1200p LCD “low-power” display by default, and for $100 you can change it for an OLED display. The OLED has 120HZ refresh instead of 60, better colour accuracy, contrast and a 2.8k resolution. Both displays get up to 500 nits of peak brightness.

The touchscreen works great. Everything is responsive and we noticed much less smudging compared to many tablets we have tested. Our only complaint is that Windows 11 is still not well optimised for only touch control despite Microsoft having their own series of Windows Surface tablets; Programs like Photoshop also are designed with using mouse and keyboard in mind. Android or iPadOS feel miles ahead here.

Our test unit comes with the OLED display, and we think that it’s gorgeous. Of course, it’s more reflective compared to the LCD model, but thanks to an anti-glare layer you’re never blinded by overhead lights. We watched The Walking Dead on Netflix with this laptop on a trip and had a great time. Dark scenes are super immersive and HDR – if enabled – boosts contrast even more.

With the OLED, you can also get significantly longer battery life if you use dark mode for Windows and all your apps. 

Speakers

When it comes to the speakers, we are a bit underwhelmed. They get pretty loud and the audio quality is decent, but it’s nowhere as detailed or bassy as the speakers on an older MacBook Pro. The sound seems to come from under the keyboard and underneath the chassis, which helps it fill the room in tablet mode but obviously sounds less clear than forward firing speakers. 

On any other laptop, we would find these more than acceptable. But here you’re spending at least $2,500 so it’s reasonable to expect every feature to be top class. And that’s just not the case for the speakers, unfortunately. 

Lenovo Yoga Pen

For another $20, Lenovo will throw in the Lenovo Yoga Pen, which we think is very worth the price. With the multi-touch display, you can jot down quick notes or reminders, draw a diagram or scribble on a digital whiteboard with ease. Allowing you to turn the laptop into a writing tablet is one of the highlights of the 360° design.

The Yoga pen is super accurate in note-taking apps like OneNote, however we don’t think that the Thinkpad X1 2 in 1 can replace a notetaking tablet fully since the laptop is quite bulky and thick when folded into tablet mode. 

Read: OnePlus Pad 3 Review: Faster Than All Android Tablets?

Summary

Lenovo’s ThinkPad X1 2-in-1 Gen 10 is a sleek but robust Business notebook that’s hard not to love. The touchscreen works well, performance is good and the keyboard and trackpad are top-notch; It’s arguably one of the best business laptops around. Only the speakers feel a bit underwhelming.

Honestly, the biggest weakness of this laptop is the price. You can find the Lenovo Yoga 7i 14’’ Intel for a much more digestible price and almost identical specs, or opt for a Microsoft Surface Pro 12’’ for a true Windows Tablet experience. Any cheaper Windows laptops can handle office tasks just as well, so you’re really paying a premium when you buy this model.

But if the price doesn’t deter you, we think that this Lenovo ThinkPad 2 in 1 is seriously worth recommending.