Huge performance upgrade for featherweight sub 1 kg system: Lenovo will offer Arrow Lake H in ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 laptop

Lunar Lake has been a great release for Intel, especially for business laptops. A chip optimized for efficiency is the perfect fit for laptops that should offer a great battery life and silent operation in the office. It has been especially great for models like Lenovo's ThinkPad X1 Carbon line (X1 Carbon G12 available on Amazon), which has suffered from the less than efficient Intel predecessor CPUs. The ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition with Lunar Lake has been the best version of the X1 in many years.

However, with Lunar Lake, there are certain limitations. This includes the RAM limit of 32 GB - older versions of the ThinkPad X1 Carbon could do up to 64 GB, the new X1 Carbon G13 was limited to 32 GB. This was true up until now, as Lenovo has announced new CPU options for the flagship ThinkPad. The X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition will start to ship with Intel Arrow Lake H and Arrow Lake U CPUs soon, potentially increasing the RAM limit to 64 GB.

This may not just enable Lenovo to offer more RAM, it may also increase the CPU performance of the ThinkPad X1. While Lunar Lake offers great GPU and single-core performance, its usefulness for multicore tasks is limited. Arrow Lake H offers 14 cores instead of just the eight of Lunar Lake, so the X1 Carbon G13 with Arrow Lake H should be able to work faster for tasks like rendering and compiling.

Aside from the X1 Carbon Gen 13, Lenovo also announced Arrow Lake H and Arrow Lake U for the convertible model Lenovo ThinkPad X1 2-in-1 Gen 10 Aura Edition. Both should start shipping this month.