Review verdict for the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 14 - An excellent business laptop, but pay attention to the display

The ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 14 is Lenovo's flagship business laptop and impresses with its extremely low weight. The current generation gets a completely overhauled chassis and uses Intel's latest Panther Lake mobile processors. The huge advantage for potential customers is the wide range of CPUs, because you get all the chips starting with efficient models for light workloads as well as powerful Core Ultra X chips with powerful iGPUs.

The construction of the notebook is special, because the display you select has a big effect on the materials. If you decide to get a touchscreen, you get a slightly thicker lid. The displays are also quite different, because you can decide between IPS and OLED panels. The default IPS touchscreen offers decent image quality, but is limited to 60 Hz. 

If you go for the IPS panel, you will get a base unit made of aluminum, which has a noticeable effect on the weight. Our IPS review unit tipped the scale at 1.14 kg, so about 150 grams more than the OLED version. This might not sound like much, but it is very noticeable in a direct comparison. The IPS model also suffers from a poor calibration out of the box, which results in a very distinct color cast towards green/blue. SKUs with OLED panels on the other hand use base units made of magnesium, which is very light and the OLED SKU only weighs 989 grams. The image quality of the OLED screen is also better. 

If you purchase this premium device, you have to decide what your priorities are, because you must make a compromise: The IPS panel gives you phenomenal battery runtimes, because we determined an excellent runtime of almost 24 hours in our Wi-Fi test. If you get the OLED screen, however, the battery runtimes will be significantly shorter.

Except for the display question, the new ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 14 offers improved speakers, which offer surprisingly good sound quality. Road warriors can also equip their machine with an integrated LTE or even a speedy 5G modem. Please see our in-depth review for more information about the new ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 14.