The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano has arrived: Case and 16:10 Display are great, but the keyboard disappoints

However, the more compact chassis also has negative effects on the keyboard. It is narrower, which is clearly noticeable when you look at some of the keys on the right side, but this is a thing you will get used to. The keyboard travel is the bigger issue, because compared to the current X1 Carbon (which already has a reduced travel of 1.5 mm) it is further reduced to 1.35 mm. This does not sound like much, but you can definitely notice it when you type. This means the X1 Nano has the worst keyboard in the whole ThinkPad model lineup and it reminds us more of the less expensive ThinkBook lineup. This development is definitely going in the wrong direction.

The new 16:10 display creates nice images. All the contents are crisp and colors look good. After our initial measurements, we can confirm the advertised brightness of 460 nits in the center of the screen (the average value is a bit lower), and the contrast ratio is also excellent at more than 1700:1. The small sRGB color gamut is covered completely.

The ThinkPad X1 Nano is the first at Notebookcheck with the Tiger Lake processor Core i7-1160G7. It is a so called UP4 package, where the power consumption is much lower (configurable between 7-15 W), while the "regular" UP3 chips are configurable between 12-28 W.

We already know that these values can be adjusted by every manufacturer with much wider ranges. The new ThinkPad X1 Nano has both limits (PL1 & PL2) set at 40 W, which is rather optimistic considering the slim device. The notebook can at least utilize its high clock of up to 4.4 GHz in short peak load scenarios.

The performance utilization of the X1 Nano is actually pretty decent, because we see the full 4.4 GHz when we stress one core and around 35 W (>30s) in multi-core tests, which results in the full 4x 3.6 GHz. We will obviously check how long the X1 Nano can maintain this performance under sustained workloads, but we are still positively surprised. This, however, begs the question why Lenovo uses an efficient UP4 chip in the first place...

The initial impression is very good and we cannot criticize much in terms of chassis, display, or the performance after our initial tests. The biggest issue is the keyboard, because the reduced key travel is very noticeable when you type. This might be a serious problem for long-term ThinkPad users.

The full review of the ThinkPad X1 Nano will be published in 2-3 days. Please leave a comment if you have special questions or suggestions.