ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 12: New keyboard, better cooling and 120 Hz screen for Core Ultra flagship laptop

Traditionally, Lenovo announces the ThinkPad X1 Carbon every year at CES. This time though, the announcement comes before the show begins and still in the year 2023.

Of course, this timing coincides with the launch of Intel's new Core Ultra CPU series, code named Meteor Lake. For this occasion, Lenovo is revealing the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 12, the newest in the long line of flagship premium ThinkPad laptops of the X1 series. And this year, this model line for company managers, frequent travelers and high end enterprise computing gets a brand new design.

TrackPoint buttons or no TrackPoint buttons: You get the choice

The first big design change visible to anyone is the new haptic trackpad, which was pioneered by the ThinkPad Z series, with models like the ThinkPad Z13. This forcepad-like design forgoes the traditional dedicated buttons for the TrackPoint, the red ThinkPad pointing stick, integrating them into the touchpad and thus increasing the touchpad area. Touchpad users will probably like this, but ThinkPad fans who love the TrackPoint? Not so much. In a good move, Lenovo will still offer the classic solution with a mechanical trackpad and dedicated buttons, so users get the choice which design they prefer.

This is not the only input-device change: Lenovo has flipped the FN and Ctrl keys, fixing a long-standing annoyance of many users who are used to other manufacturers. The new keyboard also integrated the fingerprint sensor and it includes new tactile markers on certain keys, so blind users and touch-typists can more easily find them.