This Lenovo laptop competes against a nonexistent Apple MacBook Pro 15

When we tested the Lenovo ThinkPad X9-15 in 2025, we clearly recognized its purpose: This business laptop, with its 15.3 inch screen, efficient Intel Lunar Lake CPU and thin metal chassis, was Lenovo's answer to the Apple MacBook Air 15, made for the enterprise market that Lenovo did not want to lose to the competition from Cupertino.

So far, Lenovo has not updated the original ThinkPad X9-15 to a newer platform. Instead, the Chinese manufacturer opted to transform this premium laptop into the Lenovo ThinkPad X9-15p Gen 1 Aura Edition (a name that is a mouthful) which we recently reviewed.

Lenovo ThinkPad X9-15p: A competitor against whom?

The new version keeps the same basic design and reuses parts like the keyboard and screen, but completely changes the internal layout, with a much bigger cooling system and additional ports, like a third Thunderbolt 4 port and a full-size SD card reader. The bigger fans are necessary for the more powerful Intel Panther Lake CPUs of the Core Ultra X7 and Ultra X9 class, the system can consume up to 50 W under sustained load.

It is a much more powerful laptop compared with the older model, and thanks to the additional ports also more useful. Plus, Lenovo only sells it with 32 or 64 GB RAM. All of these changes shift the X9-15p more from the MacBook Air into the MacBook Pro territory. 

Of course, this is not quite a match, either: There is no Apple MacBook Pro 15. This means the ThinkPad X9-15p Gen 1 fills a niche that Apple does not serve: It is much more versatile than a MacBook Air 15, but also much more portable than a MacBook Pro 16.