The first really foldable PC in the world is Lenovo’s Thinkpad X1 Fold. The majority of other PCs are convertibles, meaning that the keyboard and display may be detached or rotated around one another. The Thinkpad X1 Fold is the first laptop in the world that can be folded in half to transform into a 13″ tablet or a netbook that is the size of a small book. The Thinkpad X1 Fold from Lenovo succeeds in a lot of ways while falling short in others. But overall, we think users will find the Thinkpad X1 Fold to be very practical.
Design
The ThinkPad X1 Fold has a range of orientations for every work environment. The keyboard and stand attach magnetically to each other and to the notebook itself, folding together and snapping onto the outside of the chassis when folded. The optional Wacom pen also attaches magnetically to the edge of the display. The X1 Fold Gen 2 looks very sturdy, which is a relief given the propensity of folding technology to break for very little. The outer panels are made of a nice, grippy fabric made from 100% recycled plastics. That eco-friendly design ethic extends to the rest of the product; the speaker chamber, internal battery housing and AC adapter are made from at least 90% post-consumer recycled materials. Even the packaging is fully compostable. Open it up and you have a 16-inch, auto-rotating screen that allows you to use the device in portrait or landscape mode, or you can fold it at an angle, attach a keyboard to the bottom half of the screen and use it as a small laptop. The key word is versatility. It doesn’t have the same polished, refined look and design as an ultrabook, but there’s no denying the practicality of trying to offer the advantages of a large screen, but in a package that reduces its size for easy portability.
Keyboard and Touchpad
Accessories for the 2022 ThinkPad X1 Fold are now included with the folding PC and are lightweight and magnetically attached. The ThinkPad TrackPoint Bluetooth keyboard is a full-size peripheral modeled after the ThinkPad X1 Nano keyboard. It includes TrackPoint buttons, a haptic trackpad and a Windows Hello compatible fingerprint reader.When not connected, the keyboard can be used separately from the display while connected to Bluetooth. In addition, you can place the keyboard on top of the flat part of the folding PC in clamshell mode or continue to use the keyboard docked or separately. Similarly, the accompanying stand magnetically attaches to the ThinkPad X1 Fold 2022 and fits snugly for ease of use. You can place the device in landscape or portrait mode and adjust the fold to your liking. Fortunately, many of the issues with the keyboard layout of the original ThinkPad X1 Fold have been resolved. There are no missing keys and no surprises: everything is right where you’d expect it to be on a standard ThinkPad laptop. That’s largely thanks to the larger size – there’s no more need to make compromises to fit all the keys.
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold review: Display
The OLED display is beautiful, with 600 nits of brightness and HDR certification. Colors pop and blacks are deep and crisp. Being a folding panel, the surface is a thin plastic with some very slight imperfections around the hinge area, but that’s pretty much unavoidable at this point. The touchscreen is operated well with fingers or the compatible Wacom stylus, which may make it a great choice for digital artists. As mentioned above, the new keyboard has benefited greatly from the upgrade to a 16.3-inch form factor. The keyboard on the original X1 Fold was awkward and cramped; this one is much easier to use, with full-size backlit keys that offer decent travel. Naturally, it includes Lenovo’s signature red Laptop Nipple (sorry, “trackpoint”) in the center. The newly enlarged haptic trackpad is responsive enough, but feels a bit thin and doesn’t offer a very satisfying click.
Connectivity
The ThinkPad X1 Fold offers two USB-C ports (3.2 Gen. 2) that can also be used to connect external displays. One port is on the left side and the other on the bottom edge. There is no SD card reader, but Lenovo installs Intel’s popular and fast AX201 module as WLAN module, which also supports Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) and Bluetooth 5.1. The transfer rates in our test with the Netgear RAX120 router are decent, and we could not detect any problems with signal quality. The ThinkPad X1 Fold is optionally available with a WWAN module (5G). also you will learn our article on Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold review.
Audio
In each configuration, the X1 Fold offers stereo sound and Dolby Atmos immersive audio capabilities, albeit the quality varies. The audio/video experience is fairly pleasant when the Fold is opened like a big tablet and used with its built-in kickstand, but we discovered that we had to utilize the inbuilt Dolby Access software to manually specify whatever type of content we were using. But we found our self getting lost in a space battle scene in Star Wars: The Last Jedi, so that’s a good sign. Although the video is obviously considerably smaller and less theatrical in clamshell mode, the sound is, as far as we can tell, roughly the same and the video quality is still excellent. In a congested coach seat on a flight, you might do worse.
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold review: Graphics
The integrated graphics card with the UHD Graphics G7 designation is the fast iGPU of Ice Lake processors in principle, but its clock speeds are significantly reduced in this case. However, we cannot determine the exact GPU speed. The iGPU is sufficient for normal tasks, which also include high-resolution video playback. Nevertheless, you should not expect much more performance. The graphics performance is slightly better than in the Samsung Galaxy Book S, and it is also above the previous UHD Graphics 620 iGPU that was used for many years. However, the test model cannot compete with modern Intel Xe models or AMD iGPUs. Graphics performance is not reduced on battery power. As a result, gaming performance is limited, and the hybrid processor can also lead to further shortcomings. If you want to play games without fail, you will have to limit yourself to less demanding titles or simple games from the Windows Store.
Performance
We weren’t able to properly test the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold in our brief time with it, but we’ll be sure to include our usual set of benchmark results when we receive our own unit and update this review. Regardless, we’re confident that the X1 Fold will outperform its predecessor. With the generational leap in performance offered by the 12th generation Intel Alder Lake CPUs, we should see improvements across the board. The lack of a discrete GPU means it probably won’t be capable of very demanding workloads, but everyday use and low to medium intensity tasks should be a breeze. Battery life could vary significantly between models, as the X1 Fold can be configured with a dual-battery setup that places a battery on each side of the center hinge. The default primary battery is actually a 48Whr unit compared to the first generation model’s 50Whr, which is a bit of a concern – although Alder Lake’s reduced power consumption will hopefully mitigate this somewhat. The optional secondary battery is much smaller at 16Whr. An interesting feature of our experience was the hinge disassembly, which showed how Lenovo has designed a pair of graphite plates that touch when the laptop is unfolded. This allows for superior thermal transfer across the two halves of the device – a necessity, as the X1 Fold Gen 2 is completely fanless.
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold review: Battery life
The 50-Watt-hour battery lasts about 4-5 hours when using the ThinkPad X1 Fold in the balanced profile in battery settings. In performance mode, the battery life takes a hit of about 1 hour, but the overall system response improves a bit. You can also try to squeeze a few more hours out of it in the power-saving profile. We used the ThinkPad X1 Fold mainly in the balanced profile at 60% brightness, which gave us an average battery life of about 5 hours. The 65W charging adapter takes about 90 minutes to charge the machine from 0% to 100%. You can also use the device while it is still charging, but that slows down the charging speed. Battery life feels on the low side considering it’s an OLED display which is considered low power.
Heat
The device heats up mainly on the left side, where the important components are located. The surface temperatures are already slightly elevated here during idle use. Under load, we measured a maximum of 45 °C, which is still harmless. Still, the rear is somewhat more comfortable thanks to the leather cover. In the stress test, the processor has to reduce its power consumption from 9.5 watts to 8 watts after a few minutes, but this level remains stable thereafter. you can read our article on Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold review.
Configuration options
For a configuration with an Intel Core i5-L16G7 processor, Intel UHD graphics, 8 GB of RAM, and 256 GB of PCIe-based SSD storage, the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold starts at $2500. This excludes, however, items like a Lenovo Mod Pen and the presumably essential Lenovo Fold Mini Keyboard (although a full-sized Bluetooth mobile keyboard could be a better option). Although there are no processor or RAM upgrades available, you could easily spend approximately $3000 on a Fold. With the Fold, you can have up to a 1 TB PCIe-based SSD plus, if you’d like, 4G or 5G mobile broadband.
Conclusion
Amazing technology like the Lenovo X1 Fold performs much better than it should for a proof of concept. It isn’t flawless in any way, but considering that Windows 10X, the software for which it was intended, isn’t yet ready, it is amazing how well it functions. Although it is far too pricey and comes with too many trade-offs for me to actually advise anyone to get one, it does serve as evidence that folding displays may be helpful at any size and that ultra-compact PCs in the near future will be excellent.
