Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 3 – 30 days in
How do you describe the sensation of turning on a powerful laptop? How do you describe the joy of not waiting for graphics to load? How do you describe the exhilaration of watching your videos render four times as fast as ever before?
Does this explain it to you? If not, read on…
I’ve been using the ThinkPad X1 Extreme for about a month now, and DAMN, it’s nice. This particular machine features an OLED 15.6” 4K touch screen which is beautiful; a 1 terabyte solid-state disk drive (SSD) which is blazing fast; 32MB of DDR4 2933MHz RAM which will easily run any program I have; and the typical ThinkPad keyboard with TouchPoint that is about as durable and comfortable as anything you can get in a laptop. Built to military specs, this machine is liable to last for a decade or more.
I got my first ThinkPad back around 2006 and its screen, keyboard, and disk drives are still working today. Having been a corporate road warrior and a travel writer, I’ve hauled laptops from Alaska to the Amazon and my ThinkPads have never disappointed. Can’t say the same for some lesser-priced machines I’ve tried. So, let’s look at why paying for quality in a laptop, is a smart move.
ThinkPad Dependability
If you need a computer for work, it goes without saying that a cheap computer is liable to embarrass you whenever it knows you are making a presentation. I don’t know how that happens, but invariably it will. Often, I’ve seen lesser laptops shrivel up and stop working when trying to edit video. Pushing 4K video through Adobe Premiere on a substandard machine is next near to impossible unless you’ve got all night to wait for it.
Quality webcam built-in
If you use Zoom for meetings, do you really want to appear fuzzy on everyone else’s screen? My machine uses a built-in 720p webcam which is DVD quality, and I always get comments on how sharp my picture is. In addition, a physical shutter slides over the lens when I’m not sure I want to be “on screen”. A little red dot shows up so I know if the camera is on or blocked.
ThinkPad top-of-the-line display
If you use a computer for entertainment, I can only say that the 4K screen is the bomb. You’ll see details you never realized were there before, and small fonts look crystal clear instead of muddy. For work, that means you can have multiple documents open simultaneously and still be able to read them all clearly.
This 15.6” screen boasts a UHD (3840×2160) with Dolby Vision HDR400 graphic display, and 600 nits of brightness – far brighter than most normal laptops. To push the screen for photo and video editing as well as gaming, it utilizes an NVIDIA GeForce GTX1650 TiMax-Q 4GB card. That’s lightning fast!
Processing power
Similarly, the computer’s processing is equally impressive, with a 10th generation Intel Core i7 10850H processor with vPro (2.70 GHz, up to 5.10 GHz with TurboBoost, 6 cores, 12 Threads, 12MB Cache).
Blazing fast drive
Having a solid-state drive is more expensive than a spinning disk drive, but the performance difference is easily noticeable. SSDs don’t need to spin up to speed before processing your data. The SSD processes within milliseconds after you press the enter key. Saving and opening files will be so much faster. With one terabyte (1TB) of storage, I can edit photos and video for weeks without having to worry about running out of space. On a long trip, that’s super valuable.
Add on top of that, what’s know as Modern Standby, which means when the system is in standby, you can wake the system in just one second, and be connected to the Internet one second later.
Some additional features that I’ve fallen in love with are:
The TrackPoint button and three physical buttons above the touchpad. Between the left and right-click buttons, there is a center button that enables me to continuously scroll down or up long pages without needing to carefully mouse over the scroll bar along the side of the page.
The fingerprint reader – enables you to log in with a swipe of your finger instead of typing passwords or PINs.
The SD card reader – so many computers have dropped this convenience and most of my cameras all still use SD cards, so I appreciate not have to carry a separate card reader.
Dual USB-C Thunderbolt 3 ports for connecting with hi-res display tablets, cellphones, and high-speed external drives.
Two USB-A 3.2Gen 1 (one powered) ports for all my legacy peripherals and flash drive sticks.
Backlit Keyboard with dual intensity settings so I can type while in a dark environment like a train or plane at night.
Bluetooth version 5.1 connects to everything Bluetooth that I own – from speakers to earphones to headsets.
HDMI 2.0 for projectors or large monitor displays
WiFi 6 logs on external systems super quickly whether I’m working on the road or at my home office.
3.5mm Stereo jack for microphone input or headphone output
The 80W internal (not interchangeable) battery is rated for 12 hours and with the rapid charge technology, it will recharge 80% of capacity in just one hour. The charger is rated at 135 watts, so the machine will never be lacking in power.
Like external monitors? With the ThinkPad x1 Extreme, you can connect up to four!
ThinkPad game changer
It would be an overstatement to say that all my work gets done so much quicker with this ThinkPad X1 Extreme, if all I did was write in Word or Google Docs. If that’s what I did, it would be overmatching the tool to the task – BUT I DON”T. My days are spent downloading and editing hundreds, if not thousands, of photos at a time. I also edit and create HD videos every week, and rendering used to be the dreaded part of the task. Now I’m rendering four to five-minute videos in under 30 seconds.
Check out the ThinkPad section of the Lenovo website for all the available models:
https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/c/laptops/thinkpad
Disclosure: I am a Lenovo ambassador and part of the Lenovo Insiders group. This machine was provided to me so I could test and recommend it to others. No financial consideration was involved, and opinions are and always will be strictly my own.