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Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga Review: The best business laptop?

The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga is a premium 2-in-1 business laptop. It’s thinner, lighter, an excellent display, and powerful computing capabilities. 

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Are you looking for a good business laptop? You might want to consider the new Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga. It features a classic executive notebook design, silver color, and a thin body. In fact, it’s the thinnest convertible ThinkPad. 

It rises just about 0.45 inches from the desk. Meanwhile, the keyboard is redesigned to give this ThinkPad a traditional vibe. On the other hand, both big companies and creative professionals don’t mind the expensive price tag since it’s a highly capable computing machine. 

Thanks to its range of innovation, the ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga is an excellent laptop to grow your business. In comparison, this laptop is thinner than the ThinkPad X1 Carbon and a little bit heavier than the ThinkPad X1 Nano. 

Titanium Color

While most of the corporate world likes the rugged black chassis that was almost left unchanged, Lenovo, on the other hand, is trying out some innovation. For this reason, the Titanium Yoga X1 is only available in light Titanium color. It’s with the innovative move that they’re doing away with the black finish of the X1 Carbon and other former ThinkPad models.

Moreover, the 360-degree rotating hinge allows you to convert the laptop into a tablet using its mount. Not really a tent, but you can play with it. All of the standard fares of the ThinkPads remain. On the other hand, the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga is now available and on its fifth generation. In fact, the sixth generation is already announced along with the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga release date. 

Aside from being the thinnest, it only weighs about 2.5 pounds with a unique screen that sets it apart. That’s because it features a 13.5-inch touchscreen display, a 3:2 aspect ratio, and a 450-nit backlit. This allows the laptop to have a taller but narrower orientation. The added height allows you to see more of your document or web page. 

This is a welcome addition, especially for executives who are swamped with reviewing memos on a daily basis. Likewise, the 3:2 aspect ratio is coming back on ultraportable laptops. In fact, they’re introduced in some models in recent years. Before the widescreen video was used, the 3:2 aspect ratio was a common thing in laptops. 

With this in mind, the Titanium is like a throwback to the 1990s and 2000s. Moreover, the X1 Titanium is above average in all aspects. The highly appreciated is the QHD resolution that measures 2,256 x 1,504p. This resolution is placed in between the HD and 4K. 

The resolution features a crisp text that doesn’t come as overkill for most professionals who don’t spend most of their time watching 4K movies. Likewise, the 3:2 aspect ratio serves its purpose well if you use the devices like a tablet and the keyboard being folded at 360 degrees. Additionally, the 3:2 aspect ratio is very functional in tablet mode. 

The Cutting-Edge Feature

The ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga comes with a variety of very useful features for any business. This includes a webcam with an IR sensor for face recognition and a secure shutter for privacy. Since these features require a little bit of extra space on the laptop design, the interiors, on the other hand, come as a little bit less sophisticated compared to the latest XPS 13 from Dell. 

Likewise, the camera works alongside the laptop’s rear sensor and IR sensor. This allows the device to detect the user, awakens automatically when in sleep mode, and logs in using face recognition. You can also log in to your Windows account using the small fingerprint reader on your keyboard’s upper right-hand corner. 

If you’re into the techie stuff, you’ll appreciate what the X1 Titanium Yoga has inside. The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga specs include the new 11th Gen Core processors. The processor includes the vPro remote management and security capabilities. 

Here’s more of the specs. This laptop has a Core i5-1130G7 CPU, 16GB of RAM, and 512GB SSD storage. But if this is underwhelming, you can order other configurations like a Core i7 processor, an additional 8GB of RAM, and up to 1TB SSD. 

Furthermore, the vPro processors are used by most Fortune 500 companies as well as other large organizations that use a big number of laptops in their companies. On the other hand, Intel claims that this type of CPU offers up to 20% better performance than the previous 10th Gen models. 

Unfortunately, no matter how business-friendly the X1 Titanium Yoga is, it’s not a perfect laptop. One of the key missing features is the absence of a full-size HDMI port. This is a big loss given the fact that businesses often hold conferences and lectures. With that said, the X1 Titanium Yoga only offers two USB Type-C ports, a headphone jack, and a SIM card slot for a 5G/LTE modem. 

The controversial keyboard and touchpad

This is the most controversial feature of the X1 Titanium Yoga laptop. That’s because Lenovo has radically modified these traditional input devices. They changed the clicking switch on the touchpad and opted for the haptic feedback. This system uses tiny vibrations from simulations on physical clicks. 

This is not a new technology. In fact, this has been used for years on Apple laptops. However, Lenovo’s version relies mainly on using haptic motor sensors provided by Sensel company. The technology combines all touchpad components into one single package. Ultimately, this technology is key to why the X1 Titanium is so thin. 

Moreover, Sensel allows few other settings in its standalone app. They included finger detection and clicking using the threshold intensity. Again, this is almost the same as what Apple MacBooks offer. With that said, the tapping and haptic clicks fall short of that of Apple. 

We haven’t experienced any tapping problem on the touchscreen display, which allows input from your fingers or from the Lenovo Precision Pen. On the other hand, the keyboard is not as radical as the touchpad. However, because of ThinkPad users’ value typing experience, this too has been controversial. 

Truth is, Lenovo also ditched its more expensive keys that are popular with ThinkPads. Instead, they used the shallow and stiffer keyboard. As a result, the travel distance somehow feels a little bit shorter compared to the X1 Yoga or the X1 Carbon. The overall typing experience is somehow similar to the older MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models that use the butterfly keyboard. 

In perspective, the tapping effect is slightly better than the old Macs. Also, they included the red TrackPoint that sits in the middle of the keyboard.

Sound Quality 

The sound quality is on the inferior side. That’s because the X1 Titanium is so thin that it can’t fit the powerful speakers on the chassis. Instead, they only included two 2-watt speakers with average sound. However, the company compensated with an array of four microphones. These microphones are dedicated to effectively reduce noise cancellation for a much clearer voice quality. 

Notably, the company offers a shorter one-year warranty on the X1 Titanium Yoga. It’s a long way off compared to the standard coverage when you purchase an HP or Dell laptop. 

Performance

One of the biggest downsides of thin laptops is the dissipation of heat. This often results in throttling which ultimately reduces the performance. However, this isn’t entirely the case for the X1 Titanium. While the fan is obviously loud, there are no lags and the laptop didn’t slow down during web browsing or even when installing sophisticated apps like Adobe Photoshop. 

The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga showed that it could compete with other 2-in-1 business laptops such as the HP EliteBook x360 1040, Microsoft Surface Pro 7+, and Dell Latitude 7320 2-in-1. 

Conclusion

All-in-all, the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga is proof of what a business computer should be in the future. That’s because most users want a thinner and lighter laptop that features a high-quality screen with powerful computing power. While this laptop achieved its goals with some controversies along the way, its innovative mindset allowed the redesign of the keyboard, touchpad, and a lot of port selection.