Lenovo’s new Comet Lake-equipped ThinkPad X1 Carbon hits this September

Today, Lenovo announced launch plans for the seventh generation of its critically acclaimed ThinkPad X1 Carbon laptop. A number of modest changes improve on an already strong business laptop line, with the most notable being 10th-generation Intel Comet Lake CPUs.

We've previously reviewed the ThinkPad X1 Carbon and found it to be one of the strongest business laptops on the market thanks to good performance, strong battery life, and an outstanding keyboard. One of our chief complaints with last year's model—the lack of a 4K option—has been addressed this year. So you can now get the laptop in both FullHD or 4K variants, as well as WQHD. The 4K variant offers a carbon-weave-material option for the lid, giving it a more "premium" look. Or so Lenovo suggests.

As noted, we already liked the performance and battery life in this line, but those are really the two main areas of improvement with this release. The 10th-gen Intel Core i5 or Core i7 CPUs (there's a six-core configuration at the high end) bring with them greater power efficiency and a promise of up to 18.5 hours of battery life in the FHD configuration. The 14-inch display peaks at 400 nits of brightness (for the FHD version) or 500 nits with HDR support (for the 4K version).

Other specs include Dolby Atmos, a 720p webcam with a privacy shutter, 8GB or 16GB of LPDDR3 memory, SSD storage up to 2TB, two Thunderbolt 3 ports, USB 3 Type-A, HDMI 1.4, a headphone jack, and gigabit Ethernet. The 2.4-pound X1 Carbon will start at $1,479 when it begins shipping in September.

Lenovo also brought 10th-generation Intel CPUs to the X1 ThinkPad Yoga, which will go on sale in September starting at just over $1,600. Several of its lower-end ThinkPad laptops (T490, X390, L13, and L13 Yoga—all due in October) saw CPU bumps as well. The L13 and L13 Yoga also got modest redesigns, with smaller bezels and some new features previously seen in higher-end Lenovo laptops. You can find the full, updated lineup at Lenovo's website.

Listing image by Lenovo