If we hadn’t just reviewed the latest Dell XPS 15 OLED, we’d be raving about the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 4 (starts at $1,639; $2,498 as tested). A brilliant OLED display was one of our favorite features of last year’s X1 Extreme Gen 3. The new Lenovo swaps the familiar 15.6-inch diagonal and 16:9 aspect ratio for a 16-inch panel with a slightly taller 16:10 profile, but unlike with the 16:10 Dell, Lenovo doesn’t offer an OLED version, just a choice of three IPS screens. That’s disappointing in a premium laptop, but the X1 Extreme is still a sleek, loaded speedster that will tempt execs seeking a deluxe desktop replacement.
Lighten Up: Alloy and Carbon Fiber
Like rivals including the XPS 15, the 16-inch Apple MacBook Pro, and the Gigabyte Aero 15 OLED XC, the ThinkPad X1 Extreme is an elite laptop for digital content makers who don’t need the independent software vendor (ISV) certifications of a full-fledged mobile workstation. It’s not cheap, but even the base model has an eight-core, 11th Generation Intel Core i7-11800H CPU and Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 Ti graphics.
Our $2,498 review unit (the price our Lenovo rep quoted, though I configured it for $2,131 at the company’s website) keeps that system’s 2.3GHz processor and 2,560-by-1,600-pixel non-touch screen but steps up to 16GB of RAM, a 512GB PCIe 4.0 solid-state drive, and Nvidia’s 6GB GeForce RTX 3060 GPU. You can escalate to a Core i9-11950H, 64GB of memory, and two 2TB drives as well as a 3,840-by-2,400 display with 600 nits of brightness, available in touch or non-touch flavors.
The X1 Extreme Gen 4’s aluminum alloy bottom and carbon-fiber top cover wear the same matte-black hue and have passed the same MIL-STD 810G tests for shock, vibration, and environmental extremes as other ThinkPads. At 0.7 by 14.2 by 10 inches, it’s slightly bulkier than the Dell XPS 15 (0.71 by 13.6 by 9.1 inches) and Razer Blade 15 Advanced Edition (0.67 by 14 by 9.3 inches), but a bit lighter at 4 pounds to the Dell’s 4.3 and the Razer’s 4.4.
Medium-thick bezels surround the screen, making room up top for a webcam with a sliding privacy shutter; our Extreme didn’t have the optional face recognition camera but had a Windows Hello fingerprint reader integrated with the power button. The latest Wi-Fi 6E joins Bluetooth 5.2 wireless; the spec sheet lists 5G mobile broadband as an option but I didn’t see it in the online configurator.
Except for an audio jack, the only ports on the XPS 15 and MacBook Pro are USB-C Thunderbolt ports. The Lenovo has two Thunderbolt 4 ports on its left flank, but you’ll also find an HDMI port there (along with audio and power connectors), so you can plug in an external monitor without needing a DisplayPort dongle. Two USB 3.2 Type-A ports (one always on) join an SD card slot and security lock slot on the right.
Memo to Other Manufacturers: Copy This Keyboard
Laptop keyboards don’t get any better than the ones you’ll find on high-end Lenovo ThinkPads. The X1 Extreme’s keyboard has the familiar ThinkPad layout with Home and End keys on the top row and Page Up and Page Down at bottom right. The top-row shortcut keys let you place and end video calls, as well as adjust volume and brightness and toggle airplane mode. The Fn and Control keys are arguably in each other’s places at lower left, but you can swap them with the supplied Lenovo Vantage software.
The backlit keyboard has a snappy typing feel. It wants a slightly harder touch or firmer rap to avoid missed keystrokes than I’m used to from my Logitech desktop keyboard, but it is quiet and comfortable. There are two cursor controllers, Lenovo’s trademark TrackPoint mini joystick embedded in the keyboard (with three buttons below the space bar), plus a good-size touchpad that takes just the right amount of pressure for a quiet click.
The screen offers plenty of brightness, with pristine white backgrounds and excellent contrast. Viewing angles are broad, and fine details and the edges of letters are sharp. Colors are rich and well saturated—maybe a touch duller than the vivid hues and darker-than-ink blacks of an OLED panel, but about as good as an IPS screen gets.
The webcam offers 1080p instead of the usual, minimal 720p resolution; it captures well-lit and colorful images with almost no noise or static. Speakers flanking the keyboard produce loud and clear audio, with a surprising amount of bass and virtually no distortion; it’s easy to hear overlapping tracks. Dolby Access software offers music, movie, game, voice, and dynamic presets and an adjustable equalizer with surround virtualizer and volume leveler. The above-mentioned Lenovo Vantage handles system updates and Wi-Fi security as well as device settings.
Testing the X1 Extreme: Running With a Fast Crowd
Besides the high-end Razer Blade 15 Advanced Edition and Dell XPS 15, I compared the ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 4’s benchmark performance to that of two under-$1,500 alternatives, the Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 and Dell Inspiron 16 Plus. All four have won PCMag Editors’ Choice awards, so the Lenovo has its work cut out for it.
Productivity Tests
The main benchmark of UL’s PCMark 10 simulates a variety of real-world productivity and content-creation workflows to measure overall performance for office-centric tasks such as word processing, spreadsheeting, web browsing, and videoconferencing. We also run PCMark 10’s Full System Drive test to assess the load time and throughput of a laptop’s storage. (See more about how we test laptops.)
Three benchmarks focus on the CPU, using all available cores and threads, to rate a PC’s suitability for processor-intensive workloads. Maxon’s Cinebench R23 uses that company’s Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene, while Primate Labs’ Geekbench 5.4 Pro simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning. Finally, we use the open-source video transcoder HandBrake 1.4 to convert a 12-minute video clip from 4K to 1080p resolution (lower times are better).
Our last productivity test is Puget Systems’ PugetBench for Photoshop, which uses the Creative Cloud version 22 of Adobe’s famous image editor to rate a PC’s performance for content creation and multimedia applications. It’s an automated extension that executes a variety of general and GPU-accelerated Photoshop tasks ranging from opening, rotating, resizing, and saving an image to applying masks, gradient fills, and filters.
The X1 Extreme led the pack in our all-important PCMark 10 benchmark, though all five systems scored way above the 4,000 points that indicate stellar productivity—Microsoft Office and Google Docs are easy peasy for these PCs. The Lenovo aced our storage and CPU tests as well, and did well in a very competitive field in Adobe Photoshop.
Graphics Tests
We test Windows PCs’ graphics with two DirectX 12 gaming simulations from UL’s 3DMark, Night Raid (more modest, suitable for laptops with integrated graphics) and Time Spy (more demanding, suitable for gaming rigs with discrete GPUs).
We also run two tests from the cross-platform GPU benchmark GFXBench 5, which stresses both low-level routines like texturing and high-level, game-like image rendering. The 1440p Aztec Ruins and 1080p Car Chase tests, rendered offscreen to accommodate different display resolutions, exercise graphics and compute shaders using the OpenGL programming interface and hardware tessellation respectively. The more frames per second (fps), the better.
The Razer’s top-of-the-line GeForce RTX 3080 predictably led the way in these benchmarks (though it balked at 3DMark’s Time Spy subtest), but the ThinkPad took second place. It’s not intended to be a gaming laptop, but it can certainly indulge you in some shooting or racing action after working hours. More important, it’s a fine choice for image or video editing or other creative content tasks.
Battery and Display Tests
We test laptops’ battery life by playing a locally stored 720p video file (the open-source Blender movie Tears of SteelTears of Steel) with display brightness at 50% and audio volume at 100%. We make sure the battery is fully charged before the test, with Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting turned off.
We also use a Datacolor SpyderX Elite monitor calibration sensor and its Windows software to measure a laptop screen’s color saturation—what percentage of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 color gamuts or palettes the display can show—and its 50% and peak brightness in nits (candelas per square meter).
The Lenovo finished next to last in battery life, but its nine-hour runtime is perfectly acceptable for a powerful desktop replacement, especially since it’s light enough to take on plane trips. The Dell’s OLED panel and the Razer’s high-refresh-rate 1440p screen showed the most vivid colors, but the Extreme wasn’t far behind, and its peak brightness was exceptional, exceeding its rated 400 nits.
Sensational, But Sans OLED
The ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 4 is a sensational desktop replacement for power users. It barely misses an Editors’ Choice nod, mainly because its competition is so formidable—the Dell XPS 15 is nearly flawless, and the Gigabyte Aero 15 offers an OLED display for hundreds less. But if you’re shopping for a first-class creative platform that can double as a gaming laptop or workstation, you’re doing yourself a disservice if you don’t include the Lenovo.
