The celebrated ThinkPad X1 Carbon isn’t the only compelling ultraportable in Lenovo’s business lineup. If that 14-inch premium laptop is a bit too rich for your blood, there’s the ThinkPad X13, a 13.3-inch model available with either Intel or AMD CPU silicon under the hood. The AMD Ryzen-based system under the microscope here starts at just $683 and is $1,004 in our specific test configuration—much more affordable than the Carbon, which is compensation for its weighing more (2.8 versus 2.4 pounds) despite its slightly smaller screen. The X13’s six-core Ryzen 5 Pro 4650U processor gives it impressive performance, though we could wish for a couple more hours of battery life, and its keyboard and construction quality are up to ThinkPad standards, i.e., faultless. If your budget doesn’t stretch to the Carbon or a Dell XPS 13, it’s a first-class choice.
Check That Coupon
The $683 base model of the ThinkPad X13 has a quad-core Ryzen 3 Pro CPU, a too-small 128GB solid-state drive, and a deal-breaking 1,366-by-768-pixel screen resolution that would be acceptable, these days, only on an 11-inch Chromebook priced at $149. Stepping up to my $1,004 review unit brings the Ryzen 5 Pro chip, 8GB of RAM, a 256GB NVMe SSD, and a 300-nit full HD (1,920-by-1,080-pixel) touch screen, along with niceties ranging from fingerprint and SmartCard readers to Windows 10 Pro and a backlit keyboard.
Speed demons can opt for an eight-core Ryzen 7 Pro 4750U, while buyers who traffic in sensitive business data can pick a 500-nit PrivacyGuard display that blocks the view of airline seatmate snoops. There is no 4K screen choice, so if you want more than 1080p, you’re out of luck. The memory and storage ceilings are 32GB and 1TB, respectively.
Intel-based configurations of the X13 start at $857 with a dual-core Core i3 and a Thunderbolt 3 port (a technology exclusive to Intel). The prices quoted here reflect one of Lenovo.com’s sometimes changing discount coupons; the coupon was missing one weekend during my review, which sent my machine’s price soaring to a considerably less attractive $1,674.
Clad in classic ThinkPad matte black, the X13 measures 0.69 by 12.3 by 8.6 inches, which is no burden in a briefcase but slightly larger than the same-weight Asus ZenBook 13 (0.7 by 11.9 by 7.5 inches) and XPS 13 (0.58 by 11.6 by 7.8 inches). Like all ThinkPads, it has passed MIL-STD 810G torture tests against shock, vibration, and environmental extremes, though it’s not as tough as more costly semi-rugged and rugged notebooks.
On the laptop’s left side, you’ll find two USB 3.2 Type-C ports (either suitable for the AC adapter), a port for a $35 Ethernet adapter, a USB 3.2 Type-A port, an HDMI video output, and an audio jack. The right edge offers another USB-A port, a SmartCard reader, and a Kensington-style security lock slot.
Some fiddling with a bent paper clip removes a tiny tray at the rear that holds a microSD flash card. It’s easy to miss unless you’re looking for it.
Predictably High Quality
A sliding ThinkShutter privacy panel lets you block the 720p webcam, which captures reasonably well-lit and colorful, though somewhat soft-focus, images. It’s not an IR-equipped face-recognition camera, but Windows Hello fans can bypass passwords thanks to the fingerprint reader in the palm rest.
Sound from the bottom-mounted speakers is loud enough to fill a midsize room; it’s a little boomy and short on bass but clear enough to distinguish overlapping tracks. Dolby software lets you try dynamic, music, movie, game, and voice presets or play with an equalizer.
ThinkPads are justly famous for their great keyboards. I could quibble that this one’s “A” through apostrophe-key span is an eighth of an inch shy of the regulation 8 inches, but I confess I didn’t notice until I reached for my ruler. Otherwise, the layout makes typing a pleasure. The key feel is a bit shallow but snappy, with all the features we like such as dedicated Home, End, Page Up, and Page Down keys, inverted-T cursor arrows, large Shift and Backspace keys, and not-too-small Escape and Delete keys. (The Alt and Control keys to the right of the space bar are downsized, but that is a modest concern.)
The F10 and F11 keys answer and reject or hang up on conference calls in Skype for Business and Microsoft Teams. If you can’t get used to the Fn and Control keys being in each other’s places at bottom left, the supplied Lenovo Vantage software lets you swap them. The utility also provides handy utilities and Wi-Fi security. Both the buttonless touchpad and the three-button TrackPoint cursor controller work smoothly and surely.
The screen leaves white backgrounds just a shade off-white, but brightness is otherwise adequate, contrast is good, and viewing angles are wide. Colors don’t pop vividly but are nicely saturated, and fine details are as sharp as the 1080p resolution permits. Unlike many touch screens, the Lenovo’s touch-input panel isn’t annoyingly reflective, so room lights aren’t a bother.
Testing the ThinkPad X13: An Under-Three-Pound Performance Brawl
For our benchmark charts, I compared the ThinkPad X13 to four other Windows ultraportables. The Acer Swift 3 and Microsoft Surface Laptop 3 have 13.5-inch screens with a squarer 3:2 rather than the usual 16:9 aspect ratio for extra scrolling space. The Dell XPS 13 is a premium class favorite, while the Asus ZenBook 13 joins the Acer in coming close to the ThinkPad’s low price. (This is the 10th Generation “Ice Lake” version, here with low-end but dedicated GeForce graphics; a new 11th Generation Core “Tiger Lake” one just debuted, as well.) You can see their basic specs in the table below.
Productivity and Media Tests
PCMark 10 and 8 are holistic performance suites developed by the PC benchmark specialists at UL (formerly Futuremark). The PCMark 10 test we run simulates different real-world productivity and content-creation workflows. We use it to assess overall system performance for office-centric tasks such as word processing, spreadsheet work, web browsing, and videoconferencing. PCMark 8, meanwhile, has a storage subtest that we use to assess the speed of the system’s boot drive. Both yield a proprietary numeric score; higher numbers are better. (See more about how we test laptops.)
Led by the Lenovo, all five ultraportables cleared the 4,000 points that indicate an excellent score in PCMark 10. Their solid-state drives sped through PCMark 8’s storage exercise.
Next is Maxon’s CPU-crunching Cinebench R15 test, which is fully threaded to make use of all available processor cores and threads. Cinebench stresses the CPU rather than the GPU to render a complex image. The result is a proprietary score indicating a PC’s suitability for processor-intensive workloads.
Cinebench is often a good predictor of our Handbrake video editing benchmark, in which we put a stopwatch on systems as they transcode a brief movie from 4K resolution down to 1080p. It, too, is a tough test for multi-core, multi-threaded CPUs; lower times are better.
The ThinkPad’s Ryzen 5 Pro was the hands-down winner in these tests. It’s not quite up to workstation rendering or analysis standards, but it’s a mincemeat-maker for ordinary spreadsheets and databases.
We also run a custom Adobe Photoshop image-editing benchmark. Using an early 2018 release of the Creative Cloud version of Photoshop, we apply a series of 10 complex filters and effects to a standard JPEG test image. We time each operation and add up the total (lower times are better). The Photoshop test stresses the CPU, storage subsystem, and RAM, but it can also take advantage of most GPUs to speed up the process of applying filters.
The X13 finished at the back of the pack here while the Asus and Dell raced ahead. It’s fine for image touch-ups but not the best choice for intensive image editing.
Graphics Tests
3DMark measures relative graphics muscle by rendering sequences of highly detailed, gaming-style 3D graphics that emphasize particles and lighting. We run two different 3DMark subtests, Sky Diver and Fire Strike. Both are DirectX 11 benchmarks, but Sky Diver is suited to laptops and midrange PCs, while Fire Strike is more demanding and lets high-end PCs and gaming rigs strut their stuff.
The ZenBook is the only system here with a discrete GPU, but it barely beat the ThinkPad. Gaming laptops with GeForce GTX or RTX silicon are miles ahead of these machines.
Next up is another synthetic graphics test, this time from Unigine Corp. Like 3DMark, the Superposition test renders and pans through a detailed 3D scene, this one rendered in the eponymous Unigine engine for a second opinion on the machine’s graphical prowess.
Ultraportables are generally meant for productivity, not gaming. These laptops are best restricted to casual or browser-based games.
Battery Rundown Test
After fully recharging the laptop, we set up the machine in power-save mode (as opposed to balanced or high-performance mode) where available and make a few other battery-conserving tweaks in preparation for our unplugged video rundown test. (We also turn Wi-Fi off, putting the laptop into airplane mode.) In this test, we loop a video—a locally stored 720p file of the Blender Foundation short film Tears of Steel—with screen brightness set at 50 percent and volume at 100 percent until the system quits.
The Acer and Dell tied for the win, lasting almost seven hours longer than the Lenovo. The latter will get you through a full day of work or school, but is a little short on stamina by modern ultraportable standards.
A Winning Alternative to Intel
Assuming you can find it with Lenovo’s discount coupon in effect, the ThinkPad X13 is a worthy successor to the ThinkPad X390 it replaces. AMD’s “Renoir” Ryzen 4000 series mobile CPUs have proven to be overachievers in several laptops we’ve tested (and one desktop), and this one is no exception. And the ultraportable’s keyboard and overall engineering uphold the brand’s stellar reputation.
The lack of a 4K screen option is regrettable but 4K isn’t all that practical for 13.3-inch displays, and underwhelming results in our battery life and Photoshop benchmarks shouldn’t detract from the X13’s otherwise fine performance. In a crowded, competitive market, this ThinkPad is a solid contender.
