HP Spectre 13 Ultrabook Review

ros: Unique Control Zone touchpad; Beautiful design; Gorgeous display; Snappy backlit keyboard; Strong performance; Long battery life

Cons: Bottom runs a bit warm

The Verdict: The HP Spectre 13t-3000 Ultrabook packs a user-friendly touchpad, strong performance and long battery life in a beautiful design.

One of the chief complaints users have about Windows 8 is that its gesture controls aren't intuitive enough for first-time users. HP addresses that gripe head-on with the new Spectre 13t-3000 Ultrabook. Large areas on either side of the notebook's Control Zone touchpad make it easier to activate Windows 8's gesture-based Charms and Recent Apps menus. That's not all this $1,019 ultraportable has to offer, though. With the latest Intel Core i5 processor, a solid-state drive, beautiful 13-inch 1080p touch screen and a dead sexy design, the Spectre 13t is one of the best Ultrabooks money can buy.

HP Spectre 13 Ultrabook Review

Design

  Like many of HP's Ultrabooks, the Spectre 13t-3000 features a gorgeous, all-aluminum chassis. For the Spectre 13t, however, HP has added some panache, throwing in a truffle-brown-colored, brushed lid and base that are offset nicely by the notebook's champagne, brushed-aluminum keyboard deck. In the center of the lid, a reflective bronze HP logo adds a touch of class.

Open up the notebook, and the first thing to catch your eye will be the Spectre 13t's oversized Control Zone Touchpad. Developed to make it easier than ever to use Windows 8 gestures, without having to reach up to the touch screen, Control Zone features a standard touchpad flanked on its left and right sides by areas specifically designed for interacting with Windows 8's Recent Apps and Charms menus. (More on this later.)

Measuring 12.8 x 8.7 x 0.59 inches and weighing a scant 3.3 pounds, the HP Spectre 13t is a hair thinner, though a bit heavier than the 13-inch MacBook Air (12.8 x 8.9 x 0.11 - 0.68 inches and 3 pounds). At 12.6 x 8.8 x 0.54 inches, Samsung's ATIV Book 9 Plus is slightly smaller than both the Spectre 13t and Macbook Air, and weighs 3.2 pounds. Acer's Aspire S7 measures just 12.7 x 8.8 x 0.51 inches and weighs 3 pounds.

Display

 The Spectre 13t sports a beautiful 13.3-inch, 1920 x 1080-resolution HP Infinity touch screen display that's far sharper than the $1,099 MacBook Air's 1440 x 900 panel. The Acer Aspire S7 offers a 1920 x 1080, 13.3-inch display, while the $1,399 Samsung ATIV Book 9 Plus comes with a Retina-like 3200 x 1800 QHD+ screen. If you want to shell out an extra $70, however, you can equip your Spectre 13t with an HP Vivid QHD Infinity display (2560 x 1440 pixels).

A trailer for "X-Men: Days of Future Past" looked considerably better when viewed on the Spectre 13t's 1080p display than it did on the MacBook Air. Fine lines in characters' faces were sharper on the HP, and colors appeared warmer. Skin tones also looked more natural, and blacks looked endlessly deep on the Spectre 13t. The MacBook Air's display looked washed out by comparison. Similarly, a high-definition image of a lush mountain landscape looked far greener and sharper on the HP.

With a display brightness of 254 lux, the HP Spectre 13t's screen barely outshined the ultraportable laptop category average of 249 lux, and was neck and neck with the Samsung ATIV Book 9 Plus (251 lux). The MacBook Air's display topped out at 263 lux, while the Acer Aspire S7 hit an impressive 329 lux.

The Spectre 13t's touch screen proved accurate and responsive during our time with the notebook.

Audio

As with many of HP's more-premium notebooks, the Spectre 13t-3000 comes loaded with the impressive Beats Audio software. Jay-Z and Kanye West's bass-heavy "No Church in the Wild" sounded excellent as it thumped through the Spectre's bottom-mounted speakers. We noted a similar experience while listening to Coheed and Cambria's "Mothers of Men," as guitar squeals and symbol crashes filled our conference room.

Switch off Beats, however, and audio sounds muddled. In fact, at one point, it sounded like we were listening to a smartphone rather than a laptop. So just keep Beats on. On the LAPTOP Audio Test, the Spectre 13 pumped out a steady 84 dB at a distance of 23 inches. That's just above the category average of 83 dB.

Keyboard

The HP Spectre 13t's keyboard provided consistently solid feedback throughout our testing. We experienced a good amount of travel and little to no flex. We're also fans of the keyboard's beautiful white backlighting, which evenly illuminated each key.

On the Ten Thumbs Typing Tutor test, we typed at a rate of 79 words per minute with a 1 percent error rate, about equal to our personal average. Our one gripe with the keyboard is the small size of its directional keys, which made navigating a bit of a chore.

Control Zone Touchpad

Using Windows 8 gestures via a notebook's touchpad can be a pain. The pad's small size limits space for swiping in from the left or right, making accessing the Charms and Recent Apps menus frustrating. To address this issue, HP and Synaptics equipped the Spectre 13t with a Control Zone touchpad. Despite its name, it's essentially a normal touchpad with two visually and tactilely distinctive wings on either side. It's designed to make using Windows 8 gestures more intuitive.

Performing gestures on the Control Zone is no different than it would be on a standard notebook. Users swipe in from the right to open the Charms menu, while a swipe in from the left opens the Recent Apps menu. In testing, however, HP said it found that the wings helped users more easily recognize how to use Windows 8 gestures. From a practicality standpoint, it makes more sense to direct users to the touchpad, rather than forcing them to use the touch screen exclusively or expecting them to know, without prompting, that they can use the touchpad for the same gestures.

 Control Zone offers more than not just improved usability. When you open the Charms menu, for example, you can now simply slide your finger up or down the right control zone to select the icon you want to open. Without this feature, you'd have to open the Charms menu, then move your cursor to the icon you want. It's a small, but welcome improvement.

Adding the Control Zones to the touchpad dramatically increased its size, to a whopping 5.5 x 2.6 inches. With such a large space between the user and keyboard, we figured we'd accidentally move the cursor more often. To prevent this, HP and Synaptic wisely chose to disable the cursor in the Control Zones. As a result, we noticed little to no issues with palm rejection during our time with the notebook.

Overall, we liked the larger touchpad and its enhanced functionality. Even Windows 8 veterans will appreciate how much easier it is to use gestures with the Control Zone compared to a standard touchpad.

Ports and Webcam

  As with many Ultrabooks, the Spectre 13t-3000 keeps ports to a minimum. On the right side, you get a single USB 3.0 port, full-size HDMI port, mini DisplayPort and power jack. On the left side is a second USB 3.0 port, combination microphone/ headphone jack, 2-in-1 SD Card slot and lock slot. Don't expect Ethernet or VGA.

The Spectre 13t's 720p webcam provided acceptable stills and video. Colors were accurate, and while we noticed some blurring, the lines in our shirt were still easy to make out.

Heat

The Spectre 13t proved itself to be a cool customer during our LAPTOP Heat Test (streaming a full-screen Hulu video for 15 minutes) reaching just 84 degrees Fahrenheit on the touchpad. The space between the G and H keys hit 94 degrees, falling just below our comfort threshold of 95 degrees. The bottom of the notebook, however, reached a somewhat toasty 99 degrees.

Performance

With a 1.6-GHz dual-core Intel Core i5-4200U processor, 4GB of RAM and 128GB solid-state drive, the Spectre 13t is a lightweight speed demon. We opened multiple tabs in both Chrome and Internet Explorer, streamed music from Spotify and watched Netflix without any slowdown.

On the Geekbench 3 benchmark, the Spectre 13t scored 6,436. That's better than the Intel 1.3-GHz Core i5-4250U-powered MacBook Air 13-inch's score of 6,267, and well above the ultraportable category average of 4,559. The Samsung ATIV Book 9 Plus, which packs the same processor as the Spectre 13t, scored a lower 4,150.

The Spectre 13t performed equally well on the PCMark 7 benchmark, hitting 4,806 and easily besting the ultraportable category average of 3,927. The ATIV Book 9 Plus pulled ahead of the HP with a score of 5,017, but the Acer Aspire S7 was higher still, with a score of 5,051.

Thanks to its 128GB solid-state drive, the Spectre 13t booted Windows 8.1 in just 10 seconds. The Acer Aspire S7 was one second faster, while the ATIV Book 9 Plus was a second slower.

The Spectre's SSD also helped it transfer files at a breakneck pace, moving 4.97GB of mixed media files in just 32 seconds. That equals a rate of 159 MBps, which is faster than the category average of 111 MBps, as well as the Acer Aspire S7's 113 MBps and Samsung ATIV Book 9 Plus' 127 MBps. That said, the MacBook Air handily beat all three notebooks with its impressive transfer rate of 242 MBps.

During the OpenOffice SpreadSheet Macro, the Spectre 13t matched 20,000 names to their corresponding addresses in 5 minutes and 30 seconds. The average ultraportable takes 6:40, while the MacBook Air 13-inch took 5:33. The ATIV Book 9 Plus was a bit quicker, at 5:13. Once again, though, the Aspire S7 took the crown, with a time of 5:12.

Graphics

 With its Intel HD Graphics 4400 integrated graphics chip, the HP Spectre 13t is primed for watching HD videos and playing basic Windows 8 games, but don't expect to run something like "Call of Duty." On the 3DMark 11 benchmark, the Spectre 13t pulled down a score of 943, while the Samsung ATIV Book 9 Plus scored a respectable 913, and the Aspire S7 scored 895. All three laptops easily beat the ultraportable category average of 713.

While playing "World of Warcraft," the HP Spectre 13t delivered an average of 28 frames per second with the graphics set to auto detect and resolution at 1366 x 768. That's not quite playable. The Acer Aspire S7 averaged 39 fps at the same resolution, while the ATIV Book 9 Plus hit 46 fps. The MacBook Air averaged 45 frames per second with the resolution set to 1300 x 812.

Battery Life

Thanks to its 4-cell battery and low-voltage, fourth-generation Intel Core i5 processor, the Spectre will last you all day, and you won't have to worry about finding an outlet. On the LAPTOP Battery Test, which involves continuous Web surfing over Wi-Fi with the display brightness set to 40 percent, the Spectre 13t lasted an impressive 9 hours and 4 minutes. That blows away the ultraportable notebook category average of 6:35. This runtime also surpasses the Samsung ATIV Book 9 Plus' 8:06 and Acer Aspire S7's 8:53. The MacBook Air 13-inch, however, ran for a marathon 11:40.

Software and Warranty

 HP went relatively light on the software load for the Spectre 13t, which is a good thing. You get the standard array of Windows 8.1 apps, including the new Bing Food & Drink and Health & Fitness apps and Microsoft Office Home and Student.

The heavy hitter here is the included Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5. Regularly priced at $149, the software lets you adjust, enhance and organize your digital photos with ease. Unfortunately, unlike HP's older Envy notebooks, the Spectre 13t doesn't come with Photoshop Elements or Premiere Elements.

HP provides customers with a one-year limited hardware warranty. See how HP fared in our Tech Support Showdown and Best & Worst Brand Report.

Configurations

The Spectre 13t starts at $999. At that price, consumers get a 1.6-GHz dual-core Intel Core i5-4200U processor, 4GB of RAM, a 128GB solid state drive and a 1080p display. The Smart Buy configuration, which costs $1,229 after a mail-in rebate, has the same processor, but 8GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD and a 2560 x 1440-pixel screen.

Consumers can also customize the starting model with up to an Intel Core i7-4500U processor ($195), 8GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD ($150) and the 2560 x 1440 display ($70). Additionally, you can outfit the Spectre 13 with 802.11ac Wi-Fi, a $20 option.

HP Spectre vs. the Competition

 In some ways, the Spectre 13 surpasses the likes of Apple's $1,099 13-inch MacBook Air, offering a sharper and more vivid screen along with touch capability. However, the Air lasts much longer on a charge and boasts faster flash memory.

Samsung's $1,399 ATIV Book 9 Plus has a sharper display, but you can configure the HP with a higher-res panel, too. And the Spectre 13 offers a better keyboard. The Aspire S7 ($1,399), an Editors' Choice pick, is lighter and slimmer than the HP and offers faster performance, but it also costs $380 more.

Verdict

 HP's $1,019 Spectre 13t-3000 has everything you want in an Ultrabook: a sleek design, fast performance and long battery life. And while you can always use the full HD touchscreen to navigate Windows 8.1, HP gives you an excellent alternative with its Control Zone touchpad. We also like this ultraportable's keyboard and sound quality. The only complaint we have is that the bottom of the Spectre 13 runs a tad warm. Overall, the HP Spectre 13 is a superior Windows 8 Ultrabook.

See more: Lenovo IdeaCentre Flex 20 Review

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Dell Latitude 7440 Review

Pros: Attractive and durable design; Soft-touch palm rest; Colorful touch-screen display; High-quality audio

Cons: Keyboard flexes; Below-average battery life

The Verdict: The Dell Latitude 7440 is a slick business Ultrabook with speedy performance and a full HD touch screen, but it could use a little more endurance.

The Dell Latitude 7440 is a business Ultrabook that packs a lot of technology into its durable 3.9-pound frame. Starting at $999, our $1,849 14-inch Dell Latitude 7440 sports a fourth-generation Core i5-4300U processor, a full HD 1080p touch-screen display and a 256GB SSD for speedy performance. But is Dell's new Latitude the best business notebook you can get?

Dell Latitude 7440 Review

Design

The Latitude 7440 sports a sleek and attractive all-black design. The notebook's lid is made of a sturdy soft-touch carbon fiber material that reminds us of the Kevlar back on Motorola Droid phones. This carbon fiber is backed by an aluminum frame and reinforced steel hinges.

Underneath the surface, Dell deployed its MIL-STD-810G-tested Tri-Metal chassis for extra durability. This means the E7440 should be able to withstand extreme temperatures and vibrations more than your average notebook. Specifically, MIL-STD-810G-tested notebooks can operate in temperatures ranging between 32 degrees and 95 degrees Fahrenheit and at altitudes between minus 50 and 10,000 feet. Both the $1,749 Lenovo ThinkPad T440s and $1,229 Toshiba Tecra Z40 are similarly certified.

The Latitude 7440's keyboard deck sports the same texture as its lid, which felt comfortable while typing. We love the subtle blue accents Dell added to the Latitude's keyboard. The baby blue color of the keys' Fn symbols matches the outer lining of the pointing stick, which adds a pleasant contrast to the otherwise black body. The E7440's display is capable of folding all the way back, enabling it to lie flat. This is a good position for giving presentations.

Measuring 12.2 x 8.3 x 0.79 inches and weighing 3.9 pounds, the Latitude 7440 has a smaller footprint than the slightly heavier Lenovo ThinkPad T440s (13.3 x 8.89 x 0.8 inches, 3.8 pounds with 3-cell battery). The Toshiba Tecra Z40 (13.3 x 9.3 x 0.8 inches) is a much lighter 3.2 pounds, while the Acer Travelmate P645 is taller and wider but lighter (12.9 x 9.3 x 0.8 inches, 3.5 pounds).

Display

The Latitude 7440's 14-inch 1920 x 1080 glossy touch screen produced vivid colors, but it's not the brightest in its class. When watching a trailer for "The Amazing Spiderman 2," we enjoyed bold orange explosions and we were impressed with the energetic red shade of Spiderman's suit.

The Latitude's display registered 238 lux on our light meter, beating the Toshiba Tecra Z40's matte display (169 lux) and the thin-and-light notebook category average (209 lux). The Dell also shined brighter than the Travelmate P645's 1920 x 1080 235 lux display. However, the Lenovo ThinkPad T440s' 14-inch 1920 x 1080 touch screen notched a higher 294 lux.

We found the touch screen to be responsive during everyday use. We had no issue selecting and moving tiles in Windows 8 and using pinch-to-zoom to enlarge images.

Audio

The Dell Latitude 7440's bottom-mounted speakers produce boisterous audio for a notebook of its size. When blasting "Royals" by Lorde, we felt the bass notes thump, and the snaps in the background sounded crisp against the singer's smooth vocals.

The 7440 also pumps out louder audio than your average notebook. At 88 decibels, the E7440 scored higher on the LAPTOP Audio Test than the Toshiba Tecra Z40 (79 dB), the Acer Travelmate P345 (83 dB), the Lenovo ThinkPad T440s (81 dB) and the thin-and-light notebook category average (82 dB).

Keyboard

There are many things we like about the Latitude 7440, but its keyboard isn't one of them. The traditional backlit keyboard felt somewhat flimsy while typing, exhibiting flex when we pushed down on the G and H keys. Key travel was fairly deep, but shallower than the Dell Latitude 6430u's island-style keyboard. We much prefer the ThinkPad T440s' comfortable keyboard with its stronger tactile feedback.

Using the Latitude 7440, we only managed 57 words per minute during the Ten Thumbs Typing Test with a 2 percent error rate. This is much lower than our personal average speed of about 75 words per minute.

Touchpad and Pointing Stick

Overall, the Latitude 7440's 3.5 x 1.8-inch touchpad was smooth. There was no latency when moving the cursor, and the touchpad was responsive to gestures such as two-finger scrolling and pinch-to-zoom. We enjoyed using the touchpad's dedicated click buttons, which provide solid feedback.

The pointing stick located in the center of the 7440's keyboard is a reliable alternative to the touchpad. The rubberized grip makes it easy to manipulate the cursor without having to take your fingers away from the keyboard. Dell also features a button in between the upper set of mouse keys that allow you to quickly navigate to the top of a Web page or document when pointing up with the pointing stick.

We easily highlighted text and scrolled around websites using the Dell's pointing stick, but the Lenovo ThinkPad T440s' AccuPoint pointing stick provided a more accurate experience.

Ports

Built for productivity, the Dell Latitude 7440 comes with all the ports you need. The laptop's right side houses an audio and microphone combination jack, a USB 3.0 port and a lock slot. The left side features a SmartCard reader and an SD Card slot. On the notebook's rear, you'll find a power jack, HDMI, two more USB 3.0 slots, a mini DisplayPort and Ethernet. Dell has also included a docking connector on the bottom of the notebook.

Heat

The Latitude 7440's side-mounted vents keep the notebook cool under pressure. After streaming video on Hulu for 15 minutes, the notebook's underside reached 90 degrees Fahrenheit, lower than the 95 degree threshold we consider to be uncomfortable. The touchpad registered 78 degrees, while the area between the G & H keys hit 86 degrees.

WiGig

Our configuration of the Latitude 7440 supports WiGig technology for wirelessly connecting your laptop to compatible monitors and displays. The notebook is also compatible with the $269 Dell D500 Wireless Dock, which connects to a monitor, mouse and keyboard. However, we found this solution to be much less reliable than a wired dock based on our testing.

Webcam

The Dell Latitude 7440's 720p camera takes colorful yet grainy images. When we captured a self-portrait, our face looked blurry and pixelated. At least the red hair color shown in the image looked true.

Performance

Our configuration of the Dell Latitude 7440 features a 1.9-GHz Intel Core i5-4300U processor with 4GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD. This combination of components enabled the notebook to multitask with ease. With 10 apps open, including the camera app, Internet Explorer, Bing News and the Windows Store, we streamed an episode of "Family Guy" in one window while playing "Cut the Rope" in another and didn't notice any latency or hiccups.

The Latitude 7440 delivered mixed results in synthetic benchmark tests. The notebook scored 4,544 on PCMark 7, which is higher than the 3,493 thin-and-light category average and the Tecra Z40 (2,542, 1.9-GHz Intel Core i5-4300U with 8GB of RAM). Both the 2.6-GHz Intel Core i5-4200U-powered ThinkPad T440s (4,970) and 1.8-GHz Intel Core i7-4500U Acer TravelMate P645 (4,886) scored higher.

On the Geekbench 3 test, which measures multicore processor performance, the Latitude 7440 score of 5,259 fell short of the 5,939 thin-and-light category average. This is also lower than the Tecra Z40's score (5,326) and the TravelMate P645 score (5,945), but it still beats the T440s (5,151).

It only took 14 seconds for the Dell Latitude 7440 to load Windows 8 Pro, which is twice as fast as the 28-second thin-and-light category average. The Lenovo Thinkpad T440s booted Windows 8 Pro in the same amount of time.

The Dell transferred 4.97GB of mixed media files in 39 seconds, equaling a rate of 130.5 MBps. This is twice as fast as the average thin- and-light laptop (60 MBps) and much quicker than the Tecra Z40's 320GB 7,200-rpm hard drive (23 MBps). Other business Ultrabook SSDs are faster though, including the Acer TravelMate P645 (175.5 MBps) and ThinkPad T440s (188.5 MBps).

The Latitude 7440 matched 20,000 names to their corresponding addresses in OpenOffice in just 4 minutes and 46 seconds, faster than the 6:17 thin-and-light category average. This is also quicker than the Lenovo ThinkPad T440s (5:14), but on a par with the Toshiba Tecra Z40 (4:45) and Acer TravelMate P645 (4:42).

Graphics

The Dell Latitude 7440's integrated HD 4400 graphics are suitable for light gaming and streaming video, but don't expect to play demanding games. The notebook scored 801 in the 3DMark11 benchmark. This is lower than the 968 thin-and-light laptop category average and both scores of the Tecra Z40 (869) and ThinkPad T44s (930). The Acer TravelMate P645 scored the highest with 1,783, but it benefits from a discrete ATI Radeon HD 8750M graphics chip.

When playing "World of Warcraft" at the laptop's native resolution on auto settings, the E7440 mustered an unplayable 23 frames per second. When bumping up the settings to ultra, that frame rate dropped to a barely playable 11 fps.

Battery Life

The Dell Latitude 7440s doesn't have the staying power of other business Ultrabooks. During the LAPTOP Battery Test, which consists of continuous Web surfing over Wi-Fi at 40 percent display brightness, the notebook's 4-cell 45 Whr battery lasted 5 hours and 52 minutes. That runtime is shorter than the 6:49 thin-and-light notebook category average, and also falls behind the ThinkPad T440s' standard battery (7:01) and the Toshiba Tecra Z40 (9:28). You'll have to pay $276 for Dell's 9-cell 97Whr battery slice to get extra battery life.

Security

Dell offers a few security options with its Latitude 7000 Ultrabook line. The notebook comes with TPM support out of the box, but you can purchase additional security and encryption software at an extra cost. These include various versions of Computrace ranging from $26.60 to $104.29, DDPE encryption services that cost between $20.30 and $90.30 depending on your preference, and Dell SonicWALL solutions priced between $310.50 and $1,095. The Latitude 7000 line doesn't come with an option for a fingerprint or SmartCard reader at this time, although those features are likely to come in the future. Both the Lenovo ThinkPad T440s and Toshiba Tecra Z40 have offered biometric security configurations since launch.

Software and Warranty

The Dell Latitude 7440 is mostly a blank slate out of the box, but Dell has included some of its own first-party tools. These include Dell Digital Delivery, Dell Power Manager and Dell Backup and Recovery. Dell Digital Delivery is the company's platform for purchasing software, while the Dell Power Manager provides information about your system's battery, including its condition and how much power is left.

This configuration of the Latitude 7440 comes with three years of basic hardware service and three years of limited onsite service after remote diagnosis. See how Dell fared in our Tech Support Showdown and Best & Worst Brands report.

Configurations

Dell offers a few configuration options for the Latitude 7440. Our $1,849 review unit came with Windows 8 Pro, a 1.9-GHz Intel Core i5-4300U processor, 4 GB of RAM, a 256GB solid state drive and a 1920 x 1080 touch screen. This is the most expensive model in the 7000 series line listed on Dell's website.

The least expensive configuration starts at $999 and includes Windows 7 with a license for Windows 8, a 1.7-GHz Intel Core i3-4010U CPU, 4GB of RAM, a 320GB 5,400-RPM hard drive, and a 1,366 x 768 anti-glare non-touch display. It also features a smaller 3-cell 34 Whr battery and 802.11n single-band Wi-Fi, as opposed to the most expensive configuration's 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy support.

Verdict

The Dell Latitude 7440 is a business Ultrabook that offers solid Haswell performance, a rich full HD touch screen and impressive audio in a design that's both attractive and tough. Frequent travelers and office workers will definitely benefit from Dell's Tri-Metal military-grade chassis, which is built to handle the bumps, bruises and extreme temperatures that come with being on the road.

However, the keyboard on this notebook didn't feel sturdy enough, and the below-average battery life disappoints. Overall, we prefer Lenovo ThinkPad T440s, which offers a better keyboard and pointing stick along with longer battery life. But if you're in a Dell shop or like what the brand brings to the table this Ultrabook is a good choice.

 See more: Acer TravelMate P645 Review

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Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon (2014) Review

When Lenovo launched the ThinkPad X1 Carbon in 2012, the uber-light 14-inch laptop took the business notebook world by storm with its svelte, 3-pound carbon-fiber chassis. After adding atouch screen version in 2013, the ThinkPad-maker has released its second-generation ThinkPad X1 Carbon, complete with a power-efficient Intel 4th Generation Core Series processor, an optional QHD (2560 x 1440) screen and a first-of-its-kind Adaptive Function Row with keys that light with different symbols, depending on what application you use. Its new processor and screen offer impressive improvements over the first-gen X1 Carbon, but this $1,679 ($1,299 to start) Ultrabook also has a couple of annoying drawbacks that make it less than a no-brainer for productivity-minded users.

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon (2014) Review

Design

The new ThinkPad X1 Carbon looks nearly identical to its predecessor with a simple, but very thin raven black carbon fiber chassis that's adorned with the ThinkPad logo on its lid and adds a splash of color with the red TrackPoint nub and a couple of red stripes on the clickpad. Unfortunately, Lenovo ditched the luxurious soft touch lid and deck on the original for a less-attractive and comfortable hard matte surface.

The new X1 Carbon is a bit lighter than its predecessor, weighing just 2.8 pounds without touch and 3.15 pounds where the first-gen model was 2.99 and 3.25 pounds, respectively. This machine is also a tiny bit thinner, measuring .69 inches thick without touch and .72 inches with touch as opposed to .74 and .81 inches on the original. Overall, the touch screen version of the X1 Carbon 2nd-generation (13 x 8.9 x.73, 3.15 pounds) is only a little bit larger than the 13-inch MacBook Air(12.8 x 9 x 0.68 inches, 3 pounds) but is much thinner and lighter than other 14-inch business laptops, including the HP ZBook 14 (13.4 x 9.3 x 0.83 inches, 3.96 pounds) and Dell Latitude 7440(12.2 x 8.3 x .79 inches, 3.9 pounds).

Like the original X1 Carbon, the second-generation model is built to take a bit of a licking. Because of its durable carbon fiber and magnesium chassis, the X1 Carbon has passed a number of MilSpec tests, including ones for humidity, extreme temperatures, sand exposure, high altitudes, vibration and mechanical shocks.

Adaptive Keyboard Row

On the new X1 Carbon, Lenovo has made some radical changes to its traditional ThinkPad keyboard, both in terms of layout and functionality. A new Adaptive Function Row sits at the top of the keyboard, replacing the standard function row you'll find on the original X1 Carbon and every other laptop made. Instead of tactile keys, the Adaptive Row has capacitive touch buttons that light up with different symbols depending on what app you're using. Alternatively, you can switch modes manually using a button button to the left.

The Adaptive Row supports four main modes. Home mode, which shows by default, features standard volume and brightness controls along with shortcuts to the task switching menu, the all apps menu, the snipping tool and the voice and gesture controls. Web browsing mode, which appears when you are using Chrome, IE or another browser, shows forward, back and refresh buttons. Web conference mode, which displays when you are using Skype or another video calling app, shows microphone and camera controls. Function mode shows normal function keys F1 to F12. There's also a lay flat mode, which is supposed to appear when you open the lid 180 degrees (it didn't work consistently for us), and provides shortcuts to the voice and gesture control apps.

The symbols on the Adaptive Row keys are built into their gray LED lights so there's no possibility of adding your own shortcuts. Lenovo's settings software allows you to disable any of these modes or set a different default.

Overall, we found the Adaptive Row much less useful than traditional function keys. Because the flat keys offer no tactile feedback and change functions based on what you're doing, we had to look down when hitting them. Unlike traditional keyboards, where we could simply hold down an Fn key and change settings like brightness with one stroke, we had to hit the mode change button one to three times to make it change to the mode we needed. The keys don't change instantly either; there was a small, but noticeable delay each time we changed modes.

Keyboard and Typing Experience

Lenovo has changed the layout of the other five rows on the keyboard, too. In place of the Caps Lock key, Lenovo has put two half-sized keys for Home and End. To get the caps lock function, you must double tap on the left shift key, after which a small green light on the key illuminates to indicate that the notebook is in caps lock mode. However, we found ourselves accidentally entering caps lock when we hit the Shift key one time too many.

Lenovo has also replaced the full size Backspace key with a half-size Backspace and half-size Delete key. Unfortunately, we found it far too easy to accidentally hit Delete when we wanted to hit Backspace.

ThinkPads as a group are known for having the best laptop keyboards, largely because of their strong tactile feedback and solid key travel. Unfortunately, the new X1 Carbon doesn't quite reach this high standard, as its keys felt stiffer and shallower in our tests than the X240 and T440s. Nevertheless, we achieved our typical rate of 86 words-per-minute with a 2-percent error rate.

The keyboard backlight provides three settings: high, low and off. In either high or low, the light provided more than adequate illumination to see all the keys. Unfortunately, we had to switch to function key mode (which is not the default) on the Adaptive Row to change the keyboard brightness mode.

Touchpad and Pointing Stick

Like other ThinkPads, the new X1 Carbon offers both a TrackPoint pointing stick and a touchpad. As with other models, we prefer the TrackPoint, because it provides precise navigation around the desktop without forcing us to lift our hands off of the home row. However, the stick's corresponding buttons are now built into the top of the touchpad. On the first review unit we tested, these buttons were unpleasantly stiff, sometimes forcing us to double click two or three times for it to register. On a second unit we tested, the buttons felt less stiff and did not miss any of our double clicks.

The 3.93 x 2.75 inch glass touchpad is slightly larger than the 3.93 x 2.4-inch version on the original ThinkPad X1 Carbon. Unfortunately, the pad was also quite a bit less accurate than the one on its predecessor; it felt slippery in our tests and even occasionally jumped when we clicked while using the pad two handed. However, multitouch gestures such as pinch-to-zoom, rotate, three finger swipe and four-finger vertical swipe worked smoothly. The built-in touchpad buttons required less force and were more accurate than the TrackPoint buttons on top of the pad.

Display and Audio

Lenovo offers the ThinkPad X1 Carbon with a standard 1600 x 900 display or a QHD (2560 x 1440) touch screen. The 14-inch, QHD panel on our review unit displayed brilliant images with flawless viewing angles. When we watched a 1080p offline trailer for Skyfall, the objects were sharp and colors (like Daniel Craig's blue eyes and the red in a British flag) appeared particularly vivid. Images did not wash out, even at 90 degrees to the left or right.

The X1 Carbon's screen measured 268 lux on our light meter, slightly above the 252 lux category average and about on par with the Apple MacBook Air 13-inch (263 lux). However, the ThinkPad X240 with its 1366 x 768 touch screen (325 lux) and the Acer Aspire S7 (329 lux) are much brigher.

The 10-point touch screen was highly responsive to our touches and even allowed us to draw with all of our fingers at once in Windows Paint. However, when we first got the system, the screen did not accept touch input until we factory resetted it. After that, the touch worked more smoothly for the most part, but we did experience several incidents where the screen stopped working after we woke the X1 Carbon from a long sleep. It started working again as soon as we rebooted.

Lenovo sent us another review unit, which we used only briefly, but we did not experience the above problems. However, Re/Code's Walt Mossberg noted the same issue in his X1 Carbon review.

Audio

The ThinkPad X1 Carbon delivers impressive audio output for any laptop, let alone a business ultraportable. When we played the bass-heavy "Forget Me Nots," music was rich, clear and loud enough to fill a small room with no distortion even at maximum volume. The guitar-heavy "Symphony of Destruction" was clear and completely free from tinniness, if not overly rich. At 82 dB on our sound test, the X1 Carbon fell slightly below the 83 dB ultraportable category average but was louder than the ThinkPad T440s (81 dB).

Enabled by default, the bundled Dolby Home Theater v.4 software gives you fine control over the audio settings and enhances the sound greatly. When we disabled Dolby, both songs sounded hollow and lifeless.

Ports and Webcam

To make the ThinkPad X1 Carbon this thin, Lenovo made some compromises on the number and type of ports included. On the left side, there's a USB 3.0 port, HDMI out, mini DisplayPort and the power port, which features Lenovo's OneLink connector that allows you to connect it to a docking station for both power and data. On the right side, there's another USB 3.0 port, a Kensington lock slot and a small, proprietary Ethernet port that requires an adapter to plug into wired networks.

Lenovo added the Ethernet port to this version of the X1 Carbon, because IT customers wanted to be able to boot and manage the device over the LAN. However, in order to make room, Lenovo removed the SD Card reader that was present on the original X1 Carbon. If you have to take photos with a DSLR or mirrorless camera and own the X1 Carbon, you'll need to bring your own reader or use USB.

The 720p webcam is a high-definition disappointment. In both low light and under direct overhead lamps in our office, images we shot of our face were extremely noisy. Image quality did not improve when we fired up Skype. In addition to exposure and brightness controls, the camera has a face tracking feature, which did a decent job of following our face.

Gesture and Voice Control

If you get tired of using the keyboard and touchpad, you can try waving your hands at the ThinkPad X1 Carbon or talking to it. Lenovo bundles the laptop both with its own gesture control software and Dragon Assistant, a voice control application.

If you enable it, the gesture control application will run in the background and only power on the webcam when you're in an application that supports it. With gesture control enabled, we were able to jog back and forth between photos in the Windows 8.1 Gallery app and between points in a video (but not between videos) by waving a hand to the right or left. We were also able to start and pause the movie by pushing toward the camera with an open hand.

The application is supposed to support a number of eReading apps, office applications (for presentations) and media players. When we kept our hand close to the webcam, the software recognized our gestures most of the time, but when we leaned back in our chair, it missed many of our motions. In theory, the gesture controls would be good for business presentations, but in practice it's easier to use a wireless clicker or hit a key on the computer.

With the included Dragon Assistant software, you can send email, conduct web searches, post to Twitter or Facebook or control a music player on your laptop with your voice. Unfortunately, like the gesture control software, this application is more of a gimmick than a helpful feature. In order to get the software to listen to us, we had to hit a voice assistant button on the keyboard adaptive row; there's no way to have the software always listening. When we did speak to the software, it was often very slow in reacting to our commands and even slower when it went out to the cloud and searched for a response.

We also found that we had to reach for the keyboard and touchpad to close Dragon's email window after we opened the message composer with it and then tried to do something else by asking the software to "Show me something funny." Giving more vague commands such as "show me something funny" brought up a web search of YouTube for comedy but doesn't actually start video playback.

Heat

The ThinkPad X1 Carbon stayed pleasantly cool throughout our tests. After streaming video for 15 minutes, the touchpad measured a chilly 80 degrees, the keyboard a cool 85 degrees and the underside was a reasonable 93 degrees Fahrenheit. We consider temperatures below 95 degrees comfortable and those under 90 degrees imperceptible.

Performance

With its Intel Core i5-4200U, 8GB of RAM and solid Intel HD 4400 graphics, our review configuration of the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon offered slightly above average on most of our tests. However, a relatively slow SSD held it back.

On PCMark7, a synthetic benchmark that measures overall perofrmance, the ThinkPad X1 Carbon scored a solid 4,734, which is way above the 3,974 ultraportable category average and the ThinkPad X240 (4040). This socre is even slightly better than the Core i7-4500U powered Sony VAIO Pro 13 (4,698). However, the Acer Aspire S7-392-6411, which also has a Core i5-4200U CPU, scored a slightly higher 5,051.

The X1 Carbon's 128GB Samsung SSD is slower than a modern solid state drive should be. Though it booted to Windows 8.1 in a brisk 11 seconds (faster than the 16.6-second average) it took a lengthy 59 seconds to complete the LAPTOP File Transfer test, which involves copying 4.97GB of mixed media files. That's a mediocre transfer rate of 86 MBps, which is way below the 113.9 MBps category average and miles behind the Sony VAIO Pro 13 (391.5 MBps) and MacBook Air 13-inch (242.4 MBps). Even Lenovo's own ThinkPad X240 was nearly twice as fast (141.4 MBps). We also experienced some lag when opening certain applications, particularly Lenovo utilities.

The ThinkPad X1 Carbon's Core i5-4200U processor completed our OpenOffice Spreadsheet Macro Test (in which we match 20,000 names with their addresses) in just 5 minutes and 26 seconds. This time is nearly a minute faster than the 6:32 category average and about on par with the MacBook Air 13-inch (5:33), though slightly behind the Sony VAIO Pro 13 (5:10).

Graphics

The notebook's integrated Intel HD Graphics 4400 chip offers enough performance for HD playback and light gaming. On 3DMark Ice Storm Extreme, a synthetic graphics test, the ThinkPad X1 Carbon scored a strong 26,342, comfortably above the category average of 20,144.

When we fired up World of Warcraft at 1366 x 768 resolution, the X1 Carbon provided a fairly smooth frame rate of 38 fps at default settings. This dropped to an unplayable 20 fps with the special effects turned up. Those rates are higher than the catgory averages and 31. 8 / 16 fps and the 30/14 fps offered by the Sony VAIO Pro 13. However, the MacBook Air provided slightly higher rates of 42 and 26 fps at a slightly higher resolution of 1440 x 900.

Battery Life

[ThinkPad X1 Carbon] Because it features a power-efficient Intel 4th Generation Core Series processor, the new ThinkPad X1 Carbon offers significantly longer endurance than its predecessor. While the original X1 Carbon with touch screen lasted for only 5 hours and 52 minutes on the LAPTOP Battery Test, which involves continuous surfing over Wi-Fi, the new model managed a more respectable time of 7:15, which is about 30 minutes above the ultraportable category average (6:42). Neverthe less, this runtime is behind Acer Aspire S7 (8:53) and much shorter than the Apple MacBook Air (11:40). With its 6-cell battery, the ThinkPad X240 lasted an incredible 20 hours and 28 minutes

We would expect the non-touch version of the ThinkPad X1 Carbon to last much longer, as the original non-touch model managed a time of 7:45.

Software and Warranty

In addition to the gesture control and voice software, Lenovo includes only a handful of utilities. The Adaptive Keyboard Settings application provides limited control over which of the adaptive layouts can appear. The overall Lenovo Settings app provides control over some camera, audio and power settings. QuickCast allows you to share files between Lenovo devices that have the software installed. Lenovo Solution Center has a backup function, password vault and update checker.

There's also a fair amount of bloatware on board, including Evernote Touch, Accuweather, rara Music, Kindle, Zinio and drawing app Skitch Touch. All of these apps are available for free from the Windows Store so we would have preferred to download them on our own as necessary.

Lenovo backs the ThinkPad X1 Carbon with a standard one-year warranty on parts and labor. You can also buy extended warranties of up to 5 years, accidental damage insurance or on-site service for prices ranging from $129 to well over $500.

Configuration Options

As of this writing, Lenovo.com only offers two configurations of the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon. The $1,499 model offers a 1600 x 900 non-touch display, Core i5-4300U CPU and 180 GB SSD, and a $2,099 model with a 2560 x 1440 touch screen, 256GB SSD and a Core i7-4600U processor.

However, the company plans to offer a configure-to-order option on its site within the next few weeks, with prices ranging from a $1,299 option to select different CPUs, SSD sizes, RAM amounts, versions of Windows and your choice of either screen.. Our review unit is based on the configure-to-order system and comes with the 2560 x 1440 touch screen, 8GB of RAM, Windows 8.1 professional and a Core i5-4200U for $1,679.

Verdict

The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon has some things going for it. This 14-inch business Ultrabook sports an extremely thin and light design, an optional WQHD touch display, a powerful / power efficient Intel 4th Generation Core Series processor, and a durable chassis. Unfortunately, the new X1 Carbon's falls short when it comes to three key features: keyboard, touchpad and webcam, things that are best-in-class on other ThinkPads. A relatively slow SSD also holds this system back. New features like the Adaptive Function Row, gesture controls and voice assistant are innovative, but won't necessarily help you be more productive.

If you want the thinnest, lightest 14-inch business Ultrabook on the market, the new ThinkPad X1 Carbon is worth a look. However, if you don't mind a smaller screen, get Lenovo's 12.5-inchThinkPad X240, which starts at just $923, instead. For nearly $400 less, you'll be rewarded with a better keyboard and touchpad, plus more than 20 hours of endurance with the extended battery.

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