Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon G10, Black Weave, Core i7-1255U, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD, LTE, DE

With the 10th Generation of the Thinkpad X1 Carbon, it's the first I have seen Lenovo offer a U-Series 15W option for this SKU. Initially, I thought this would be a subpar option for performance, but surprisingly it did pretty well as we ran through the benchmarks. In many scenarios, you will note the 1265U outperforming the 11th Gen 1185G7, which was damn near top of the range in its day, and it also manages to keep up with the 1260p in some cases. Its single-core performance was 150 points higher than 11th Gen in R23, and nT showed an even bigger boost of nearly 3000 points. In application testing, we saw a near 200 points jump in both Office and Photo workloads using the UL Procyon benchmark. All of this makes for a potent combo, as the Gen10 Carbon, if configured with the 1265U, is an ultra-light machine that uses even less power than its 28W counterparts giving you more battery life; this is evident in our power chart where a 1280p powered XPS Plus shows nearly 300 minutes less battery life with a similar 55wH battery. The Thinkpad X1 Gen10 overall hasn't changed much in its design over the years, this is something Lenovo is likely keen to continue, but we were hoping to see an improved cooling design in this new iteration as the center-mounted fan is easily blocked if you use this on your lap without a lap desk. In turn, this can severely degrade the performance, especially if you have a P-Series SKU.