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Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 3 review: A spec bump, but still a winner

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Lenovo’s latest ThinkPad X1 Extreme is mostly a spec bump, with Intel’s Comet Lake H processors and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 Ti GPU, but it’s still a winner with a 4K OLED display and more.
Lenovo’s ThinkPad X1 series is the best that it has to offer, and a couple of years ago, the company decided to kick things up a notch with a larger screen, a 45W CPU, and dedicated graphics, things that weren’t previously seen in a ThinkPad X1. The ThinkPad X1 Extreme was born. Now on the Gen 3 model, not much has changed. In fact, coming from the Gen 2 model, the only things that are different is the CPU and the GPU. That’s not unique to the ThinkPad X1 Extreme either. All of Lenovo’s ThinkPad lineup look the same as they did last year. So now, we’ve got Intel’s Comet Lake H processors and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 Ti GPU. It’s still a lovely device, despite the lack of changes. This model that Lenovo sent me packs a 4K OLED touchscreen, along with a 1TB SSD and 32GB of RAM. It’s also got one of the best keyboards around, especially when it comes to its class, which is a small class to begin with. This is the unit that Lenovo sent me, as this PC starts at $1,399.99. It’s also noted that these prices vary. Full price, as configured, is $4,066, but Lenovo.com always has some kind of discount, and it fluctuates. As I mentioned, the chassis has not changed since last year’s model. The lid has Lenovo’s carbon fiber weave, which made its debut a couple of years ago in the X1 Carbon. In fact, the one thing that looks different with this model is the logo on the lid. It has the same black ThinkPad logo that’s reserved for premium devices, but it has X1 branding under it now. The body only comes in two flavors, both of which are black. There’s regular black, and then there’s the carbon fiber weave. Black is standard for ThinkPads and carbon fiber weave has been an option for high-end ThinkPads for a while, but there’s not much else. The X1 Yoga comes in a gray color now, since it’s actually made out of aluminum, but if you want a clamshell that’s not black, you’ll have to go for Lenovo’s ThinkBook lineup. Obviously, the ports haven’t changed either. On the left side, there’s an AC power port, being that this requires too much power to only use Power Delivery. There are also two Thunderbolt 3 ports, HDMI 2.0, and a 3.5mm audio jack. You can charge through the Thunderbolt 3 ports, but it charges slowly. If you use a regular 65W USB Type-C charger, it’s about half the wattage of the adapter that comes with this PC. On the other side, there’s an SD card slot and two USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A ports. USB 3.2 Gen 1, also known as USB 3.1 Gen 1 and USB 3.0, supports data transfer speeds of up to 5Gbps, and frankly, I’m a little tired of seeing it in premium PCs. It’s time to move on to USB 3.

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