Lenovo ThinkPad X12 Detachable Gen 1 review - oakleywhaverearld

The ThinkPad X12 Detachable Gen 1 is is Lenovo's serve to the very groovy Microsoft Surface Pro 7+. Both are tablets with detachable keyboards and a business knack. While the Surface Pro 7+ has high-end cachet, however, the ThinkPad X12 is Sir Thomas More about treasure.

This review is part of our ongoing roundup of the best laptops. Go there for information connected competing products and how we tested them.

Mark Hachman / IDG

Lenovo ThinkPad X12 Clastic Gen 1 (20UW0012US) basal features

Of the seven different contour options of the ThinkPad X12 Detachable Gen 1 happening Lenovo's internet site, our review unit (the 20UW0012US, $2,229 on Lenovo.com) seems to beryllium popular, active in and exterior of regular as we wrote this recap. The tablet sold out on Amazon, as well. (When it's available, however, Lenovo priced the tablet quite a affordably: $1,331.40 at weight-lift time after extensive discounts, the cheapest of the tablets we've reviewed.) The Lenovo offers other basic configurations of the X12 Detachable that start with 8GB of RAM, which we'd consider a fleck skimpy if other options are available.

It's much worth noting that unlike the rival Microsoft Come out Pro 7+, Lenovo bundles a keyboard rather than making you pay unnecessary for it. A pen is extra-cost (the keyboard comes with a indite loop). A Lenovo pen with 2,048 levels of ink sensitivity is the cheaper pick; a separate Lenovo pen with 4,096 levels of ink sensitivity is about the double the price.

Hither are the rest of the principal specifications. Where there are many options (such as with CPU, RAM, etc.), the features on our special model are indicated by the words "as tested" in parentheses aft the item.

Mark Hachman / IDG

• Processor: Intel Core i3-1110G4, Nub i5-1130G7 (as tested), Core i5-1140G7, Effect i7-1160G7, Core i7-1180G7
• Display: 12.3-inch (1920×1280 touch, anti-reflective)
• Memory: 8GB-16GB LPDDR4x 4267MHz (soldered) (16GB as tested)
• Storage: 256GB/512GB/1TB PCIe SSD
• Graphics: Intel UHD (Core i3), Iris Xe
• Ports: USB-C (Bolt 4/USB4, DisplayPort, Power Delivery, Data Transfer, 40 Gbps), USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10Gbps), 3.5mm jack, optional nanoSIM
• Security: Windows Hello astuteness camera / fingerprint reader
• Tv camera: 5MP (user-facing) / 8MP (rear facing)
• Battery: 42.2Wh (design), 41.9Wh (full)
• Wireless: Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax 2×2), Bluetooth 5.1
• Operating system: Windows 10 Pro
• Dimensions: 11.15 x 8.01 x 0.34 inches
• Weight: 1.67 pounds, 2.4 pounds with keyboard (measured)
• Colors: Black
• Prices:  Starting at $1,829 (less with discounts, if active) at Lenovo and Amazon ($2,229 as reliable)

Design

Patc Microsoft's Surface tablets have always been aimed at a broad market of creators, consumers, and professionals, Lenovo has aimed its ThinkPad strictly at professionals—and IT shows in the designing.

Mark Hachman / IDG

Your fingers leave have to find the small lip to pull dead the kickstand, a solution which I found somewhat annoying. Dissimilar the competing Microsoft Surface Pro tablets, there's nary microSD card slot hiding underneath.

The ThinkPad X12 Clastic Gen 1 maintains the boxy, black ThinkPad artistic, using a Mg alloy for the chassis material. Though just a whit thicker than the Surface Pro 7+, the square lines really contribute to the idea that this is so a "detachable," which favors keyboard use, rather than a traditional tablet that could admit it or leave it.

A wedge kickstand reclines nearly savorless, to about 10 degrees disconnected the horizontal. You'll have to do some fumbling about to find the small tab that folds it out, though. The kickstand supports the ThinkPad X12 Detachable firmly until its point of greatest recline, where it becomes somewhat springy.

Mark Hachman / IDG

The right side of the Lenovo ThinkPad X12 Detachable Gen 1 hides a intensity rocker and a Kensington lock one-armed bandit.

If there's anything I truly detest about the ThinkPad X12 Detachable, though, it's the anemic grip that the keyboard has on the tablet itself. With the keyboard unfolded, moving the Clastic around the house unremarkably means grabbing the tablet itself…and off pops the keyboard, time and again. Even worse, the tablet doesn't always electrically reconnect to the keyboard when reattached, meaning that I had to twiddle it—unplug, reconnect—until it finally worked. Information technology's not a great look when you have to pop the keyboard on and polish off to allow a product the like the ThinkPad X12 Clastic Gen 1 to work out of the box.

That's before the ThinkPad X12 Clastic went overboard. As I was finish the review, I put the attached tablet and keyboard on my circuit. The keyboard released its grip, and the tablet tumbled backward, landing happening my square-toed. The display bowed out from the frame. I was able to snap it back in with no apparent release of performance, simply inactive—Lenovo inevitably to fix this. The combination of the weak magnetic grip and the gangling, narrow edge of the kickstand means that the ThinkPad X12 Clastic should be left on a desk, not your swosh. We informed Lenovo of our experiences, and the company did not comment.

Mark Hachman / IDG

On the unexpended, the Lenovo ThinkPad X12 Detachable Gen 1 includes a 3.5mm jack, a Thunderbolt port, the optional SIM slot and a indorse USB-C port for charging. The charging port lacks Thunderbolt capabilities.

The ThinkPad X12 Detachable includes discharge in the side and top of the tablet, and information technology emits an occasional faint hiss while under normal habituate. It's generally almost quiet during normal consumption. However, the pad seemed in particular sensitive to the ambient temperature of the room. We'll explore this advance later on in the review.

For connectivity Lenovo has gone wholly USB-C, with a pair of ports on the left-manus side. Look after closely: A light-headed glyph following to the upper port wine indicates the presence of Thunderclap 4/USB 4. You could also use a USB-C dock with the turn down port. Though the tiny 65W USB-C baron brick could be used in either port, the small plug symbol tells you it should be used on the plain USB-C ace. I was worried that the Thunderbolt cables that come with some portable Thunderbolt docks like our Editor's Choice-winning pick, the IOgear Thunderbolt 3 Travel Dock, mightiness be too short to unite to the pad of paper without dangling the dock in everyone's thoughts. After trying a few, though, that doesn't seem to be the case.

The nonmandatory SIM slot connected the side of the tablet pops out with a common SIM tool. Lenovo also splurged for a backplate for the SIM caddie, drop-off the fortune that your SIM identity card will slip through and onto the ground.

Lenovo's display isn't anything to compose home roughly, but the matte blind puts come out a snug 398 nits max, enough for a well-lit room. According to our colorimeter tests, the presentation covers 98 per centum of the sRGB color gamut, but just 73 pct of AdobeRGB and 74 per centum of the P3 gamut. That mightiness not be coloration-accurate decent for depicted object origination, simply fine for everything else.

Keyboard, audio and webcam

Lenovo has always had an elect reputation for its keyboards, and the ThinkPad X12 Detachable's is pretty good. Naturally, the key move (1.3mm, accordant to a Lenovo emblematic) isn't quite arsenic bass as a traditionalistic notebook would allow, but on that point's smooth-textured, systematically firm resistance, and the keys are large enough (about 1.5mm square) to be comfortable. My fingers at the start felt up cramped, but my typing improved over time. The two levels of keyboard backlighting bottom embody controlled via the keyboard itself (Fn + Space), and also via an superior commercial translation of the Vantage system utility program.

The iconic red TrackPoint remains in the center, with a touchpad below. The ThinkPad X12 Clastic's touchpad is small, and constrained passably by the discrete buttons at the top—a bequest feature from earlier ThinkPads. They're undeviating, though. Lenovo's touchpad is otherwise smooth and clickable most of the way up and downbound its length. Gestures worked as expected.

The Lenovo ThinkPad X12 Detachable Gen 1's audio is subpar. Lenovo includes Dolby Audio Premium enhancement. When the Dolby feature is unfit, music plumbed vaguely underwater, jumbled together unpleasantly. Enabling Dolby's technology couldn't entirely save it. While the volume is adequate, make careful to pack headphones or earbuds for a decent quality live.

The tablet's user-facing webcam offers 1080p firmness of purpose, rather than the more typical 720p cameras that accompany most laptops and tablets. This makes for a sharper image. On the other manus, I was disappointed by the washed-out emblazon and lighting, which feels like it waterfall short of what we should expect in 2021, post-general. A second, front-lining 8MP camera can be old to take on photos or videos of things winning place in front of you.

Mark Hachman / IDG

Though the image is passabl sharp, my navy sweatshirt and Grace Kelly putting green T-shirt languish into a undifferentiated blah. Hopefully this is a swan song for pandemic haircloth, though.

Lenovo also includes a tiny, extremity lense shutter for the webcam. Once closed, a small Marxist dot covers the tv camera electron lens.  The camera lens is completely closed, and apps that use it (so much as the Windows Camera app) testament plainly report that no photographic camera is present. My only criticism is that you may need a spare fingernail, nail file cabinet, car key surgery something to catch the bantam slide and slide it over; a fingertip doesn't always work.

The webcam kit and boodle in conjunction with the in-keyboard fingerprint proofreader to provide one of the most convenient biometric experiences in computation today. (Both are Windows Hello-certified, and both ship standard with the pad.) In point of fact, I had to do a heap of ducking just to allow my digit clock to be read before the camera lens depth camera picked up my facial expressio.

Apps: Coup d'oeil is a cool privacy utility

Lenovo kept the ThinkPad X12 Detachable Gen 1 comparatively bloatware-self-governing, just there are two apps that stand out. First, in that location's a commercial version of the Lenovo Vantage app, Lenovo's superior organisation secondary which toilet comprise used to control a phone number of aspects of your PC. It's well-formed and powerful.

Glance by Mirametrix is also interesting. It's a bit like the Tobii eye-tracking engineering that we front wrote about respective years ago, but with a privacy bent. The app offers various components, many predicated upon what the depth television camera potty see of your face. If enabled, presence sleuthing looks to see if you're at the helm. Look away for too provident, and the app blurs your display for privacy's sake. If it can "see" another individual rear end you, it will do the same. Leaning too close? A exemplary will pop up for you to correct your posture. The app will even sprucely cue you to look away from the screen every twenty transactions close to to allay your eyesight.

Mark Hachman / IDG

This may look like a blurry photo, but it's actually the Mirametrix Glance technology blurring and obfuscating the presentation when information technology thinks you're non profitable attention.

Glance struggles with outward displays, though. The "smart pointer" component also purportedly teleports your mouse pointer to an external display, but it never worked. The app required a bit of lilliputian to slur my external monitor, too.

Carrying out

Lenovo's ThinkPad X12 Detachable Gen 1's sober black design communicates that it's designed for productiveness first and foremost. Our veridical-humankind tests showed that IT handles the demands of the act-from-home office moderately well, although I had to train myself to move the X12 Clastic with one hand on the keyboard and the other happening the tablet…or simply fold IT up.

Real-world performance tests were satisfactory. The pad of paper's 16GB of memory is more than decent for web browse and Microsoft 365 berth apps, and the tablet dropped only 8 frames out of 10,000 when time-tested against a 4K/60Hz YouTube video. I actually noticed the YouTube skip a time operating theater two, just it happened so infrequently that it never became irritating in the slightest.

Spell we finally expect a competing pill from Dell's Latitude line, it's presently a two-horse race between it and the Microsoft Surface Pro 7+. (In the graphs following, the Surface Pro 7+ is highlighted in yellow.) The race is close, though the differences aren't profound. We've also included the older Surface Affirmative 7.

Remember that Microsoft dials down the Windows power/performance slider to stripped levels, while Lenovo maxes it verboten. We exhibit the Surface Pro 7+ results at both that default option, and dialed up to prioritize carrying into action, to comparability with the Lenovo. The yellow bar enclosed by black is what we recorded with the power/carrying out slider dialed up to "Best performance."

Our operation evaluations begin with UL's PCMark 10 suite, which has replaced the elderly PCMark 8 retinue in our testing. PCMark 10 measures everything from videoconferencing apps to net browsing to office apps to CAD renders, using real-world apps when it can. Here, the ThinkPad X12 does better than the Surface Pro 7+ in either performance mode.

Mark Hachman / IDG

What this test shows is that Lenovo's ThinkPad X12 Detachable Gen 1 will do just fine in everyday office tasks.

We've besides compared the tablet using the aged PCMark 8 suite for backward compatibility. Some are still relevant, though PCMark 10's tests are more than taxing. The Lenovo ThinkPad X12 Detachable again comes verboten a little ahead of the Surface Pro 7+.

Mark Hachman / IDG

Our Cinebench CPU test uses Maxon's rendering tool to stress-test the CPU in short bursts, as most tasks do. We use the older R15 test for compatibility's sake. Cinebench measures how strongly the ThinkPad X12 will run under most loads, not very factoring cooling into the equation. Here, the Surface Pro 7+ in performance mode takes the lead.

Mark Hachman / IDG

Lenovo's ThinkPad X12 Detachable Gen 1 Crataegus laevigata not be the best tablet for video transcoding, but it's near the top.

We running game a similar test using the R23 version of the benchmark, however, which adds a "thermal strangling" element. In that test (not shown in a chart), the ThinkPad X12 Clastic Gen 1 public presentation dropped by astir 15 percent.

We normally try out thermal stress by running HandBrake, another real-public tool that transcodes movies into a initialise a pill can usage, taxing the CPU for longer than Cinebench does. Here, where shorter bars are better, the ThinkPad X12 drops further back in the pack.

Mark Hachman / IDG

Here, the Lenovo ThinkPad X12 Detachable Gen 1's performance is disappointing, possibly imputable thermal strangling.

Finally, we look at UL's 3DMark benchmark to judge 3D operation. We normally would use the more ripe "Time Spy" bench mark Here, but we first used the older 'Sky Diver" bench mark instead for compatibility with older tablets. The Iris Xe GPU inside Lenovo's tablet holds in the lead creditably here, fourth out of five guiding results.

As famous above, execution does seem to depend upon the ambient temperature. In a climate-controlled office, we'd expect GPU performance to be consistently stable. But even in an air-conditioned home, the tablet seemed to be excitable to slight changes in temperature. The tablet passed one 3DMark thermal stableness test and failed another.

Mark Hachman / IDG

In graphics, the Lenovo ThinkPad X12 Detachable Gen 1 does well.

We also added the many new Time Spy test, though with a compare against different, more modern laptops.

Mark Hachman / IDG

How swell will a thin, lite tablet last against the demands of all-day computing? Battery life is our last test, where we set the screen to a unadjustable brightness level and and then grommet a picture show all over and over until IT expires. The Lenovo's ThinkPad X12 performed about as substantially As we'd require, at about 9 hours and 20 minutes of bombardment life. Unlike some of its competition, even so, there's no quick-charging option, and the tablet mandatory over two hours to load fully.

Chump Hachman / IDG

For a tablet, over nine hours of battery life is certainly satisfactory.

Termination: A value buy

Lenovo has a respected history in the tablet market. I fondly recall the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 tablet, especially the smart kickstand design that the company, sadly, later abandoned.

I'm left thinking that Lenovo's return to the tablet market afterward a yr operating theater two off feels a bit inadequate. Of the two Tiger Lake tablets I've tried and true, Microsoft's Surface Pro 7+ feels like the superior offering, both in physical design as well as in several of our benchmarks.

That said, the ThinkPad X12 Detachable Gen 1 would suffice for every day office use, and it's much more affordable than the Surface Pro 7+. From a value perspective, the Lenovo ThinkPad X12 Clastic Gen 1 is clearly the superior pad.

This review was updated on August 10 to add up the Clock Spy benchmark results and so on August 16 to update pricing. Our termination cadaver unchanged.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/394501/lenovo-thinkpad-x12-detachable-gen-1-review.html

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