Lenovo’s ThinkPad brand has a new flagship model: The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano Gen 1 complements the high-end ThinkPad X1 series with a new, much smaller model.
In design, the new ThinkPad X1 Nano is very similar to the existing Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 8. You could call the ThinkPad X1 Nano a smaller brother of this model, as it has the same wedge-design and black Carbon fiber top-cover. The key difference between the two: While the X1 Carbon uses 14 inch displays in the more common 16:9 aspect ratio, the X1 Nano comes with a 13 inch screen in the taller 16:10 ratio. By going this route, the X1 Nano provides the same screen height as the X1 Carbon, but in a much smaller package.
Lenovo Nano: Lighter than X1 Carbon & XPS 13
The chassis is not only smaller, it is also significantly lighter. Lenovo notes that the ThinkPad X1 Nano is the lightest ThinkPad laptop so far, with just 962 g or 2.12 lbs. That is not only lighter than the X1 Carbon (1.09 kg/2.4 lbs), but also significantly lighter than the new Dell XPS 13 9310 (1.2 kg/2.64 lbs).
To make a ThinkPad this small and light, there had to be some compromises. Notably, the X1 Nano does not have the impressive array of ports that the bigger X1 Carbon boasts. Instead, the ThinkPad Nano has just two Thunderbolt 4 ports and a headphone-jack. The battery and the keyboard are also slightly smaller in size compared with the bigger counterpart.
Of course, Thunderbolt 4 already hints at it: The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano is powered by Intel Tiger Lake, the first ThinkPad X1 to have these newer CPUs. At this stage, it is not clear if it will feature the UP3 or UP4 Tiger Lake models though. Some additional firsts for the ThinkPad X1 line: 5G and LPDDR4X memory (up to 16 GB). The screen will only be offered with a single 2K level resolution (2,160 x 1,350), which has a brightness of 450 cd/m². Both touch and non-touch are available.
ThinkPad X1 Nano: Pricing & availability
The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano will be available in December 2020. It will cost at least $1,599. It will ship with either Windows 10 Pro or Ubuntu Linux.