People shit on Xiaomi here but even imitation requires some level of artistry and finesse. This looks like a good clone of Air, and I haven't seen Acer/Lenovo/Dell manage to do that yet.
Clearly it's not a cheap product, but the Lenovo Thinkpad Carbon X1 is razor thin, high powered, well built, and very good looking.
Maybe I'm missing something?
And Carbon Fibre is certainly more lightweight than aluminium, and may be stronger as well. As such, the Carbon X1 certainly qualifies.
I'm not too concerned about Superfish - that was only the consumer junk, right? The BIOS-Windows-auto-install stuff was more concerning. But hey, little choices. Lenovo is certainly incompetent - look at the X240/T440 with the terrible pad design they backtracked on (obvious). Or the Carbon keyboards they ended up ditching.
The X1 Carbon is much cooler but also less powerful ;)
The X250 is pretty good, though you get a keyboard at random and will need to replace the part (always get next business day warranty) if you get one of the junk ones. Otherwise it's a nice laptop - I've not seen anything I like more (though it could be better, of course; a 3:2 screen for starters).
I've used a T450s, and the keyboard feels fantastic on it. At 3K res it'd probably real nice. Unless you need a specific CPU/GPU, stick with the X260/T460s (s for slim). Perhaps compare reviews to the X250/T450s to see if it got worse?
Assuming you don't need high-end power (like quad core), it's more of a preference if you want a small 12" or a larger screen. I dock my X250 and it seems fine, even driving a higher-pixel external monitor. I'd go for the X260, but if software support was better for hiDPI I might consider the T450s. (If they had centred keyboards without numpad, maybe even a 15" model.)
Edit: FWIW when using it in laptop mode, I run CPU throttled to 50% or less to keep it cool. I have the cheaper i5-5200U option and it's fine for emacs/VS/browsing. At full power it can play Dolphin emulator Smash Brothers Brawl and Melee at full speed, but just barely.
HP's ZBooks? You can even replace almost any component inside. I got the first generation model (15") and it's very good. Sure, it's not light and slim.
On some Lenovo models they are the same size (and can be swapped), but not on the Carbon X1.
I've been getting ThinkPads on corporate refresh cycles for 15 years and after they sold to Lenovo, I never know if a new machine will turn out to be a flaky piece of junk or totally solid and well built. Seems like it's always one or the other.
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2015/08/12/lenovo-used-a-hidde...
At least this issue should be solved.
It was certainly a giant blunder, but like all of these issues they are Windows only, and usually only if you use the factory OS image.
Like most(?) of the HN crowd not using Apple products, I run Linux, so that kind of stuff doesn't affect me at all. I assume the remaining ones reinstall using their own installation-media too?
It doesn't excuse Lenovo's behaviour and certainly can make you question their judgement, but all in all, I'm one of those who are putting less weight on this issue than others may do.
What matters most to me, are the practical aspects: what can this product do for me? And Carbon X1 Thinkpads are among the best lightweight laptops out there.
Don't forget that your hardware vendor is also responsible for firmware. Not saying that Lenovo is special in any way here, but delivering terrible software on the factory OS image might have implications for software quality in general.
ThinkPad hardware is OK, but it's very hard to trust Lenovo with anything these days. A good summary I found while looking for the above link is http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/now-three-pre-installed-malware...
That was not on the business line. I.e. it did not impact thinkpads, which is what people usually buy on HN anyway.
[1] http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/x-series/x1-ca...
That said, I still find complaints about the X1's price from an Apple-user funny. Whenever people in the past people was critical towards the pricing of Apple products, the response was always "Real quality costs money" and "It's worth it".
Is that no longer so? And is a quality higher than that provided by Apple unimaginable?
I now own a 3rd-gen X1 Carbon for personal use. After my experience with it, I'll never buy or recommend Lenovo again. Months of waiting on backordered parts (for their flagship laptop), repeat visits from their service center, and the end result is finally a laptop that mostly works, but is starting a slow death very early because of cheap plastic construction and tight tolerances that aren't so tight after a few months of use. I've had it a year and a half (I bought it the week it came out); I'll be lucky if it makes it to two years without another significant problem.
Terrible experience all the way around. It looks pretty on the website, but it's not built to last like their older products were, and their service is a shadow of its former self.
Xiaomi is a Chinese company they don't care since if they ever do get sued the Chinese court will always side with the Chinese company.
The again if the clone works just as well as the original I don't really care but this would have been a really good chance to copy and improve.
And Acer is Taiwanese.
And Lenovo is a Chinese company, but I guess they've made the cost-benefit analysis that they have more to lose getting sued by Apple in the US for copying their products than they have to gain by selling a cheap Macbook knockoff in an already very competitive Chinese market.
Taiwan has robust rule of law, unlike china.
Xiaomi is the new kid on the block and just copies Apple designs. Some examples:
http://www.iphonehacks.com/2014/07/xiaomi-copying-apple.html
Also they have no legitimate sales channel in the US/EU, so there's a jurisdiction issue with a lawsuit. Apple knows it can't just march into China and win a lawsuit. Acer and Lenovo sell in the US/EU, so they have to play ball with our IP laws.
The eeepc was the thing that proved there was enough interest for a low-power-but-mobile computer, which ended up turning into the tablet market. Crappy build quality, but people went berserk for them.
Really? Here's one [0] from approximately when the Air came out and looks not even remotely similar to me in shape.
[0] https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ASUS_Eee_PC_PIC_09...
And how!!! My ex-boss read the press announcement on a flight (sometime in 2011?) and went gung ho. On coming back, he got me to inquire with our regular/local hardware vendors. Turned out nobody (in our small city) had even heard of it, so the inquiry was escalated to the largest city of our state. Still nothing. Finally, he actually got a staffer to fly to Mumbai and get him a piece.
Within the next few weeks, he bought not less than 7 more, to gift them away to family and friends!! Yes, berserk is right. :-)
And yeah this laptop looks nice anyway.
In any case, what does being a fan have to do with appreciating good design? I'm no fan of Apple either, but I appreciate their product design nonetheless. I'm not sure why your reaction was that sharp.
Sure, it's a lot sleeker than most laptops (not made by Apple), but its design leaves me asking a ton of "why did they choose that?" kind of questions.
The question is how it looks after six months of use.
https://www.google.com/search?site=&tbm=isch&q=samsung+serie...
Don't get me wrong, it's a really good laptop and I've chosen it over so many others on the market. I would probably still choose it for my linux laptop (lenovo x1 is neat but I'm done with lenovo with all the stuff they've done lately). It just looks poorly to me in a direct comparison.
Though to be honest there is a small issue with coil whine in very quiet settings. I hear Dell has addressed this in newer models.
Last laptop I bought was due to needing something for occasional DJ and projection graphics projects. Since it needed to be mobile, even a small form factor desktop build was not really feasible so I went looking for the best thing I could grab at Microcenter for under a grand.
Now this was a few years ago so the specs aren't top notch anymore but for just under $1000 I got an Asus that's not quite all metal (bottom half of the shell is plastic but the rest is aluminum), 1920x1080 screen (but worse viewing angles than a premium display), an i7 processor, 16GB RAM, and the mobile variant of the then-current class of nVidia GPUs (because I needed something that could handle all of the OpenGL stuff I was messing with). The only other sucky part was it came with a HDD instead of a SSD but at some point I'll upgrade the SSD in my desktop and hand that one down to the laptop.
The nearest competing Apple notebook at the time (at least 1920x1080, i7, 16GB RAM, and discrete graphics) would've run me about $2500. Build would've been better, display would've been a bit better, and if it had a SSD or one of those hybrid drives, that obviously beats spinning platters.
But none of those things (or all of them together) was worth spending more than double. If it was going to be my only machine for everything I'd have probably paid the premium for an Apple or another higher-end notebook with nicer display and SSD but for a secondary computer at around $950-ish it is still running perfectly when I need to take something on the road.
Ew. What purpose does that serve?
Not much otherwise.