Lenovo X1 Nano vs. X1 Carbon
Just in case anyone's interested, I switched from a 2019 Carbon to a current-gen Nano a few months back. Here are my impressions. I use Arch, btw.
Overall, the Nano is worse at everything - except being nano. It is significantly lighter (just under 1kg instead of 1.3kg for the Carbon) and feels more like the original MacBook Air in form factor, although it's not visually as thin as the tapered MBA of old.
Things that are worse:
- Speakers: yes, I'm an imbecile and listen to music on laptop speakers. The old Carbon had great speakers. This one drones and vibrates a lot when the bass is too loud.
- Keyboard: still probably among the best out there, but the keys feel significantly less smooth and pleasant than the Carbon. I originally thought I just had to "break it in" but it hasn't changed in a few months now. I heard they tried going thinner in they keys, hope they don't fall into the same trap as Apple and ruin all keyboards for 5 years :( I seem to regularly get 10-20 WPM less than I did on my Carbon.
- Battery: oh boy. This thing gets HALF the battery run time my Carbon got, which wasn't great to begin with (topped it out at 8h real-world once). I'm displaying the current watt usage in the sway bar and whereas the (old) Carbon would idle at around 2-3W, this one tends to idle around 7-9W (!). If I disconnect wifi, stop all services, set the brightness to 1%, and so on I'll eventually get it to 3-4W, still way worse than what the Carbon would get routinely. I suspect that Intel tuned the new chips to be faster to compete with Apple and AMD chips, and that they sacrificed battery life. Ugh.
- It runs a lot hotter and the fan comes on more often. On the old Carbon, it never ever got hot and it never ever ran the fan. I don't usually do intense things, maybe play an old retro game or compile something. The Nano's fan comes on all the time. This might be a combination of new Intel chip and smaller (therefore less thermal/cooling capable) form factor.
- In terms of ergonomics, it's only a 13" instead of a 14", but it feels like I have to look down significantly more, which is more uncomfortable. That said, I don't use it in laptop mode a lot anyway, mostly connected to an external monitor. Still.
Honestly I am thinking of just going back to my old Carbon. It has damage from dropping it from desk height, face-down on a stone tile floor, resulting in the screen flickering sometimes. Maybe I'll just get that repaired and use it as my main machine again.
I'm a little skeptical of buying the new Carbon, since it also has the new Intel chip. What if I have shitty battery life and heat/fan occurring with that? Other laptops (e.g. Framework) also report that the new Intel generation is WORSE in terms of battery life than the old one.
Really hoping that Lenovo will team up with AMD and put those monster chips into the Thinkpads. Those seem to practically equal the Apple M1/M2 in terms of both performance and battery life. It seems there is an AMD model out, but it's not in the mainstream lines like X1 yet.