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Specs:
1365U
32GB of RAM
1TB
WUXGA 400 nit
Storm Grey
My first thought when I saw it: this thing is going to get scratched all over in no time.
Aluminum is just soft. Magnesium, specially if coated with rubber, is way more resistant to scratches.
(Despite being quite new, it already had a couple on scratches, one of the side and one of the lid).
It feels really cold to the touch. Definitely a different feeling than a regular X1 Carbon. It's all metallic and it feels so.
It's a really nice laptop, visually speaking. It's gray, but darker than pictures would lead you to believe. The anodized aluminum case has a very nice design and I can see, just by looking at it, that the palmrest / chassis is milled (it glares in the milled surfaces), rather than cast, like the X1 series. It has sharp edges on the sides (not chamfers).
Hinges are super solid, there is no flex anywhere. I'm pretty sure the keycaps are metallic, probably made of magnesium.
It's built like a rock. The first thought I had when I picked up: this is a [censored] brick, way heavier than the regular X1 Carbon. Am I holding an armor plate? All those high-alloy aluminum layers *SHOULD* be capable of stopping a .22 LR...
I folded it back and used it like a tablet. It's quite cumbersome due its size and weight, I would definitely not use this instead of a regular Android tablet. The pen didn't impress me at all. But everything works as intended. I fired up Paint and began drawing by hand and the accuracy was acceptable, though not perfect.
I noticed the screen adjusting the brightness setting, like a phone. So it has an ambient light sensor. About time they incorporated one...
The IR camera works well. I've never had an issue with it on any of my laptop. For a fixed focus cheap camera, it does the job.
I noticed that the laptop wakes up when moving the Trackpoint, something I had not seen previously.
Ergonomics are just average. About the same as a X1C9: Unlike older Thinkpads, the Trackpoint buttons no longer have a chamfer / angle (they have become quite flat) and key travel is shorter.
None of the modern X1 series appears to have a real Ethernet chip built in. If you need wired network, you have to use the USB-C dongle.
I did not have time to do fancy testing, so I used Throttlestop built-in benchmark. It's twice as fast as my old X1C5 at the same TDP (120M at about 60 vs 30), which is not really that impressive, to be honest. It feels quite responsive, but so does my X1C5 (which is what I'm using right now). 7-zip benchmark score is 21.4 (12T/32MB) vs 10.9 GIPS (4T/32MB).
Battery life can be good (I was web browsing as normal and wattage kept in the medium 3.x range), but you have to fiddle with it a little. I'm usually keeping the CPU at 9W PL1 and 15W of PL2, with 60 seconds of turbo. Battery saver on (Windows 11). Airplane mode. When I tried 4W PL1 and 8W PL2, the processor stuck at 400 MHz and didn't seem to consume any less power. It even felt sluggish. That many cores only sound good on paper; in practice, you have to drag a lot of stuff when you're not using it. Real battery capacity is higher than stated, at nearly 59Wh (it had 9 cycles on it).
My conclusion is that the new hybrid architecture simply doesn't work as intended. Sometimes it can go super down on consumption but if something causes it to spike, it raises significantly and stays there, for no apparent reason. It has trouble getting back of a low power state quickly. I do not have an older 4 core machine to compare, but I'm guessing from about 10th generation on, processors began to be pretty unpredictable about their power consumption. And that has only gotten worse with the hybrid setup because the Thread Director simply doesn't understand what tasks are doing.
My conclusion about performance is that intel's CPU technology remains quite stagnant. You only see more crunching power because they have been throwing cores and power at the problem, raising consumption. The real reason modern CPUs like this 1365U are faster in practice than older ones like my 7600U, is that the GPU was upgraded. I was monitoring stuff on Firefox's built in task manager and most of the work is now done by the GPU, not the CPU. I'm convinced a dual core, 4 thread, "conventional" CPU, just built in a more modern node with all the tweaks, and paired with a decent GPU, would be more efficient overall.
Would I buy a Yoga 8th? Only if I really needed the tablet functionality. Otherwise, an equivalent X1 Carbon is lighter, more durable and probably cheaper to own in the long run. I can't even imagine how much it costs to replace that glass-bezel screen. And parts for the Yogas seem to be far more rare and expensive.
