By With the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition, Lenovo continues to carry the ThinkPad flame forward. Despite the cumbersome moniker, there is plenty of meat to enjoy. Built around a new Intel Lunar Lake engine, the laptop combines the form and finish of a high-end ThinkPad with a stylish OLED display with an effective anti-glare surface, all in a small, light package.
You will have to pay a hefty $2519 for the right to have it, and plenty of other systems are prepared to undercut Lenovo. It is also unfortunate because Lenovo had the opportunity to utilize the Lunar Lake chip more effectively. Instead, it lags behind AMD and Meteor Lake processors, like the $999 Dell Inspiron 14 Plus 7440 (2024) and the $1689 HP OmniBook Ultra 14.
Specs and Features
Lenovo may introduce more models in the future, but for now, the Aura Edition appears to come in just two configurations with the only difference between them being storage. Our test sample shipped with 512GB of storage, but Lenovo now lists the base storage at 1TB. A 512GB base would feel rather stingy for a laptop with a starting price over $2,000.
But on the plus side, Lenovo didn’t opt for low-quality storage. A quick run through CrystalDiskMark 8 showed the drive capable of hitting read speeds of 13,023MB/s and 6,991MB/s write speeds, clearly taking advantage of extra PCIe bandwidth.
- CPU: 258V Intel Core Ultra 7
- 32GB LPDDR5x Memory; Intel Arc 140V Graphics/GPU
- Display: 14-inch OLED, 2880 x 1800, 120 Hz
- 512GB PCIe Gen5 SSD for storage
- 1080p+IR webcam
- Two Thunderbolt 4/USB-C, two USB-A 5Gbps, one HDMI 2.1, one 3.5mm combo audio, and one Kensington Nano lock slot are all examples of connectivity.
- Networking: Bluetooth 5.3, WiFi 7
- Windows Hello fingerprint and face recognition biometrics
- Battery dimensions: 12.31 x 8.45 x 0.56 inches; capacity: 57 watt-hours
- 2.15 pounds in weight
- As-tested MSRP: $2,519 ($2,519 basic)
Design and build quality
The ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition is another example of Lenovo’s skillful ThinkPad laptop design. Its lightweight, slender, and robust chassis is made from a premium bill of materials that includes magnesium, aluminum, and carbon fiber. All of that is covered in a coating that gives the laptop a slightly softer feel to the touch than its components might otherwise suggest. Fingerprints might show up too easily, however it is a small cosmetic issue.
With the 14-inch panel encircled by tiny bezels, Lenovo managed to fit in as large a display as possible for a computer of this size. A little privacy cover that slides into place when you want the camera turned off is located above the display, along with a small additional lip that contains the camera and infrared sensor. The wide hinge of the display makes it easy to fold, hold in place, and flip back flat.
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 21NS0014US 14″ Copilot+ PC Ultrabook – 2.8K – Intel Core Ultra 7
A traditional ThinkPad keyboard with a trackpoint nib in the center and a dedicated trackpad underneath is included with the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition. Despite being broad, the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition’s trackpad was quite small due to its constrained surface area. Lenovo chose the convenient inverted-T arrow key arrangement and separate Page Up and Page Down buttons, even for a little laptop like this one. You can feel out the function row because it is likewise divided into small clusters. Also tucked into the upper right corner are the Home, End, Insert, and Delete keys. Simple white backlighting is applied to the keys to make them easier to see in the dark.
A power button is one item you will not see on the keyboard deck. Curiously, Lenovo moved this to the laptop’s right edge. Feeling out can be a little challenging, and pressing can be challenging because the laptop is so near to the surface it is on. There is hardly much airflow on the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition. The exhaust vents are hidden in the slot where the display hinge is located, making them difficult to see. Fresh air is collected by two tiny fans on the system’s underside.
Connectivity
Here, Lenovo performs admirably in terms of connectivity. Despite being tiny and light, the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition does not behave like other thin and light devices in terms of port offerings. There are two 5Gbps USB-A ports and two Thunderbolt 4 interfaces. A full-size HDMI 2.1 port that supports 4K/60Hz output is also present. At least Lenovo did not determine that 3.5mm audio output was unnecessary and left it out of the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition, even though it may have gone overboard with an SD or microSD card reader.
Additionally, the laptop has Wi-Fi 7 connectivity, which is compatible with more widely used Wi-Fi 6 networks and will be prepared for Wi-Fi 7 extension. Although it is a little unexpected to find Bluetooth 5.3 rather than a more recent version, it works well for connecting to devices and headphones.
Performance
Despite having one of Intel’s newest CPUs, the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition is not among the company’s most potent models. The Intel Core Ultra 7 258V is a low-power CPU that does not perform as well on multi-core tasks as its competitors, although it might have great single-core performance. It is not the end of the world for the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition.
It performs admirably for daily computing, coming just short of 7,000 points on the comprehensive PCMark 10 benchmark. This places it essentially on par with other competitors’ small and light laptops that use both AMD and Intel components. The ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition keeps up in this test because of its generous amount of fast RAM and incredibly quick storage.
The ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition lags in terms of pure CPU performance. Its small size, narrow cooling vents, and CPU’s general capabilities are not helping either. Even with very fast CPUs, our Handbrake encoding benchmark takes a while to perform, which allows the system to heat up and undergo some throttling. The ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition does indeed slow down, trailing even the Acer Swift 14 AI with the same chip by a significant margin. Even the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H from the previous generation is more powerful than AMD CPUs.
Not unexpectedly, Cinebench also demonstrates the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition’s inability to function properly when loaded with heavy workloads. The ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition once again lagged behind these other laptops on Cinebench R23, and sometimes by a significant amount. The ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition was overtaken by AMD’s Ryzen AI 9 HX 375 in the HP OmniBook Ultra 14, while the older Intel Core Ultra 7 155H once again outperformed the newer CPU.
However, multi-core performance only reveals a portion of the truth. In Cinebench R15, R20, and R23, the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition demonstrated almost the greatest single-core performance of these laptops, trailing only the HP OmniBook Ultra 14 in each. Although single-threaded performance can be significant, the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition will fall short in this regard as larger workloads progressively utilize the additional cores that most PCs currently have.
Battery life
When a system performs poorly in comparison to its rivals, I typically anticipate that battery life will help it catch up. However, the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition falls short in this area. Without a doubt, it provides a respectable amount of runtime in our battery benchmark, falling just short of 17 hours when playing video. However, systems that can operate for an equal or greater amount of time compete with it. I was hoping Lenovo would surprise the competition again like it did with the ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 and its amazing 23:32 runtime, but it just didn’t.
Conclusion
The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition’s key assets are its great looks and excellent feel. It’s a modestly capable system thanks to the new Lunar Lake processor inside, but it’s not the most reasonable system. At $2,519, it’s incredibly expensive for a system that will force you to settle for mediocre performance and you won’t even get extreme battery life in exchange.
Although there are many things to like about the hardware, there are also many competing laptops that can offer better performance at a lower cost. This one is subject to the ThinkPad tax, so I can only hope Lenovo swiftly implements the kind of steep savings I have seen it apply to almost all of its other computers. Until then, this will not be the best option.
