Lenovo’s ThinkPad series has a loyal fanbase, and for good reason. The laptops usually offer reliable performance, excellent keyboards and long-lasting batteries that make them great, well-rounded machines. The company also improved its displays lately and attempted to refresh its classic, almost boring design to keep the ThinkPads looking modern while maintaining a distinct look.
After years of iterative tweaks that focus on making its laptops thinner and lighter, Lenovo has hit a milestone. The X1 Nano is its lightest ThinkPad yet and weighs less than 2 pounds. It’s one of the company’s first to meet Intel’s Evo certification for compact, lightweight and powerful laptops. For $1,399, the Nano offers a 16:10 display, a physical webcam shutter and a new 11th-gen Intel processor. But the most outstanding feature is its weight. The question then is: What did Lenovo have to sacrifice to make the Nano so light?
Pros
- Light and sturdy build
- Exquisite keyboard
- Physical webcam shutter
- Good performance
Cons
- Short battery life
- Only two USB-C ports
- Somewhat sluggish trackpad
Design
On the surface, at least, it doesn’t seem as if Lenovo had to cut corners on build quality. The Nano looks nearly identical to the X1 Carbon I reviewed in 2019 and feels nearly as light. But of course, I’m not a scale (in case you weren’t aware) — according to Lenovo the X1 Carbon (2019) is 2.4 pounds while the Nano comes in at 1.99 pounds. Meanwhile, the latest Dell XPS 13 measures 2.64 pounds , while the MacBook Air M1 and the latest HP Spectre x360 13 both weigh 2.8 pounds. Even Samsung’s super thin Galaxy Book Flex is heavier at 2.54 pounds.
Gallery: ThinkPad X1 Nano review pictures | 10 Photos
Gallery: ThinkPad X1 Nano review pictures | 10 Photos
Despite being so light, the Nano is surprisingly sturdy and exhibited little flex, making it easy to hold and use with one hand as I walked around my apartment multitasking. Like all ThinkPads, this machine meets military spec standards (MIL-STD-810H) for durability so it can survive some rough handling. Personally, I like the matte finish, which is clean-looking for now, though based on the X1 Carbon I’ve had for almost two years this won’t remain pristine forever.
There are two USB-C Thunderbolt 4 slots and a headphone jack on the left edge, and a power button on the right. That’s it. If you need more connections, you’ll need to invest in a dongle. I wish Lenovo had placed the power button on the keyboard deck where it would be easier to access, but that’s a small gripe.
What the Nano does have on its keyboard deck is a small fingerprint sensor next to the trackpad, which offers an alternative biometric login in addition to face-recognition via the camera above the display. I like that Lenovo included a physical shutter for the webcam, too. None of these biometric login options are new to the ThinkPad series, by the way. It’s just nice to know that the company didn’t sacrifice any of these things to make the Nano lighter.