At the Lenovo ThinkPad 2021 Spring launch event in Beijing, Lenovo announced three products in the X1 series. Today, we finally have a review of the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 6. The ThinkPad series is Lenovo’s choice for business and student users. As a result, the company has not equipped the series with the best charger, which has been a problem for many users.
However, Lenovo has listened to the market and equipped this new thin and light laptop with a better charger. If you are a loyal Lenovo user, this is the first impression that the ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen will bring to you. The laptop comes with a compact charger that weighs only 307g. Compared to the original 339g charger, this new charger not only reduces the weight by 30g, but also reduces the length and thickness of the charger. The charger also supports the PD charging protocol and has a maximum power capacity of 65W. Since the device supports USB Type-C ports, you can use one charger for multiple devices.
Specifications
| Screen | 14″ FHD+ (1920 x 1200) IPS, anti-glare, touchscreen, 400 nits, TÜV Rheinland-certified for reduced blue light emissions, LP140WU1-SPB1 |
| Processor | Intel’s 11th gen Core i7-1165G7 10nm chip (2.8GHz 4 cores and 8 threads) |
| Wireless Connection | Intel AX201 WiFi 6 802.11 AX, Bluetooth 5.1 |
| Graphics card | Intel Iris Xe Graphics |
| Memory | 16 LPDDR4x 4266MHz |
| Storage | 512GB PCIe SSD |
| Camera | Hybrid infrared (IR) 720p HD with webcam privacy shutter |
| Ports |
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| Battery | 57Whr (MM18) that supports a rapid charging USB-C 65W power adapter |
| OS | Windows 10 Home |
| Weight | 1.35kg |
Design and Appearance
Lenovo has made significant improvements in the appearance of this device. The company used an all-aluminum design for this laptop with a brushed finish on most of its four sides. The brushed finish of the ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 6 provides a premium feel and a good grip. Additionally, the designers have chamfered the corners of the different surfaces and ports.
The appearance of this device looks very sharp and angular, but when you touch it, it doesn’t feel like cutting your hands. Of course, this is not possible without superb workmanship. Because the color of the brushed part of the body is the silver-gray of the aluminum material itself, you don’t have to worry about paint falling off when using this device. However, like its predecessors, the paint job on this laptop is top-notch.
Due to the new all-metal body design, users may be concerned about two things: power leakage and weight. In response to the question about power leakage, Lenovo claims that it has done a proper job so that there is no leakage. In our review, we used the laptop for several hours with the power supply connected, and there was no leakage or even a tingling sensation. However, Lenovo recommends that we only use chargers that meet the device’s national standards. The company says, “If you use a national standard-compliant circuit and plug a national standard-compliant three-pin power plug into a national standard power outlet, this ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 6 won’t feel like it’s leaking any electricity.”
The laptop weighs about 1.4 kg, and with the original power adapter, the travel weight is only 1.7 kg. Of course, we can’t say that this device is very light, but it won’t cause too much trouble for mobile work.
The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 6 can seamlessly switch from a laptop to a tablet, thanks to its 360-degree hinge.
Display
If the changes in design and appearance don’t impress you, we’re sure that the changes in the display won’t disappoint you. First of all, you can see that the huge bottom bezel that users have complained about for years is gone. The device comes with a 14-inch 2-in-1 touchscreen laptop with a 16:10 display ratio and an 83% aspect ratio.
The bezels of the ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 6 aren’t as narrow as one might expect. Of course, there is space for improvement, but it also avoids light leakage around ultra-narrow bezels. The overall feel of this display is quite good, and it’s a solid improvement over its predecessor.
There is an integrated IR camera at the top of the screen with a ThinkShutter and HPD sensor. While we can use the Glance program to achieve a similar function to the HPD auto-lock screen with the infrared camera, the HPD sensor also provides a contactless face recognition auto-login feature. Because the functions are controlled directly from the hardware layer, the HPD sensor can operate independently of any third-party software. In addition, all parameters are managed directly in the BIOS. This makes it very energy efficient. There are four array microphone openings at the top of the screen. These microphones support hardware-integrated noise immunity, so there is no need to rely on software algorithms to implement noise immunity. This is a necessary feature for anyone who regularly uses a laptop for web conferencing.
The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 6 supports a stylus (ThinkPad Pen Pro) and has a slot for the stylus. This prevents accidental loss of the stylus and puts this laptop one step ahead of the competition in terms of stylus design. Additionally, when the stylus is in the compartment, it can be continuously charged. This means you don’t even have to think about charging the stylus. Plug it into the slot in your laptop and charge it.
The stylus is thin, short, and small. However, it is a very active device with electromagnetic response and support for the Wacom protocol. The device also supports 4096-level pressure sensing, making it very responsive to touch while writing.
The ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 6 uses an LG display with model number LP140WU1-SPB1. It is a 14-inch custom monitor with a resolution of 1920 x 1200. The monitor supports the NTSC-C color gamut, anti-harmful blue light, and HDR video streaming, with a maximum brightness of 418 nits in SDR mode. It has a contrast ratio of close to 1700:1. The screen’s native gamma is 2.23, while the native color temperature is 6800K.
The color gamut is 97.8% sRGB, 72% Adobe RGB, and 73% DCI-P3 when color-corrected to the sRGB color standard. The DeltaE, color temperature, gamma, and grayscale balance are perfect for all colors except blue when compared to the sRGB standard. Compared to the NTSC-C standard, all indicators are perfect. We can say that this screen is very comfortable to use on the Windows OS.
Keyboard
On the keyboard end, the first thing you will notice is that it has the same color as the body. The silver-gray polished ThinkPad logo gives the palm rest a qualitative leap forward. Compared to the complicated color scheme on the palmrest of the 5th-generation model, the texture of the palmrest of the sixth-generation model is a significant improvement in design.
Interestingly, the keycaps are also made of metal, but they are well-polished and offer a very smooth feel. Furthermore, Lenovo has also reintroduced the fingerprint sensor, which is integrated into the power button. Compared to the previous fingerprint reader that was placed under the keyboard, this design is much easier to access.
There is plenty of space for the fingerprint sensor on the right side of the device. However, the company chooses to place it with the power button. This means that in tablet mode, the user has to lift the screen to access the fingerprint sensor. Whether you are unlocking the device or need to perform biometric authentication, you will need to lift the screen to access it. This is not entirely thoughtful of Lenovo.
The FnLock, F1, and CapsLock keys on the keyboard have status lights. The status lights for F1 and CapsLock are located in the upper right corner.
FnLock’s status lights are located on the right side of the top and bottom centers. This is a bit strange because the status light of FnLock can be placed on the right side of the keycap, like the other two buttons.
Furthermore, the keyboard is spill-resistant, which means you don’t have to worry about drinking coffee while writing. If you accidentally spill your coffee on your keyboard, there’s no need to worry. Additionally, the keyboard has a wider 110mm/4.33″ trackpad. Finally, the keyboard supports a backlight with white LED lighting.
Ports
The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 6 has eight ports spread across both sides. On the left side, there are two Thunderbolt 4 ports, a USB 3.2 Gen 1 port, and an HDMI 2.0 port.
On the right side, there’s an anti-theft lock hole (Kensington lock slot), a USB 3.2 Gen 1 port, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and a storage garage for the stylus (it’s not a connectivity slot). Lenovo recommends using the Thunderbolt 4 port as close to the hinge as possible, as the charging port supports 45W and 65W PD charging protocols.
Hardware
To access the hardware of the device, the back cover is easy to open. All you need to do is unscrew the five screws on the bottom and carefully loosen the rear, left, and right wing clips, and you’re done. After removing the bottom cover, you will see that the cooling system adopts a new single heat pipe and dual-fan structure. The company has developed a unique design for the fan blades to reduce resonance and noise effectively.
The CPU of the device is an Intel 11th-generation Core i7-1165G7 low-voltage chip, based on the Tiger Lake core and built on a 10 nm process. The chip has 4 cores and 8 threads with a base frequency of 2.8 GHz. The thermal design power consumption reaches 28W, while PL1 and PL2 are both 64W. PL1 is the effective long-term expected steady-state power consumption of the processor, while PL2 is the short-term maximum power consumption of the processor.
The CPU integrates an Iris Xe core graphics that operates at 2GHz, and it also has 96 execution units. The model we reviewed comes with 16GB of LPDDR4x RAM and operates at a maximum frequency of 4266 MHz. It also has a 512GB SSD.
In addition, the network card is an Intel AX201, and there is a free M.2 port that can be used to place a WWAN network card.
The battery comes from Sunwoda and has a capacity of 57Wh. There is a Rest button on the left side. If something goes wrong with the computer, you can use a thimble to poke a hole in the side of the device to restart it. There is a speaker in the lower left and right corners of the keyboard area, as well as a speaker on the left and right sides. There are a total of four speakers left on this laptop.
The speakers in the ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 6 are also Dolby Atmos certified. While I’ve previously said that the ThinkPad’s audio is good enough for work but not good enough for entertainment, the sound of this X1 Yoga is very good. However, the company has made some improvements in the sound aspect. The overall soundstage is widened while continuing to ensure that vocals are sufficiently prominent. The separation between high and low frequencies is also good. However, the low frequencies are a bit weak. The sound looks a bit scattered due to harmonic distortion. If you want to enjoy the sound output, we recommend wearing headphones.
Performance testing
Next, let’s look at the performance of your laptop. Using the Cinebench R23 benchmark, the Core i7-1165G7 scored 4,900 in multi-core and 1,450 in single-core in both laptop and tablet modes.
In tablet mode, probably due to the cooling strategy, it scored 4,250 for multi-core and 1,370 for single-core in average performance power mode. However, in Best Performance mode, the device runs close to desktop mode, which is very impressive.
In the PCMark10 test, the highest score in tablet mode was 5240 in (Laptop – Best Performance) mode, while the lowest score was 4955 in (Tablet – Average Performance) mode. The overall score is still relatively stable.
Let’s take a look at the graphics card’s capabilities. In the Time Spy test, the highest score was 1774, and the lowest score was 1720. In the Fire Strike test, the highest score is 4865, and the lowest score is 4300.
In the Wide Life and Wild Life Extreme tests, the highest scores are 12,585 and 3,590, respectively, and the lowest scores are 12,359 and 3,497, respectively. In Night Raid, the highest score is 17,839, while the lowest score is 14,605.
The GPU is pretty good. The ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 6 doesn’t struggle when playing 4K 60 fps high-bitrate H265 videos, and the video decoding ability is quite strong.
Battery Life and Power Consumption
In the AIDA64 test, in the “average performance” power mode, the desktop mode can emit up to 25W at 3.8GHz. However, the tablet mode will emit up to 13W of power at 2.97GHz. In “best performance” power mode, the desktop mode can release 4.09W at 27GHz, while tablet mode can release up to 22W at 3.68GHz.
In addition, the noise control capability of the new generation dual-fan cooling system was also evident in the stress test. When the fan is running at full speed, the noise level does not exceed 45 dB in desktop mode, while in tablet mode, the noise level is less than 40 dB.
I turned on the WiFi and adjusted the screen brightness to 50%. I used the PCMark 8 Office scenario for the battery life test.
The X1 Yoga’s performance in peak performance mode is 3 hours and 28 minutes. In average performance mode, the battery lasted 5 hours and 5 minutes. However, in the popular power-saving mode, the result is 8 hours and 22 minutes. It can meet the needs of a full day of office work.
CPU Temperature
Paying attention to the CPU temperature during the performance test reveals that the temperature is constantly fluctuating. This is because there was a sudden drop in frequency during the test. For this purpose, I placed two types of thermal grease that have excellent thermal conductivity. The Shin-Etsu 7868 keeps the device stable in all modes, and the pressure CPU is stable at 25W and 4.09GHz. In this configuration, Cinebench R23 has a maximum score of 5412 in the multi-core test, while a single-core score is 1509. This is slightly higher than the previous highest multi-core score of 5356 and single-core score of 1501 points, while using raw silicone grease. If possible, if you’re good at it, I recommend replacing the silicone grease yourself.
However, even after replacing the grease, the CPU still seems to be underclocked when running Cinebench R23. After a period of CPU operation, the frequency drops suddenly, but it quickly returns to its original computing level in a very short time. After a period of strong performance, it experiences another sudden drop in frequency. After about 5 minutes, it picked up again.
Conclusion
When it comes to thin and light laptops, we don’t expect the best computing frequency and performance, but at least an average. Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga 6th Generation does that, and it’s just enough for business and academic work.
