Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold 16 Review: Inching Closer Toward Broader Appeal

8.0/ 10
SCORE

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold 16

$3,239 at Amazon

Pros

• Folding design is supercool and versatile
• Stunning, 16.3-inch OLED display
• All-in-one mode works well in both landscape and portrait

Cons

• Display feels cramped in laptop mode
• Outdated CPU
• Poor battery life
• Kickstand/keyboard folio adds to already elevated price

Lenovo first had a foldable laptop with the original ThinkPad X1 Fold and its flexible 13-inch display that you could bend in half. Fast forward four years, and the concept of the foldable laptop has yet to catch on. Lenovo's second effort boasts a larger, 16.3-inch display and thinner design, but it's unlikely to start a foldable laptop trend. Even with its expanded display from the original model, the ThinkPad X1 Fold 16 feels too cramped in laptop mode when the display is folded and becomes just a 12-inch screen.

The ThinkPad Fold X1 16's best use is as an undersized all-in-one computer you can fold up and take with you. The same can be said for the other two folding laptops we've reviewed with slightly larger, 17-inch displays: the HP Spectre Foldable PC and the Asus ZenBook 17 Fold OLED. The X1 Fold 16 is the cheapest of the bunch, but it's still far from cheap, starting at $2,500 and easily surpassing $3,000 with an upgrade or two, plus the optional $300 keyboard/kickstand folio that's absolutely necessary. That's still a princely sum for a system based on an outdated, 12th-gen Intel CPU, even one with a stunning and foldable OLED display. 

The baseline Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold 16 starts at $2,499 for a configuration with an Intel Core i5-1240U CPU, 16GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD. It's nice to see 16GB of RAM instead of a mere 8GB here, but I wish the SSD capacity started at 512GB. The 16.3-inch display is an OLED panel with a 2,560x2,024-pixel resolution, 60Hz refresh rate and HDR600 certification. 

Our test system (model 21ES001GUS) costs $3,239 and bumps up the CPU to a Core i7-1250U and the SSD to my desired 512GB. It also includes the $300 kickstand/keyboard folio as well as Windows 11 Pro and an improved warranty, moving from one year of courier or carry-in service to a year of onsite support.

The ThinkPad X1 Fold 16 is listed as coming soon in the UK and Australia.

Folded into a laptop

Because I review laptops rather than tablets or all-in-one PCs, I first tried using the ThinkPad X1 Fold as a laptop -- and was immediately frustrated with the experience. The keyboard snapped neatly in place on the bottom half of the display, and the screen quickly adjusted to fill only the top half. So, kudos to Lenovo for getting that part right, but two things tripped me up with laptop mode. 

The first is the tiny size of the display, which goes from a roomy 16.3-inch panel to an undersized 12-inch screen that's too small for most Windows apps. There's just not enough space from top to bottom. Most websites don't fit well on this size of a display, and I found myself scrolling constantly. Working in laptop mode is also a challenge. Writing in Google Docs means you can see only 20 lines of text -- and that's by using a small, 10-point font. It's worse with Google Sheets, where only 11 spreadsheet lines are visible on the screen. Side-by-side multitasking in laptop mode is to be avoided since you'll need to use most windows at full screen.

The narrow screen on the top half of the folding display means, of course, you get the same narrow area on the bottom half. And that doesn't leave a lot of room for the keyboard. The keys themselves feel roomy enough, and Lenovo even squeezed in a Function row, but this relative roominess comes at the expense of the touchpad and wrist rest, which are exceedingly narrow. My regular swipes to navigate Windows frequently had me reaching the top and bottom edges of the touchpad, but it rarely caused any issues. And I liked the touchpad's haptics; the click response felt natural and accurate. 

I got used to the narrow touchpad, but I never did take a liking to the skinny wrist rest. With the keyboard resting on top of the display, it created a thick front lip that prevented me from ever finding a comfortable typing position. Calling it a wrist rest is a misnomer -- it's hardly a palm rest with part of my palm resting on its slim expanse and the lower part of my palm awkwardly smooshed up against the vertical front edge. And I don't have large hands. If the small screen wasn't your first clue, then the tiny wrist rest is proof: the X1 Fold isn't meant for serious work as a laptop that requires lengthy periods at the keyboard.

Unfolded into a tablet or all-in-one

The X1 Fold is better as an entertainment device as either an overgrown tablet or an undersized all-in-one PC, which is funny because it's a business device. As a tablet, it's best used lying flat on a desk or table rather than cradled in one arm, because it's too heavy to be held for very long. It weighs 2.8 pounds, which is a pound and a half heavier than Apple's largest iPad, the 13-inch, 1.3-pound iPad Pro. 

The X1 Fold's 16.3-inch display provides a huge canvas on which to draw and sketch, and Lenovo includes an active pen with the unit. You can feel a few ripples in the middle of the screen where it folds when passing over it with your finger and especially with the pen. Anyone who's used a folding phone will be familiar with what I'm talking about, and while I got used to this subtle change in texture, I'm not an artist; serious creators may feel otherwise about this inconsistency with the display's surface. When you aren't using the pen, it can be attached magnetically to the top of the display (in landscape orientation).

The X1 Fold makes the most sense as a portable all-in-one, propped up against the separate kickstand with the Bluetooth keyboard in front of it. Unlike the HP Spectre Foldable PC and Asus Zenbook 17 Fold, the X1 Fold 16 lacks a built-in kickstand, so this $300 add-on is a necessary component if you want to use the screen unfolded and not lying flat or held in your hands. This kickstand/keyboard folio comprises two parts, but they can neatly be connected magnetically. It's a smart design to be able to separate the two so you can use the keyboard without it needing to be right up next to the display.

The kickstand can hold the display in either landscape or portrait mode, and I found uses for each orientation, although it tipped over on me a few times when standing tall in portrait mode. I liked landscape mode for writing and answering emails as well as watching YouTube and Netflix, even though the squarish, roughly 4:3 aspect ratio leaves you with wide letterbox bars on the top and bottom of the screen. And I liked portrait mode for web browsing where the vertical layout let me read more and scroll less. When the keyboard wasn't resting on top of the display in laptop mode but simply resting on my desk, it wasn't as thick and was more comfortable to type on.

It's easy to pack up the X1 Fold 16 and go. Just fold the display to close it and then fold down the kickstand on top of the keyboard before plopping the display on top of the keyboard. They connect together magnetically to create a compact, 4.2-pound travel companion. The exterior of each is pleasing to the touch -- a soft, feltlike fabric on the keyboard/kickstand folio and a woven, textured fabric on the X1 Fold itself. This design differs from that of the HP Spectre Foldable PC or Asus Zenbook 17 Fold, each of which folds around the keyboard, sandwiching it when closed.

The X1 Fold 16's OLED display is phenomenal, though, offering stellar contrast, vibrant colors and crisp images. Color performance is strong, with 100% coverage of sRGB and P3 and 95% of AdobeRGB. It's certified for DisplayHDR 600, and it hit an impressive peak brightness of 567 nits in HDR mode -- close to its 600-nit rating. It also achieved 438 nits in SDR, which is plenty bright for most scenarios. The display is bright enough to be viewable outside, but the glossy screen coating can cause glare and reflections and is a detriment to outdoor use.

The X1 Fold has a 5-megapixel webcam that delivers sharp, well-balanced images. Because of the hinges on either side of the display, the camera is on the top only in portrait orientation and off to the side in landscape, which never provides the best angle for video chats. And because the 12th-gen CPU is two generations prior to Intel's current Core Ultra line of AI processors, the X1 Fold 16 lacks Windows Studio Effects -- the impressive AI-assisted effects for automatic framing and background blurring.

About that 12th-gen processor. It suffices for basic use but simply can't compete with today's CPUs, even if you ignore the absence of an NPU for local AI processing. But the same Core i7-1250U here is also inside the HP Spectre Foldable PC and Asus Zenbook Fold. Among the foldables, the X1 Fold proved to be a step ahead of the HP and Asus on our benchmarks, but it had the shortest runtime of the three, lasting a bit longer than five hours on our online streaming battery-drain test. In the charts below, I included the Core Ultra-based HP Spectre x360 14 and the Acer Swift Edge 16, which has an AMD Ryzen 7 7000 series chip, to show the performance edge you'd get from a laptop with a modern CPU from either Intel or AMD.

Ports are minimal but well placed. If you picture the X1 Fold 16 folded in laptop mode, then you'll find a single USB-C port on each side and another on the top. Two of the three are Thunderbolt 4 ports, and the other offers a 10Gbps USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 connection. The Thunderbolt 4 ports are clearly labeled with the lightning bolt logo, so you can easily tell which is which.

With the ThinkPad X1 Fold 16, we are one step closer to getting a foldable laptop that's more than just a curiosity for deep-pocketed early adopters. Its design is sleeker than that of the thick and clunky Asus Zenbook 17 Fold, and its price is much more reasonable than the $5,000 that HP wants for the Spectre Foldable PC.

Refinements still need to be made, however, before the foldable laptop gets well beyond the proof-of-concept stage and enters the mass market. The display must be larger than a meager 12 inches in laptop mode, and the design still needs to be thinner and lighter for tablet mode and travel. A thinner and lighter design would also make the device less likely to tip over when it's propped up on the kickstand while being used as an all-in-one. Lastly, the price needs to drop below $2,000, and the CPU needs to be something approaching a current generation.