> This looks like a good clone of Air, and I haven't seen Acer/Lenovo/Dell manage to do that yet.

Clearly it's not a cheap product, but the Lenovo Thinkpad Carbon X1 is razor thin, high powered, well built, and very good looking.

Maybe I'm missing something?

I cannot trust Lenovo being competent at what they do after superfish, I wonder how can any of the readers of hacker news still think of buying from them... (this doesn't mean that competitors are competent or anything, but being caught like they were undermines my basic trust threshold)

> I cannot trust Lenovo being competent at what they do after superfish, I wonder how can any of the readers of hacker news still think of buying from them.

It was certainly a giant blunder, but like all of these issues they are Windows only, and usually only if you use the factory OS image.

Like most(?) of the HN crowd not using Apple products, I run Linux, so that kind of stuff doesn't affect me at all. I assume the remaining ones reinstall using their own installation-media too?

It doesn't excuse Lenovo's behaviour and certainly can make you question their judgement, but all in all, I'm one of those who are putting less weight on this issue than others may do.

What matters most to me, are the practical aspects: what can this product do for me? And Carbon X1 Thinkpads are among the best lightweight laptops out there.

No, it's not only if you use the factory OS image: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/08/12/lenovo_firmware_nast... - it is, indeed, only if you use Windows for now. But there was a time where pressing the "restore" key on the IdeaPad (yes, there was one, that starts a windows restore) would bork a Linux install.

ThinkPad hardware is OK, but it's very hard to trust Lenovo with anything these days. A good summary I found while looking for the above link is http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/now-three-pre-installed-malware...

> It was certainly a giant blunder, but like all of these issues they are Windows only, and usually only if you use the factory OS image.

Don't forget that your hardware vendor is also responsible for firmware. Not saying that Lenovo is special in any way here, but delivering terrible software on the factory OS image might have implications for software quality in general.

Lenovo actually has a moderately good track record here - they have shipped firmware updates that fixed Linux-only issues.

Unfortunately, nothing comes close to ThinkPads. I dislike Lenovo a lot and would ditch them at first chance. No vendor wants to be that chance though. (Proper keyboard, 3-physical-button pad/point, not too hot, etc.)

I'm not too concerned about Superfish - that was only the consumer junk, right? The BIOS-Windows-auto-install stuff was more concerning. But hey, little choices. Lenovo is certainly incompetent - look at the X240/T440 with the terrible pad design they backtracked on (obvious). Or the Carbon keyboards they ended up ditching.

> Proper keyboard, 3-physical-button pad/point, not too hot

HP's ZBooks? You can even replace almost any component inside. I got the first generation model (15") and it's very good. Sure, it's not light and slim.

What thinkpad would u get today? I looked into the T460 but (a) they seem to have many variants within the same model and (b) I saw too many negative reviews online.

The T440p was bulky, hot - total shit. The graphics were super weak, and the screen was utter junk. Dunno if the newer ones are considerably better; they probably fixed a lot.

The X250 is pretty good, though you get a keyboard at random and will need to replace the part (always get next business day warranty) if you get one of the junk ones. Otherwise it's a nice laptop - I've not seen anything I like more (though it could be better, of course; a 3:2 screen for starters).

I've used a T450s, and the keyboard feels fantastic on it. At 3K res it'd probably real nice. Unless you need a specific CPU/GPU, stick with the X260/T460s (s for slim). Perhaps compare reviews to the X250/T450s to see if it got worse?

Assuming you don't need high-end power (like quad core), it's more of a preference if you want a small 12" or a larger screen. I dock my X250 and it seems fine, even driving a higher-pixel external monitor. I'd go for the X260, but if software support was better for hiDPI I might consider the T450s. (If they had centred keyboards without numpad, maybe even a 15" model.)

Edit: FWIW when using it in laptop mode, I run CPU throttled to 50% or less to keep it cool. I have the cheaper i5-5200U option and it's fine for emacs/VS/browsing. At full power it can play Dolphin emulator Smash Brothers Brawl and Melee at full speed, but just barely.

The T460p is a very good deal if you want something light, powerful and extensible for a very good price. You can get a version with a quad-core i7, dedicated Nvidia graphics card and 3k display for about 1400 USD. Combined with a three-year guarantee it's a very good deal I'd say, and much better than what most other manufacturers (including Dell and Apple) offer for this price. I also own an X1 Carbon, which is a great laptop but a little underpowered for my needs (and hard/impossible to upgrade).

How's the heat on the T460p? Can you use it for light work without the keyboard heating up at all?

it heats up a bit under heavy load, but not more than my earlier Thinkpads.

The X1 Carbon is much cooler but also less powerful ;)

x1 carbon, definitely. i'm using the 1st gen carbon at work, and other than the sadly crappy battery life it's been a wonderful machine

Don't forget the Ctrl - Fn key swap.

On some Lenovo models they are the same size (and can be swapped), but not on the Carbon X1.

I assume this was implemented to improve usability for people with short fingers. As someone with tiny fingers, I would rather have a huge Ctrl key and a tiny fn key

I'm in the same boat. Additionally there is a huge immunity of people running Linux on the thinkpads which make it easier to pick the right components when buying, and sovle and find work around when you do hit a problem.

I know this is probably auto-correct, but find it hilarious that you misspelled 'community' as 'immunity' :-)

That's easy: Who cares what Lenovo installs on their hardware? Whatever is on there is coming off as soon as I get it. And their hardware is excellent for the price.

I think the thing with Lenovo is, their hardware is sometimes excellent for the price. It's like they are Intel with a tick-tock cadence except the ticks are all complete duds. Just make sure to wait for a new model to accumulate at least 6 months of solid reviews before pulling the trigger.

I've been getting ThinkPads on corporate refresh cycles for 15 years and after they sold to Lenovo, I never know if a new machine will turn out to be a flaky piece of junk or totally solid and well built. Seems like it's always one or the other.

Yeah, you are totally right.

You can't necessarily remove it. For example, there's a mechanism called the Windows Binary Platform Table that automatically copies an EXE from the UEFI image and executes it with kernel-level privileges on each boot. It's intended to be used to deliver drivers or anti-theft software after a clean install, but Lenovo was using it to deliver malware, and there's nothing you can do about it unless you have a signed image without the malware included.

http://thenextweb.com/insider/2015/08/12/lenovo-used-a-hidde...

But the second this news broke, Lenovo backed our immediately and issued a firmware update removing the bloatware.

At least this issue should be solved.

> I cannot trust Lenovo being competent at what they do after superfish

That was not on the business line. I.e. it did not impact thinkpads, which is what people usually buy on HN anyway.

It still speaks to the leadership culture at the organization. At some point, someone okayed Superfish. That's not alright.

I have tried a bunch of Macbook Air competitors, but none of them have a trackpad as good as MacBook.

I have bought/used a lot of high end ($2000+) windows notebooks: acer, asus, MSI. The trackpads all suck. Seriously, it is insane - macs had a working mouse in 1984!

You bought all the junk. Thinkpads and expensive Dells and HPs are good. So is the surface book. The brands you listed are good at making low quality laptops. Their high end sucks. Lenovo's high end is top-notch and their low end is not as good as Acer's for example.

Didn't he say he bought high-end $2000+ machines? Then you come in saying he bought junk and should be buying high-end... something doesn't add up.

the comment you replied to said that the specific brands mentioned have bad high-end offerings, so if they want to buy high-end and get their money worth they should look elsewhere.

In a life long ago, I was responsible for an office full of Thinkpads, not long after Lenovo spun off from IBM. These were machines that "just worked", and if there was a problem, their on-site service was legendary. I never had to worry about them.

I now own a 3rd-gen X1 Carbon for personal use. After my experience with it, I'll never buy or recommend Lenovo again. Months of waiting on backordered parts (for their flagship laptop), repeat visits from their service center, and the end result is finally a laptop that mostly works, but is starting a slow death very early because of cheap plastic construction and tight tolerances that aren't so tight after a few months of use. I've had it a year and a half (I bought it the week it came out); I'll be lucky if it makes it to two years without another significant problem.

Terrible experience all the way around. It looks pretty on the website, but it's not built to last like their older products were, and their service is a shadow of its former self.

An Air clone to me would have a metal body as that's a pretty defining characteristic.

For me the important aspect of an "Air laptop" would be that it is lightweight.

And Carbon Fibre is certainly more lightweight than aluminium, and may be stronger as well. As such, the Carbon X1 certainly qualifies.

Carbon Fibre isn't a good enough 'tech wank' material?

Could even be better. I didn't say anything about the value of the laptop, just whether or not I consider it a macbook air clone.

You may be missing its price - $1142.10[1].

[1] http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/x-series/x1-ca...

They stated "Clearly it's not a cheap product"

The Carbon X1 is probably positioned as a competitor to some non-existent Macbook Air/Pro hybrid, and it does have a pricing thereafter. It will certainly have to be more expensive than a plain Air, with its weak CPU and otherwise lackluster specs.

That said, I still find complaints about the X1's price from an Apple-user funny. Whenever people in the past people was critical towards the pricing of Apple products, the response was always "Real quality costs money" and "It's worth it".

Is that no longer so? And is a quality higher than that provided by Apple unimaginable?

Acer/Lenovo/Dell can't risk getting sued by Apple.

Xiaomi is a Chinese company they don't care since if they ever do get sued the Chinese court will always side with the Chinese company.

The again if the clone works just as well as the original I don't really care but this would have been a really good chance to copy and improve.

Lenovo is also a Chinese company, no?

And Acer is Taiwanese.

Taiwan isn't China. Completely different legal structure.

And Lenovo is a Chinese company, but I guess they've made the cost-benefit analysis that they have more to lose getting sued by Apple in the US for copying their products than they have to gain by selling a cheap Macbook knockoff in an already very competitive Chinese market.

The difference is that Lenovo and Acer sell to US market whereas Xiaomi does not. This means that they have something to loose. Xiaomi will be in big trouble if they ever try to break into a market outside of China (and other places with weak IP laws).

China and Taiwan are two different countries in practice (despite claims China makes to the contrary).

Taiwan has robust rule of law, unlike china.

Lenovo inherited its entire design style from the IBM sale. A modern thinkpad isn't that different from one from 2003. Lenovo doesn't need to copy anyone. Its designs are already considered classic and unique to their brand.

Xiaomi is the new kid on the block and just copies Apple designs. Some examples:

http://www.iphonehacks.com/2014/07/xiaomi-copying-apple.html

Also they have no legitimate sales channel in the US/EU, so there's a jurisdiction issue with a lawsuit. Apple knows it can't just march into China and win a lawsuit. Acer and Lenovo sell in the US/EU, so they have to play ball with our IP laws.

If you do business together in a country, you have to follow the laws of that country. Xiaomi does no "official" business here and there is nothing for apple to sue.

Well, if we're talking copies, then Airs are just a scaled-up version of the eeepc - same 'sharp wedge' shape (that is apparently why Lenovo X1s are being called clones of Airs).

The eeepc was the thing that proved there was enough interest for a low-power-but-mobile computer, which ended up turning into the tablet market. Crappy build quality, but people went berserk for them.

> same 'sharp wedge' shape

Really? Here's one [0] from approximately when the Air came out and looks not even remotely similar to me in shape.

[0] https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ASUS_Eee_PC_PIC_09...

> ...but people went berserk for them (eeepc).

And how!!! My ex-boss read the press announcement on a flight (sometime in 2011?) and went gung ho. On coming back, he got me to inquire with our regular/local hardware vendors. Turned out nobody (in our small city) had even heard of it, so the inquiry was escalated to the largest city of our state. Still nothing. Finally, he actually got a staffer to fly to Mumbai and get him a piece.

Within the next few weeks, he bought not less than 7 more, to gift them away to family and friends!! Yes, berserk is right. :-)

The original Linux based 701? Or more recent XP based variants?

What are you misssing in a Dell XPS 13?

I have both air and xps 13 and to me they are not even comparable. Yes, thin bezel looks cool at the first glance but that's about it. Instead of metal under your hand you have this weird something, keyboard works much worse, they did not even make reasonable handle to open the laptop like there is in macbook air. Also the power supply is chunky and you cannot fold it nicely.

Don't get me wrong, it's a really good laptop and I've chosen it over so many others on the market. I would probably still choose it for my linux laptop (lenovo x1 is neat but I'm done with lenovo with all the stuff they've done lately). It just looks poorly to me in a direct comparison.

$$$ mostly. XPS13 is as pricey as Macbook Air

I can second that. I am using XPS 15 and dual booted Ubuntu along side Windows 10. On Windows, some apps icons and texts are pixelated because of the 4k display (it reminds me of the time when the very first Retina Macbook Pro came out). Aside from that, pretty solid and fast laptop, given the size and the spec (can go up to 32 GB RAM + i7 CPU).

I have a Samsung Series 9 15" from 2011 - well built, stylish, decent specs and still serving me well!

https://www.google.com/search?site=&tbm=isch&q=samsung+serie...

Not sure, but maybe I say that because I'm a happy Sputnik (xps 13 w/Ubuntu) owner.

Though to be honest there is a small issue with coil whine in very quiet settings. I hear Dell has addressed this in newer models.

A laptop that's pleasing to the eyes.

Is this: http://spadkobiercy.nazwa.pl/XPS13/7.jpg seriously not pleasing?

Not particularly. There are still lots of "bits" to it - colours, materials, vents, contours, etc. So few companies actually get rid of them, but it looks so much better when they do.

There's no venting or contours, and just two materials: meta and carbon fibre. Personally, I find the carbon fibre much more pleasant to rest my wrists on than metal and it looks quite nice in person. The thing that looks like venting on the left edge is actually a battery indicator. I'd get rid of it, personally, but that's my only real complaint about its looks.

The plastic/fake metal transition is really ugly

It's real metal, and carbon fibre (rather than plastic).

Carbon fiber is a reinforced plastic.

And yeah this laptop looks nice anyway.

Doesn't matter, still looks cheap. It's too much of a seam if you see what I'm saying

There are a few things here I could nitpick about. I'm never really a fan of the textured look of the material surrounding the keyboard - I don't know why so many people who design laptops opt for this. Would much prefer just a solid matte black, no texture. Also I don't understand why the bottom of the laptop and lid are one color and the inside is another - why? I think a single color across the entire laptop would look way better.

Sure, it's a lot sleeker than most laptops (not made by Apple), but its design leaves me asking a ton of "why did they choose that?" kind of questions.

It looks very nice to me.

The question is how it looks after six months of use.

I dont like the shape of it :) That triangular body (or trapezoid in this case?) is not pleasing to my eyes. It could also be that its just something to get used to, but still.

I don't want to spoil your fun but the Macbook Air's shape is even more pointed: http://as-images.apple.com/is/image/AppleInc/aos/published/i...

Do you assume anyone who doesn't like the look of any Windows device must be an apple fan?

Not at all, but the submission's title is literally "Xiaomi’s first laptop is a Macbook Air rival" and this discussion started with the question what's wrong about the Dell XPS13 that makes it worse than the Macbook Air, so I think it's fair that to point out that the design characteristic in question is found in both devices.

In any case, what does being a fan have to do with appreciating good design? I'm no fan of Apple either, but I appreciate their product design nonetheless. I'm not sure why your reaction was that sharp.

I don't typically buy ultra-think notebooks (or really many notebooks in general) but I've had good experiences with Asus if you want that "85% of a MacBook quality for 50% of the price" thing.

Last laptop I bought was due to needing something for occasional DJ and projection graphics projects. Since it needed to be mobile, even a small form factor desktop build was not really feasible so I went looking for the best thing I could grab at Microcenter for under a grand.

Now this was a few years ago so the specs aren't top notch anymore but for just under $1000 I got an Asus that's not quite all metal (bottom half of the shell is plastic but the rest is aluminum), 1920x1080 screen (but worse viewing angles than a premium display), an i7 processor, 16GB RAM, and the mobile variant of the then-current class of nVidia GPUs (because I needed something that could handle all of the OpenGL stuff I was messing with). The only other sucky part was it came with a HDD instead of a SSD but at some point I'll upgrade the SSD in my desktop and hand that one down to the laptop.

The nearest competing Apple notebook at the time (at least 1920x1080, i7, 16GB RAM, and discrete graphics) would've run me about $2500. Build would've been better, display would've been a bit better, and if it had a SSD or one of those hybrid drives, that obviously beats spinning platters.

But none of those things (or all of them together) was worth spending more than double. If it was going to be my only machine for everything I'd have probably paid the premium for an Apple or another higher-end notebook with nicer display and SSD but for a secondary computer at around $950-ish it is still running perfectly when I need to take something on the road.

Asus is particularly adept not only at providing a good value but actually innovating in the Windows ecosystem. The Vivo AiO, for example, is a fantastic hybrid—part iMac, part Wacom tablet and with a wireless phone charging ability to boot. It doesn't seem like that should work, but the screen is actually rock solid and without wobble while drawing on it with the pen.

https://www.asus.com/AllinOne-PCs/Vivo-AiO-V230IC/

It has wireless charging and NFC build into the base, wow! That's really well thought out. I'm not too sold on the iMac-style monitor computers, but I admit they seems to have done a lot right when making the Vivo AiO.

On some of the models you're describing the motherboard is soldered to the chassis, that makes changing the HDD a bit perileous. Apart from that point I echo the sentiment. These are (were?) great little laptops for the price point/form factor

> On some of the models you're describing the motherboard is soldered to the chassis

Ew. What purpose does that serve?

Afaict, it only teaches you a good lesson about voiding warranties and looking before prying the whole thing apart. (Almost destroyed mine opening it up to clean up the airways)

Not much otherwise.

Exactly. I have long wanted to switch back to windows, and this is the first one that makes me smile (I am price sensitive:-)

ASUS ZenBook 3: https://www.asus.com/Notebooks/ASUS-ZenBook-3-UX390UA/

At the very least, Lenovo and Dell are innovating and making attractive, eye popping products that don't copy Apple at all. Copying is a poor strategy that in the end run gets you nowhere, you end up not being able to differentiate yourself other than being a copycat that's one step behind.

XPS 13?