Hardware

If you have a soft spot in your heart for the iconic ThinkPad design, the X1 will probably strike your fancy while it's in laptop mode. It has a minimalist black metal case, a fairly spacious keyboard and heck, there's even the love-it-or-hate-it bright red TrackPoint. It's a subdued design that reminds me of a classic, business-oriented Windows laptop.
But of course, it's much more than that: Its keyboard is ultrathin and completely removable. There's also a kickstand on the back of the tablet. And, lest you forget, it's as much a tablet as it is a laptop. It doesn't look as ultramodern as the Surface devices, but it's no less impressive. Toeing the line between respecting ThinkPad tradition and pushing entirely new form factors is tough, but the X1 Tablet manages it well.
Thanks to its 12-inch screen, it's fairly hefty for a tablet, clocking in at 1.7 pounds. Together with the keyboard case, it weighs 2.35 pounds. That's almost exactly the same as the Surface Pro 4 (a part of me wonders if Lenovo is trying to prove it can go toe-to-toe with Microsoft). It's significantly heavier than standalone 10-inch tablets like the iPad Air, but it's only around 0.1 pounds heavier than the 12.9-inch iPad Pro. In a way, the X1 is the antithesis than the iPad Pro: It can be a tablet when you need it, but most people would be buying it as an ultraportable laptop.