Apple Silicon MBP M1 vs Lenovo X1 Carbon Gen 9 By Mash IT

Hi, this is David at mash it now, following on from our recent x1 carbon gen 9 review, we've had a few people in the comments requesting we compared this laptop up against the m1 MacBook Pro now we do aim to please, so tonight we're going to look at both of these laptops. Now, there's no mistaking either of these machines they're, both iconic designs for their own reasons. On the left. We have the new Apple Silicon, m1 MacBook Pro 13 inches, there's literally no choice of specs for this one. You either buy it at the eight core. Eight GPU core, with eight gigabyte ram, and the only upgrade you can do, is to 16 gigabytes of ram, and you can also configure the SSD sizes and on the right we have the x1 carbon gen 9.

This is a 14-inch laptop. Both these are the 1610 screen, which is quite good when comparing them now with the x1 carbon gen 9, you do get a lot more configuration options. When you are buying it, you can configure the screen that you're using on the machine, you can add more ram. You can add more SSDs a wan card, so there's quite a lot of options when you're configuring these laptops now we're looking at both of these straight away. We want to talk about the price quickly now the MacBook Pro.

This is the base model. This cost me uh 1 299 pounds in the UK. I believe it's about the same in dollars so 1299 in comparison, the ThinkPad x1 carbon cost about 1600 pounds with a discount. Now this is the i7 16 gigabytes of ram with 256 gig SSD and just the 1200p map display. So it is a lot more expensive than the MacBook Pro.

So bear that in mind when we go through this review now, as always with ThinkPads in general or Lenovo in general, there's always discounts in the UK. We don't get great discounts on their laptops, but I know in the United States or other countries. They do offer some great discounts. So if you're going to buy a Lenovo, ThinkPad make sure you're looking out for those discount codes. First right, let's compare the two laptops now.

This will be naturally slightly smaller because it's a 13.3-inch screen in comparison to a 14. So what I'm going to just do is quickly pop them on top of each other, so that we can see the difference in size. You can see straight away. We've got probably about 50 millimeters difference or maybe about two-thirds of an inch difference on the depth of the laptop and the same on the side. So it's a little chunkier, but you've got that bigger screen in regard to the height.

If I just run my hands over it there, you can see that the actual ThinkPad is a little higher than the MacBook Pro it tapers slightly towards the front, but even at its like most narrow point, it's still a couple of mils higher than the actual MacBook Pro now build quality. The MacBook Pro is a one-piece sort of machined aluminum sort of chassis. It's obviously an iconic apple design, they've been using it for years. It's had very few tweaks over the years. Furthermore, it's just literally just slimmed down, but the actual style has remained the same.

Now, on the right hand, side the ThinkPad, x1 carbon, it's got the usual soft touch finish, and it's like a magnesium sort of frame, so it's again still very hard wearing, and it is iconic if you're used to thinking pads. I mean they kept this sort of look and design for years, although they've, again slimmed down and the ports have changed. The actual look of these laptops have remained pretty consistent with the sort of the blacks, the boxy look, the soft touch and the ThinkPad sort of logo with a light up little dot above the eye. I personally love the look of the think pads. You know I like that sort of retro boxy.

Look of the two I have to be honest. I actually prefer the look of the ThinkPad again, maybe I'm a bit older. I like the retro, look of it. Furthermore, I love the soft touch finish, and you know it's nice to have something a bit different from the usual sea of apple laptops that you, you know whenever you go to any caf? or anywhere else, where there's a lot of computers. Now I'm going to quickly look around the laptops, so let's put them on top of each other again and let's look at the ports briefly.

Now I'm going to start with the mac, because it's nice and easy to do. This is obviously the new Apple Silicon m1 there's not really a lot of ports on the left hand, side of the laptop you have two thunderbolt 4 ports. There we go. That's that's that's that done now. Let's look at the x1 carbon gen 9 we've got two thunderbolt 4 ports.

We've got an USB 3 port and a HDMI 2 port. I'm going to swing it round to the other side, so the mac again, on the right hand, side we've got a headset jack and if we move to the actual x1 carbon gen 9, we've got a headset jack, followed by an USB 3 port and lastly, we've got a Kensington lock slot. So that's it for both those machines regards to ports, but straight away, you can see the x1 carbon is an awful lot more useful when it comes to the ports, because you have so many more options. They've both got the two thunderbolt 4 ports, but I still regularly need USB sticks, hard drives and other bits and pieces and even mice. So I love having USB ports on both sides of the machine.

Now when it comes to the layout of both of these machines, what I would have preferred- and this is both the MacBook Pro and the ThinkPad as I wish- they'd- put a thunderbolt port on either side. That would make it easier because you'd be able to charge the laptop from either side and that's one thing I loved about the intel 4-port MacBook Pro, so we looked at the ports. I want to pick them both up now and just have a quick look at how they feel again both solid machines. The mapper pro is very dense, put the weights up on the screen, so you can see what they both weigh. The ThinkPad actually feels lighter again, I think it's a bit bigger, but with the feel of it, sort of this weight is sort of spread across your hand quite nicely.

So when you pick it up, this feels a bit easier to carry again because of the soft touch finish. It's a bit gripper as well, so it doesn't slip in your hand, so picking them both up. I do prefer picking up the ThinkPad x1 now before I open both the laptops up. I just want to talk about upgradeability with the m1 MacBook Pro. There is literally no upgradability.

You cannot change anything inside this, so if you, if it breaks, if it fails, you will be having to take it back to an Apple Store, or you know, a service center to try and get them to fix it, or you may have to just buy another one on the ThinkPad. You can change or upgrade your SSD, because that's just an m.2 80 millimeter drive in there, so you can increase that, and you can also you can take the battery out yourself, and you can replace that and lastly, there's a one slot, so you could put a one card in if you wanted to. But if you buy the model I bought the model at the moment. Without the one card you don't get the NATO sim reader, which is a bit of a shame right. So we've had a look around these laptops.

Let's open them up so, firstly, I'm going to do the sort of the one finger opening test. I know a lot of people like us to do that so MacBook Pro one finger, and we're straight in one of the things I absolutely love about this m1 max is how quickly they resume from sleep. It almost feels when you open up it's so fast. You think it's been almost it's closed. It's absolutely incredible right! We'll do the same test again.

This is in sleep. You can see by the light flashing on the think, pad and try one finger opening yep, also possible and again this has got the new tiger-like processors, and it has that instant resume as well. So that was as quick as the m1. That's a nice feature because, obviously, on previous windows laptops, it always took a second or two for that to fire up for you. So now that we've got the laptops open and have a quick look at the deck first, we'll move our way up to the screen.

So we'll start with the MacBook again, you've probably all seen a MacBook review before, but you've got the sort of the aluminum sort of palm rest with a huge touchpad. The touchpad is incredibly responsive, and it's probably the best in the industry for laptops. When you're, using a laptop like this. With this touchpad, I don't feel like you've got a need to actually go out and get a mouse. It's so good.

The gestures are brilliant. The haptic feedback is brilliant. It's an incredible touchpad now. Moving across to the ThinkPad x1, we've got the same. Soft touch finish on the palm rest, as we've got on the top and the bottom.

I do prefer the soft touch finish when I'm using the laptop it's more comfortable, but it is a bit of a fingerprint magnet. Also, we've got the ThinkPad x1 logo on the bottom right, I'm not sure if I like that or not, but hey it's there, and we also do have sort of a couple of intel stickers. I don't know why we feel we've got the need to cover these laptops and stickers. I would further just left them off, maybe put them in the box. You can stick it on yourself if you wanted to now in regard to the trackpad, it feels like a glass trackpad, it's smooth, it's responsive and for a windows' trackpad.

It's perfect. I really enjoyed using it, but the one thing I will say is because you've got the buttons above the trackpad for the track points. You've got obviously a more narrow touchpad here, so you do feel that sometimes, when you up and down on the screen, it is quite narrow now moving up to the keyboards. Now, with this m1 mapper, pro they've moved away from the butterfly keyboard. Thank goodness we're back to the sort of the standard sort of well.

It's called a magic keyboard uh. It is a very good keyboard. I love typing on this keyboard. I've been using them for a couple of years now, and they're great, but it powers in comparison to the ThinkPad keyboard. If you're doing a lot of typing, this is hands down my favorite keyboard style, the feel of it.

That's with the conceived and curved keys. The layout. Everything is just fine, absolutely brilliant. On the actual ThinkPad laptop now with the x1 carbon gen 9, they have reduced the travel a little. So it's a little more shallow, it's more similar to the travel on the MacBook Pro, but it's still a fantastic feeling.

Keyboard they've both got white backlighting. The mapper pro has more stages to adjust the backlight, whereas the ThinkPad you've only got three stages of backlight, but they're, both very good and very legible in the dark and lastly, on the ThinkPad. We've got the track point, which I mentioned the buttons of a second ago. Again. This is an iconic feature of a ThinkPad.

I personally don't use this enough and I should probably try- and you know push myself into using it more because if you're typing, it's nice, that you've obviously you've got it right there under your fingertips. So rather than having to move your hand away to the touchpad, you literally, you can use this little nub here to control it whilst you're typing and your thumb on the buttons it's a great way. It's definitely a more ergonomic way to access the pointer whilst you're typing. Now both of these machines have some up firing. Speakers, the ThinkPad has down fired speakers as well, and I'm going to just quickly compare the two.

So you can see what they sound like. Okay, so we're just going to test the inbuilt speakers now on both these laptops they're both set to 50 audio, and I'm running some royalties free music from YouTube. So, let's start with MacBook Pro then over to the x1 carbon. Now I'm going to go back to the MacBook, I'm going to lift the speakers up because they are quite quiet just about 80 percent, and now I'm going to do the same for the carbon at 80 percent. Well, that is quite a turn up for the book, so I never thought I'd see the day when a ThinkPad would have pretty much better or certainly louder speakers than the MacBook.

Now the MacBook Pro speakers sound, very good they've got good separation, and it's a very clear audio, but they are quite quiet, as you can hear, when comparing the two now, the ThinkPad is probably not quite as good sound quality as the MacBook Pro, but it's an awful lot louder certainly feel the room a lot better. Now above the keyboard on the MacBook Pro we've got the touch bar love it or hate it. It's still here at the moment, if you don't like the touch bar, you can buy the MacBook Air, which has very similar performance to the MacBook Pro but has function keys. But if you do want the touch bar, you need the MacBook Pro. Now it is customizable.

I don't mind it, but I do prefer function keys, but I've learned to live with it, as I've had mapper pros for a few years. What they have done in the sort of more recent versions of the MacBook Pro is they've now put a dedicated escape key, which is much better and on the right hand, side. You've got the touch ID, which is a great way to log you in. If we move across to the ThinkPad, we've got a power button over here with a fingerprint reader in it. It's also great that it can do it at a pre-boot level, so you can set it up.

So when you turn your machine on with your finger, it will boot the machine and automatically log you on. That's a really nice feature. I do like that and if you're not keen on fingerprint readers, you've also got the windows, hello, camera, which has been really accurate in my testing. So far, moving up to the screens, we'll look at the bezels first, you can see that obviously the MacBook Pro hasn't been redesigned for a few years, and it has got slightly chunkier bezels. Once you use the machine, I don't really notice bezel.

So it's not something that ever bothers me, but a lot of people do think it looks a little dated because of that, and if we move over to the next one carbon gen 9, the bezels are smaller, but there's certainly no infinity bezels. That you've got like the XPS range. But again this isn't something that ever bothers me, but a lot of people do notice this now. In regard to the screens itself, the mapper pro has a 13.3 inch retina display it's a glossy screen with great brightness about 500 nits. Now the resolution is 2560x1600, which is what they consider retina.

It's a good middle ground resolution in that everything looks incredibly crisp, but you don't get the same hit on battery life that you would do with a 4k display. This is something apple have been doing for a few years now, and it works really well and in day-to-day usage I love the screen. It's brilliant! It's got a good anti-reflective coating on it. So, although it is glossy, you can still use it in a reasonably bright room without it glaring at you and because it is so bright, you can get away with a bit of reflection as well. The colors are great and, as I say, the retina display works well with the scaling, so it's a really lovely screen to use.

Now on the ThinkPad there's a couple of screen options. I have chosen the 1200p matte screen display. Now this is 1920x1200, so a slightly lower resolution than the MacBook Pro the benefit on that in regard to windows. Laptops are having that 1200p map display is great for like minimizing reflections, and you know working outdoors, and also it gives you better battery life. If you get the 4k version of this laptop, although the screen display will look a lot better, you will lose a few hours of battery life.

Now, as I said, it's a matte screen. It's 400 nits of brightness, because it's matte, it's great. You can work on it in an outdoors as long as it's not too bright, being slightly larger at 14 inches. I find a great productive screen to work on. It is only 1200p, but this is only a 14-inch laptop, so I don't find that I'm really noticing pixels, but it's not quite as crisp as when you're looking at something on the retina display.

Now, as we come to the top of both these machines, we've got the webcams and the microphones. This is what they look and sound like. So this is a test of the webcam and the microphones on the MacBook Pro 13. And now this is a test of the x1 carbon gen 9 in the same lighting and the same conditions and also, as I mentioned earlier on the ThinkPad. We do have windows hello, which is a great way to log yourself in you literally lift the lid of the laptop.

If you're in front of it, it will log you straight in really convenient. What you also have on the ThinkPad is a think shutter. If you click that across you can lock out your camera. Quite a nice feature. If you don't want anybody accessing your camera, but if you do lock the camera out, you won't be able to use windows, hello but, as I say, you've also got the fingerprint reader.

So you've got that back up there. So now we're going to take a quick look at performance with both of these laptops. I want to start with the Apple Silicon mapper pro you've probably already seen how good these CPUs are, but just in case you haven't this little chip will run maxed out at about 30 watts, but yet will outperform pretty much every intel or dozen laptop CPU out there. It's quite an incredible chip. Now, as I'm like talking through this section, I'm going to put some benchmarks up, so you can see how much better it is than the tiger lake CPU in this x1 carbon.

Not only is it incredibly efficient at 30 watts as almost passive, because although there is a fan in the MacBook Pro, it almost never comes on only on an extended render or at the end of this cine bench r23 test. Do you even hear the fan, but it's not even loud plus it? Never gets hot on the top or the bottom of this laptop. It is a truly incredible. Processor and Apple really have sort of broken the mold with this chip, but we can't write the tiger lake off yet because it's a big improvement over the intel, 10th gen CPUs. This will still run all of your tasks really well.

If it wasn't for the Apple Silicon chip, everybody would be praising these tiger lake CPUs now so schools wise. It does very well in the single core benchmarks and pretty well in multicore benchmarks. It will handle all of your day-to-day software with ease the only area. I'd say that I'd definitely recommend the m1 MacBook over. Something like a tiger lake or even horizon, is extended, render times for videos.

So if you're exporting 4k videos or some heavy 1080p videos, it will do it so much faster cooler and quieter on the MacBook, then you might want to consider this over any of the intel processors, if that's your workflow, but if you're coding, if you're using day-to-day office, XL a bit of 3d modeling, both these laptops will suit you absolutely fine. So we focus heavily on here on the MacBook Pro m1. I want to just focus on the x1 carbon g9 for a minute. This has got the i7 tiger lake CPU in there the 1165 g7. Obviously it's much better than the 10th gen.

The graphics are much improved with this actual CPU over the previous gen, and it's also not a particularly loud laptop. I've been really quite impressed with it. It does heat up a little on the keyboard, but only warm it's never too hot. It's going to bother your fingers, and you can hear the fan, but it's certainly not loud, like a gaming laptop. So all in all, if you buy this laptop, and you want a window, machine you'll be pleasantly surprised with performance.

I think, and the noise and heat on this x1 carbon gen 9. Now something I want to just briefly talk about as well, because something that we don't often mention but is very important- is performance on battery now, with the MacBook Pro as max have usually always been. If you unplug it, you get the same performance as you do, as if you're sort of plugged in that's incredible, and especially with these m1 chips, because they're so power efficient. You have no problems at all with the x1 carbon once you unplug it, you may need to muck around with the power profiles. Now, if you put this laptop in the max performance mode, whilst on battery you're getting over 80 percent of its like mains performance, whilst on battery, that's quite a good feat for a windows' laptop, because very often you unplug, the laptop, and you're going to lose quite a lot of performance with this one.

It's right up there as if it's almost as if it's plugged in, so that's quite impressive, but obviously, if you've got it in that high performance mode, you will drain the battery a lot faster. So once we're onto that subject, let's quickly talk about battery life. Now this MacBook Pro the battery life on this is absolutely phenomenal. It's anywhere between 15 hours to 20 hours, on light use, sort of very light use and if you're heavily using this laptop, you're, still going to get probably I'd, say eight plus hours, depending on the sort of tasks you're using. So you easily get at least one work day, possibly two, depending on the tasks you're doing.

This is absolutely revolutionized sort of laptops. At the moment, it almost feels like you're, using a tablet when you're using these MacBook Pro m1, because the battery life is so incredible. That said, the target powered x1 carbon gen 9, the battery life is still great you're, getting 10 hours of sort of Wi-Fi streaming of music and easy 10 hours as well. You know I shut it off, but I think I just love about 10 battery left, and I'm getting probably a good six hours of sort of moderate to heavy use on this laptop, so it could probably quite easily last you the workday on battery plus with both of these because they are USB-C powered. You can use power banks to keep them going as well, which is always quite handy.

So, let's quickly, look at the actual charges that you get with each of these now, for the apple you've got a 61 watt, USB charger, it's quite a chunky charger, but the one good thing about it is the actual USB cable can be detached from the charger. So that's quite nice. If you damage the cable, it's very easy to replace it. So that's one thing I do like about the apple, and we've got a 65 watt charger for the x1 carbon. Again, it's an USB charger, but on this one you've got a cable that plugs into the actual PSU, which gives you a better length from the plug socket to the laptop.

It's also quite slim, because it hasn't got the plug built into the actual PSU. So I think I do actually prefer the Lenovo charger. So if I just compare the two together so that you can see, but both of these are pretty compact and easily slip into your bag now, just before I move on to the conclusion, the last thing I want to talk about is just the actual usability of both these machines. So the MacBook Pro has only got the two thunderbolt 4 ports. Again, it's quite useful, but the only one limiting factor that you've got with this is you can only have one external display and that's, I think, it's a bit of a sort of shame and a limitation with the actual MacBook Pro with the ThinkPad x1.

You've got two thunderbolt 4 ports, and you've got a HDMI 2 port. So you can have up to four displays running on this actual x1 carbon, so you've got a lot more options with the ThinkPad x1. So obviously we know the performance is a lot better with MacBook Pro, but you can't just write off the thing about x1 carbon just on a performance basis when it comes to usability. This is definitely more flexible and the fact that we do have the USB 3 ports as well, which is something that I absolutely love having on a laptop also the ThinkPad x1, is very rugged and tested to military standards. And if you drop both of these laptops, my money would be on the ThinkPad x1, still working at the end of it, and the MacBook pros shattering on the floor.

Okay to the conclusion. Looking at both these laptops together, I love both of these machines. They are both fantastic. Obviously, if you prefer one OS over the other, then that's going to sway your decision anyway, but if you're not bothered by the operating system, you're using, so you're, equally happy with mac or your actual windows, or even Linux, if you've got the ThinkPad, it's a more difficult choice between these two laptops, the plus points for the MacBook Pro it's a solid package, great display the battery life is phenomenal. The performance is perfect on mains and on battery, and it never gets hot.

It never gets loud, and these are all great features in a laptop, and also it has an amazing trackpad. It makes it a perfect all-round package and probably a package I'd recommend to most people but the x1 carbon. Furthermore, it's got an amazing keyboard. I absolutely love the ThinkPad keyboards, it's more flexible with much more ports. You have more displays.

You could have an GPU all plugged into this laptop to boost its performance. Furthermore, you could upgrade the SSD yourself, and it is you know it's going to be very rugged being a pad that is well and truly tested. It makes it a much more difficult decision now, because I sort of work in it, I'm often out on sites. I would always personally choose something like the actual think pad for myself, just because I love having those ports and I love having the flexibility. I also like the fact that I can have multiple monitors and I can run Linux, or I can easily just change out my SSD if I wish so for me, the win has to be the ThinkPad x1, but for a general consumer for most people that are just starting out just want a single sort of daily browsing PC.

Furthermore, I would have to recommend them to go for the MacBook Pro. It is a really solid package and that battery life and that performance in this package, and also the price this comes in at as well far exceeds what you're getting with the ThinkPad x1. Well, what do you think of both of these laptops? I'd love, to know what your thoughts, please? Let me know down in the comments down below and if you've got any questions about either these machines or, if you think I didn't cover anything. Please ask in the comments and I will get back to you now. We will be doing plenty more videos on these laptops, and we've got lots more laptops coming in.

So if you could subscribe and hit the like and the notifications bell, that would really be appreciated because it does help us sort of grow the channel and get more laptops into review for you. And, lastly, thank you for watching.

Source : Mash IT