Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano release date, price, specs and more

But how excited should you be? Let’s take a look at everything you need to know about the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano.

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano release date and price

The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano starts at $1,399. Unlike the ThinkPad X1 Fold, which just became available for pre-order, Lenovo isn’t selling the Nano yet. The laptop should be available in Q4 2020.

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano design

Possibly the lightest 13-inch laptop ever, the 1.99-pound ThinkPad X1 Nano — which sports a carbon fiber and magnesium alloy chassis — is definitely the lightest ThinkPad ever. Yet, it still looks like a ThinkPad.

You’ve got the cross-hatched pattern on the lid, the elegant black on black ThinkPad X1 logo, the TrackPoint pointing stick/nubbin and a full backlit keyboard. 

And its thin and narrow bezels — which give you a 85% screen-to-body ratio — give more emphasis to X1 Nano’s 2K Dolby Vision Display.

In terms of ports, you get a pair of Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports (one for power, one for accessories) and the headphone jack on the left side, while its power button is on the right. 

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano display and audio

Inside the ThinkPad X1 Nano, you’ve got a 2K (2160 x 1350 pixels) Dolby Vision display. Dolby Vision, if you don’t know, aims to optimize your picture quality with improved contrast and color, as well as brighter tones and something Dolby calls “darker darks.”

The panel is available as either a touch or non-touch screen.

Both ThinkPad X1 Nano screens are rated for up to 450 nits of brightness (which is pretty bright) and 100% of the sRGB color spectrum. It’s also got a 16:10 aspect ratio, which will just-about fit movies, but give you a little more vertical space for when you’re not watching Netflix.

Speaking of Netflix, the thin X1 Nano offers a quad-speaker setup that supports Dolby Atmos sound, which aims for an immersive sound-space.

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano performance and security

The ThinkPad X1 Nano will run on Intel Tiger Lake 11th Gen. processors, up to Core i7 with the Intel Evo certification. Tiger Lake chips are expected to offer up to 20% gains in CPU performance and twice as fast graphics performance with the Intel Xe Graphics architecture (which the Nano also has). 

In terms of connectivity, you’re as future-proof as it gets these days, with Wi-Fi 6 and 5G/4G capabilities.

Lenovo’s delivering the serious security essentials, including a dTPM 2.0 chip for protecting sensitive data, a fingerprint reader, the ThinkShutter camera cover and an IR camera that offers human presence detection. The latter feature can both unlock the X1 Nano when you arrive, and put it to sleep when you walk away. 

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano battery life

Lenovo’s claiming up to 17.3 hours of battery life on a single charge, which sounds shocking for a laptop this light. We’re going to put Lenovo’s claim (which is based on endurance on the MobileMark 2014 test) up against the Tom’s Guide battery test, which times how long a laptop lasts while web browsing over Wi-Fi. 

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano outlook

This is all well and good on paper, but when the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano is as light as it is, we’re all the more interested in benchmarking this laptop and seeing how well it lasts in other testing and every day use.

When we get wind of a laptop that’s so thin or light that it makes us reach for our credit card, it makes us wonder how this was achieved. Did Lenovo win with excellence in engineering, or did it cut some corner? 

We look forward to testing it later this year (depending on its TBA release date) to find out.