Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano Gen 3 Review: A Fine Formula For Work

Portability is the name of the game for those working on the go, whether at their favorite coffee shops, on the plane to and from meetings, or from their hotel room in Downtown Omaha. There are many options out there, from iPads with external keyboards to ultrathin laptops packing the biggest punch this side of a workstation. For Lenovo, this task falls on the carbon fiber and magnesium shoulders of its latest, the ThinkPad X1 Nano Gen 3. The previous two generations of the X1 Nano brought a lot to the table, including Intel Core i7 processors, Intel iRIS Xe graphics, tons of RAM, and SSD storage, all wrapped in an extremely lightweight package weighing around 2 pounds, give or take what all it held, and coming in at a thickness of just over half an inch.

There's always room for improvement, though, and that's what Lenovo has in mind for the Gen 3 version of its lightest work laptop. While the first generation was revolutionary, the subsequent generations follow an evolutionary pathway. Is this latest evolution enough for someone on an X1 Nano Gen 2, or even the original, to consider upgrading, though? To find out, Lenovo sent a sample of the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano Gen 3 for the purposes of this review. 

The previous two versions of the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano Gen 3 featured a lid of exposed carbon fiber, mainly to emphasize how light their new portable workstation truly was. This time, though, the carbon fiber top and magnesium bottom wear a fine coat of matte black material. That surface is susceptible to absorbing quite a bit of oil from your hands. Perhaps not the most attractive look at the hotel conference room meeting, but nothing a little Dawn and some towels couldn't get out; this issue may also inspire you to wash your hands more often, all things considered.

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Otherwise, the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano Gen 3 is still lightweight and simple in its presentation. There are two Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports (one of which may be occupied at times by the included 65-watt charger) and a 3.5mm headphone jack, and that's it. If you want more ports for your USB-A and USB-C devices, you'll need to pick up a dock and/or dongles. Then again, this laptop was meant to do quite a bit without going the full workstation laptop behemoth route. Its screen is 13 inches diagonal, it's 11 inches in width, only .6 inches in thickness, and it weighs in at 2.2 pounds (just a smidge heavier than the X1 Nano Gen 2's 2.14 pounds). 

The previous Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano had its processing power supplied by 12th-generation Intel Core i7 processors (a.k.a., Alder Lake). The original X1 Nano before it rocked Tiger Lake i7s. This time around, the X1 Nano Gen 3 gets its processing from the Raptor Lake i7. Specifically, the i7-1360P, packed with 12 total cores (four performance, eight efficiency) and 16 threads delivering 2.2 GHz of computing power; the X1 Nano Gen 3 can also be had with the 14-core, 1.9 GHz i7-1370P. That's more than enough to do everything from crunching the numbers on several Excel spreadsheets to playing some basic PC games.

That horsepower comes with a bit of a price as far as temperatures are concerned. While off the charger, each core hovers around 120 degrees Fahrenheit while consuming power from the 49.9-kWh lithium polymer battery. Said battery can run up to 19.67 hours on a single charge, though we've managed around five to six hours with activities ranging from streaming live event video, browsing social media sites, and editing photos. Put the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano Gen 3 on the 65-watt charger, though, and those temps climb up to 145 degrees Fahrenheit, which is most noticeable under the upper left corner of the keyboard. You may want to just close the laptop for a while rather than deal with the heat under your fingertips, to say the least.

Befitting a professional-grade laptop such as the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano Gen 3, users will find work-appropriate software from Microsoft, including Office 365 and PowerPoint. Lenovo, too, has a few neat features accompanying their lightweight laptop, such as the handy Lenovo Commercial Vantage, a tool for IT admins to know how best to deploy and configure Windows 10 and 11 PCs and laptops for use by their organization. In LCV, you'll find info on your battery's life and its current condition, how much memory and disk space is available, the serial and product number, and WiFi security. 

Then, there's Lenovo View, which the company says "enhances camera quality and delivers superior video quality" to meeting spaces. Aside from that, Lenovo View also takes after your wellness via posture checks and eye health, drops you onto your documents and presentations, and guards your privacy (though the physical switch does much the same for those not feeling up to being seen at all).

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Of course, there are also some interesting additions to the apps available on the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano Gen 3. For starters, Xbox and Xbox Game Bar, in case the team is up to a few matches in "Valorant." That addition makes sense, as Windows is a Microsoft product. But then, you'll also find Netflix, Spotify, WhatsApp, Amazon Prime Video, and Instagram upon clicking on the Windows logo. These are all apps a user could download themselves if they wanted them (and if IT allowed it), but there they are, taking up some prime real estate on the laptop's 512 GB NVMe M.2 2242 SSD that could be better used for PowerPoint presentations.

The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano Gen 3 has a 16:10-ratio 2K touchscreen that folds 180 degrees for sharing what you're working on in person with your colleagues and bosses. The keyboard's concave keys feel good to press down and rest upon while not in use. Those switching from alternate keyboard setups can swap button combinations using the Lenovo Commercial Vantage tool, which is relatively simple to work with. The ThinkPad's famous red mouse nub (aka TrackPoint) is in play here, and though it's a neat trick to move the cursor around with it, its existence may seem redundant to the uninitiated.

One feature that could use a bit of improvement is the speaker system (with Dolby Atmos included). The ThinkPad X1 Nano Gen 3's speakers sound a bit muffled — they deliver a soundscape that is surprisingly lacking in depth and power. That might not be too much of an issue when it comes Zoom meetings, but if you're using this machine for any sort of entertainment consumption, you might want to think twice. 

The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano Gen 3 won't flip the script on lightweight workstations — the Gen 1 did so already — but it's an evolution on a winning formula. It's still easy to throw into a briefcase (a gentle slide will suffice, though), it won't weigh you down (even though it's gained a bit of weight with each successive generation), and it'll handle all of the tasks you ask of it. The 13th-gen Intel Core i7 and excellent touchscreen are a couple of the features that'll make work seem like fun for the power user on the go, which is who this laptop is for in the first place.

There are few competitors to the ThinkPad X1 Nano Gen 3, mainly the Microsoft Surface Laptop 5 and the Dell XPS 13 2-in-1. The former beats it on price by around $100, though it also has a 256 GB SSD. The latter, meanwhile, starts at $1,399 and packs a 1 TB SSD, but makes do with a 12th-gen Intel Core i7. The X1 Nano Gen 3's price, however, has undergone a revolution of its own. 

The Gen 1 could be had for an affordable $1,399 to start, while the Gen 2 made a big jump to a starting price of $1,659. Gen 3 creeps up in price to $1,715 for the i7-1360P (available through CDW's online store), and $1,816 for the i7-1370P variant. Still, that's not a bad deal as far as enterprise applications go. After all, this is a space few others play in, preferring to stick with 14-, 15-, 17- and larger workstation laptops. Sounds like Lenovo's got a good thing going on here with the ThinkPad X1 Nano Gen 3.