Some Thoughs on the X1 Carbon 9th Gen with Linux

22 Feb 2023 • Reviews

I used to have a Dell XPS 13 developer edition with a 4k screen. I was utterly disappointed with the 3-4h battery life and the weight of the laptop, hence once I saw a good offer for a used Lenovo X1 9th Gen, I couldn’t resist.

As I am very happy with this new laptop, I thought I would write down some of my thoughts as they might be useful for others too.

Here are the tech specs:

Battery Life

Battery life is great for a 4k panel. The Computer pulls between 5 Watts when editing a simple document or coding in a lightweight editor and 10 Watts with multiple browser tabs and heavier code editing. When using Bluetooth, mobile broadband and having the screen brighter this increases to around 12–14 Watts. While writing this article on 11% brightness (bright enough as the screen gets super bright) with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth turned on, but mobile broadband turned off, the laptop used slightly less than 5 Watts with a few browser tabs and programs open in the background.

Mobile Broadband

It has an integrated Qualcomm Snapdragon X55 5G modem. I have an unlimited data plan which is 4G only. The download speeds are comparable to any modern 4G phone - though I noticed that cell reception is worse than on my iPhone Xs in similar conditions (e.g. in the train).

Linux Support

Linux support is great! Lenovo supports connected standby and S3 standby. Unfortunately, the mobile broadband modem doesn’t wake up correctly from S3 standby, which is why I use connected standby. All features including the fingerprint sensor worked out of the box on Linux Mint 21.1 (Ubuntu 22.04 base). As the screen is 4k, there are close to no issues with scaling, as 2x integer scaling is perfect for me. To enable mobile broadband, I had to install the lenovo-wwan-dpr snap, but this was very straightforward.

Conclusion

All in all, the Lenovo X1 Carbon 9th Gen is a very capable device that offers more features than my previous XPS 139310 (mobile broadband, larger screen). It comes with very good battery life for a 4k panel, and is very lightweight at less than 1.2 kg.

Below, you can see a picture of my X1 Carbon in use. Feel free to contact me if you have any specific questions.


Have any feedback?

Please feel free to send me a mail! I would love to hear from you.