A lightweight and stylish machine that sets the bar for business grade ultrabooks

Thin and impressively light; Great battery life; Excellent port options; Superb design; 14in thin bezel screen

Display performance is average at best; Pricey

It's Lenovo ‘s most beloved business laptop: the X1 Carbon. The fourth-generation model has been released, and it's as beautiful as ever, bringing the best aspects of the X1 Carbon line and refining them with updated hardware, a lighter weight, and a thinner body.

The ThinkPad Carbon X1 is an impressive notebook from Lenovo that offers fast battery charging, a keyboard that changes based on what you are doing and is power

Finding the absolute best productivity laptop has always been a personal mission of mine, and Lenovo's latest iteration of the ThinkPad X1 Carbon came really, really close to ending my search.

Last year's version of the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon was a fully-capable business Ultrabook that featured a few minor flaws. Unfortunately for Lenovo, these issues kept the Carbon from reaching the pinnacle of the business laptop market.

Lenovo's ThinkPad laptops have always proven popular with business users, and the latest Thinkpad X1 Carbon offers buyers an ultrabook version of the platform, combining the latest Intel processors into a lightweight design using carbon fibre for durability.

Thin and light; rugged carbon-fibre casing; ThinkVantage technologies

Integrated battery; no Ethernet port; no dock connector

Lenovo's 2011 vision of the ultimate boardroom ultraportable, the ThinkPad X1, simply didn't live up to expectations. Now, however, the company has gone back to the drawing board and attempted to right the wrongs of its predecessor. Enter Lenovo's business ultrabook: the X1 Carbon.

Overall, we really liked the X1 Carbon, and we think almost everyone in Australia's corporate and small business community who's got the laptop on their ‘potential buy' list will be pleased with it also.

ThinkPads have been a class act among business laptops since IBM launched the line over two decades ago. As a Lenovo brand, they remain pricey, but they're also exceptionally easy to carry and comfortable to use. The ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch stands out even from its forebears.

I was walking through the office with Lenovo's ThinkPad X1 Carbon dangling between two fingers when my colleague spied the logo. "That was my first computer," she said with immeasurable fondness. The ThinkPad was a lot of people's first computer.