The Dell XPS 13 is a more elegant option, but the Lenovo ThinkPad X13 Gen 3 is more complete. Smaller laptops aren’t typically thought of as being powerful because their compact frames are thought to be too small to hold anything spectacular. With the ThinkPad X13s, a feature-rich 13.3-inch ultraportable laptop powered by a Snapdragon Gen 3 Processor, Lenovo hopes to dispel the myth that “larger is better.” ..

Lenovo has announced that it will use Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835 mobile processor in its ThinkPad X13s laptop. This is a big move, as the Snapdragon 835 is one of the most powerful mobile processors on the market. It offers great performance and can handle a lot of tasks, making it perfect for tasks such as word processing and other routine duties. However, given that 5G is now available, it seems like a ridiculous waste not to exploit this power.

Design

The ThinkPad X13s is a well-known laptop in the market. It is black with red TrackPoint nubbin and red dot on I logo on lid.

The ThinkPad X13s is a unique laptop that stands out from the competition thanks to its round corners, webcam and IR camera.

The ThinkPad X13s has a magnesium-aluminum alloy lid and chassis, and glass fiber reinforced plastic for the bottom and sides. The keyboard deck has a small bend, but it’s not egregious and doesn’t affect the overall rigidity of the laptop. The display is securely fastened to the lid. ..

The ThinkPad X13s is one of the lightest laptops we’ve tested thanks to its lightweight construction. It is 0.53 inches thin, making it one of the thinnest laptops available. The HP Elite Dragonfly G3 is thinner at 0.64 inches but weighs less at 2.2 pounds. The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano is 0.55 to 0.66 inches thinner yet weighs 1.99 pounds less. ..

Keyboard and touch pad

The ThinkPad keyboard is a familiar and well-loved part of the laptop experience. Its big, sculpted keys and generous key spacing are easy to use, and the switches provide a pleasant and speedy typing experience. Although we occasionally dislike the keyboard because it feels too stiff, this one can compete with those on HP’s Spectre and Dell’s XPS. The design is based on the ThinkPad design, which also substitutes the Fn and Ctrl keys on the left for more conventional Windows 11 keys.

The main function keys on the Lenovo ThinkPad T460s are:

  • F1, F2, F3, and Fn.

The trackpoint nubbin on the keyboard is reliable and comfortable. The glass surface is smooth and easy to use, offering dependable support for multitouch gestures. For those who choose this control, the TrackPoint nubbin continues to function flawlessly. Our review unit’s screen was not touch-enabled, but a touchscreen alternative is available.

Lenovo ThinkPad X13s review: Display

The three display options for the X13s are all 13.3-inch Full HD (1920 x 1200) IPS panels with the perfect 16:10 aspect ratio: a multi-touch panel that supports 72 percent of the NTSC color gamut and emits 300 nits of brightness, a low power panel that supports 100 percent of the sRGB color gamut, is EyeSafe certified, and emits 400 nits of brightness.

This laptop has a 13.3-inch display with a 16:10 aspect ratio, which is unusual for a laptop in this price range.

Lenovo offers three 13.3-inch IPS screens with a 16:10 WUXGA (1920 x 1200) format. The displays are: a 400-nit low-power nonreflective display, a 300-nit non-touch display, and a 300-nit non-reflective touch display. The latter display was used by our review unit and performed admirably in our tests.

Audio

The ThinkPad X13s has a great stereo speaker system that is supported with Dolby Atmos audio upgrades. Both music and movies have excellent stereo separation, with minimal distortion even at maximum volume. Surprisingly, we are not receiving the immersive sound that we have come to anticipate from movies, but the experience is still excellent.

The hybrid workspace has a 5 megapixel webcam and three far-field microphones. The webcam has low-light color and brightness calibration, auto-framing, and user presence capabilities. The workspace can be equipped with an optional AI camera that enhances the webcam with low-light color and brightness calibration, auto-framing, and user presence capabilities. ..

Lenovo ThinkPad X13s review: Graphics

Our primary synthetic gaming benchmark, the 3DMark Time Spy test, did not run on the ThinkPad X13s. Our favorite integrated graphics game, Fortnite, was not tested because we saw no reason to. It’s unlikely that the Snapdragon GPU can play anything other than the earliest games at low resolutions and graphics (should they be installed and actually run). And it’s a good thing too, since the ThinkPad X13s isn’t really designed to be a gaming laptop.

Performance

The ThinkPad X13s is a powerful laptop that comes with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3, 16GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD. Our testing on the X13s is different from prior Windows on Arm laptops because Windows 11 supports 64-bit software emulation. We were able to execute Handbrake and our Cinebench R23 stress test, which was previously impossible. Emulation-based performance might therefore have both advantages and disadvantages. The apps do function, on the one hand. On the other hand, you are testing the emulator rather than the hardware. Even so, it provides you a general notion of the performance you should expect, which, if you’re simulating software, usually implies sacrificing some performance. ..

Lenovo ThinkPad X13s scores 1,125 on the single-core test and 5,891 on the multi-core test on Geekbench 5, our standard laptop performance test. This is a significant improvement over the HP Elite Folio, which had a Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2 chip and scored 792 on the single-core test and 3,115 on the multi-core test. The MacBook Air (Apple M2) and Dell Inspiron 14 2-in-1 (Intel Core i7-1255U) were still much quicker. With a copy speed of 550.95 MBps, Lenovo’s laptop lagged behind the Folio (666.5 MBps) and the MacBook Air in terms of copying 25GB of data (958.85 MBps). The slowest in the group was the Dell Inspiron, with a speed of 404.86 MBps.

Previously, Windows on Arm computers couldn’t run Handbrake. There is now a native Arm version available (you could imitate an x86 version, but you shouldn’t!) The X13s needed 18 minutes and 21 seconds to convert a 4K video to a 1080p file. That still lags well behind the Core i7-powered Inspiron laptop (9:49) and the MacBook Air (7:52). ..

Windows 11 can now run 64-bit apps using emulation, which is a big step forward for the platform. We ran the Cinebench R23 stress test on it to see how it performs. The result was very impressive - it ran for more than two hours! ..

Lenovo ThinkPad X13s review: Battery life and heat

The Lenovo X13 is a laptop that can last through the entire workday. It kept up streaming video, surfing the web, and running OpenGL tests while connected to Wi-Fi and the screen was set to 150 nits for 15 hours and 2 minutes. However, when cellular was also activated, it decreased to 13:39. This is not quite the 28 hours Lenovo claims “up to” on its website, but in the real world it’s still fairly outstanding. The X13s easily outperformed the MacBook Air and the x86-based Dell Inspiron (7:52). ..

The ThinkPad X13s has the advantage of running fanless and being completely silent thanks to the Arm design. The ThinkPad X13s maintained a comfortable temperature during our testing, which is what it was made for—light workloads. However, we also performed our usual Cinebench stress test and measured our skin temperatures, which demonstrated just how hot this fanless machine might go under extreme load. The keyboard’s middle, in between the G and H keys, registered 38.8 degrees Celsius during the stress test (101.84 F). At 30.1 C (86.18 F), the touchpad was substantially colder. The laptop’s bottom heated up to a temperature of 46.7 C. (116.06 F).

Configuration options

We observed a significant pricing difference between what US buyers of the entry-level ThinkPad X13s pay and what European and Australian buyers may pay. The sole SKUs in the UK and Australia contain 16 GB of RAM and 256 GB of SSD space, in contrast to the US first-rung SKU’s 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage. That doesn’t make up for the price difference, but in the USA you have to buy a model that costs at least $1,301.40 in order to receive 16GB of RAM, bringing the price closer to other regions.

The most expensive US SKU costs $1,571.40 and has a Qualcomm Snapdragon X55 5G Sub 6 WWAN module together with 16GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD. Customers in the UK and Australia don’t now have the choice of WWAN, but we anticipate Lenovo will add an SKU with this feature. Customers should be aware that the RAM in these devices is soldered in place, making it impossible to purchase an 8GB or 16GB model and then upgrade it to 32GB. ..

Conclusion

The ThinkPad X13s Gen 1 is the best Windows on ARM laptop we’ve ever used. It’s energy-efficient and compact, making it a pleasure to use. The engineering and design are deserving of the ThinkPad name, making it a pleasant gadget to use and carry.

The ThinkPad X13s are the only business computer that can provide what they can on their own; but, before giving them to the team, make sure that all of your mission-critical software is compatible with them. This machine is much less useful to people. There are some folks out there who would love a durable, slim device with integrated 5G, but the competition is fairly fierce.