 This is David with The Verge and this is the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon. It's the company's premium ultrabook and you'll pay for it. It starts at $1,399. But it looks and feels like a premium laptop too. It's made of carbon fiber, hence the name, and it's really thin and light. It weighs less than three pounds and is one of the thinnest ultrabooks we've seen. It's really sleek and good looking but it's obviously a ThinkPad with the same color scheme that we've seen for years and years. There aren't a ton of ports on the machine. There's a USB 3.0 port and a USB 2.0 port, plus a DisplayPort, an SD card slot, and a SIM card slot that you can use for internet access. The X1 Carbon has a 14-inch display but its chassis is basically the same size as a 13-inch MacBook Air. The 1600 by 900 display is good but it's not as impressive as some of the 1080p screens we've seen from other high-end ultrabooks. It's a good screen and since it's matte you'll actually be able to use it and see it outdoors. One of the things Lenovo does best is make keyboards and the X1 Carbon's is really, really good. It has the same curved smile design as some of the company's other ultrabooks and it looks weird but it works really well and it's just a really good keyboard. The trackpad, too, is something Lenovo's finally starting to get good at. The X1 Carbon's trackpad is really glassy, really smooth and responsive and everything from two-finger scrolling to pinch and zoom works pretty well. It's not as good as a MacBook mostly because gestures lag a little bit but that seems to be primarily a Windows problem. If you're not into the trackpad, the X1 Carbon also has Lenovo's classic trackpoint, nub, and mouse buttons. I never use them personally but plenty of people do. There are two stereo speakers on the bottom of the computer which aren't exactly world-beating but are perfectly solid for a laptop. They put out decent stereo sound and are relatively loud. The base model of the X1 Carbon comes with a Core i5 processor, 4GB of RAM, and Intel's integrated graphics. If you pay more you can get more processing power and more SSD storage but a lot of the specs stay the same even up to the $1849 model. Performance in general is good, more than enough for things like browsing the web and watching movies, but this definitely isn't a gaming machine by any stretch and games are almost unplayable. The computer can boot in a little under 30 seconds and resumes virtually instantly. It's almost like an iPad in its speed coming back from sleep. The biggest frustration with the computer is its software. It runs Windows 7 but there's a ton of bloatware on the machine and Lenovo also redesigned a lot of apps and settings menus that just don't look very good or work very well and at points it actually harms the experience of using the computer. The computer also tends to get really hot when it's working hard and the fans aren't very loud even when they're working hard but you can actually feel them whirring underneath the computer as you rest your palms on it which is kind of an odd effect. The X1 Carbon's battery life is relatively short for an Ultrabook but it has Lenovo's Rapid Charge technology which actually charges from dead to about 50% in only about 20 minutes and can charge fully in under an hour. Overall the X1 Carbon is one of the best Windows Ultrabooks yet. It's great looking, really light, and thanks to good performance and a great keyboard is a really good work machine. But it's really really expensive. It's $200 more than a 13 inch MacBook Air and hundreds of dollars more than a number of other Ultrabooks that we've tested and because of that will sadly likely only be for people with deep pockets through their companies. If you can afford it though and don't mind keeping a charger handy for a quick top off every few hours the X1 Carbon is a really good Windows Ultrabook.