Lenovo X1 Carbon 14" X1 Carbon 6th Gen. Black 2018

The Lenovo X1 Carbon 6th Gen is a featherlight laptop with an unbeatable keyboard and solid build quality. But its aging dual-core CPU and soldered 8GB RAM make it suitable only for basic tasks. At around $640 refurbished, it's a niche pick for extreme portability and typing comfort.

If you've been hunting for a lightweight business laptop that won't break the bank, a refurbished Lenovo X1 Carbon 6th Gen has probably popped up in your search. At around $640, it's a tempting way to grab a ThinkPad that still looks and feels premium. Our unit came with a 14-inch 1080p IPS display, an Intel Core i5-8350U, 8GB of RAM, and a 256GB NVMe SSD. It's also running Windows 10 Pro and has that classic matte black chassis that weighs just 1.13kg. For students or commuters who need a laptop they can toss in a bag and forget about, the portability here is a real standout. Sitting in the 88th percentile for compactness, it's one of the lightest 14-inch laptops we've ever tracked. The keyboard, as you'd expect from a ThinkPad, is a joy to type on. And unlike many modern ultrabooks, you get a solid mix of ports, including two USB-C, two USB-A, and a full-size HDMI. That said, this is a 2018-era machine, and it shows its age in a few key areas. The CPU, RAM, and storage all land in the lower percentiles of our database. That doesn't mean it's useless, far from it. But you need to go in with the right expectations.

When we ran our usual workflow tests, the i5-8350U chugged along, but it's not going to impress anyone used to a modern Ryzen or 12th-gen Intel chip. This CPU sits in the 11th percentile among all laptops we've benchmarked, which is one of the lowest scores we've seen recently. In practice, that means web browsing, document editing, and video streaming feel fine, but anything heavier will slow things to a crawl. Lightroom or Photoshop will work for small edits, but don't expect snappy performance. The integrated UHD Graphics 620 is about average for its age (45th percentile), so it can drive a 4K external display or play older games at low settings, but gaming on this machine is a non-starter, our gaming score came out to a dismal 12.5/100. The 8GB of RAM is the real bottleneck. With a few browser tabs and Slack open, you'll hit the ceiling fast. And because the RAM is soldered, there's no upgrading it later. The 256GB SSD is roomy enough for an OS and essential apps, but you'll likely need an external drive or cloud storage for your media. On the bright side, the SSD is NVMe, so boot times and app launches are snappy.

At $640, you're paying for that X1 Carbon build quality, keyboard, and portability, not raw horsepower. New budget laptops in this range often have plastic shells and worse keyboards, but they'll come with faster 12th-gen or Ryzen chips, 16GB of RAM, and bigger SSDs. So you're making a trade-off. If your daily routine is Office, email, and web, this ThinkPad will handle it all day without a hiccup, and you'll enjoy the typing experience. But if you even occasionally edit video, run VMs, or keep 50 Chrome tabs open, you'll outgrow this machine fast. Consider alternatives like a refurbished Dell Latitude 7-series or HP EliteBook for similar build quality with maybe better specs at the same price.

Stacked against the modern laptops retailers list as competitors, like the MacBook Pro M5 or Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro, the X1 Carbon 6th Gen looks like a relic. Those machines feature high-res OLED screens, blazing fast performance, and all-day battery, for well over $1,500. That's not a fair fight. The real competition for this refurbished unit is something like a used Dell XPS 13 9370 or an HP EliteBook 840 G5. Both pack similar 8th-gen Intel silicon and premium build, but the X1 Carbon's keyboard is universally better. If you need a bit more grunt, a refurbished ThinkPad T480 gives you socketed RAM and a bigger battery, though it's heavier and clunkier. For the pure ultraportable experience at this price, the X1 Carbon still holds its own, provided portability and typing are your top priorities.

This laptop isn't for gamers, that's obvious with a gaming score of 12.5/100. But it's also a poor choice for anyone who needs to run virtual machines, edit 4K video, or keep dozens of browser tabs open while working. The soldered 8GB RAM and aging CPU will have you pulling your hair out. If you're a power user, skip this and look at a used ThinkPad P-series or a newer MacBook Air. Even for students, we'd recommend spending an extra $100-$200 on a modern budget laptop with 16GB RAM and a 12th-gen Intel or Ryzen 5 chip.

So, should you buy a refurbished X1 Carbon 6th Gen? Yes, if portability and keyboard are everything to you, and your workload is light. It's a joy to type on and a dream to carry. The build is tough enough to survive years of travel. But if you even think you might need more RAM or a faster processor down the line, we'd say skip this one. It just doesn't have the headroom for a heavy workflow. For the right person, writer, student with cloud-based apps, business traveler with a thin client setup, it's a sweet little workhorse. For everyone else, save up a bit more and get something with a more modern foundation.