When comparing Microsoft Surface Pro 4 vs Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon, the Slant community recommends Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon for most people. In the question“What are the best laptops for programmers who travel/digital nomads?” Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon is ranked 2nd while Microsoft Surface Pro 4 is ranked 5th. The most important reason people chose Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon is:
The Carbon X1 is a very light and durable laptop. It has the characteristic raven-black finishing of other Thinkpads on top of a carbon-fiber reinforced chassis. The carbon fiber increases the overall durability of the laptop, making it a great fit for people who travel a lot since it can withstand a lot of physical damages.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Great pen support
The (included) Surface Pen has a very interesting set of features - it allows for 1024 points of pressure, has an eraser on top, and when you click the eraser it will open Cortana (Microsoft's new voice assistant). It's magnetized, so it will stick to the left side of the Surface. The Surface achieves all of this via its new N-trig technology (replacing the Wacom technology found in older generation models). There's also palm rejection technology, so whenever the pen tip it close to the screen is will ignore all finger or palm touches.
Pro Laptop-level specs
The Surface Pro 4 comes in configurations from core M up to a core i7. RAM starts at 4GB, and goes to 16GB. Storage caps out at 256GB of SSD storage, which should be enough for most users. These are all specs that can be found in most laptops - even beating out some budget-midrange desktop options.
Pro Good expandability options
The Surface has a USB 3.0 port that can be used for a mouse to be plugged in, or you can plug in a USB hub or Microsoft's own Surface Dock, which has 4 USB 3.0 ports, audio output, Gigabit Ethernet, and two HD video ports. The Surface Dock allows for as much expandability (or more) as most laptops out there. There's also a SD card slot if you need more storage (current SD card sizes range up to 200GB, although this won't be as fast as the internal SSD speeds).
Pro Great build quality
The Carbon X1 is a very light and durable laptop. It has the characteristic raven-black finishing of other Thinkpads on top of a carbon-fiber reinforced chassis. The carbon fiber increases the overall durability of the laptop, making it a great fit for people who travel a lot since it can withstand a lot of physical damages.
Pro Great battery life
The battery supports over 10 hours of light activity like web browsing, watching videos and editing documents. This can be doubled to 20 hours by swapping in the extended, 6-cell battery, which can be hot swapped without turning off the laptop since it also has an internal 4-cell battery.
Pro Very portable
At around 2lbs this is a very light laptop. Especially when you compare it to other Thinkpads. It's light enough to carry in one hand and when it's carried in a backpack it's easy to forget that you are carrying a laptop because of how light it is.
Pro Excellent display
The X1 Carbon comes in two different versions. With a 1080p or a 1440p display, with the latter being $70 more. Both displays are excellent. The image is sharp and the colors are very noticeable. Although, understandably, the 1440p display has images that are a bit sharper than its 1080p counterpart.
According to colorimeter tests, both versions of the display can produce 104 and 103 percent of the sRGB color gamut, respectively. That's very impressive when compared to the average for 14" displays (83%).
The 1080p screen is noticeably brighter than the 1440p screen (292nits vs 257nits) and the colors generally start fading only at about 45 degrees viewing angle.
Pro Excellent typing experience
Like most Thinkpads, the X1 Carbon has an excellent keyboard as well. The keys have about 1.8mm of travel and provide great tactile feedback. Their gently curved keys also make it very easy to target without looking at them. The keyboard also has optional backlighting which can be turned on or off with a simple key press.
Pro Built-in support for Amazon Alexa
The 2018 model of the X1 Carbon has far-field microphones built-in to work with Amazon Alexa. This will allow you to give commands to Alexa from across the room.
Pro Built-in support for Amazon Alexa
The 2018 model of the X1 Carbon has far-field microphones built-in to work with Amazon Alexa. This will allow you to give commands to Alexa from across the room.
Pro Great speakers
The X1 Carbon has bottom-mounted speakers which provide excellent audio output. The sound is loud enough to fill a large room and there's clear separation of sound coming from the speakers, making them great for any sorts of recreational activity involving audio be it listening to music, watching movies or playing videogames.
Cons
Con Expensive
You can find a computer with similar specs for about half the price of the Surface Pro 4. You are paying a premium for the high-end build quality, for the engineering required to manufacture a fully portable computer, as well as for the high resolution touchscreen.
Con Lack of touch-focused apps
Windows has traditionally been a mouse-and-keyboard operating system. Finally, third party apps are starting to become more touch friendly, although it's a long, slow process. The Windows Store still lacks many big titles, which means the only option is to download the regular Windows version of most apps, which are rarely touch-friendly.
Con Extended dual battery adds weight
6-cell extended battery adds 0.4 pounds to take this ultrabook's weight far above that of the ultrabook standard (<3 pounds).
Con Missing an Ethernet port
The X1 Carbon is missing an Ethernet port, so people who prefer having that option as well are forced to use Wifi only.