ASUS ZenBook Pro UX501VW vs Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon

The fans produce at most 43.9 dB(A)of sound, quieter than virtually all of its gaming competitors. During idle, it is very quiet at just 28.9 dB(A).

The UHD (8340x2160) IPS panel is a touchscreen model. It's average brightness is 250.2 cd/m² which is reasonable, but not ideal for outdoor use. The glass layer used is thicker, muting colors a bit more than other laptops. sRGB achieves 89%, and AdobeRGB scores 58% - both reasonable results, however not extraordinary. The screen is glossy, and provides great viewing angles.

The i7-6700HQ processor paired with 16GB of RAM and accompanied by the GTX 960M offers good performance for just about any task, although machines with similar hardware can be found for considerably less (although they don't come with USB Type-C).

The CPU scores 113 in CineBench R15 - a disappointing result. It's expected that that the system throttles down below its maximum setting before finishing the test.

For storage speeds, this laptop is great. It uses NVMe SSDs that are more common on extremely high end hardware. It can achieve 1633 MB/s read, and 1579MB/s write.

Gaming performance is very good, with games running on high settings with ease. Ultra settings will bring down FPS to below 30 for some games, however lighter titles can still run up to 77FPS (StarCraft 2).

At full load, the ZenBook Pro can last for 1h57m, and when surfing the web it lasts 6h19m. These are good results for a gaming focused gaming laptop.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.