The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano Gen 3 is back on the scene with the same great thin and light form-factor that's made this laptop series such a hit as well as some pretty powerful new hardware, though the latter might actually work against it somewhat.

The ThinkPad X1 Nano has long been the best business laptops for users who are constantly on the go and need a lightweight travel option that doesn't sacrifice too much in terms of performance, and this latest refresh certainly keeps up that legacy. 

With its attractive, if somewhat austere, design, this is exactly the kind of laptop you imagine when you think of a room full of professionals working around a table at an industry conference, and given its price starting at just $1,739 (about £1,320 / AU$2,520), you're certainly going to see a lot of these if you're running in those spaces professionally.

With that said, this is hardly the kind of laptop that's going to garner any envy in said spaces. This laptop is really just about functionality and portability, with a strong emphasis on the latter. Coming in at just 991.5 grams (or just over 2.10 pounds), this is the best Ultrabook on the market by just about any measure, especially for the enterprise user.

Actually using the laptop is just as lovely as it's predecessors, though its 13-inch IPS panel doesn't leave much screen real estate for a lot of heavy duty creative work, which is probably for the best. 

The Intel Iris Xe integrated graphics is enough to power a spreadsheet or PowerPoint presentation, but beyond that, this laptop isn't powerful enough to do any intensive graphics work like video editing, photography work, and especially not gaming. 

On that last point, I really want to underline that this is not the kind of laptop you'll be able to play any modern PC game on, not even something as light as Civilization VI. If you need something to do on a long flight and you're tired of staring at a word processor page, I'd recommend you bring along a Nintendo Switch and keep this laptop in your bag.

All this brings me to maybe the biggest knock I have with this laptop, namely Lenovo's insistence on sticking with the Intel P-series mobile processors rather than the more energy efficient U-series for the X1 Nano. What you're going to be able to do on this laptop could easily have been achieved with a comparable U-series chip and it could have helped stretch the rather svelte battery a little bit farther.

Still, those complains aside, the only other negative of note is that this is still a pretty expensive device for what it ultimately is: a productivity machine. Given that competing laptops for business users can get comparable performance for less and not have to really give up too much in the portability category means this is really best for those who value the portability of the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano Gen 3 over every other consideration. For that, though, you'll be hard pressed to find better just about anywhere. 

The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano Gen 3 is available now in the US, UK, and Australia, starting at $1,739 (about £1,320 / AU$2,520). This will get you an Intel Core i5-1340P processor, 16GB LPDDR5 RAM, 256GB Storage, and a 13-inch 2160x1350p resolutiuon touch display running at about 60Hz. The starting configuration uses the lower powered panel than my review unit and the high-end configuration, but otherwise all three share the same display specs.

This is far from the most expensive business laptop out there, and for what you're paying, you are getting your money's worth in terms of portability and performance. Though with competitors like the Dell XPS 13 Plus or the MacBook Pro 13-inch (M2), you have plenty of options if you're looking for something with comparable power at a better price—assuming the extreme portability of the X1 Nano Gen 3 isn't as important to you as the weight of your wallet after you've made your purchase.

Once you start adding on the beefier specs to the X1 Nano Gen 3, the price goes up quickly. Bumping up to the Intel Core i7-1360P processor and a 512GB SSD brings the price of the X1 Nano Gen 3 to $2,159 (about £1,640/AU$3,130). Stretching further to the Intel Core i7-1360P with vPro processor and a 1TB SSD the price rises even further to $2,799 (about £2,130/AU$4,060).

All that said, Lenovo is almost always running sales and promotions on its laptops at its store, so you'll probably be able to pick this one up for much less than the initial sticker price, making it an even more compelling buy.

The design of the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano Gen 3 is essentially unchanged from the previous two iterations of the device, and that's not entirely surprising. If it's not broke, don't mess with it, but that does mean that if you've got an earlier X1 Nano model, there's probably little reason to upgrade (we'll get to the performance later, don't worry).

The exterior finish is a classic matte black that is smooth to the touch and comfortable to hold, open, or otherwise adjust. Given its lightweight, however, opening it usually requires two hands thanks to a pretty stiff hinge.

The keydeck on the X1 Nano Gen 3 is well-spaced all around and comfortable to type on for long stretches. The cursor button in the middle of the keyboard is responsive and doesn't get in the way of typing, and the laptop's trackpad, while a bit compact, is smooth and responsive to use.

The audio isn't terrible, given the size. The up-firing speakers definitely help give the sound on the X1 Nano Gen 3 a boost, so you'll be able to teleconference just fine, and maybe even get some music going to make the workday fly by a bit faster.

Given the size of the X1 Nano Gen 3, you shouldn't be surprised to learn that there are little in the way of ports here, though the two ports are at least Thunderbolt 4, with one always-on port for charging your phone when not in use.

The 1080p IR webcam means that you can take advantage of Windows Hello for added security, and the picture quality is pretty decent for a laptop this size. There is also a physical privacy shutter for the webcam as well, so you get some peace of mind there.

The performance of the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano Gen 3 is one of its stronger suits thanks to its P-series processor, which gives the processor a bit more juice than the more efficient Intel U-series processors usually found in laptops of this size and weight.

The i7-1360P in my review unit scored about even with the recently released Dell XPS 13 Plus running more or less the same hardware, but it noticeably beat out the MacBook Pro 13-inch with M2 chip on CrossMark's benchmark tests, which was one of the only productivity benchmarks I'm able to run on the two devices.

The X1 Nano Gen 3 also outperformed the 13-inch MacBook Pro in Geekbench 6's Multi Core test (9,268 points to the Mac's 8,911), though it lost out to the XPS 13 Plus's 10,621.

In terms of storage performance, it took the X1 Nano Gen 3 about 22 seconds to copy a 25GB folder containing 3,700+ files, while the Dell XPS 13 Plus managed to do so in about 18 seconds. The graphics performance of the X1 Nano Gen 3 and XPS 13 Plus are effectively tied; no surprise considering the two units we tested used the same Intel chip with Intel Iris Xe graphics.

The X1 Nano Gen 3 scored lowest of the three in Handbrake 1.6 1080p video encoding, converting a 4K video to 1080p about 19% slower than the XPS 13 Plus and about 33% slower than the MacBook Pro 13-inch. If you're looking for a creative workstation like the best laptop for photo editing or the best video editing laptop for business use, this really isn't it.

As far as gaming goes, like I said before, you're better off not really bothering unless you set the resolution lower than 1080p and/or turn the graphics settings way down. At 1080p on its highest settings, Civilization VI, hardly a demanding title, ran at an average of 21 fps, compared to the MacBook Pro 13-inch's 51 fps. Dropping the visual settings to the lowest they could go got me back into the 50 fps range at 1080p, so if you can stomach that, that's about the best you'll get.

Which, ultimately, is fine. This isn't trying to be the best gaming laptop on the market, it's here to get to work, and in terms of productivity workloads and multitasking, it'll be more than enough to get the job done.

Fortunately, there isn't a whole lot of bloatware on the ThinkPad X1 Nano Gen 3, though we did have to uninstall McAfee, which seems to have found its way into every laptop on the market. It's hardly the best antivirus software you can use, so I definitely recommend you go for something better.

Beyond that, there isn't much in the way of additional software that comes with the X1 Nano Gen 3 beyond Lenovo Commercial Vantage, which is the manufacturer's command center of sorts. You won't find much in the way of performance tuning in there like you would with a gaming laptop or a true creatives' mobile workstation, but it will let you tinker with some settings and check up on how much time is left in your warranty.

So, battery life.

The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano Gen 3's battery life isn't terrible, getting about eight hours and 28 minutes of use on average. This is better than the Dell XPS 13 Plus's six hours and 20 minutes, but it falls well short of the MacBook Pro 13-inch's 18 hours and 20 minutes of battery life.

The battery life here is actually better than it looks on the surface, given that the X1 Nano Gen 3 is packing a meager 49.6 WHr battery pack compared to the XPS 13 Plus's 55 WHr or the MacBook Pro's 58.2 WHr batteries.

You do technically get a full workday's worth of power out of the smallest battery of the three, though you could cut the MacBook's battery in half and it would still likely beat the X1 Nano Gen 3. The Apple MacBook Air (M2) has a much more comparable 52.6 WHr battery and it manages to get close to 15 hours of battery life.

This comes back to the choice of going with the more powerful, but less efficient, P-series chips in the Nano. A comparable U-series chip might have gotten it north of 10 hours without sacrificing much in terms of performance. 

If my Lenovo ThinkPax X1 Nano Gen 3 review has you considering other options, here are two more laptops to consider.

I spent about a week using the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano Gen 3 as my day to day device, spent mostly writing and attempting (and struggling) to edit photos for work.

I also benchmarked the laptop using a standard battery of tests we use for lightweight laptops like this, focusing on those that could be used across different devices in order to get comparable scores.

We pride ourselves on our independence and our rigorous review-testing process, offering up long-term attention to the products we review and making sure our reviews are updated and maintained - regardless of when a device was released, if you can still buy it, it's on our radar.

Read more about how we test

The Lenovo Slim Pro 9i 16 is the latest attempt to dethrone the MacBook Pro 16-inch as the go-to laptop for scores of creative professionals looking for something serious without looking corporate. I can honestly say that this laptop can and probably will be that laptop for many people out there, but it could have been the greatest MacBook Pro alternative yet, were it not for a couple of missed opportunities down the stretch.

The Slim Pro 9i 16 is a new model line for Lenovo, along with the more mainstream Slim line that also launched this year, and it's a fantastic direction for the company, design-wise. 

The rounded corners, the overhanging webcam and microphone that breaks up the smooth line of the laptop display's top edge, and other subtler design touches make this one of the first laptops of the year that made me straighten up and take notice when I first saw it at preview events earlier this year, and now that I've gotten my hands on it, it lives up to its billing and is easily in contention for a spot on our best laptop list.

In a laptop market that has long stumbled after Apple to make all their products look enough like MacBooks to try and fool customers into buying their laptop instead of the MacBook Air they actually wanted, Lenovo's Slim Pro 16 is on the leading edge of a class of laptops that looks at the mostly unchanged-and-growing-stale MacBook design we've had for over a decade and has the courage to say "Nah, we can do better than that." 

And it does, in more ways than one, and so rather easily puts itself in the position of the best Windows laptop to take on the Apple MacBook Pro 16-inch, even muscling out the Dell XPS 15, which had long had that anti-MacBook spot mostly to itself.

The Lenovo Slim Pro 9i 16 doesn't come alone, either. It's packing the latest Intel Core i9-13905H processor and a discrete GPU in the form of either the Nvidia RTX 4050 or RTX 4060, giving this laptop more than enough power to chew through the kinds of workloads that make the MacBook Pro the default device for creatives out there.

Meanwhile, the Lenovo Slim Pro 9i 16 manages to outperform both the MacBook Pro 16-inch and the Dell XPS 15 from earlier this year in all the key ways that matter, save one, and does so with a stunning mini-LED display that doesn't quite defeat Apple's Liquid Retina XDR display, but gives it a serious challenge. It also stands up well against the Dell XPS 15's 3.5K OLED display, all while costing substantially less than either of its rivals.

It starts at $1,799.99 (about £1,370/AU$2,630) for the Nvidia RTX 4050 model, with the more powerful RTX 4060 version costing $2,199.99, though both of these models can be found discounted online to make them even cheaper. Is this enough to ultimately get MacBook Pro users to finally jump ship to Windows? No, but nothing could really do that. 

What it does do, however, is give non-MacBook-using professionals enough power, performance, and style that they can finally stop being envious of their MacBook wielding colleagues—so long as they never stray too far from an open power outlet, that is.

The Lenovo Slim Pro 9i 16 is available now in the US, starting at $1,799.99 (about £1,370/AU$2,630). It isn't currently available in the UK or Australia, unfortunately, and we've reached out to Lenovo to find out whether the Slim Pro 9i will be available in those markets any time soon and for how much. We'll update this review if and when we hear back from the company with further pricing and availability.

In the US, the starting configuration sports an Intel Core i9-13905H processor with an Nvidia RTX 4050 GPU, 32GB LPDDR5X-6400Mhz RAM soldered to the motherboard (so you can't upgrade it unfortunately), a 1TB PCIe SSD, and a 16-inch 3.2K (3200x2000p) mini-LED touch display running at 165Hz.

For $2,199.99 (about £1,670/AU$3,215), you can get this same configuration with a bump up to an RTX 4060 GPU.

Compared to a similar MacBook Pro with an Apple M2 Pro chip with a 12-core CPU and 19-core GPU, 32GB unified memory, and 1TB SSD storage, you'd pay $3,099/£3,299/AU$4,899, while the similarly specc'ed Dell XPS 15 with an RTX 4050 GPU will cost you $2,449/£2,214.60/AU$3,399.

This puts the price advantage strongly with the Lenovo Slim Pro 9i, and that's definitely not something to scoff at given the sometimes outrageous prices charged for premium hardware like this.

As mentioned before, the Lenovo Slim Pro 9i 16 is a gorgeous laptop, top to bottom.

The Storm Grey chassis is as elegant as it feels sturdy, and it's not as thin as the best ultrabooks, but it doesn't bring with it the kind of bulk you normally get with many of the best mobile workstations. Considering the kind of hardware you have packed into this thing, it's still relatively thin and light, but it's still a fairly hefty device.

The full-size keyboard with tenkey is lovely to type on and the trackpad feels smooth and responsive, though creative pros will probably still want to have the best drawing tablets or similar at the ready if they aren't on the road.

This also brings us to the port selection on the Slim Pro 9i 16. Given that this is a 16-inch laptop, there are plenty of ports here, including two USB-A Gen 3.2, with one always on; one Thunderbolt 4 with data, DisplayPort, and power delivery; an HDMI port; an SDCard reader; and a power connector and 3.5mm audio/mic jack.

The webcam gets a major upgrade thanks to a 5MP sensor, along with a dual array microphone. Like all of the best Lenovo laptops, the webcam has a physical privacy shutter that provides a vital layer of security for users. 

The switch is along the side of the laptop near the power button, which isn't my prefered setup, but considering how many laptop makers are still not including one of these in their devices, it's a very minor complaint.

In terms of audio, along with the headphone output, there is also a six-speaker sound system with Dolby Atmos, including top-firing tweeters, so it's more than enough to fill a room with some excellent sound. That said, music pros will obviously want to use something a bit more sophisticated like one of the best headphones for professional audio work.

Finally, there is the display, which is a 16-inch 3.2K (3200x2000p) mini-LED panel with a 16:10 aspect ratio, 165Hz refresh, and 100% of the sRGB, DCI-P3, and Adobe RGB color gamuts, making it a fantastic display for visual artists, whether that be graphic design, photography, or video producers and editors.

It has a max brightness of 1200 nits and Dolby Vision and TÜV Low Blue Light Certification+ and Eyesafe Certification, so it's a much easier screen to look at over the long haul than other competing displays.

Performance is one area where this laptop really stands out as a professional workstation, thanks to powerful hardware like the Intel Core i9-13905H processor and either an Nvidia RTX 4050 or RTX 4060 GPU.

This allows you to chew through pretty much any major workload out there on the go, and while it won't be as powerful as the best workstations sitting on top of a desk, this is about as good as you're going to get for something on the go and at an affordable price.

The obvious points of comparison here are the Apple MacBook Pro 16-inch (2023) and the Dell XPS 15 (2023), both of which are stalwart workstations for creative professionals over the years.  

There aren't a whole lot of synthetic benchmark tests that can be run on both Windows and macOS, but of those that can, the Lenovo Slim Pro 9i 16 manages to outclass the M2 Pro (12-core CPU/19-core GPU) MacBook Pro 16-inch and the Dell XPS 15 (2023) packed with an Intel Core i7-13700H and an Nvidia RTX 4070 GPU.

The Lenovo Slim Pro 9i 16's Geekbench 6 performance is about even to slightly faster than the MacBook Pro 16-inch, and is a 12% to 19% faster than the Dell XPS 15. The MacBook Pro 16-inch can't run 3DMark Time Spy or Fire Strike, but in this test, the Slim Pro 9i 16 was about 27% and 17% faster than the Dell XPS 15 in Time Spy and Fire Strike, respectively. Not bad when you consider that it has a weaker GPU, but the Core i9-13905H comes through on physics and CPU segments of those benchmarks to put the Slim Pro 9i over the top.

In the cross-platform CrossMark benchmark, the Lenovo Slim Pro 9i 16 is about 6.5% faster than the MacBook Pro 16-inch overall, and about 1.7% faster than the XPS 15, overall. 

On creative workloads, the Lenovo Slim Pro 9i 16 is easily one of the best laptops for photo editing and if you're looking into the best video editing laptops, it's worth checking out. In our tests, we found it more than holds its own against the MacBook Pro 16-inch and XPS 15. It's about 6% faster than the MacBook Pro when encoding 4K to 1080p in Handbrake 1.6, and about 26% faster than the XPS 15.

It was only really in HDXPRT 4's Music Editing benchmark that the Slim Pro 9i 16 fell behind the XPS 15, scoring about 20% lower on that test, though even or noticeably above the XPS in photo editing and video conversion, giving it about a 5% better overall score.

In terms of Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Premiere Pro, according to PugetBench, this is the Slim Pro 9i 16's biggest performance defeat to the MacBook Pro 16-inch, scoring about 4% lower in Photoshop, and a substantial 42% lower in Premiere Pro.

Finally, none of these devices are what we'd call one of the best gaming laptops around, but the Lenovo Slim Pro 9i 16 does put up a good showing here in case you want to blow off some steam after work. 

It runs Civilization VI: Gathering Storm about 114% faster than a MacBook Pro 16-inch, and about 80% faster than the XPS 15 at 1080p/1200p. Up Civ VI to the various native resolutions for the displays, and the Slim Pro 9i 16 gets about 73% better performance over the MacBook Pro 16-inch and about 38% better performance than the XPS 15.

If you want something a bit more action-packed, Shadow of the Tomb Raider runs about 37% better on the Slim Pro 9i 16 at 1200p than it does on the MacBook Pro 16-inch at the same resolution, and about 16% better than the XPS 15. And, while no laptop was really able to play Shadow of the Tomb Raider at native resolution at a consistently playable framerate, the Slim Pro 9i 16's 31fps on average was about 55% better than the MacBook's 20fps and about 29% better than the XPS 15's 24fps.

At 1200p, turning DLSS 3 on performance can get you about 137fps on average in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, with a minimum of 61fps, which is pretty much the gold standard for PC gaming. This isn't a gaming laptop, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have the chops for it (within reason, of course).

As for software, there isn't too much egregious bloatware that I needed to uninstall from the laptop, but McAfee antivirus was definitely one of them, especially once it's rather obnoxious popups started to break into my game testing and general work day. McAfee isn't terrible, but it's far from the best antivirus software on the market and it is rather outrageously priced for what you're getting, so once your free trial period is up (or even before), you're better off getting a better product for cheaper. 

Other than that, the only major software of note is Lenovo Vantage, which lets you tweak some hardware controls among other system setting options. 

All that's a good thing (other than McAfee), since for a laptop at this price, you shouldn't have much if any bloatware. You're paying more than enough to cover the cost of the machine, there's no need to subsidize a lower price with crappy software contracts that you'll never really need.

And, the moment we've all been waiting for and that I've been hinting at this entire time: battery life.

Given the very powerful hardware and mini-LED display, this laptop is going to chew through energy pretty quickly, and unfortunately, its 75WHr battery just isn't big enough to get you through a full workday considering how power inefficient its internals are compared to the super efficient Apple M2 Pro and M2 Max, which can last substantially longer on a 70WHr battery (the XPS 15 uses a substantially larger 86WHr battery). 

In our proprietary web surfing test, the Slim Pro 9i 16 managed to only eek out six hours and 12 minutes of battery life, compared to the XPS 15's nearly nine hours and the MacBook Pro 16-inch's astounding 17 hours and six minutes.

And the PCMark 10 Application battery benchmark revealed a pretty dreadful four hours and 36 minutes of battery life. Needless to say, you'll need to keep your power usage in mind when you're away from your desk or don't have access to a wall outlet to recharge midday.

This definitely isn't great, especially for a laptop that you will be spending at least $1,600/£1,600 on, even if it's on sale, but given that it's MSRP is nearly half that of a similarly specced MacBook Pro 16-inch, and nearly a third less than a comparable Dell XPS 15 (much less an XPS 17), something had to give. In this case, it's the battery, and only you will be able to say whether that's enough of a deal breaker for you to pass up what is an otherwise extraordinary laptop.

If my Lenovo Slim Pro 9i 16 review has you considering other options, here are two more laptops to consider.

I used the Lenovo Slim Pro 9i 16 for about a week and a half as my every day work device as well as for general browsing and video streaming. In addition to our standard suite of benchmarks, I used the laptop in a number of use cases where a professional buyer might want to use it, such as doing creative content work on the train in to work or at a coffee shop.

I've been reviewing laptops for years now, in addition to having an extensive educational background in computer science, and I've tested countless laptop models across the spectrum of designs, quality, and performance. I know what the best laptop at a given price point should be able to do, as well as how much any given set up should cost you, so I'm well qualified to judge the merits of any given laptop.

We pride ourselves on our independence and our rigorous review-testing process, offering up long-term attention to the products we review and making sure our reviews are updated and maintained - regardless of when a device was released, if you can still buy it, it's on our radar.

Read more about how we test