Lenovo makes so many laptops that we’re used to seeing the company split hairs between model lines, but the ThinkPad X9 14 Aura Edition (starts at $1,239; $1,519.01 as tested) in particular deserves a double-take—maybe even a triple. For one, it’s aimed at small and mid-size businesses, which have traditionally been ThinkBook territory, while the ThinkPad brand sticks to the corporate enterprise. For another, a 14-inch ThinkPad X9 kind of runs up against the 14-inch ThinkPad X1 Carbon, which we’ve dubbed the best work laptop you can buy. But if you’re looking for something more affordable—and a decent MacBook alternative, specifically—the X9 is a sure success and earns our Editors’ Choice pick for midrange business ultraportables.
Configurations and Design: Thunder Gray, Not Matte Black
Instead of magnesium and carbon fiber, the new ThinkPad’s slim chassis (at 0.51 by 12.3 by 8.4 inches) is made of partly recycled aluminum. It still carries the brand’s usual MIL-STD 810H certification against travel hazards like shock, vibration, and extreme temperatures. You’ll feel minimal flex if you grasp the screen corners or press the keyboard deck. At 2.74 pounds, the X9 14 qualifies as an ultraportable, undercutting the 14-inch MacBook Pro M4 (3.4 pounds) and tying the 13-inch MacBook Air.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
The 14-inch X9 starts at $1,239 with an Intel Core Ultra 5 processor, 16GB of memory, a small 256GB solid-state drive, a 1,920-by-1,200-pixel OLED display without touch control, and a copy of Windows 11 Home. It peaks at $2,149 with a Core Ultra 7 vPro chip, double the RAM, quadruple the storage, and a 2,880-by-1,800-pixel, 120Hz OLED touch panel.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
My review unit (model 21QA0001US) hits a happy medium with the Core Ultra 5 226V, 16GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD, a Windows 11 Pro installation, and the 2.8K OLED touch screen for $1,519.01 at Lenovo’s online configurator. (I also found it for $1,498.95 at B&H Photo.)
The “Aura Edition” moniker refers to some ancillary AI features co-developed with Intel and seen on several other Lenovo laptops lately. For example, pressing F8 pops up a menu of Smart Modes such as Attention (fewer distractions, focus timers) and Wellness (posture reminders and eye breaks). F11, meanwhile, launches Intel Unison for a tap-to-link connection to your smartphone for swapping photos and handling calls and texts.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
Lenovo created a special barrel-like housing for ports and cooling on the X9, which gives the system the necessary room inside to fan-cool its CPU and provide a decent amount of ports without sacrificing performance. The laptop’s left flank holds an HDMI monitor port and a Thunderbolt 4 USB-C port (suitable for the petite AC adapter). Another Thunderbolt 4 port joins an audio or headphone jack on the right side. Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth come standard for wireless connectivity.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
Using the Lenovo ThinkPad X9 14: Always Look Your Best
In addition to recognizing your face for Windows Hello logins (you’ll also find a fingerprint reader in the power button), the webcam can dim the display when you look away and doze and wake the system as you leave and return. (That’s both a privacy enhancer and a battery saver.) The camera also supports Windows Camera’s auto framing and background blur.
Lenovo fitted the laptop’s 1440p webcam in the above-screen bump or ridge that we’ve seen on many such laptops, making it easier to open the lid with one hand. The camera captures up to 1440p videos and 4K stills that are well-lit and colorful, with sharp details and no noise or static. If you’re concerned about eavesdroppers, the F9 key toggles it on and off.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
Speaking of well-lit and colorful, Lenovo’s 1800p touch screen is a heavenly highlight. Capable of dynamically switching between a 120Hz and a 60Hz refresh rate to save battery power, the OLED panel is exceptionally bright and shows richly saturated colors, washday-white backgrounds, and inky blacks. The screen’s viewing angles are broad, though the touch glass does tend to show reflections at extreme off-angles. The display’s contrast is sky-high, and fine details are crisp, with no pixelation around the edges of letters.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
Sound from the front-corner speakers isn’t thunderous but enjoyably clear and enough to fill a room. The speakers have a defined bit of bass, punchy highs, and lively mid-tones. Audio isn’t harsh or tinny at top volume from these speakers, and it’s easy to make out overlapping tracks. Preinstalled Dolby Atmos software provides dynamic, game, music, movie, and voice presets, as well as an equalizer.
Alas, the X9 doesn’t share the ThinkPad T and X1 series keyboard—you’ll find dedicated Home and End keys on the top row, but Page Up and Page Down are relegated to the Fn key plus up and down arrows, and the latter are hard-to-hit, half-height keys stacked between the left and right arrows. The typing feel is snappy but noticeably shallow, with minimal travel. I can manage a brisk pace with almost no mistakes, but it feels like it would be uncomfortable to type on for hours. The large, buttonless touchpad glides smoothly, though taps are more comfortable than clicks.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
As usual, Lenovo Vantage software—dubbed Commercial Vantage on business laptops—centralizes system updates and settings (including the Dolby and AI modes), along with providing Wi-Fi security and Smart Care options for contacting tech support. Lenovo Smart Noise Cancellation can capture all speakers in the room, or focus on just your voice during teleconferences, all while reducing background noise.
Testing the Lenovo ThinkPad X9 14: Great Gusto, But No MacBook Killer
Apple’s MacBooks don’t support one of our key benchmarks, PCMark 10. However, given that MacBooks are one of Lenovo’s stated targets for the ThinkPad X9 14, we included the 14-inch MacBook Pro model in our comparison group, along with the category-leading Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13. We filled the charts with two other slimlines: the corporate-class Dell Pro 14 Premium and the more consumer-oriented, AMD-powered Acer Swift 14 AI.
Productivity, Content Creation, and AI Tests
Our primary overall benchmark, UL’s Windows-only PCMark 10, tests a system in productivity apps ranging from web browsing to word processing and spreadsheet work. Its Full System Drive subtest measures a PC’s storage throughput.
Three more tests are CPU-centric or processor-intensive. Maxon’s Cinebench 2024 uses that company’s Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene; Primate Labs’ Geekbench 6.3 Pro simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning; and we see how long it takes the video editing tool HandBrake 1.8 to convert a 12-minute clip from 4K to 1080p resolution.
Workstation maker Puget Systems’ PugetBench for Creators rates a PC’s image editing prowess with various automated operations in Adobe Photoshop 25. Finally, Geekbench AI is one of the first AI processing benchmarks, measuring a system’s capacity for tasks like image and text classification using neural processors, CPUs, and GPUs.
Apple’s M4-series chips embarrassed Intel’s here. While we can rationalize that the ThinkPad X9 costs less and that our test unit had a Core Ultra 5 instead of an Ultra 7 CPU, the MacBook Pro still spanked the Lenovo in our processing and Photoshop tests. Plus, while it’s not listed here, so did the 13-inch Air, albeit to a slightly lesser degree. The Acer’s Ryzen AI 9 was an overachiever, too.
At any rate, the X9 14 posted perfectly perky results, easily clearing the 5,000 points that indicate excellent productivity in PCMark 10 and hanging tough against the Core Ultra 7 chips. You’ll be delighted with the X9 as a daily driver and light content creation station.
Graphics Tests
We challenge laptops’ graphics with a quartet of animations or gaming simulations from UL’s 3DMark test suite. Wild Life (1440p) and Wild Life Extreme (4K) use the Vulkan graphics API to measure GPU speeds. Steel Nomad’s regular and Light subtests focus on APIs more commonly used for game development, like Metal and DirectX 12, to assess gaming geometry and particle effects. A fifth test, Solar Bay, emphasizes ray-tracing performance.
The ThinkPad X9 14 finished in the back half of the group in these tests. Notably, in two of the three tests that the MacBook Pro supported, it topped those results, losing to the Dell Pro in the Solar Bay ray-tracing test. The X9 has fine enough graphics for video streaming and solitaire gaming, but this is a laptop for work—not play.
Battery and Display Tests
We test each laptop’s battery life by playing a locally stored 720p video file (the open-source Blender movie Tears of Steel) with display brightness at 50% and audio volume at 100%. We make sure the battery is fully charged before the test, with Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting turned off.
To gauge laptop displays further, we also use a Datacolor SpyderX Elite monitor calibration sensor and Windows software to measure a screen’s color saturation—what percentage of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 color gamuts or palettes the display can show—and its 50% and peak brightness in nits (candelas per square meter).
We’ve almost grown used to ultraportable batteries lasting through not one but two full days of work or school, but it’s ridiculous that the X9’s 19 and a half hours of unplugged life are the fewest in this group. You’d have to be crazy to complain about it—or the screen’s nearly perfect color coverage and brightness.
Verdict: Pretty Grand for One and a Half Grand
If Santa Claus provided us a choice of the ThinkPad X9 or ThinkPad X1 Carbon, we’d pick the latter, but if we were spending our own money we’d be tempted to save hundreds. We can find no fault with Lenovo’s new small-business model except for a less-than-ideal keyboard and a missing USB Type-A port. This ThinkPad’s screen quality, audio fidelity, and other user conveniences earn it our Editors’ Choice award. Lenovo has found and filled a nifty niche with this laptop.
Lenovo ThinkPad X9 14 Aura Edition
Cons
The Bottom Line
Lenovo targets Apple’s MacBooks with an ultraportable work laptop for small offices that can’t afford the ThinkPad X1 Carbon. Overall, the ThinkPad X9 14 succeeds in design, pricing, and display quality.
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About Eric Grevstad
Contributing Editor
