Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano Gen 3 review: tiny — and a little stale MSRP $1,593.00 Score Details DT Recommended Product “Small, fast, and light, the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano Gen 3 still seems dated.” Pros Cons Lenovo’s iconic ThinkPad design remains as recognizable as ever. Recognizable comes with a downside though, because the design is starting to feel a little dated, as both the industry and Lenovo itself start to leave the design behind.
The ThinkPad X1 Nano Gen 3, though, is an old-school ThinkPad through and through. It’s all-black with a few red accents, such as the LED dotting the “i” in the ThinkPad logo on the lid and the red TrackPoint nubbin in the middle of the keyboard. It’s not a bad look, it’s just dated. The large plastic top and bottom display bezels don’t help, leaving the Dell XPS 13 Plus as a much more contemporary laptop.
Connectivity is typical for today’s tiny laptops, with just a couple of Thunderbolt 4 ports and a 3.5mm audio jack. The latter is welcome, given that laptops like the XPS 13 Plus have dropped the port. There’s also an optional Nano-SIM slot supporting 4GB WWAN connectivity to go with Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.1.
Overall, the ThinkPad X1 Nano Gen 3 provides solid productivity performance, but won’t set any speed records in creative tasks. But of course, that’s not why people buy tiny laptops. Gaming isn’t really an option given the integrated Iris Xe graphics that didn’t perform particularly well in the 3DMark Time Spy benchmark.
I’m not sure how to account for the poor web-browsing results given the other two scores. It’s possible that the ThinkPad X1 Nano Gen 3 gets at least average battery life, but I’m left with questions.