GeezBlog

I’ve been using the X1 2-in-1 Gen 9 as my go-to road machine for a while now.  One of the interesting things about this machine is its use of a haptic TrackPad – no physical buttons.  Virtual buttons supported by some kind of high-tech magic.  Very cool… but not for me.

I’m a hard-core TrackPoint user.  Often disable the TrackPad since I only use the TrackPoint and the buttons at the top of the TrackPad.  This going back to my first ThinkPad – an R40.

I just haven’t been able to adjust to the virtual buttons.  Constantly miss left clicks.  May be due to hand position, or perhaps just ingrained (finger) muscle memory, or old age… but I just can’t use this thing efficiently.

Not saying others won’t love it.  This is purely subjective.

Got to poking around in the parts lists and saw both the haptic and classic (3 button) TrackPad listed for my machine.  Lenovo calls them ForcePad and ClickPad, respectively.  Decided to take a major risk and attempt a transplant.   This worked (or didn’t) for me.  No guarantees it will work for anyone else.  No guarantees it won’t lead to physical or electrical damage.  However this turns out, I’m here to tell you those tiny connectors are terrifying!  Here we go… 

Working on a grounded ant-stat mat with wrist strap attached.

First thing: with AC power disconnected restart and access BIOS.  Disable the internal battery.

The Hardware Maintenance Manual and Service Videos were vital resources:

Hardware Maintenance Manual – ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 12 and X1 2-in-1 Gen 9

Removal and Replacement Videos – ThinkPad X1 2-in-1 Gen 9 (21KE, 21KF)

For once got the bottom cover off without breaking anything.  Not shown in the HMM: there’s a clip in the middle of the base cover that is a friction fit.  Once the screws are removed and the edges of the cover pried up, it releases with a straight pull up, directly away from the laptop.

Now to the internals. Remove the battery.  Once the screws are removed, the battery pulls straight up from the connector, then tilts out at the bottom.

Note that the haptic and “click” ‘pads mount differently.  The haptic pad has an extra row of screws not used by the click pad.  The cables (as I found out later) are also different.  Remove the cable and the spill mylar.  Then the 10 screws holding the haptic TrackPad.

Now to put it all back together.

The parts I used.  From https://pcsupport.lenovo.com/us/en/products/laptops-and-netbooks/thinkpad-x-series-laptops/thinkpad-x1-2-in-1-gen-9-type-21ke-21kf/21ke/parts/display/compatible

TrackPad: CS23 3+2bCP,GL,GR,NONFC,TRI Part No 5M11G56210

Cable: CABLE-FPC,CLICKPAD Part No 5C11L99747

Note: the cable and TrackPad part numbers will be different if the laptop has other options, NFC and/or WWAN for instance.

The new ‘pad came with a cardboard jig.  The intent is that it goes over the top of the TrackPad with the “ears” wrapped around the sided  This to locate the new ‘pad precisely in the hole.  I struggled with it for some time.  If the ears are wrapped enough to keep it (barely) in place, they bind so much that they couldn’t be pulled out once the new ‘pad was in place. In the end I installed the TrackPad and left the screws loose, poked the jig ears around the edges, and tightened the screws.  Seemed to do the job, but there must be a better way.

New TrackPad and spill mylar installed.  3 screws unused.

New cable installed.

Smoke test.

Battery reinstalled.

Job complete.  Seems to work just fine 🙂

 Let’s have a look at the 9th generation X1 Yoga … I mean the X1 2-in-1 Gen 9….

From time to time Lenovo sends me a gadget. They’re handy to have around – both for my own use and when trying to help out in the Lenovo forums. I do some testing and writing as well. Beyond the use of the laptop, I’m not otherwise compensated. Professional images are Lenovo’s. Amateur snapshots are mine. Opinions are exclusively mine. I do not work for, represent, or speak for Lenovo.

This one is a pre-customer-ship unit.  I expect it to be representative of what is – or will be – available to the public, but it may vary in some details.  As always, I strive for accuracy, but please double-check anything I say here before using it to make a purchase decision.

This laptop continues the evolution of the X1 series, but this time it’s more than an incremental change.  The new CPU has made  large improvements in battery run-time, and the physical user interface is considerably different.  Tightened dimensions and weight, narrower display bezel, Larger camera/microphone “bump”, relocated ports, power button, fingerprint reader, the optional button-less touchpad, and the move from a garaged pen to somewhat larger one that attaches magnetically to the laptop.

That’s a lot to cover.  Let’s get to it…

It’s a toss-up whether to focus on difference from the Gen 8 or the Gen 9’s features. The changes are pronounced enough that it amounts to the same thing – so we’ll do a sort of mash-up.

First a note about “2-in-1” and “Yoga”.  Lenovo has introduced machines bearing the Yoga appellation that are not yogis.  They do not fold.  The 2-in-1 label has apparently taken over from yoga to indicate a foldable laptop.

The Lenovo product manager provided a set of feature bullet points:

Also provided was a list of differences from the Gen 8:

For reference, here’s my Gen 8 write-up:

ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 8: The More Things Change… The More They (mostly) Stay The Same…

The laptop on my bench is an SVT – pre customer ship – unit, so it doesn’t show up in Lenovo’s PSREF pages.  The base spec is available:

https://psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys/PDF/ThinkPad/ThinkPad_X1_2_in_1_Gen_9/ThinkPad_X1_2_in_1_Gen_9_Spec.pdf

This machine’s specs:

• Core™ Ultra 7 165U – 12 cores: 2 P cores, 8 E cores, 2 LPE cores 12MB cache
• 64GB RAM:  LPDDR5x-6400 –  SOLDERED
• 2TB SSD: Gen 4 Performance
• WLAN:  Intel 6E AX211 160MHz
• WWAN:  None
• Display:  2.8K (2880×1800) Multitouch OLED 400nits 120Hz
• Camera:  UHD 8.0MP + IR discrete, privacy shutter, MIPI, fixed focus, Computer Vision – please see Linux discussion below.
• Glass surface multi-touch Haptic Touchpad

A surprising option on this machine was the buttonless Touchpad.  Yike, are we trying the infamous “ClackPad” again?  I use the TrackPoint exclusively and believe me I was very skeptical. Withholding final judgement pending further use, but this actually works pretty well.  I’m not sure what the appeal is, and there are versions of the 2-in-1 with buttons, but we’ll soldier on…

[Update 2024.10.08]  I’ve been using the X1 for my daily on-the-road driver.  Just can’t get used to the buttonless touchpad 🙁  I’ve been a TrackPoint user since my R40 and the finger muscle memory is too ingrained.  Constantly miss the sweet spot on the left “button”.  My X1 Yogas with physical buttons are much more forgiving.  This is a beautiful high-spec machine, and I won’t abandon it because of the haptic touchpad – just wish it had buttons.

This is a purely subjective thing and others may well love the haptic pad.  Just a heads-up FWIW.

[Update 2024.10.24] Fixed that: Amateur Surgery: X1 Yoga 2-in-1 Gen 9 TrackPad Transplant

Note the fingerprint reader next to the right CTRL key.  Also note that the left-side CTRL and Fn keys have swapped positions.  I have zero idea why they abandoned years of ThinkPad tradition.  Don’t like it.  Will deal with it.

Instant update:  CTRL/Fn key swap is a BIOS option.  Wish they had left the buttons alone and let those who don’t like the classic ThinkPad layout use the BIOS option.  </soapbox>

As mentioned in the intro, many physical UI features have moved.  Fingerprint reader is on the keyboard instead of in the power button.  Power button has moved from above the keyboard to the right side of the machine.  Ports have been shuffled a bit.

Another change: the switch from a garaged pen to a larger one that can attach magnetically.  Note that this is an option and may not be included with all versions.

Instant add:  Even the screen protector used in shipping includes a “cheat sheet”.   Nice touch.

Let’s have a look at performance.  This SSD is a Gen 4 performance unit.  Lenovo also offers Gen 4 SSDs without the “performance” tag. Those use a Gen 4 interface, but run at speeds closer to Gen 3.  This one comes close to saturating the interface when reading.

Wifi is strong in this one.  Takes full advantage of my 1gbps down/40mbps up cable.

[Update 2024.09.07] Cable has been updated to 2gpbs/300mbps.  The X1 is capable of exceptional wifi speeds.

For completeness I ran Cinebench and PassMark in Balanced and Performance modes.

This is a laptop – a road machine – so battery run-time (not “life’) is important.  Intel has done something magical with this processor.  Playing an MP4 movie I see close to twice the runtime as the Gen 8.  Nice.  Part of that may be the lower resolution OLED display, but this is an eye-popping improvement.

That said, it’s not perfect.  The performance issues with some apps continue.  I still don’t know if problem is with the MS thread director, the app, or something else.

Building a new virtual machine with VMware Workstation Player can take 25 minutes.  Awful.  My ThinkPads prior to the mixed core processors could do it in 4 or 5 minutes.  The quick-and-dirty work-around is to run VMware in administrator mode.  That seems to force it to use the P cores instead of the E cores.

Instant update: VMware offered an update to 17.5.1.  once done I was surprised at how quickly an existing VM booted.  A few quick tests and it seems things have improved.  A build takes 8 minutes or less, and boot time and general performance are decent.  Not as fast as running in Admin mode, but tolerable.

Almost forgot to link the  User Guides and Hardware Maintenance manual:

https://download.lenovo.com/pccbbs/mobiles_pdf/x1_carbon_gen12_2in1_gen9_ug_en.pdf

https://download.lenovo.com/pccbbs/mobiles_pdf/x1_carbon_gen12_2in1_gen9_linux_ug.pdf

https://download.lenovo.com/pccbbs/mobiles_pdf/x1_carbon_gen12_2-in-1_gen9_hmm_en.pdf

Hey!  There’s a Linux UG.  Looks like Lenovo will offer Ubuntu and Fedora, although they don’t show up in the PSREF pages yet.

NOTE: this is important! The Computer Vision/MIPI camera is still not supported in Linux.  I’d like to think it will be, but it’s been hanging unresolved for a very long time.  That’s on Intel IMHO.  Please be aware if you purchase a 2-in-1 with the MIPI camera, you may be doing without for a long time.

I did try an install of Ubuntu 23.10 and it feels a little shaky. Trying to find out what versions Lenovo will ship, and whether they will be modified in any way.

Instant update: I tried the Fedora 39 image that Lenovo will offer. Seems to work well – apart from the camera.  There is discussion on the forums that a camera solution is about to drop.  Fingers crossed…

Update to the Fedora 39 update: I’m a TrackPoint user so I didn’t notice this right away.  The button-less touchpad doesn’t move the cursor.  The “phantom” buttons at the top do work but not the touchpad itself.

A quick report on the laptop that arrived on my bench a few days ago, including a drive-by look at how it handles Linux (or how Linux handles it).  But first:

From time to time Lenovo sends me a gadget. They’re handy to have around – both for my own use and when trying to help out in the Lenovo forums. I do some testing and writing as well. Beyond the use of the laptop, I’m not otherwise compensated. Professional images are Lenovo’s. Amateur snapshots are mine. Opinions are exclusively mine. I do not work for, represent, or speak for Lenovo.

This one is a pre-customer-ship unit.  I expect it to be representative of what is – or will be – available to the public, but it may vary in some details.  As always, I strive for accuracy, but please double-check anything I say here before using it to make a purchase decision.

The more things change: the Gen 8 X1 Yoga sports a range of 13th generation Intel processors.  There is (or will be) a 64GB RAM option.

The more they stay the same: otherwise, the Gen 8 Yoga is essentially identical to the Gen 7 Yoga.

 

Gen 8 vs Gen 7 differences:

I’ve previously written about the Gen 7 X1 Yoga and how it differed from the Gen 6, so I’ll try to avoid repeating that here, with the occasional exception to highlight something of particular interest.

ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 7: Truly a New Generation

I’ll immediately renege on that promise and offer the difference chart and bullet points sent by the product manager:

 

• New recycled aluminum on the D cover
• Change to a more powerful/more efficient 13th gen Intel vPro processors
• Max memory now up to 64GB
• Increase of Post Consumer Content(PCC) plastics throughout the chassis
• We are seeing approximately a 10% increase in benchmark performance G2G
• Also seeing approximately a 1.5hr increase in battery life as well
• Thermals have been adjusted based on “warm” feedback received on Gen8
• All packaging is “Plastic Free” for mass production, so we will have removed all plastic bags, twist ties, AC adapter plug covers, etc…(you still may see these in the sample systems)

Using the above to compare my Gens 7 and 8 Yogas is a bit “apples and oranges” since the Gen 7 has a P CPU while the Gen 8 sports a U – there’s a large difference in the Performance core count.

NOTE: whatever RAM capacity is installed, it is soldered, and can’t be upgraded.

One difference that I can attest to is the packaging.  99.999% plastic-free, including the box handle:

NOTE: the Ethernet USB-C dongle shown may not be included with customer-ship units.

The only plastic items are the stickers over the power button and camera that remind the user that the fingerprint reader is in the power button, and there’s a privacy shutter for the camera.

About that privacy shutter: the mechanism is tiny.  It’s easy to miss and often brings users to the forum complaining that their camera doesn’t work.  Having it closed is one of the reasons to see a camera image like this:

 

Gen 8 Specifications:

Gen 8 PSREF pages:

https://psref.lenovo.com/Product/ThinkPad/ThinkPad_X1_Yoga_Gen_8?MT=21hr

The full base specification:

https://psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys/PDF/ThinkPad/ThinkPad_X1_Yoga_Gen_8/ThinkPad_X1_Yoga_Gen_8_Spec.pdf

Current sales page:

https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadx1/thinkpad-x1-yoga-gen-8-(14-inch-intel)/len101t0052

The CPUs that are or will be available:

What Intel has to say about the gen 13 processors:

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/docs/processors/core/13th-gen-core-mobile-brief.html

Ports – identical to the Gen 7’s:

 

My Gen 8’s Specifications:

This pre-customer-ship unit doesn’t appear in the PSREF pages, so these details are gleaned from Windows internals.

• i7-1365U  10 core: 2 performance, 8 efficient, 12 threads
• 32GB RAM: Samsung K3KL9L90CM-MGCT 6400 LPDDR5
• 2TB SSD: WD PC SN819 SDCQNRZ-2T00-1201
• WLAN:  Intel 6E AX211 160MHz
• WWAN:  Intel 5G Solution 5000
• Display:  OLED 3840×2400
• Camera:  Intel AVStream

Per a forum conversation the WWAN card appears to be the same one offered on the 2022 platforms.  Likewise, the camera is the MIPI/ComputerVision/AVStream unit previously offered.

https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Ubuntu/ThinkPad-X1-Yoga-Gen-8-super-quick-look-and-heads-up/m-p/5217285

My unit’s CPU:

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/232141/intel-core-i71365u-processor-12m-cache-up-to-5-20-ghz.html

Lower core count than P series processors, but still decent performance and improved thermal management and battery run-time (not life…).

 

Performance:

SSD:

NOTE: my unit has a “Gen 4 Performance” SSD that delivers close to full Gen 4 read speeds.  Lenovo may also offer “Gen 4” SSDs – without the “performance” in their description.  They will run at Gen 3 speeds, even in a Gen 4 slot.

RAM:

Wifi:

Comes close to saturating my gigabit internet and LAN speeds.

Passmark – balanced and performance modes:

This matches up ~ evenly with my Gen 6 and a little lower than the Gen 7.  Subjectively, it’s pretty snappy.

Battery run-time (not “life”):

As noted in the product manager’s bullet points, this is an improvement over my Gen 7’s run-time by nearly two hours.  Nice. And a bit better than the Gen 6, even with the Gen 8’s gorgeous OLED display.  Really nice.  (About “run-time” vs “life”: tilting at windmills here.  To me, “life” means that a battery can still be charged and used.  “Run-time” is how long it will power a laptop once charged.  </soapbox>)

Idle CPU power consumption:

Idle power consumption is considerably reduced from the Gen 7 – which has many more cores, which may – or may not – explain the difference.  The Gen 7 would sometimes run fans at idle, while the Gen 8 doesn’t seem to.

Thermals:

This is also improved over the Gen 7, which could hit 100C in the performance cores when doing seemingly non-demanding tasks.

VMware, ah… VMware:

As discussed in the Gen 7 article, “Unresolved Issues“, for some applications performance is terrible.  This seems to be an issue of handling mixed core assignments.  If the applications aren’t core-aware and the MS Thread Director assigns efficient cores to demanding tasks, performance craters.

My test case is building a Ubuntu 22.10 virtual client in VMware Workstation Player (free).  A similar build on my Gen 6 took about 5 minutes.  On the Gen 7 and now on this Gen 8, it takes close to 25 minutes.  Ugh.  Once built, the VM startup time is awful.  Really awful.

I’d hoped that improvements to the Thread Director or to the VMware host software would fix this, but no joy 🙁  What does fix things is running VMware in Administrator mode – even when power is set to balanced. That brings the build time down to 5 or 6 minutes, and startup time is excellent.  My guess is that admin mode forces performance core usage. Odd, but a simple fix if one doesn’t mind clicking through the UAC nag every time.

 

Linux – Close But No Cigar:

First things first:

With the newer models there’s one additional step required to boot Ubuntu (or other signed distros) in Secure Boot mode: enable MS 3rd Party UEFI CA.

The basics:

Hopefully this will improve with time, but for now this Gen 8 X1 Yoga isn’t fully supported.

Testing with Ubuntu 22.10 live and installed, most of the basics seem to work – in a “quick-and-dirty” test:  keyboard and ultranav, wifi, touch, audio, brightness and volume keys, tablet mode detection all seem to function.

What doesn’t work are WWAN and camera.  Some hope that WWAN unlock will be fairly soon, but the camera is taking forever…

https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Ubuntu/ThinkPad-X1-Yoga-Gen-8-super-quick-look-and-heads-up/m-p/5217285?page=1#5951632

Bad enough that camera support for the MIPI unit is taking so long, but selecting a model with a high-DPI screen seems to force that unsupported camera.  This causes some major pain among ThinkPad + Linux fans who select high-spec machines as their Linux platforms.

Dock drama: LAN:

Another pain point is Ubuntu vs the ThinkPad Universal Thunderbolt 4 Dock (40B0).  TLDR it isn’t quite stable.

Things are actually a bit better than with the Gen 7: “Unresolved Issues”

With that Yoga and Ubuntu 22.04, using the dock with LAN cable plugged in would hang Linux immediately after logging in.   With this Gen 8 and Ubuntu 22.10 it doesn’t generally hang.  What happens is that it loses the LAN connection shortly after logging in.  This persists even when rebooting to Windows and requires fiddling with un/replugging the USB-C cable, power cycling the dock, and probably facing the right direction and holding your face just right.  Ugh.

The apparent fix with both machines is going to BIOS Setup, Config, Thunderbolt 4 and turning off PCIe tunneling.  Things are mostly stable after that – at least LAN-wise.  I have seen the LAN disconnect a couple of times in normal use.  In that case un/replug of the cable seems to sort it.  Not quite stable…

My guess is that tunneling allows Linux to access and configure the dock’s chips directly, leading to the hang/disconnect.

More dock drama: monitors:

This worked, more-or-less, eventually.  Tied a TV to the dock via HDMI and tried to use it as a 2nd monitor. First no detection, then detected and no image, then a Ubuntu error, and finally after cable fiddling and restarts, a kind of success.  Don’t know yet how stable it will be.  The same connection directly to the laptop worked perfectly first try.

Last things last:

One irritating quirk when bouncing back and forth on a Windows/Linux dual-boot setup is the different ways they handle the clock.  Confuses Windows as to what time it is, which can foul up any number of things.

To get Ubuntu to use the same clock reference as Windows, as root:

timedatectl set-local-rtc 1 --adjust-system-clock

Others will suggest setting Windows to use UTC.  Your choice.

 

For the forums:

A version of this article has been adapted for the Lenovo forums.  I will attempt to keep them in sync.

https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-X-Series-Laptops/ThinkPad-X1-Yoga-Gen-8-The-More-Things-Change-The-More-They-mostly-Stay-The-Same/m-p/5219141

There seems to be a whole lot of half-informed “information” floating around about Lenovo and/or MS locking out Linux on new ThinkPads. And as usual,  the torch and pitchfork crowd railing against the conspiracy.

Nope. You can still boot a signed distro, but it takes one more step. The ability to boot something that uses MS 3rd party certs has been split out in the secure boot options. Enter BIOS, switch that toggle, and Bob’s your uncle. Confirmed on my ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 7 and multiple other ThinkPads by my mates.  Whew.