X1 Carbon Gen 9: Lenovo has to be careful with the ThinkPad keyboard

[Redaktion]

Until 2018, Lenovo did not change a lot when it comes to the typing feel of the ThinkPad X1 Carbon. Since Lenovo has reduced the travel with the X1 Carbon Gen 7, it seems like pandora's box has been opened. With the new ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9, there are big changes yet again.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/X1-Carbon-Gen-9-Lenovo-has-to-be-careful-with-the-ThinkPad-keyboard.537996.0.html

[Donald William Gillies]

Without a good keyboard a lot of their laptops are garbage .... They took away the modularity, the expandability, now the only thing left for the Bean counters to kill is the keyboard!

[kony]

I wish there was a company that *improves* keyboards in their laptops, instead everybody are cutting costs on it, even Lenovo...

I miss 7 row keyboards on Thinkpads...

[Ole-André]

Lenovo killed the keyboard in 2012, been crap ever since...

[Dorby]

I wish there was a company that *improves* keyboards in their laptops, instead everybody are cutting costs on it, even Lenovo...

I miss 7 row keyboards on Thinkpads...

Gaming laptop OEMs are always coming up with different variations of "mechanical keyboard" switches. Gigabyte has one with Aorus, Dell with Alienware, Asus with Scar, MSI with GT series and Acer probably has one too, I can't remember which. Aorus 15 is really good from what I remember. The rest are probably good too, considering they are selling points on the marketing material.
For regular gaming laptops with non-mechanical switches, Asus ROG is the best imo.

Other than that, Surface Book has a great long-travel keyboard last I checked. HP flagships (Spectre, Elte, ZBook) have mastered the great short-travel design, like pre-2015 MacBooks. I've personally used many HPs because I liked their more recent switches.

Lenovo and Asus (consumer lines) are quite good as well, but they're highly inconsistent by model, and within the same model as well. Dell tries to experiment a lot with XPS and Inspirons, which results in some being good and many others much worse. Dell business is good, but not better than Lenovo and HP.

The key issue is typing is highly subjective. Some people prefer clicky short travel, others springy long travel, etc etc. On top of that, everyone's trying to make their devices slimmer these days, a conflict of interest between engineers, designers, and us consumers.

IMHO, Lenovo Thinkpads are STILL the best and most consistent Brand, if you prefer longer travel on a non-gaming laptop. Of course I'm talking about the current gen X, T, P series, minus the X1s given the recent negative NBC and Youtube reviews of those. Just beware that the XTP series are prone to some degree of keyboard lottery.

(Keep in mind, all of my impressions are only relevant to the mid-range and high-end brands, not any budget laptops)

[winston]

Gaming laptop OEMs are always coming up with different variations of "mechanical keyboard" switches. Gigabyte has one with Aorus, Dell with Alienware, Asus with Scar, MSI with GT series and Acer probably has one too, can't remember which.

Unfortunately they all look like learning aids for retarded children, not something you'd wanna use in a professional environment.

[xpclient]

Don't forget the touchpad which is also now ruined by Lenovo by turning it into a clickpad. They should have at least one series or at least one ThinkPad model from their dozens with touchpad buttons below and trackpoint buttons above. I permanently moved from ThinkPads to gaming laptops with touchpad buttons because of this.

[Spunjji]

Gaming laptop OEMs are always coming up with different variations of "mechanical keyboard" switches. Gigabyte has one with Aorus, Dell with Alienware, Asus with Scar, MSI with GT series and Acer probably has one too, can't remember which.

Unfortunately they all look like learning aids for retarded children, not something you'd wanna use in a professional environment.

Way to signal your superior intellect 🙄

[Brian]

The article finally explains a bit why that, for the typing feel, the keyboard on the T430s I have has been the best typing experience for me. 2.5mm key travel! I never bothered to understand it myself, but did notice that it was visibly higher than other chiclet keyboards. Also, that, with my x220 being my other reference, earlier Thinkpads had higher quality TrackPoints. The low-profile TrackPoints for the more recent models I have are just not that great.

[vertigo]

This is just showing what I've been saying for a while, which is that ThinkPad quality has been on a general downward trend for years. For many people that buy ThinkPads, the keyboard and/or TrackPoint are main driving factors toward that choice, and for some, like myself, the only reason for buying a Lenovo instead of the many other available options, a large number of which are superior in many, if not most, ways to Lenovo. And they're taking the biggest thing that makes them stand out and gives consumers reason to choose their product over something else and gradually destroying it. I was already set against getting another Lenovo after the problems I'm having with my new/current one, though the thought of using a laptop with cramped arrow keys and without a TrackPoint, as well as the multitude of other stupid design decisions I see in various keyboards, is an unpleasant one. But at this rate, that won't even matter, because in a year or two, when I might be looking to upgrade, ThinkPads won't even have that going for them anymore.

[DonglyDiddles]

The layout is poop anyway if you ask me.
There is a reason that no other keyboard maker puts the Fn key on the far left of the bottom row... it screws with our notion, that we unshakably remember from usage of all standard desktop keyboards, that ctrl should be in that position directly under and left of shift...
and a dedicated Printscreen key on the bottom row... why? Another needless deviation from standard, but worse than that it replaces the ContextMenu key which is no where to be found on the keyboard, a key that's extra valuable for laptop.
It doesn't stop there, page up and down are by the arrow keys, OK this works. But Home and End are at the opposite side of the keyboard on the top row, what the ****?
Trash for programmers. Trash for productive typists.
It's like they're designing this windows-shipped laptop with mac-users in mind, what the hell??

Forget keyboard feel, garbage design is why I'm not considering buying these laptops. Seems like a mistake made in the 90s and refused to update.
Hey, maybe I'm wrong and their design is amazing... maybe throwing standards out the window for an erratic layout is great. But if that's true then why is this layout only found on ThinkPad series keyboards not their other lines?

[vertigo]

The layout is poop anyway if you ask me.
There is a reason that no other keyboard maker puts the Fn key on the far left of the bottom row... it screws with our notion, that we unshakably remember from usage of all standard desktop keyboards, that ctrl should be in that position directly under and left of shift...
and a dedicated Printscreen key on the bottom row... why? Another needless deviation from standard, but worse than that it replaces the ContextMenu key which is no where to be found on the keyboard, a key that's extra valuable for laptop.
It doesn't stop there, page up and down are by the arrow keys, OK this works. But Home and End are at the opposite side of the keyboard on the top row, what the ****?
Trash for programmers. Trash for productive typists.
It's like they're designing this windows-shipped laptop with mac-users in mind, what the hell??

Forget keyboard feel, garbage design is why I'm not considering buying these laptops. Seems like a mistake made in the 90s and refused to update.
Hey, maybe I'm wrong and their design is amazing... maybe throwing standards out the window for an erratic layout is great. But if that's true then why is this layout only found on ThinkPad series keyboards not their other lines?

Personally, I like the placement of the home and end keys and don't ever use the context key, and the page up and down keys are in as good a place as any (IMO), though I do think they're backwards of how they should be (left key should be down and right key should be up). And the Ctrl and Fn keys can be swapped in BIOS, though I agree it's a stupid placement to begin with and it should be the other way around and allow those that actually prefer it this way to switch it. The problem with swapping them is the labels don't match and, more importantly, the Fn key is smaller, making the "Ctrl" key, once swapped, smaller. If I could swap those and the page up/down keys, layout-wise it would be near-perfect for me. But yeah, putting print screen where insert is with insert as the alternate function for it so the context key could be there would certainly make more sense. They should just make a touch paper display strip on the right side with 5-6 slots that can be used for whatever you want, so people can put less frequently used keys like print screen, insert, pause/break, etc there.

[_MT_]

Personally, I like the placement of the home and end keys and don't ever use the context key, and the page up and down keys are in as good a place as any (IMO), though I do think they're backwards of how they should be (left key should be down and right key should be up). And the Ctrl and Fn keys can be swapped in BIOS, though I agree it's a stupid placement to begin with and it should be the other way around and allow those that actually prefer it this way to switch it. The problem with swapping them is the labels don't match and, more importantly, the Fn key is smaller, making the "Ctrl" key, once swapped, smaller.

I don't agree with you. If you are in a page mode and you hit right arrow, you expect to see the next page. Therefore, if you want to put page up and down keys next to each other, rather than above each other, page down should be the right key. To mirror right arrow. This is what makes for an intuitive interface. Just as "next song" button is on the right on players. Or "fast forward." It's always the right button. Left is previous/ back. Right means forward and since we read top down and pages (in a computer) are typically organized top down, forward means down therefore right means down. Yes, I can see how down could be seen as previous (you move towards the top, top is forward) but that's not how text works.

I think the only reason they keep the function key is legacy. That's why only ThinkPads have it that way. Yes, I don't like it either, it was really the primary reason my first laptop was a Latitude and not a ThinkPad. And the BIOS option is a poor substitute as, as you write, the key is smaller. I think IBM screwed up.

I quite like having function key with arrows for this. Up and down for page up and down and left and right for home and end. Yes, you have to press one more key to get the job done. But it can work with shift pretty well for home/ end. It's intuitive. And when it comes to going through pages in a document, I typically have the whole page displayed and use arrows anyway. I don't use page up and down much at all. Or I like using a scroll wheel. I still think fondly of a keyboard I had as a kid that had a scroll wheel on the left edge. For some reason, scrolling through a document with that was more comfortable than scrolling with a wheel on a mouse. I could tuck my fingers sort of underneath it, my thumb would rest perfectly on top. The best scrolling experience I ever had.

[vertigo]

I don't agree with you. If you are in a page mode and you hit right arrow, you expect to see the next page. Therefore, if you want to put page up and down keys next to each other, rather than above each other, page down should be the right key. To mirror right arrow. This is what makes for an intuitive interface. Just as "next song" button is on the right on players. Or "fast forward." It's always the right button. Left is previous/ back. Right means forward and since we read top down and pages (in a computer) are typically organized top down, forward means down therefore right means down. Yes, I can see how down could be seen as previous (you move towards the top, top is forward) but that's not how text works.

I think the only reason they keep the function key is legacy. That's why only ThinkPads have it that way. Yes, I don't like it either, it was really the primary reason my first laptop was a Latitude and not a ThinkPad. And the BIOS option is a poor substitute as, as you write, the key is smaller. I think IBM screwed up.

I quite like having function key with arrows for this. Up and down for page up and down and left and right for home and end. Yes, you have to press one more key to get the job done. But it can work with shift pretty well for home/ end. It's intuitive. And when it comes to going through pages in a document, I typically have the whole page displayed and use arrows anyway. I don't use page up and down much at all. Or I like using a scroll wheel. I still think fondly of a keyboard I had as a kid that had a scroll wheel on the left edge. For some reason, scrolling through a document with that was more comfortable than scrolling with a wheel on a mouse. I could tuck my fingers sort of underneath it, my thumb would rest perfectly on top. The best scrolling experience I ever had.

Good point about page up and down. It's just that I seem to intuitively expect it to be the other way, and every single time I use them I have to look. Part of it is that I, like you, don't use them very often, and one of the main things I do use them for is dimming the monitor with f.lux, where page down dims and page up brightens, which is confusing because I'm pressing the right key to make the brightness bar go left and the left key to make it go right. And yes, I realize I can adjust the brightness via hardware with the actual brightness keys, but the lowest level is often too dim whereas the next level is too bright. Lenovo really did a crap job there, with far too big a jump at the low end.

The home and end keys, though, I use a lot, and they required the use of the Fn key on my Surface, and I hated, hated, hated it. I never, ever want them to not be standalone keys again.

[_MT_]

Part of it is that I, like you, don't use them very often, and one of the main things I do use them for is dimming the monitor with f.lux, where page down dims and page up brightens, which is confusing because I'm pressing the right key to make the brightness bar go left and the left key to make it go right.

The home and end keys, though, I use a lot, and they required the use of the Fn key on my Surface, and I hated, hated, hated it. I never, ever want them to not be standalone keys again.

That is understandable. The root of the problem is that the key is called Page Down instead of Next Page. The logic f.lux uses makes perfect sense when the keys are above each other. But not when they're are next to each other. They should offer an option of inverting it. I would suggest it to them. Since it's a common arrangement on laptops.

I'm specifically talking about function plus arrows. Nothing else. On a desktop keyboard, moving (from typing position) to cursor keys and moving to the block above them with home and end is very similar. But on laptops, with six row keyboards and since home and end are often in different places on different keyboards, I would really rather have them on left and right cursor keys with function. On old seven row laptop keyboards, I felt it was a little bit more awkward compared to a desktop, but the block was still there and the keys were easy enough to find without looking. That's just not the case with a typical modern laptop keyboard. I'm so used to switching to cursor keys from typing and using them with shift (character selection), control (word skip) and control + shift (word selection) that it just feels very natural to use them with function as well (function for jumping and function + shift for selection). I have no problem hitting those combinations with my left hand.