As I work on updating and revamping Small-Laptops.com, as the website heads into the 20th year of it being online, my current (PC) ultraportable of choice has been a refurbished 13-inch ThinkPad X1 Nano (i5, 1st generation). I bought it about 4 months ago (eBay) for around $500 USD, and it came with a Lenovo warranty. My ThinkPads are always refurbished – I haven’t bought a new one in years.
I chose the 1st generation Nano because the processors in the 2nd and 3rd generations ran a little hotter, and made for a shorter battery life than the 1st generation. I know they are much faster in certain areas, but for what I need a sub-2 pound laptop for (something I can throw in my backpack, and that doesn’t look expensive at a coffee shop or cafe), the performance of the 1st generation nano was great – I did buy the 16GB version, and I did upgrade the internal storage to a SABRENT Rocket 1TB 2242 DRAM-LESS M.2 PCIe Gen 4 NVMe SSD (SB-2142-1TB), which is u usually around $100 at Amazon.com (affiliate link). Unfortunately, while I would love a 2TB drive in my Nano, the problem is that you have to go with a 3rd-generation NVME, which is slower, and you may not be getting a drive with TLC/3D NAND, and performance and battery life will be lower. The drive I chose is best overall in terms of performance and battery life.
As for why I chose the X1 Nano – I just fell in love with the design, and the keyboard was solid for its size, and the display was fantastic (I chose the non-touchscreen/matte version because of battery life, but the touchscreen version (glossy) doesn’t impact the battery that much). It’s not much smaller as far as the footprint when I compare it to my 6th-generation 14-inch ThinkPad X1 Carbon, but it just feels a lot more smaller (the keyboard on the Carbon is much better than the Nano, but keyboards after the 6th generation are not that much better.
As for its cancellation, you can’t find even the ThinkPad X1 Nano 3rd generations (last year’s release) up on the main Lenovo ThinkPad website, and the 4th generation should have been announced months ago.
And if you visit the Lenovo Outlet/Refurbished Site (link) you can only find the 1st and 2nd generation ThinkPads (and at a hefty premium given their age/cancellation). That makes me wonder what the production numbers were on the 3rd generation.
Am I surprised? No – The latest 11th generation ThinkPad x1 Carbon, while it may have a 14-inch display, has a starting weight of 1.12kg / 2.48lbs, a much better keyboard, and a footprint that is not that much bigger. If you want smaller than the Nano, or close in size, you can go down to the ThinkPad X12 Detachable (basically a nice 12-inch tablet with a detachable keyboard) or stay with 13-inch and the X13’s (Intel), L13’s (Lenovo’s budget line), and Z13’s (AMD), all of which are close to 3lbs (or over depending on options).
It’s unfortunate – I feel like a lot of people who loved the X1 Nano (and there are plenty of us) probably bought the 1st or 2nd generation and so were not in the market for a new ThinkPad just yet. I also think the 2nd and 3rd gen Nanos were not served very well by their processors – I feel like a newer low-power Intel (or better yet, AMD) processor could have brought the X1 Nano…I don’t want to say “back to life” but I think a different CPU choice could have gotten the Nano back to what the original goals were – a lightweight, low-power, excellent battery life ThinkPad that just so happened to have a 2K display and weigh under 2lbs.