Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold 2022 hands-on

Foldable screens are officially here to stay. Years of subpar foldable phone iterations have finally yielded worthwhile devices like Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip 4 and Z Fold 4, whose flexible displays have legitimate productivity and portability benefits. Not to be outdone, PC makers have also jumped on this trend by producing full-size foldable computers. However, as we figured out with 2020’s Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold, they still had a long way to go.

Fortunately, Lenovo has gone back to the drawing board and refined its foldable PC for 2022, promising a larger display and faster performance within a slimmer body that can be easily folded up and packed into a small bag. We got some early hands-on time with this $2,499 computer ahead of its November release, and while it’s still shaping up to be a niche product, it’s still awesome to see in action.

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold price and release date

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Mike Andronico/CNN

The ThinkPad X1 Fold 2022 is currently slated to launch in November 2022 with a starting price of $2,499. There will also be a $2,999 model for those who want a pen and keyboard included.

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Mike Andronico/CNN

For the uninitiated, the first Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold was essentially a giant 13-inch Windows tablet that could serve as a huge canvas for drawing or watching movies when fully expanded, or act as a laptop when you fold it at a 90-degree angle and plop a keyboard on one half of the screen. And when you fully close it up, it’s about as small as an average sized book, and more portable than a typical laptop.

There’s a lot to like about this design on paper, but as we learned while reviewing it, the original 2020 version of the X1 Fold simply wasn’t ready for everyday consumers. Windows 10 wasn’t optimized for foldable screens at the time, resulting in a frustrating and oftentimes buggy software experience that made it hard to use even the most basic apps. Factor in average performance and short battery life, and you had a device that was extremely hard to justify for its steep $2,499 price tag — and that’s without the optional keyboard.

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Mike Andronico/CNN

The 2022 Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold is just as expensive — and will likely remain a niche — but I immediately noticed significant improvements when I got my hands on one at an early preview event in New York City. The first thing that caught my eye was the new display, which isn’t just significantly bigger (16 inches versus 13.3 inches) but also more attractive and immersive, thanks to much slimmer bezels around the screen.

The X1 Fold’s OLED display looked great in action, pumping out bold colors whether I was watching a vivid Dolby Vision video of an amusement park or simply admiring the deep reds and blacks on the PC’s wallpaper. I especially liked using the big screen vertically in portrait mode — a new feature for this year’s model — as I had

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