I'm not going to tell you that the ThinkPad X9 Aura Edition is among the best business laptops. I mean, I could, and they certainly fit that bill, but they are also a marked divergence from the higher-end ThinkPad models, while also being powerful, tough, and with all-day battery life. Gone is TrackPoint's red nubbin and triple physical buttons on the top of the touchpad, and the exterior is a more sedate dark gray instead of black with red highlights. The best keyboard has been kept for the X1 Carbon and the 2-in-1 models, but even without those features, they're unmistakably a ThinkPad.

Like the ThinkPad branding on the lid, which has a red dot on the 'i' that pulses if the laptop is in sleep mode, or glows solidly if it's charging. The keyboard might not have metal keys or a scalloped shape, but it's no less joyful to type on, and the fingerprint sensor works just as swiftly. Both models have a large glass Haptic Touchpad, which is often found on premium models.

For the first time I can remember, a business laptop has OLED for both screen options instead of forcing you to choose between image quality with OLED and battery life with IPS. The only difference between the two 15-inch models is whether you want a touchscreen layer or not. The 14-inch model has a touchscreen if you get the 2.8K resolution panel or an FHD+ resolution OLED if you prefer not to have touch capability. And you really do want the 2.8K screen. Other than that major change, both are almost the same laptop, just with a different screen size, so you can pick the size you prefer, and not compromise on specifications.

About this review: Lenovo sent us the ThinkPad X9 Aura Edition in 14- and 15-inch sizes for the purposes of this review. The company had no input into its contents or saw the content before publication.

Price, specs & availability

The Lenovo ThinkPad X9 Aura Edition in 14-inch and 15-inch display sizes is available now, starting at $1,227 for the 14-inch and $1,345 for the 15-inch. Lenovo's pricing fluctuates (wildly at times), so that might not be the price when you click through to check them out.

The upper bounds really depend on which Lunar Lake CPU you want. I've been testing the 14-inch with an Intel 226V inside and the 15-inch with a 258V, which are the lower SKU and the second-from-top, and while I certainly noticed the extra power of the 15-inch, I found myself gravitating toward the smaller model.

But you can get the smaller device with the same CPU I tested in the larger one, and that's exactly how it should be. Picking a screen size shouldn't lock you out of hardware choices elsewhere, and Lenovo has nailed it here.

The ThinkPad grew up

They won't please the purists, but everyone else will love them

The ThinkPad X9 makes a few deviations from the design of other recent ThinkPads. They use aluminum shells for lightness, which are super-thin, thanks to Lunar Lake having integrated RAM so that the PCB can be shrunk down. Underneath there's a foot of sorts that houses the PCB, has vents for cooling, and houses the ports.

That does mean you're rather limited in connectivity. Both models have two USB4/Thunderbolt 4 ports, a 3.5mm audio jack, and a full-size HDMI port. The 15-inch also gets a USB-A port, but you'll want a docking station for desk use. The bottom shell comes off with four screws, and you can swap out the SSD (although it needs 2242-sized NMVe drives), and the battery is replaceable by the user.

The 14-inch weighs 2.66 lbs, and the 15-inch weighs only 3.08 lbs, which puts them both in MacBook Air territory for weight. I've been carrying both around for the last few weeks, and I barely know they're in my bag. They're that light, and I love this trend of super-thin, super-light laptops.

OLED, everywhere, all at once

Finally, the FHD option is also OLED

Typically, with business laptops, you have a choice between the nice OLED panel you want to look at and the FHD IPS panel that you get because of battery life worries. But you can ignore that, because all the displays on the ThinkPad X9 range are OLED. There's a 2.8K OLED on the 15-inch that comes with or without touch, an FHD (non-touch), and a 2.8K OLED with touch for the 14-inch. The other good news is that these displays are pretty good. The models Lenovo sent over to test are both the 2.8K and 30- 120Hz panels with VRR, and they're nice to use on the daily, with good color and brightness.

The 14-inch covers 100% of sRGB, 83% AdobeRGB, and 94% of the P3 color space, although it measures at 2.3 gamma without calibration, so it's a little darker than you'd want. Lenovo says this is capable of 500 nits brightness, and we tested it at 527 nits, and I'd always rather it outperforms the manufacturer specs here. Uniformity over the panel was 1.6 deltaE at maximum, but was mostly under 1, which is great to see, and under 2 deltaE for color accuracy.

But the 15-inch display is even nicer, with 100% sRGB, 90% AdobeRGB, 100% of P3, the same 2.3 gamma curve, and a max brightness of 539 nits. It was also much closer to the ideal white point, with 6400 and 6500 readings across the luminance values. Uniformity was under 1.7 deltaE, except for the top left segment, which was at 2.5. But an average color accuracy of 0.67 deltaE makes this one of the better laptop panels I've personally used, and it's a joy during daily work.

TrackPoint might be gone, but I only miss the color

The keyboard and haptic touchpad used here are awesome

Here's where we get to the biggest change from the ThinkPad formula. The keyboard and trackpad are missing the TrackPoint and the three physical buttons. But you know what, I didn't miss them one bit while I was typing. The keys have just enough push to them to be satisfying, while the haptic trackpad should be standard on all laptops by now. It's just that good.

I do miss the TrackPoint's red accent, though, and I'm sure many longtime ThinkPad fans will agree. For that experience, the X1 Carbon or the 2-in-1 ThinkPads still keep the beloved nubbin, although they're substantially more expensive.

Performance is there for every tier

Lunar Lake continues to impress on all fronts

We've been impressed with every Lunar Lake laptop so far. Every CPU gives the right balance of performance and battery life, even with the 'best performance' option used while not plugged in. You want to keep that setting because the other settings in the Windows performance menu will frustrate you. There's no point either, as the battery life is still all-day when using the best setting.

Synthetic benchmarks are only part of the picture. They're useful to show if the different OEM implementations are reducing performance in any way, but the ThinkPads are on par here and I've got no complaints. They're powerful enough for daily work, and the new Arc graphics are powerful enough for video editing or AI-powered photo editing, both of which were a struggle on integrated graphics before now.

As for battery life, using the Procyon Office Productivity battery life test on both laptops was impressive. The 14-inch with its smaller battery lasted just shy of seven hours, while the 15-inch lasted 10 hours and 50 minutes. Unlike the fixed refresh rates of the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition, both of the ThinkPad X9 Aura Edition models can use dynamic refresh rates, which cycle between 30 and 120Hz depending on what you're doing, which helps the battery life immensely.

Should you buy the Lenovo ThinkPad X9?

This time around, size doesn't matter

You should buy the Lenovo ThinkPad X9 if:

• You love ThinkPads, but not the usual price
• You want a thin and light laptop
• You want a great keyboard and trackpad

You should NOT buy the Lenovo ThinkPad X9 if:

• You want an AMD laptop
• You need 5G or 4G LTE connectivity
• You want more ports as standard

The Lenovo ThinkPad X9 Aura Edition range are fantastic business laptops, and the OLED screens mean they're pretty good at everyday things you'd actually want to be doing as well. They're as light as you can get without going into exotic carbon fiber chassis, like the ThinkPad X1 Carbon, and at around half the price, they're incredibly good value.

Lunar Lake does make this more expensive than previous generations, but the OLED screens are worth the splurge, and the battery life is astonishingly good, especially on the 80Wh 15-inch model. The new keyboard and glass haptic touchpad are a joy to use, and only the most die-hard ThinkPad enthusiasts will miss the TrackPoint.