Lenovo launches 14-inch carbon-fiber Ultrabook, weighs in less than 3lbs

Dell may have started the carbon-fiber in Ultrabooks fad, but it appears that Lenovo has taken it a step further with their latest creation. Being touted as the "lightest 14-inch Ultrabook in the industry," the ThinkPad X1 weighs in at under 3lbs. And they didn't strip out features to achieve that feat.

What you are looking at is an Ultrabook with all carbon-fiber rollcage. "We crafted the ThinkPad X1 Carbon with premium carbon fiber material in order to make it incredibly thin and light, yet durable," said Lu Yan, senior vice president, Think Product Group, Lenovo. "Our new ThinkPad laptop portfolio embodies much of the innovative thinking exemplified in the X1 Carbon, such as a backlit keyboard, super-bright high definition display, Dolby® Home Theatre® and rich communications features that balance business performance with personal use."

The announcement page gives only some details on the upcoming Ultrabook. The Ultrabook has built in 3G connectivity for "anywhere, anytime access" and comes with a "RapidCharge" battery which, according to Lenovo, can charge to near-full capacity in only 30 minutes. Lenovo is billing this machine as a premium professional machine, and I can see why.

More details about it have been spilled by the Verge who were in attendance of Lenovo's presentation. The ThinkPad X1 will have a backlit keyboard along with an Ivy Bridge processor. The Ultrabook features a 1600x900 screen with 300cd/m^2 brightness and will have USB3 and DisplayPort connectivity. The Ultrabook is most likely not released due to the fact that we have yet to see Intel's dual-core 17W Ivy Bridge chips.