Lenovo announces the first Arm-based ThinkPad

Enlarge / Lenovo ThinkPad X13s. (credit: Scharon Harding)

Lenovo's ThinkPad X13s will be the first ThinkPad to use an Arm-based processor, Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3, Lenovo announced on Friday.

ThinkPads represent Lenovo's most powerful laptop lineup, and they're marketed to enterprises and power users. It's interesting to see one of the machines foregoing the new Intel 12th-generation and AMD Ryzen 6000 laptop chips to put Windows 11 Pro on Arm. We briefly saw the ThinkPad X13s in person, and it had a lighter, cheaper plastic feel to it but also sported a textured matte finish.

The 8cx Gen 3 is the first 5 nm Windows PC SoC. It has four Arm Cortex-X1 cores at up to 3 GHz and four Cortex-A78 cores at 2.4 GHz. Qualcomm's chip enables the ThinkPad X13s' fanless design and longer claimed battery life. The upcoming ThinkPad is 0.53 inches thick and 2.35 pounds and comes with a 49.5 WHr battery that Lenovo claims can last up to 28 hours, based on local video playback.

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