I honestly don't know what is it with these laptop manufacturers that refuse to offer the 16GB RAM upgrade option. Since the RAM is soldered on, it practically forces me to buy a Mac to get enough of it... and the actuall chips don't use more space.
Broadwell-U supports up to 2 channels with an 8GB DIMM per channel.[1] For configurations up to 8GB, you only need to run traces for one channel. Supporting 16GB requires more design work (need to run twice as many traces) and wastes logic board space on lower-RAM configs. Apparently, Lenovo decided the trade-off wasn't worth it.
Edit: If the 2015 X1 Carbon is dual-channel, I'm not sure why Lenovo would lack a 16GB option. I guess mounting twice as many RAM chips could hit space constraints.
Basically, the problem the vendor has when selling a product with a large appeal is that they want to sell it at the highest price the buyer will bear. If portion A of the buyers budgeted $100, and portion B of the buyers budgeted $150 for your gizmo, how do you price your gizmo to extract maximum value from the buyers from A and B? If you sell it for $150, A won't buy. If you sell for $100, you're missing out on $50 from B.
The solution is to make minor modifications to your product to sell the Basic version to A for $100, and the Premium version to B for $150. If you've done your manufacturing right, the cost of one over the other is minimal, and you're getting the maximum value from both portions of buyers-- I mean market segments. :)
And to expand on your your issue with the availability of 16GB models... you represent a small enough niche at this stage that it's not worth Lenovo's effort to design and source parts to accomodate your segment.
But I can't buy any small laptop / ultrabook from Lenovo (or most other manufacturers) with 16GB at all, no matter the money.
Calling it segmentation would make sense if I could actually give a boatload of money to buy something that includes it. Getting a huge W workstation really isn't an alternative.
My Lenovo S540 came with 16gb ram plus SSD and 1920 x 1080 resolution, it's pretty damn small (I've travelled Europe to the States several times with it in hand luggage easily).
Apple sells to it with the 13" MBP, which you can get with 16GB RAM as a BTO upgrade. I doubt that many people opt for it, but it's not a non-existent market.
I didn't explain my point very well. What I was trying to say was how can "laptop manufacturers that refuse to offer the 16GB RAM upgrade option" (as izacus put it) be considered market segmentation (as AceJohnny2 said in his reply to izacus). It's not a segment to those that don't sell anything to them, and because they don't sell to them, they have no (first-hand) data on how big that segment might be if they were to sell to it.
I refuse to buy any laptop with less than 16GB of RAM.
Spent almost 1 year searching for a laptop to buy. Had to buy a 14" ASUS-RoG G46VW[0] and replace the screen for a 1920x1080 one.
I bought a Lenovo W530 just so I could get enough ram. 16gb isn't enough for me (I run a lot of VMs and high memory applications), so I wanted a laptop with swappable memory. I now have 23gb of ram. I believe the system supports up to 36gb.
They use 'barebones' Clevo shells, which are then configured by different vendors.
I have a laptop based on W230SD and I'm very happy with it. It contains a proper i7, not the underpowered U model and also has a 3k screen, 2x mSATA slots and is easily upgradable in a 13.3" chassis.
Not may people realise just how underpowered the U processors are for any real CPU intensive work. 4xxxU i7 processors are on a par with 2xxxx mobile processors.
You sacrafice ultrabook thinness and some battery life, but the return is a very powerful, cheap, upgradable laptop.
You can select a 16Gb option for the X250. It does say "single SODIMM" though, which presumably means single channel memory => a very expensive SODIMM & sub-par performance compared to a dual channel equivalent.
Don't praise the keyboard, please! I have a 2014 Thinkpad and the weak screen, low capacity battery, the fact that it wakes out of sleep only when it feels like (at other times I have to remove and plug the battery back in to get it started), and the crappy wifi is not even close to being as annoying as grouping the arrow keys with PageUp & PageDown. Take a look at the screenshots, they're even tighter than the other screens.
This is my story every day: "you wanna go left? No you wanna go PageUp!", "You wanna go right? Here's a PageDown for you!" "AAAAAAAARRRRGH"
I have a slightly older model that also moves the PgUp/PgDown keys to the arrow keys. I never really had the problem of pushing them instead of left/right, but I was annoyed at it at first because I couldn't find PgUp/PgDown. After using it for a few months, I actually prefer that layout.
What annoyed me more was the swapping of ctrl/fn from my older model (Fn is at the leftmost now). I got used to that too, though I would still prefer ctrl on the left.
As for the keyboard itself, I preferred the pre-chiclet keyboard on the old thinkpads, but of the current-generation laptops I've tried, it's still the best one by miles.
I don't understand why they put the FN on the left. Maybe it's because Ctrl+Shift isn't that common a gesture for the general population, but switching them in the BIOS is the first thing I do.
I've had it for 10 months. My fingers don't have the accuracy for it. It blows my mind how they could make them tighter than all the other keys. Why not tighten up all other keys too and save even more space...
Immediately discounted due to not having a 16GB model. I'm frustrated with the hardware and software quality from Apple of late, but it seems they are still the only real option.
One of the screws fell out of my Macbook Pro Retina 15" Late 2013, due to it being stripped at the factory, and Apple refused to fix it because it was two weeks out of warranty. The quality seems to be slipping a bit.
What I find disturbing is that they have not made much of an effort to clean up their reputation. Which obviously means that it doesn't hurt their sales sufficiently. I think installing malware that goes to these lengths to compromise the user should make reviewers obliged to point out that the manufacturer does have a history of installing dangerous malware and that one should take this into consideration.
Not that I believe other manufacturers are innocent, but that's not really important. What is important is that reviewers take some responsibility in informing the public about what demands it should be making.
The problem is, when you look at non technical users most of them care about, how shiny their new laptop looks. Or that they can play candy-crush on it or browse facebook.
Not many people unfortunately I notice, care about their own privacy in the digital age.
And the fun thing at the end of the day is, the end users of these products are majority non-technical users.
That's true; it just depends on where the company is trying to go and which user group they are trying to please. But then again, I see sites like passcode growing, so maybe it's changing. What do you think?
My advice: for the money, the X250 is much better bang for the buch. Components are easier to replace, you can get fantastic touchscreens, the body is thicker but smaller and just as portable, and you can get the 6-cell battery pack for a ridiculous 20 hours of battery life.
I was thinking about XPS13, but then I've found UX305. Around half the price, with similar specs, works great with Linux, and has mate display (I can work in bright sunlight on my laptop, woohoo!).
Bought a m3800 recently, one of the best laptops I have owned to date.
Currently I am running ubuntu on this beauty and its running without any problems. If only Dell could improve a little bit more on the battery life.
Got one about a month ago. Liking it so far. Really disappointed that there's only 8GB RAM. My previous ThinkPad is probably close to a decade old now so I don't really have a great comparison point as far as keyboard revisions and the like go.
Really didn't want to support Lenovo after the whole Superfish thing but it's nearly impossible to find a PC laptop that is light, > 13", and not a complete underpowered pile.
Good on Anandtech for calling out Lenovo on their use of TN screens in the base model. I'm not sure if the criticism of 4GB RAM is as justified, it may be enough for most office tasks.
It depends. Lenovo's TN screens have historically been horrible, due to poor viewing angles (even when looking straight-on, you have to move your head to see properly).
The low brightness of the x1 carbon bothers me also, I have it on full brightness all the time and often wonder wether I've turned the brightness up.
The machine is really solid, and for a 14 inch screen it is really tiny. It's just a bit bigger then my 13 inch macbook pro but features a larger screen. Using ubuntu 15.04 on it also is really pleasent experience, nearly everything works, except the 3/4 finger gestures on the touchpad and audio. But since my worklaod typically exists of running virtual machines, ssh and chrome the sound doesn't bother me.
Having used the 2014 ThinkPad keyboards, they are indeed one of the worst I've ever experienced, far worse than [generic cheap laptop brand]. I'm waiting for the Quad Core Broadwell Mobile's to come out and then hoping to upgrade to a W550 or T550p.
So glad they didn't say "this keyboard is better, get used to it" and instead listened to their customer base. It's still not as good as the keyboards on the T/W/520, although the backlighting is nicer than the thinklight when working in low lighting conditions.
Totally agree, they are absolutely terrible and impractical. I always wonder how they tested them that they still went ahead with decision to ship laptop with them.
What gives?!