Hey, internet! I’m Corey, Senior Creative Strategist here at Mashable, and I’m ready to get back to life on-the-go. That means I’ve been keeping my eyes peeled for tech that finds the perfect balance between performance and portability. When I need a boost in productivity, I’ve found a change of scenery works to get my creative energies flowing — sometimes that means hopping a few steps from the home office into the yard, but when that won’t cut it (or when I’m running out of sunscreen here in Los Angeles), I’ll head out into the world for some fresh inspiration.

For an all-in-one device that promises flexibility and real power, the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga 2-in-1 Laptop caught my attention as a standout — and I put it to the test over a weekend to see if it could make my portable productivity dreams come true. Here’s what I found.

Design

I need to be able to bring my computer with me, of course, and I have to be confident it will keep up with my demands — whether I’m video conferencing, running multiple apps, or just powering through long writing spells with plenty of battery life. Afterwards, when I’m off the clock, I’d like to use the same device for my hobbies and personal projects, too, from digital sketching to streaming a movie on the couch. Friday morning, I dove right into my usual routine, eager to put Lenovo’s X1 Titanium through its paces.

First things first: picking up the X1 Titanium, it reads as premium right away. It’s amazingly thin — less than half an inch thick — but the titanium lid lends a sturdy and solid feel. Combined, the titanium and thin profile add up to an appealingly futuristic aesthetic, one boosted further by the device’s not-even-there weight (2.54 pounds, if you’re keeping track). That the-future-is-now feel carries through into the screen, its thin bezels giving the 13.5-inch screen plenty of room to catch your attention. 

Lifestyle fit

The X1 Titanium helped me breeze through my morning. Zoom and Google Hangout video calls looked crisp and vivid on the 2K screen, with no lag or pixellated delays even as I ran multiple apps (if my boss is reading, they were all related to the meetings, I swear!). My usual suite of Microsoft Word and Powerpoint, Slack, Spotify, and Google Chrome offered no resistance as the X1 Titanium hummed along. In fact, the computer itself hardly hummed — it was whisper-quiet, thanks to a hybrid cooling system that allowed even such a thin machine to stay virtually silent while working hard.

After a quick lunch, I was ready to hit the road with my new gizmo. I wanted to fit a workout in later, so I took the X1 Titanium with me to my gym’s coworking space (it’s an athletic club, okay, but somehow the extra perks haven’t yet translated to extra abs for me — strange). I’d been working unplugged that morning, and the X1’s battery easily kept me powered as I worked on a pitch deck. One feature I happily noted as I clicked and maneuvered: the haptic touchpad was remarkably responsive, providing a tactile experience that helped me in my design-oriented apps and in interactive web experiences as I browsed. The pad’s click strength is actually customizable, but I didn’t need to mess around with it — it already felt perfect for my purposes.

Workweek finished, Saturday and Sunday mean time for my own creative work — and the X1 Titanium doesn’t get a day off. Even though I’ve been an Angeleno for about a year now, I’m still a New Yorker at heart. I lived in Brooklyn for seven years, and I still prefer to get around town via putting feet onto pavement when I can. A few miles in the LA summer sun can be less than pleasant if you’re schlepping a heavy bag, but the X1 Titanium hardly registered in my backpack at all — and with a titanium lid, I felt secure in jostling it around. Its thin profile made for a perfect writing companion as I worked on my own fiction in a coffeeshop, and the biometric locks and login protection made me feel secure leaving it while I grabbed another bev or perused the cafe’s bookstore to stretch my legs.

Unexpected benefit

On Sunday, I spent some time outside. I’ve been taking a digital course on botanical sketching — drawing plants, in other words — and that usually means squinting at the video lectures on my phone while I sketch in my notebook. This time, the X1 Titanium’s Yoga flexibility came in handy, to say the least. I flipped the screen backward to transform the laptop into a tablet (with a very simple and clean UX), and voila: clear, bright video on a much larger screen, with dynamic audio to boot. It made it much easier for me to follow along with my class, though my sketch of a little moon cactus proved I still have a lot of work to do.

Though my class deals with good old-fashioned pen-and-ink for sketching, I loved drawing with the X1 Titanium’s digital pen, too. Maybe my next class will be in digital illustration? The UX of the tablet mode made me want to spend more time with it, and that’s an exciting feeling. Later, that night I sprawled out on the couch and streamed some comfort TV to ease me out of the weekend. With Dolby Vision display and Intel® Iris™ Xe graphics, the stream looked gorgeous, even if I fell asleep halfway through the show.

Giftability

As we move into a world where remote work looks like a permanent fixture, the Lenovo X1 Titanium Yoga has my wholehearted recommendation as a gift. Anyone looking to match portability with performance would welcome the device — whether that means college grads or those of us who have been out of school for too long. I’m keeping mine for myself, though. I’ve got plants to draw.