Lenovo ThinkPad X9 15p Aura Edition Review ⭐

The ThinkPad X9 15p Aura Edition is a stylish premium Copilot+ PC laptop that delivers truly impressive performance and battery life. With its powerful Intel processor and Arc B-series graphics, I was expecting the former, but the battery life is a happy surprise that really puts the X9 over the top.

For those unfamiliar, Lenovo debuted its first ThinkPad X9 series laptops at CES 2025, and I was immediately taken by its radical--for ThinkPad--design aimed at those who might otherwise ignore the brand. That first year, there were just two X9 laptops, both with 14-inch displays. I reviewed the ThinkPad X9 14 Aura Edition last May and I loved just about everything about it, though I prefer larger displays and I dinged its poor performance and battery life.

So it was with considerable interest to see that Lenovo has updated the X9 lineup with 15.3-inch models. That's a curious display size for a business laptop, as 14- and 16-inch models are most common these days, but it does solve my desire for a bigger screen. And as noted elsewhere in this review, Lenovo also solved the performance and battery life issues with the previous generation X9s, and then some. In any event, I'm reviewing the 15.3-inch ThinkPad X9 15p Aura Edition this year. And it is a delight.
Design
The overall look and feel of the ThinkPad X9 are unchanged at a high level year over year. There are some traditional ThinkPad design flourishes throughout--the angled ThinkPad logo on the corners of the outer display (with a red-lit dot on the "i") and the wrist rest, most notably--but this laptop mostly goes its own way.

The construction is 100 percent aluminum, top and bottom, not some bespoke hybrid material with an origin story. But it passes the same MIL-STD-810H durability certifications as other ThinkPads, and the single color on offer is a handsome graphite-like dark gray that Lenovo calls Thunder Grey.

The keyboard is island-style, and its square key caps bear no resemblance to the scalloped key design Lenovo uses elsewhere in its premium laptop lines. Those key caps are a very dark gray that provides nice visual contrast with the rest of the hardware, as does the sharp white backlighting.

But the biggest design differentiator in the X9, perhaps, is how it calls attention to the internal design that's long been common to thin and light laptops of all kinds with the unique Engine hub design. As with smartphones that place all their componentry in a camera bar "plateau" that sticks out from the rest of the device, laptops use similar modular designs that reserve most of the remaining interior space for the battery. The Engine hub is located at the rear of the laptop, and in addition to containing the laptop's major internal components, it also hosts its expansion ports.

Most laptops--the MacBook Air being a key exception--are taller in the rear and shorter towards the front, and it's reasonable to assume that this Engine hub design means...