Lenovo ThinkPad P15 Gen 2
RRP $ 5,445.00
"The Lenovo ThinkPad P15 is a dying species, but remains relevant because of its expandability."
advantages
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Long-lasting workmanship
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High quality entry display
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Great keyboard
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Superior expandability
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Solid performance
disadvantage
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Not much faster than cheaper laptops
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Touchpad is too small
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Expensive
We don't normally review mobile workstations, but a significant trend has emerged in laptops aimed at YouTubers. These thin and light laptops, like the Dell XPS 15, are surprisingly good at speeding up demanding tasks like video editing. In addition, they have brilliant, color-true OLED displays.
When Lenovo offered us the ThinkPad P15 Gen 2 with a Core i9-11950H CPU and an Nvidia Quadro RTX A5000 GPU for testing, we took the opportunity to see how a more traditional approach to a mobile workstation would fare.
Is the ThinkPad P15 proof that old school workstations are a thing of the past? In a way, yes. But because of its unique features, the audience remains very limited for this expensive laptop.
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The ThinkPad P15 looks exactly like a ThinkPad should – only it's incredibly thick and heavy. There's the usual black aesthetic with just a few hints of red, including the iconic LED “i” in the ThinkPad logo on the lid. There is also the same soft-touch surface and the usual red TrackPoint knob in the center of the keyboard.
The most noticeable difference in look and feel to the typical ThinkPad is the additional ventilation openings on the sides and back, which indicates a different ThinkPad P15. Oh, that, and the massive bezels around the display that look like a laptop from 10 years ago.
Mark Coppock / Digital Trends
Then there is this size. Where modern ThinkPads, at least the more upscale consumer and business models, are thin and light, the ThinkPad P15 is simply huge. It is 0.96 inches at its thinnest point and 1.24 inches at its thickest point and weighs 6.32 pounds. I thought the ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 4 was a bit bigger than it should be, but the ThinkPad P15 dwarfs its 0.70 inches thick and 3.99 pounds. It's a little weird to put the two side by side – they're almost identical in width and depth, and look similar, but the ThinkPad P15 looks like a balloon version that someone has inflated with extra air.
Not that there is anything wrong with any of this. The ThinkPad P15 is a workstation-class notebook and does not pretend to be a very portable, relatively fast notebook like the ThinkPad X1 Extreme or the Dell XPS 15. Instead, it's supposed to offer plenty of room inside to move air around and store things cool and fast, along with additional expandability. In fact, this expandability is what sets this laptop apart the most.
You can configure up to 128 GB of RAM via four SO-DIMM slots (and you can choose error-correcting RAM for sensitive applications), which makes creative types of power users happy. There are also three SSD slots inside – one PCIe 4.0 and the other two PCIe 3.0 – that support up to 16 TB of storage. And the laptop is user upgradeable, which means you can start with, for example, 64GB of RAM and a single SSD, and then add two 32GB RAM modules for 128GB of RAM and one or two more SSDs for more storage. All of that just can't be packed into a thin and light device, and the ThinkPad P15 is not intended for road warriors.
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In terms of durability, the ThinkPad P15 comes close to the usual ThinkPad standards. An internal magnesium frame holds the lower chassis together, with a plastic and fiberglass material covering it for added protection and a soft feel. The keyboard deck and the lower chassis make a fairly robust impression. The lid is made of plastic and fiberglass and is a little more flexible than I'd like to see. The ThinkPad P15 doesn't quite meet the standards of the ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 4 or the XPS 15, but it feels robust enough. Of course, it passed Lenovo's usual MIL-STD 810G tests, which provides additional security.
Connectivity is a strength as you can imagine with this class of machine (and given so much room for ports). On the left is a full-size HDMI 2.1 port, a USB A 3.2 Gen 1 port, a nano SIM slot for optional 4G WWAN support, and a 3.5mm Audio jack. On the right is a USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 port, a full-size SD card reader (which developers will appreciate), and an optional smart card reader.
Finally, on the back there is an Ethernet port, a connection for the 230 watt power supply, two USB-C ports with Thunderbolt 4 support and a USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 port. Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2 offer wireless connectivity.
Mark Coppock / Digital Trends
Mark Coppock / Digital Trends
Mark Coppock / Digital Trends
Mark Coppock / Digital Trends
power
This is not a cheap laptop. As configured by the dealer CDW, the ThinkPad P15 I tested costs a whopping 5,445 US dollars – frightening when you consider that my test device “only” 32 GB of RAM, a 1 TB solid-state drive (SSD) and a small 15 , 6-inch full HD (1,920 x 1,080) display. The laptop can be configured with up to 128 GB RAM, 6 TB SSD storage and a UHD OLED panel (3840 x 2160).
With all this upgradeability, the ThinkPad P15 promises unbelievable performance for demanding creative tasks. We recently tested several developer laptops, but these were in the usual thin-and-light consumer-centric class. The ThinkPad P15 has the components and thermal design to blow these laptops out of the water.
The ThinkPad P15 is fast, but not as dominant as you might expect. It did very well in Geekbench 5 and got the highest score for a laptop in our test database. But it's not as far ahead as I expected, because the Asus Vivobook Pro 16X OLED is quite close behind thanks to its AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX CPU, especially in the multi-core part of the test. Even the Dell XPS 17 with its Core i7-11800H was in the same stadium (surprisingly faster than the Vivobook Pro 16X).
In our Handbrake test, which encodes a 420 MB video as H.265, the ThinkPad P15 was again the fastest laptop we tested – and again the Vivobook Pro 16X was almost as fast. In fact, the ThinkPad P15 wasn't much faster than the other laptops in our comparison group – certainly not for a laptop that's at least twice as expensive. Cinebench R23 told a similar story, with the ThinkPad P15 leading our database, but not far behind with the Vivobook Pro 16X. And again, several other notebooks from our comparison group are in close proximity to the ThinkPad P15. So far, the workstation hadn't blown away the thinner, lighter, and much cheaper machines.
The ThinkPad P15 doesn't do well enough to justify its incredibly high price tag.
You probably won't be surprised to hear that the ThinkPad P15 was again the fastest in another test, PCMark 10, and that another thin and light laptop was close by – this time the MSI Creator Z16. This applied to the essentials, productivity and even the content creation part of the test, where the ThinkPad P15 was fast again, but not that much faster.
I thought PugetBench running in Premiere Pro would surely make the ThinkPad P15 glow. After all, the laptop has Independent Software Vendor (ISV) certifications from several developers, including Adobe. ISV certification means that hardware and software have been designed to work together for the best performance and reliability. However, the ThinkPad P15 scored 724 points, less than the 738 of the MSI Creator Z16 and not much faster than the 692 of the Dell XPS 17. Once again, the ThinkPad P15 had shown no real advantage over laptops that cost and weigh only half as much.
I'm not sure if it's a blow to the ThinkPad P15 or proof of how powerful thinner and lighter laptops have become, but the workstation failed in our benchmarks. You can upgrade it to a Xeon processor which would surely make it faster, and 128GB of RAM which the creators can use to work with the largest of videos and which is likely to offer a significant speed boost. But in the configuration I tested, the ThinkPad P15 doesn't do well enough to deserve its incredibly high price.
| Underdog bench 5 (Single / multiple) |
Cinebench R23 (single / multiple) | Handbrake (seconds) | PCMark 10 | Pugetbench Premiere Pro | 3DMark time spy | |
| Lenovo ThinkPad P15 (Core i9-11950H) | 1691/9250 | 1596/12207 | 84 | 6866 | 724 | 9045 |
| MSI Creator Z16 (Core i7-11800H) | 1540/7625 | 1444/9615 | 102 | 6486 | 738 | 6322 |
| Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 4 (Core i7-11800H) | 1520/7353 | 1519/10497 | 106 | 6251 | 432 | 6691 |
| Dell XPS 15 (Core i7-11800H) | 1556/7692 | 1513/9979 | 103 | 6024 | 509 | 4540 |
| Dell XPS 17 (Core i7-11800H) | 1568/8801 | 1525/10145 | 109 | 6209 | 692 | 7039 |
| Asus Vivobook Pro 16X (Ryzen 9 5900HX) | 1544/8299 | 1486/11478 | 90 | 6486 | 571 | 4601 |
You're not buying a workstation-class laptop to play games, but that doesn't mean you won't play occasionally. So I ran the ThinkPad P15 through some of our benchmarks to see how it fares against the Nvidia Quadro RTX A5000. This isn't a gaming GPU, but it's still pretty powerful and should be able to run modern titles at decent resolutions and frame rates. According to 3DMark Time Spy, it is about as fast as a GeForce RTX 3070.
It might not be intended as a gaming laptop, but it does act like one.
The ThinkPad P15 did well in Assassin's Creed Valhalla, achieving 76 frames per second (fps) with 1080p and high graphics and 67 fps with ultra-high graphics. The gaming laptop Lenovo Legion 5 Pro was slightly behind with 67 fps and 61 fps, while the Razer Blade 14 (also with an RTX 3070) was behind with 67 fps and 60 fps. In Battlefield V, the ThinkPad P15 achieved 106 fps at 1080p with medium graphics and 59 fps with ultra graphics, compared to the Legion 5 Pro at 82 fps and 73 fps and the Blade 14 at 115 fps and 96 fps. Finally, in Fortnite, the ThinkPad P15 did well with 138 fps at 1080p and high graphics and 104 fps with epic graphics, while the Legion 5 Pro performed well at 120 fps and 101 fps and the Blade 14 at 114 fps and 96 fps.
I also ran Civilization VI and saw 218 fps on 1080p and medium graphics and 155 fps on ultra graphics. The next fastest laptop in our database is the Lenovo Legion 5 Pro with a Ryzen 7 5800H and an RTX 3070, which achieved 127 fps and 114 fps, respectively. The ThinkPad P15 clearly excels in this CPU and GPU intensive game.
So yes, you can play with the ThinkPad P15 and play modern titles with high graphics. It might not be intended as a gaming laptop, but it can fulfill that role if needed.
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Mark Coppock / Digital Trends
You can configure the ThinkPad P15 with multiple displays, all 15.6-inches in the old-fashioned 16: 9 aspect ratio. There's Full HD (1,920 x 1,080) anti-glare, Full HD with Dolby Vision (which my test unit had), UHD (3840 x 2160) IPS with HDR400 and Dolby Vision, and UHD OLED with Dolby Vision options. Developers will be drawn to the UHD panels, which are likely to offer better colors and contrasts – especially the OLED panel. The Full HD display on my review unit was very bright and delivered good colors that seemed accurate to me, along with a decent contrast ratio. I found it good for the productivity work during my review.
According to my colorimeter, this is a good premium display, not a great one, and it isn't aimed at creative types. The brightness was excellent at 542 nits (we like to see 300 nits or better), and the contrast ratio topped our 1,000: 1 threshold at 1,040: 1. With 76% AdobeRGB and 100% sRGB, the colors were close to the premium display average with a color accuracy of DeltaE 1.49 (less than 1.0 is considered excellent). These are all good results, in line with laptops like the MSI Creator Z16 (although this laptop offers wider AdobeRGB) and the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 4. Of course, an OLED panel like that of the latest Dell XPS 15 offers far superior colors (99% of AdobeRGB and 100% of sRGB) and higher accuracy (0.46) with exceptional contrast and inky blacks.
Again, I have to say: this is a fine display, but not for the price. Yes, it's great for productive work, but when you're spending over $ 5,000 on a laptop that's at least partially designed for creative work, you want wider, more accurate colors. You should go for the OLED panel, which can probably compete with the other OLED panels we tested, which offer outstanding colors and contrasts across the board. Given Lenovo's current prices, you could probably find a model with the OLED panel for less than you are currently spending on my review unit.
The sound was faint, at a low volume, even when turned all the way up. The mids and highs were clear enough and there was zero bass. There's not much to say here – sound quality was clearly not a priority on the ThinkPad P15, and you'll need headphones or bluetooth speakers for anything but system sounds and the occasional YouTube video.
Keyboard and touchpad
Mark Coppock / Digital Trends
Like all ThinkPads, the ThinkPad P15 has the same keyboard with outstanding spring travel (1.8 mm), a nimble mechanism and a spacious layout with large, molded keys. Interestingly, I found the ThinkPad P15's keyboard lighter than the ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 4's, which I liked a lot. The ThinkPad P15 took less force to press the keys, reduced fatigue, and kept me at my usual speed of around 90 words per minute. I would rate this keyboard as my favorite, the HP Specter range, which I can't say about the ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 4.
The touchpad is small given the overall size of the laptop and loses space for the TrackPoint buttons. It works well and supports Microsoft's Precision touchpad drivers (pretty much taken for granted in recent years) – it's just too small. TrackPoint is there when you want it to, and it works as usual. It's standard on ThinkPads, but I sometimes wonder how many people actually use it. Note that if you opt for an OLED display, you get a touch panel and active pen support.
Windows 10 Hello support is provided by both a fingerprint reader and an infrared camera with facial recognition. I tried both methods and they were consistently quick and accurate. No complaints there. The typical ThinkPad ThinkShutter privacy screen is there to block the webcam when you don't want anyone to spy on you.
Mark Coppock / Digital Trends
Battery life
If there's one area I had low expectations from the review, it was battery life. In no way did I expect the ThinkPad P15 to show almost a full day's lifespan even for simple productivity tasks. Suffice it to say, I was a little surprised.
The huge chassis houses 94 watt hours of battery, and that helps. Likewise the full HD display. Still, I was surprised when the ThinkPad P15 lasted 9.5 hours in our web browsing test. That's half an hour longer than the Dell XPS 15 and more than two hours longer than the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 4. In our video test, which repeats a local Full HD Avengers trailer, the ThinkPad P15 lasted around 11.5 Hours through, not a great score, but better than the XPS 15 by six minutes and the ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 4 by more than two hours (again). That's not bad for a workstation.
The PCMark 10 Applications Benchmark, the best test of productivity longevity, didn't do quite as well. The ThinkPad P15 lasted almost 6.5 hours here, less than the eight hours of the XPS 15 and the ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 4 with 8.7 hours. And the ThinkPad P15 only lasted 56 minutes in the PCMark 10 gaming test, which demands the CPU and GPU. This is the lowest score in our database, with the XPS 15 and ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 4 both holding out about half an hour longer. Obviously, the ThinkPad P15 maintains its performance when it is switched off.
Overall, these are better results than I expected. You will surely have to carry the bulky 230 watt power brick around with you when working at the workstation level. But if you've planned an easy day of typical productivity tasks, you will likely make it through most of the day. That's not bad for a workstation.
Our opinion
In the configuration I tested, the ThinkPad P15 feels outdated. It's not that much faster than the fastest thin-and-light laptops that either its price or size is justified. Then why would you buy this laptop? The answer is simple: you are a real power user and you need a machine that can support 128GB of RAM, you need error correcting RAM, you need a Xeon processor, and / or you need the flexibility and growth of three SSD Slots with RAID support and up to 16 TB of storage.
That's a special kind of person, and that's what this workplace is all about. We were curious to see how it would compare to the typical laptops we test and the answer is that it really doesn't. If you are a typical home or business user, or even a creative who can live with the performance of an XPS 15 or 17 or a ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 4, then the ThinkPad 15 is not for you. We only mentioned developers in this review, but the ThinkPad P15 will appeal to users who use sophisticated 3D CAD, scientific applications, and AI. Workloads.
Are there alternatives?
If you need to meet the high-end specs of the ThinkPad P15, you need to look at other workstation-class laptops. In the high-end area, the Dell Precision 7760 can keep up with the ThinkPad P15, but with a 17-inch display.
The WS65 Mobile Workstation from MSI also comes close. It also supports Quadro RTX A5000 graphics, but only up to 64GB of RAM, and it doesn't have the same expandability as the Lenovo. However, it is thinner and lighter.
When you don't really need a workstation, you have a lot more choice. The Dell XPS 15 has enough performance for everyone but the most demanding developers, it's relatively thin and light, and incredibly well built, and costs around half that.
How long it will take?
The ThinkPad P15 is tough enough to carry around for years. It also has modern components and incredible expandability. It's crazy, however, that a laptop that costs over $ 5,000 should have a one-year warranty.
Should you buy it?
Yes, but only if you have to maximize it. This laptop is for extreme power users who are unlikely to be satisfied with the configuration of my test device.
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