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Lenovo ThinkPad P15 Gen 2 Review: A Dying Breed

September 30, 2021
Posted by Samson

Lenovo ThinkPad P15 Gen 2 sits on a table.

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

Long-lasting workmanship
High quality entry display
Great keyboard
Superior expandability
Solid performance

disadvantage

Not much faster than cheaper laptops
Touchpad is too small
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.

draft

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.

Lenovo ThinkPad P15 Gen 2 sits on a table. 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.

Lenovo ThinkPad P15 Gen 2 sits on a table. Mark Coppock / Digital Trends

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.

HDMI port, USB port, and headphone jack on the left side of the Lenovo ThinkPad P15 Gen 2 laptop.

Mark Coppock / Digital Trends

SD card reader and USB port on the right side of the Lenovo ThinkPad P15 Gen 2 laptop.

Mark Coppock / Digital Trends

Ethernet cable connector, charging port and three micro-USB ports on the back of a Lenovo ThinkPad P15 Gen 2 laptop.

Mark Coppock / Digital Trends

Ethernet cable connector, charging port and three micro-USB ports on the back of a Lenovo ThinkPad P15 Gen 2 laptop.

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.

Close-up of the Lenovo ThinkPad P15 Gen 2 screen. 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

Illustration of the Lenovo ThinkPad P15 Gen 2 keyboard. 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.

Close-up of the Lenovo ThinkPad P15 Gen 2 webcam. 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.

Editor's recommendations

15 Aug

Blog

Apple iMac 5K 27-inch (2020) Review: A Dying Breed Lives On

August 15, 2020
Posted by Samson

Apple Imac 5k 27 inch review 2020 06

"The 27-inch 5K iMac may not have Apple Silicon, but it is still the best all-in-one you can buy."

Better memory and RAM options
Improved graphics
Significantly improved performance
Nano textured glass is revolutionary
Speakers and webcam are top notch

Outdated design
No Apple Silicon

Apple Silicon Macs are coming. They'll be here before the end of the year, just in time for you to regret buying an Intel Mac.

Why would Apple do this to us? Why release an Intel-based Mac while trying to improve support for the upcoming processor transition? Your guess is as good as any other. In a strange year of product delays, we now have an updated 27-inch 5K iMac that isn't part of Apple's grand vision that was unveiled at WWDC. It will be remembered as the swamp – the last of the old guard.

As a potential iMac buyer, you are in a difficult position. Why spend thousands of dollars on a system that is on the verge of extinction? Shouldn't you just wait for the next generation iMac?

Possibly. However, based on my time with and testing Apple's latest 27-inch iMac, this old dog managed to learn some new tricks.

design

The iMac has evolved internally, but stagnated on the outside. It's still a beautiful piece of hardware – just not one that looks like it was designed in 2020. It has absolutely massive bezels, a stand that cannot adjust its height, and a fairly thick case. Put a 2020 iMac next to a 2015 iMac and you won't be able to tell the difference between the two.

All-in-one devices like the Dell Inspiron 27 7790, the HP Envy 32 All-in-One, and the Microsoft Surface Studio 2 ensure that the current iMac feels a bit clunky. None of these Windows PCs are as sophisticated and low-key as the iMac, but a redesign is long overdue. Even the rounded shape of the corners and the back looks a bit out of date for Apple's current design language. As with Apple Silicon, you'll have to wait until at least 2021 to get a fresher look. That's a bitter pill to swallow when you're spending more than $ 3,000 on a computer.

The ports are still in the far right corner, making them difficult to get to, especially if you're standing against a wall. The choice of ports includes an Ethernet jack, two Thunderbolt 3 ports, four USB-A ports, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and a full-size SD card slot. Here you can connect an external monitor and at the same time supply power to accessories or external drives.

Do I wish Apple had added two more Thunderbolt 3 ports for the Mac mini and MacBook Pro? Naturally. All-in-one devices like the HP Envy 32 even have an HDMI input if you want to connect a Nintendo Switch, for example. Still, it's a nice selection of ports old and new, and far less controversial than what Apple offers for other products.

For an additional $ 100, Apple is also offering a 10 Gb Ethernet connection. This is faster internet than most people know what to do with it – but faster connections are never a bad thing.

display

Most of the improvements to the 2020 iMac are under the hood. The screen is the only exception. The 5K panel itself hasn't changed, but Apple now offers an option for "nano-texture" glass, a feature first introduced as a $ 1,000 upgrade to the Pro Display XDR. Even as a $ 500 upgrade to the iMac, you might be wondering how on earth could that cost be worth it.

Here's what it does: you get the same brilliant brightness and contrast from a glossy screen with no reflections. The upgrade reduces glare almost completely, even when the brightness is lowered. The combination of 497-nit brightness and nano-textured glass makes for an insanely bright, clear screen. Even next to a bright window, you will find it difficult to find a single reflection or glare.

I want nano-textured glass on every other device I use. It's so cool

You have to see for yourself, but there really is nothing like it. An anti-reflective coating or layer is often used on matte displays, which can reduce the visible contrast on the screen. This is not a good thing when you are doing precise color editing or even trying to enjoy the full color range of a video.

It's hard to tell if it's worth $ 500 or not, but after using it I've wanted it on every other device I use.

The panel itself has not changed from the previous models, regardless of whether you opt for the nano-textured glass or not. It is a 16: 9 "5K" screen with a total resolution of 5,120 x 2,880. Even though it's a couple of years old, it's still a clear screen. However, it is no longer the champion of pixel density. The Microsoft Surface Studio 2 has a larger and more pixel-rich screen, as does the 6K Pro Display XDR. There are even 27-inch external monitors available these days that match the resolution of the iMac.

The iMac display still scores across the board. The color gamut is fantastic at 93% Adobe RGB, the colors are very accurate, and the contrast is decent too. It's neck to neck with the Surface Studio 2, the only other all-in-one that can compete on this level.

Am I eagerly awaiting a redesign that will reduce the size of the front panel, increase the resolution and maybe even switch to mini-LED technology? Absolutely. However, the iMac's display is still one of its highlights for now.

The same cannot be said of the sad 1080p 21.5-inch model that Apple unfortunately still sells.

performance

The original iMac started with a focus on balance and beauty, not performance. It was the computer you put at the front desk desk, not in the back of the office where the developers, artists, and engineers sit.

When the use of the Intel Core i9 processors began in 2018, that changed. iMacs have evolved into powerful desktops with surprising performance.

The latest iMac continues that trend. My test device came with a 10th generation Intel Core i9-10910 processor that contains 10 cores and 20 threads. We are grateful to Intel for these two additional cores this year that offer a significant improvement in photo editing, video rendering, and most other forms of content creation. Outside of the iMac Pro, there isn't another all-in-one PC that even tries to use a chip this powerful. Up to 128 GB of RAM and 8 TB of storage space are permitted. That makes the 5K iMac a completely unique computer in terms of form factor and performance.

Very hot chips are of course useless if the system cannot cool them properly. I ran Cinebench R20 and Geekbench to see how the processor performance compares to other computers I tested. This new iMac was again 20% faster than the previous year's model in the Geekbench 4 multi-core test thanks to the additional cores and threads. It destroys a Core i7 All-in-One like the HP Envy 32 and circles around the slow Surface Studio 2.

To further test the processor, I turned to video encoding in Handbrake, a processor-limited application. The iMac was extremely fast, completing H.265 encoding 20% faster than the HP Envy 32, 28% faster than the Dell XPS 17 (with the 8-core Core i7-10875H), and 19% faster than that iMac from last year. A beefy gaming desktop or workstation PC with the same chip is likely to outperform it, but the iMac's unique form factor completely puts it in its own category.

The iMac outperformed last year's video video export by a whopping 48%.

However, I knew that a real performance test had to include the GPU upgraded to AMD's latest Radeon Pro 5000-series graphics. My device came with the fastest card in the AMD arsenal, the RX 5700XT. Adobe Premiere Pro can use a powerful graphics card to speed up project export. I've seen this on laptops like the Dell XPS 17 and Microsoft Surface Book 3. This new iMac outperformed last year's model in the same video export by a whopping 48%. That's a fantastic improvement on last year.

However, other solutions are also improving quickly. I was surprised to see that the XPS 17 was barely faster when exporting the same 4K project to ProRes 422. The XPS 17 was equipped with an Intel processor with eight cores and the powerful Nvidia RTX 2060.

Still, the 27-inch iMac is a very capable workhorse for content creation and would likely be even faster when running Apple's own proprietary applications like Final Cut Pro. Meanwhile, the system stays calm and cool and its fans only hum a little under the heaviest loads.

Gaming performance

The iMac is not a gaming PC, especially not for fast-paced shooters or 3D action games. The Radeon Pro RX 5700XT is a fantastic GPU for gaming, but the screen isn't designed for high frame rates. Take a game like Fortnite, for example. It plays flawlessly and can record an average of 60 fps (frames per second) at Epic settings, even at a resolution of 1440p. However, because the screen is locked at 60Hz and doesn't have adaptive sync technology, I've constantly struggled with the screen tearing and stuttering. Even with Vsync, the gaming experience wasn't as smooth as you'd expect from the graphics card.

However, a game like Civilization VI was a better experience. It plays at 1440p with settings at Ultra without skipping a beat and hovering just below 60 fps. The same goes for most of the lighter games you can find in the Mac App Store or with Apple Arcade.

The game library at your disposal is far sadder than the iMac's gaming performance. That's not a bug with this particular iMac – it's in no way, shape, or form a priority for Apple. The light at the end of the tunnel for Mac games comes in the form of Apple Silicon, which could open many new ways for developers to bring their games to the Mac. Now, of course, that won't help you, and it will never help this Intel-based iMac.

What about Apple Silicon?

As one of the last Macs to not run on Apple's own silicon, the durability of this new iMac is likely to be an issue. For most people considering a new iMac, this is a shadow over the potential excitement of buying a new iMac. However, if you fall into the target market of this powerful iMac, it might not be as important as you might fear. Apple is determined to make the transition to the ARM system architecture as smooth as possible from both an app and a performance perspective. That means replicating the Intel experience comes first for Apple, and not trying to change anything dramatically.

Additionally, Apple has promised to support Intel systems for many years – likely longer than you would want to keep using this iMac. So what are some of the goodies you might miss out on staying at Intel? Well, you can't run iPhone apps on your iMac, that's for sure. And if Apple's transition goes particularly well, you might be missing out on some of the apps that support this architecture with exclusive features. However, the apps you know and use every day today are going nowhere, and iMac's performance won't be impacted anytime soon.

Webcams, speakers and microphones

Outside of performance, Apple also made some welcome changes to the quality of life on the new iMac.

I appreciated the upgrade to the FaceTime webcam the most. Going from 720p to 1080p, it's now the best built-in webcam you'll find on a Mac. It also outperforms any laptop webcam you can buy – though that doesn't say much.

Not only does Apple have razor-sharp image quality (thanks to the higher resolution), it also has a few other tricks to improve the image. First, Apple has a new sensor that uses the backlight, resulting in improved low-light performance during late-evening zoom meetings. To sweeten the business, Apple even introduced face recognition for automatic exposure adjustments and tone mapping.

I happily joined my morning zoom scramble and enjoyed having the sharpest video feed for the call. The sensor doesn't overexpose the image like many internal webcams, which means your face may not be as bright as it used to be. You still have to be careful about how bright your background is, but overall, this is a big step up from last year's model.

These speakers surpass the volume and audio quality of many cheap bluetooth speakers.

This greatly improved webcam is of course not just a new camera module. With the T2 co-processor included in the MacBooks (and pro-level Mac desktops), Apple can directly control the camera to make these tweaks and improvements in image quality. It's technically the same camera you'll find in the iMac Pro. So let's hope it will be available for MacBooks at some point.

It is similar with the speakers. The speakers themselves haven't changed, but the T2 allowed Apple to tweak some additional settings. The result is a richer, fuller sound. These speakers surpass the volume and audio quality of many cheap bluetooth speakers.

The microphones also benefit from the T2, although Apple actually introduced new hardware this time around. I was skeptical of the studio-quality three-mic array, especially for anything but the occasional Zoom call. While the system blocks out background noise quite a bit, it's still better to use AirPods or a headset to get the clearest voice quality.

Peripherals

Apple has ignored many aspects of the iMac over the years, but the peripherals are the most frustrating. The Magic keyboard is great, but it lacks many of the features found in MacBook keyabords, such as: B. the touch bar – or even the Touch ID. Unlike every other Apple product you can buy in 2020, you have to rely on an old-fashioned password to sign in with the iMac.

The Magic Mouse 2 is the real kicker. This is a mouse that should have been replaced years ago. It's uncomfortable, only supports a few gestures, and cannot be used while charging. Thanks to the downright hilarious placement of the Lightning connector, it's often referred to as one of the worst-designed products Apple has ever made.

Fortunately, Apple is offering the excellent Magic Trackpad 2 as a $ 50 upgrade that is well worth the money.

Our opinion

The lack of Apple Silicon will no doubt sway a large chunk of opinion about the new iMac – for better or for worse. Sitting on your hands by 2021 to get a redesigned iMac isn't a bad idea, but not everyone can afford to wait. The two additional processor cores and the significantly improved graphics are a tempting upgrade and offer a significant increase in performance compared to the previous year's model.

Plus, some quality of life changes, from the 1080p webcam to the nano-textured glass, are breathing life back into the iMac.