Lenovo's ThinkPad P1 Gen 4 is the most popular of its mobile workstations. It starts at $1,676 and ends at $3,599 (as tested). It's equipped with a variety of software vendor (ISV), certifications to support scientific applications, specialized design and CGI. The ThinkPad P1 Gen 4 is also the workstation edition of the ThinkPad X1 Extreme. And the Dell Precision 5560, which can be used for drafting or rendering, is the XPS 15 sibling.
That means it's less powerful and expandable but thinner and lighter than Lenovo's flagship ThinkPad P15 Gen 2—a slice of prosciutto under the 4-pound line at 3.99 pounds versus a portly 6.32 pounds. Although the P1 is more expensive than similar content creator laptops that don't have ISV credentials, its performance and ports beat out the Precision 5560 to become our Editors' Choice awardee for light mobile workstations.
The fashionable aspect
The ThinkPad P1 was formerly a 15.6 inch laptop. It now has a 16-inch display with a higher 16:10 aspect ratio. The Gen 4 base model is priced at $1,676 and features an Intel Core i7-11800H CPU, Nvidia T1200 graphics card, 8GB memory, a 256GB solid state drive, and a 2,560-by-1.600-pixel screen rated for 400 nits brightness.
Our review unit (model 20Y3006XUS) ranged from $3,599 at Staples to $3,925 at CDW. It steps up to an eight-core, 2.5GHz (4.8GHz turbo) Core i7-11850H CPU and GeForce RTX 3070 graphics—the RTX 3070 and 3080 accompany Nvidia's RTX A-series professional GPUs on the options list—along with a 1TB PCIe Gen 4 SSD (the storage ceiling is 4TB) and the max 64GB of RAM. Processor choices climb to the Core i9-11950H and six-core Xeon W-11855M, the latter offered with error-correcting-code (ECC) memory.
You can choose between touch or non-touch 3840x-2,400 IPS screens, which are both 600 nits. The system features the non-touch panel and thin bezels surrounding it. On the top, there is room for a sliding privacy shutter that allows you to use Windows Hello. Stereo speakers surround the keyboard, making it impossible to use a numeric keypad.
Outfitted with an aluminum alloy bottom and carbon fiber weave top, the ThinkPad P1 Gen 4 has passed MIL-STD 810G tests against road hazards like shock, vibration, and hot and cold temperatures. There's almost no flex if you mash the keyboard or grasp the screen corners. The system measures 0.7 by 14.1 by 10 inches (HWD), making it a tad bigger than the Dell 5560 (0.73 by 13.6 by 9.1 inches) and HP ZBook Studio G8 (0.69 by 13.9 by 9.2 inches). The HP weighs the same as the Lenovo; the Dell is a third of a pound heavier.
While the Precision 5560 offers only three USB-C ports (two with Thunderbolt 4) and a USB Type-A and HDMI dongle, the ThinkPad has a fuller set of interfaces. Two Thunderbolt 4 ports join an HDMI port, an audio jack, and the AC adapter connector on the laptop's left side. The right edge holds two USB 3.2 Type-A ports and an SD card slot plus a security lock slot. Wired networkers will find a USB-C to Ethernet adapter in the box; Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth handle wireless links.
Above-Average 1080p Camera
The workstation's IR webcam is way above average, offering 1080p instead of the usual, minimal 720p resolution and capturing sharp, colorful images with almost no static—you'll look a little dark in a less than brightly lit room, but your colleagues will know if you skipped shaving this morning.
Upward-firing speakers produce loud, clear sound. It's possible to distinguish between tracks and hear overlaps. Dolby Atmos provides presets for dynamic, music, video, and movie settings, as well as an equalizer. Lenovo Vantage is another preinstalled utility that centralizes information and system updates, Wi-Fi security and settings, including keyboard defaults and noise levels, as well as setting the cooling fan speed and noise level.
Speaking of the keyboard, it has a bright backlight and Lenovo's trademark first-class typing feel. There are dedicated Home, End, Page Up, and Page Down keys, and the top-row Escape and Delete keys aren't too tiny. The F10 and F11 keys place and end calls in Microsoft Teams; the Fn and Control keys are in each other's places at bottom left, but if you can't adjust you can swap them with Lenovo Vantage.
Both Lenovo's TrackPoint keyboard pointing stick (with three buttons including the middle one beloved of ISV apps) and a good-sized touchpad are available for cursor control; the pad takes just the right amount of pressure for a quiet click.
The ThinkPad P1 Gen 4 is not equipped with an OLED screen, unlike the Gen 2 model that we reviewed in March 2020. It doesn't provide a high level of contrast or utterly dark blacks, as well. The screen measures 3,840x2,400 pixels and is nearly as bright as an IPS panel. It has remarkable brightness, fine details, and you won't be able to see any pixelation, even if it did.
White backgrounds are as pure as the driven snow, helped by a screen hinge that tilts way back. Colors are deep, rich, and well saturated and viewing angles are broad. An X-Rite Color Assistant utility in the system tray lets you switch among default, sRGB, Adobe RGB, DCI-P3 cinema, Rec. 709 television, and DICOM medical imaging color palettes.
The ThinkPad P1 Performance Test: Workstations vs. Creative Laptops
The benchmark charts below show how I compared P1 Gen 4 with four high-performance replacement desktops. As a light workstation, the Dell Precision 5560 has a direct rival. The HP ZBook Studio G8 is somewhere in between the content-creator and workstation worlds. The Acer ConceptD 5 and Asus ProArt Studiobook 16 OLED belong to the content-creator camp—and cost a lot less than the mobile workstations at about $2,000 and $2,400 respectively.
Productivity tests
PCMark 10, the main benchmark, simulates a range of content-creation and productivity workflows in real life to assess overall performance on office-centric tasks like word processing, spreadsheeting and web browsing. PCMark 10's Full System Drive is also used to evaluate the throughput and load times of a laptop's storage drives.
To rate the suitability of a computer for processing-intensive tasks, three benchmarks examine its CPU. They use all cores and threads. Maxon's Cinebench R23 renders complex scenes using Cinema 4D, and Primate Labs Geekbench Pro simulates popular applications such as PDF rendering, speech recognition, machine learning, and more. We use HandBrake, an open-source video converter to transform a 12 minute video clip from 4K resolution to 1080p (faster is better).
Puget Systems' PugetBench Photoshop is our final productivity test. It uses Adobe Creative Cloud 22 to evaluate a computer's ability to create content and multi-media applications. This extension automates various tasks in Photoshop, including opening, rotating and resizing images, saving them, applying filters, gradient fills and masks.
This is clearly an extremely talented group. The five laptops all scored the same 4,000 points, which indicates high productivity in PCMark 10. (Using them to create Word and Excel is wasteful). Despite being up against a Core i9 CPU and a Ryzen 9 processor, the Lenovo Core i7 performed admirably in our benchmarks. It's a great Photoshop platform.
Graphics Testing
Two DirectX 12 simulations are used to test the graphics of Windows PCs. Night Raid is a more modest option for those with integrated graphics, while Time Spy, which requires more effort, can be used for gamers with discrete GPUs.
Two tests were also performed using the cross-platform GPU benchmark GFXBench 5. This test focuses on both low-level tasks like texturing as well as high-level image rendering. To accommodate different resolutions, the Aztec Ruins 1440p and Car Chase 1080p tests were rendered offscreen. They include exercise graphics, compute shaders with OpenGL programming and hardware tessellation, respectively. More frames per second (fps) is better.
Although the ThinkPad did not win any gold medals, it is clearly capable of handling both demanding visual apps and medium-high gaming after hours. This confirms its promise to be an eye-pleasing display.
Specific Tests for Workstations
Three additional programs are used to simulate the workstation application. We don't know if they work for all notebooks in our database so I switched in the MSI WS66 and Lenovo ThinkPad Gen 2 laptops. They all have Core i9 processors, and Nvidia professional pinnacle RTXA5000 GPUs.
PugetBench Pro for Adobe Premiere Pro is the first. This counterpart to Photoshop's benchmark focuses more on image and video editing. Blender is an open-source 3D software for simulation, modeling, animation and compositing. The time taken by Blender's built-in Cycles Path tracer to create two realistic photo-realistic BMW car scenes, one with the CPU and the other using the GPU is recorded. We believe that shorter times are more accurate. Mike Pan, BMW's artist, said that he doesn’t find the scenes fast enough for testing but they are a very popular benchmark.
SPECviewperf 2020 is our most significant workstation test. It renders and rotates wireframe and solid models and zooms in or out using popular ISV app viewsets. The 1080p resolution test is based on PTC’s CreoCAD platform, Autodesk’s Maya simulation and modeling software for TV and film; and Dassault Systemes’ SolidWorks 3D render package. You should watch more frames per second.
If you are a professional 4K video editor and need a Core i9 processor, the P1 Gen 4 is a great choice. It was able to match the ThinkPad P15, and even beat the Precision 5560 in Blender, and the SPECviewperf test. Look no further if you are looking for a high-quality mobile workstation with minimal footprint.
Testing of the Battery and Display
The battery life of laptops is tested by playing locally saved 720p video files (the Blender movie Tears of SteelOpens in new window)). Display brightness was set at 50%, and the audio volume at 100%. Before testing, we make sure that the battery has been fully charged.
We also use a Datacolor SpyderX Elite monitor calibration sensor and its Windows software to measure a laptop screen's color saturation—what percentage of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 color gamuts or palettes the display can show—and its 50% and peak brightness in nits (candelas per square meter).
We have never seen laptop screens that are more beautiful than this. OLED panels are featured in the Asus ProArt, HP ZBook Studio, and the ThinkPad P1. However, the ThinkPad P1 is actually a disappointment for not covering 90% of DCI-P3 (as it's used for design rather than cinema) and being 1% short of Adobe RGB. The brightness of the P1 is unsurpassed by rugged laptops intended to be outdoors.
The battery's 7-hour life span is not impressive, but most mobile workers spend their time connected to the internet for long sessions of 3D rendering and data crunching. It is understandable.
The New Champion Lightweight
ThinkPad P1 Gen 4 features the USB-A, HDMI and USB-A ports the Dell Precision 5560 does not allow for. It also beats the Dell in many of our benchmarks and is a worthy competitor. It's a great choice for our Editors Choice Winner among portable workstations, unless you prefer an OLED display over an IPS.