We've reviewed mobile workstations that rival the power of the Lenovo ThinkPad P52 (starts at $1,160.10; $2,897 as tested), but they've been 17.3-inch bruisers.
This 15.6-inch ThinkPad is a relative heavyweight compared to the Editors' Choice Dell Precision 5530.
Equipped with solid-state and hard drives, plus a touch screen, it's about six pounds, versus the Dell's four and a half.
But it's a 3D-rendering beast, ready to rampage through technical-standard applications, including ones for creating virtual reality (VR) worlds.
Its maximum memory, 128GB, is quadruple the Precision's ceiling.
As much as we like thin-and-light laptops, the P52's stellar performance makes us swing back to the traditional 15.6-inch form factor.
It's our new Editors' Choice in the mobile workstation category.
Serious Designers Only Need Apply
Positioned above the trimmer ThinkPad P52s, the ThinkPad P52 has considerably more muscle: Even the $1,124 base model carries a six-core Intel Core i7-8750H processor, though its other components are more modest (8GB of RAM, a 500GB hard drive, a 1080p display).
My test unit—model 20M90024US, ringing up at $2,897 at this writing—stepped up to a 2.6GHz (4.3GHz turbo) Core i7-8850H, 16GB of memory, a 512GB Intel NVMe SSD, a secondary-storage 1TB hard drive, and a 4K (3,840-by-2,160-pixel) touch screen.
The panel is backed by the Max-Q version of the 6GB Quadro P3200, Nvidia's third-fastest GPU for mobile workstations.
Buyers who prefer Xeon power can opt for the 2.7GHz Xeon E-2176M processor, with support for up to 64GB of error-correcting (ECC) memory if absolute data integrity is paramount.
Storage can be expensively expanded to 6TB (two 2TB solid-state drives, plus a 2TB hard drive).
Whatever the innards, the ThinkPad P52 is a 0.96-by-14.9-by-9.9-inch slab in familiar ThinkPad matte black.
That dwarfs the Dell Precision 5530 (0.66 by 14.1 by 9.3 inches) but is a bit smaller than the HP ZBook 15 G5 (1 by 14.8 by 10.4 inches).
The top cover is made of glass-fiber-reinforced polymer, with a magnesium-aluminum alloy covering the bottom.
The system has passed a dozen MIL-STD 810G toughness tests; there's no flex in the screen or keyboard tray.
You'll find a USB 3.1 Type-A port and an SD card slot, along with space for an optional SmartCard reader, on the Lenovo's left side.
The SD slot earns points for swallowing cards whole instead of leaving them protruding to snag on stuff in your briefcase.
Two more USB Type-A ports, an audio jack, a mini-DisplayPort, and a security-cable lockdown slot are on the right.
At the rear are Ethernet and HDMI ports, two Thunderbolt 3 ports, and a connector for the AC adapter.
Bluetooth and 802.11ac Wi-Fi are standard; 4G LTE mobile broadband is an option.
A Classic Keyboard
Lifting the lid reveals the familiar ThinkPad keyboard with its dual pointing devices, the embedded TrackPoint mini-joystick and the touchpad.
Each of the pointers has its own set of the three buttons useful for independent software vendor (ISV) apps, and each is silky smooth in operation.
Except for the Fn and Ctrl keys occupying each other's space in the bottom left corner of the layout (a supplied Lenovo Vantage utility lets you swap them, as well as adjusting other hardware settings), the backlit keyboard is flawless.
There's ample travel and a satisfyingly solid typing feel, with firm feedback as the keys hit home.
The 4K display panel defies today's fashion trend toward thinner-than-thou bezels, but it's a beauty.
Fine details are sharper than sharp, and viewing angles are wide.
Contrast is high, with dark blacks and pristine white backgrounds.
Colors are rich and well saturated.
Brightness falls off below the top couple of backlight settings, but otherwise documents, images, and videos look great.
Touch-screen operations are precise.
The ThinkPad P52's speakers produce slightly muted audio, suitable for a conference room but not overly loud even at maximum volume.
Midtones are strong, but highs and lows seem swallowed up, though at least the overall sound is not tinny or distorted.
A set of headphones makes things much better, with some help from Dolby Atmos software.
Windows Hello security buffs can sign in using either the fingerprint reader on the palm rest or the face-recognition webcam above the display.
The 720p camera captures slightly dark but sharp and colorful images.
Lenovo backs the Windows 10 Pro system with a somewhat skimpy one-year depot or carry-in warranty, with up to five years of onsite support available at extra cost.
Setting the Test Bench on Fire (in a Good Way)
I compared the ThinkPad P52's performance to that of four other professional-grade 15.6-inch laptops with six-core CPUs.
Two, the abovementioned Dell Precision 5530 and Dell Precision 3530, are mobile workstations.
The MSI P65 Creator is almost a workstation, aimed as it is at 2D and 3D designers and editors.
Lenovo's own ThinkPad X1 Extreme is more of an executive productivity machine, but it stocks thoroughly competitive components.
The systems' specs appear in the comparison table below.
The P52 absolutely blazed through both our primary productivity test and our workstation-specific benchmarks.
Its only stumble came in our battery-life measurement, where its unplugged time was forgivable considering its overall power and 4K screen but trailed the field nonetheless.
Productivity, Storage, and Media Tests
PCMark 10 and 8 are holistic performance suites developed by the PC benchmark specialists at UL (formerly Futuremark).
The PCMark 10 test we run simulates different real-world productivity and content-creation workflows.
We use it to assess overall system performance for office-centric tasks such as word processing, spreadsheet work, Web browsing, and videoconferencing.
The test generates a proprietary numeric score; higher numbers are better.
PCMark 8, meanwhile, has a Storage subtest that we use to assess the speed of the laptop's storage subsystem.
The result is also a proprietary numeric score; again, higher numbers are better.
Four of the laptops breezed through PCMark 8's Storage test.
(The Precision 5530 was just a bit off the pace.) All five aced PCMark 10's productivity suite, scoring well above the 4,000 points that we consider excellent, but the ThinkPad P52 was in a class by itself with a high score of 5,659 points.
Only a few laptops, mostly Core i9 screamers, have topped that in our testing to date.
Next is Maxon's CPU-crunching Cinebench R15 test, which is fully threaded to make use of all available processor cores and threads.
Cinebench stresses the CPU rather than the GPU to render a complex image.
The result is a proprietary score indicating a PC's suitability for processor-intensive workloads.
All of the notebooks posted impressive numbers, but the P52 powered past the Xeons to take first place.
It's a superb platform for animation, analysis, rendering, and video editing.
We also run a custom Adobe Photoshop image-editing benchmark.
Using an early 2018 release of the Creative Cloud version of Photoshop, we apply a series of 10 complex filters and effects to a standard JPEG test image.
We time each operation and, at the end, add up the total execution time.
(Lower times are better.) The Photoshop test stresses the CPU, storage subsystem, and RAM, but it can also take advantage of most GPUs to speed up the process of applying filters, so systems with powerful graphics chips or cards may see a boost.
The ThinkPad workstation finished in the middle of the pack here, trailing the Xeon-based Dells by about one second per graphic filter or effect.
Still, that's close enough, and its screen is attractive enough, to appeal to image editing professionals.
Graphics Tests
3DMark measures relative graphics muscle by rendering sequences of highly detailed, gaming-style 3D graphics that emphasize particles and lighting.
We run two different 3DMark subtests, Sky Diver and Fire Strike, which are suited to different types of systems.
Both are DirectX 11 benchmarks, but Sky Diver is more suited to laptops and midrange PCs, while Fire Strike is more demanding and made for high-end PCs to strut their stuff.
The results are proprietary scores.
Game-like graphics such as 3DMark's aren't really ideal material for workstation GPUs, which are optimized for different kinds of operations.
Nevertheless, the ThinkPad P52 performed well enough here to take the silver medal behind the MSI and its GeForce GTX 1070.
Next up is another synthetic graphics test, this time from Unigine Corp.
Like 3DMark, the Superposition test renders and pans through a detailed 3D scene and measures how the system copes.
In this case, it's rendered in the company's eponymous Unigine engine, offering a different 3D workload scenario than 3DMark, for a second opinion on the machine's graphical prowess.
We present two Superposition results, run at the 720p Low and 1080p High presets.
Again, this test isn't as relevant as our workstation-focused benchmarks, but the P52 didn't do too badly, easily dispatching the laptops with lesser Quadro GPUs.
Workstation-Specific Tests
POV-Ray 3.7 puts systems through an off-screen rendering exercise that taxes GPUs and multiple CPU cores to the limit.
The ThinkPad P52 completed the test in 114 seconds, barely slower than the Precision 5530 (112 seconds) but edging out the HP ZBook 15 G5, which combines a Core i7-8850H processor with Quadro P2000 graphics (117 seconds).
The Precision 3530 was well back at 146 seconds.
SPECviewperf 13 is a benchmark that renders and rotates 3D and wireframe models based on popular ISV apps' viewsets; it's the most realistic and challenging workstation test we run.
In the Creo and Maya workloads, the ThinkPad P52 managed 175 and 178 frames per second respectively.
That simply crushed the Dell 5530 (77fps and 90fps respectively) and ZBook G5 (77fps and 86fps respectively), showing that the VR-ready Quadro P3200 is in a different league than GPUs we've hitherto seen in 15.6-inch mobile workstations.
Video Playback Battery Rundown Test
After fully recharging the laptop, we set up the machine in power-save mode (as opposed to balanced or high-performance mode) where available and make a few other battery-conserving tweaks in preparation for our unplugged video rundown test.
(We also turn Wi-Fi off, putting the laptop into airplane mode.) In this test, we loop a video—a locally stored 720p file of the open-source Blender demo movie Tears of Steel—with screen brightness set at 50 percent and volume at 100 percent until the system conks out.
Here's where the P52 disappointed.
Mobile workstations aren't taken on plane trips the way ultraportables are—they're carried down the hall or across town to show renderings or scientific analyses to the boss or to a client.
Even so, six hours of stamina barely qualifies as average these days.
A Virtual Winner
Obviously, not every workstation customer needs to design VR environments; an architect focused on 2D CAD applications may be perfectly content with a thin-and-light model.
But the ThinkPad P52's formidable performance, along with everything from its build quality and keyboard to its range of options at ordering time, put it at the head of the class.
If we were concerned about maximum portability, we'd drop the hard drive to save a few ounces, but for buyers in technical fields that need equal parts workstation-GPU muscle, CPU grunt, and typing comfort, paired with the reasonable carry comfort afforded by a 15.6-inch mobile workstation versus a 17-incher, it's an irresistible Editors' Choice pick.
Pros
Powerful, VR-ready Nvidia Quadro graphics and six-core Intel CPU.
Gorgeous 4K touch screen.
Classic ThinkPad keyboard does not disappoint.
Cons
A pound overweight.
Brief battery life.
The Bottom Line
Thumping its peers in our testing, Lenovo's Quadro-based ThinkPad P52 raises the bar for beefy 15.6-inch mobile workstations in almost every regard.
We've reviewed mobile workstations that rival the power of the Lenovo ThinkPad P52 (starts at $1,160.10; $2,897 as tested), but they've been 17.3-inch bruisers.
This 15.6-inch ThinkPad is a relative heavyweight compared to the Editors' Choice Dell Precision 5530.
Equipped with solid-state and hard drives, plus a touch screen, it's about six pounds, versus the Dell's four and a half.
But it's a 3D-rendering beast, ready to rampage through technical-standard applications, including ones for creating virtual reality (VR) worlds.
Its maximum memory, 128GB, is quadruple the Precision's ceiling.
As much as we like thin-and-light laptops, the P52's stellar performance makes us swing back to the traditional 15.6-inch form factor.
It's our new Editors' Choice in the mobile workstation category.
Serious Designers Only Need Apply
Positioned above the trimmer ThinkPad P52s, the ThinkPad P52 has considerably more muscle: Even the $1,124 base model carries a six-core Intel Core i7-8750H processor, though its other components are more modest (8GB of RAM, a 500GB hard drive, a 1080p display).
My test unit—model 20M90024US, ringing up at $2,897 at this writing—stepped up to a 2.6GHz (4.3GHz turbo) Core i7-8850H, 16GB of memory, a 512GB Intel NVMe SSD, a secondary-storage 1TB hard drive, and a 4K (3,840-by-2,160-pixel) touch screen.
The panel is backed by the Max-Q version of the 6GB Quadro P3200, Nvidia's third-fastest GPU for mobile workstations.
Buyers who prefer Xeon power can opt for the 2.7GHz Xeon E-2176M processor, with support for up to 64GB of error-correcting (ECC) memory if absolute data integrity is paramount.
Storage can be expensively expanded to 6TB (two 2TB solid-state drives, plus a 2TB hard drive).
Whatever the innards, the ThinkPad P52 is a 0.96-by-14.9-by-9.9-inch slab in familiar ThinkPad matte black.
That dwarfs the Dell Precision 5530 (0.66 by 14.1 by 9.3 inches) but is a bit smaller than the HP ZBook 15 G5 (1 by 14.8 by 10.4 inches).
The top cover is made of glass-fiber-reinforced polymer, with a magnesium-aluminum alloy covering the bottom.
The system has passed a dozen MIL-STD 810G toughness tests; there's no flex in the screen or keyboard tray.
You'll find a USB 3.1 Type-A port and an SD card slot, along with space for an optional SmartCard reader, on the Lenovo's left side.
The SD slot earns points for swallowing cards whole instead of leaving them protruding to snag on stuff in your briefcase.
Two more USB Type-A ports, an audio jack, a mini-DisplayPort, and a security-cable lockdown slot are on the right.
At the rear are Ethernet and HDMI ports, two Thunderbolt 3 ports, and a connector for the AC adapter.
Bluetooth and 802.11ac Wi-Fi are standard; 4G LTE mobile broadband is an option.
A Classic Keyboard
Lifting the lid reveals the familiar ThinkPad keyboard with its dual pointing devices, the embedded TrackPoint mini-joystick and the touchpad.
Each of the pointers has its own set of the three buttons useful for independent software vendor (ISV) apps, and each is silky smooth in operation.
Except for the Fn and Ctrl keys occupying each other's space in the bottom left corner of the layout (a supplied Lenovo Vantage utility lets you swap them, as well as adjusting other hardware settings), the backlit keyboard is flawless.
There's ample travel and a satisfyingly solid typing feel, with firm feedback as the keys hit home.
The 4K display panel defies today's fashion trend toward thinner-than-thou bezels, but it's a beauty.
Fine details are sharper than sharp, and viewing angles are wide.
Contrast is high, with dark blacks and pristine white backgrounds.
Colors are rich and well saturated.
Brightness falls off below the top couple of backlight settings, but otherwise documents, images, and videos look great.
Touch-screen operations are precise.
The ThinkPad P52's speakers produce slightly muted audio, suitable for a conference room but not overly loud even at maximum volume.
Midtones are strong, but highs and lows seem swallowed up, though at least the overall sound is not tinny or distorted.
A set of headphones makes things much better, with some help from Dolby Atmos software.
Windows Hello security buffs can sign in using either the fingerprint reader on the palm rest or the face-recognition webcam above the display.
The 720p camera captures slightly dark but sharp and colorful images.
Lenovo backs the Windows 10 Pro system with a somewhat skimpy one-year depot or carry-in warranty, with up to five years of onsite support available at extra cost.
Setting the Test Bench on Fire (in a Good Way)
I compared the ThinkPad P52's performance to that of four other professional-grade 15.6-inch laptops with six-core CPUs.
Two, the abovementioned Dell Precision 5530 and Dell Precision 3530, are mobile workstations.
The MSI P65 Creator is almost a workstation, aimed as it is at 2D and 3D designers and editors.
Lenovo's own ThinkPad X1 Extreme is more of an executive productivity machine, but it stocks thoroughly competitive components.
The systems' specs appear in the comparison table below.
The P52 absolutely blazed through both our primary productivity test and our workstation-specific benchmarks.
Its only stumble came in our battery-life measurement, where its unplugged time was forgivable considering its overall power and 4K screen but trailed the field nonetheless.
Productivity, Storage, and Media Tests
PCMark 10 and 8 are holistic performance suites developed by the PC benchmark specialists at UL (formerly Futuremark).
The PCMark 10 test we run simulates different real-world productivity and content-creation workflows.
We use it to assess overall system performance for office-centric tasks such as word processing, spreadsheet work, Web browsing, and videoconferencing.
The test generates a proprietary numeric score; higher numbers are better.
PCMark 8, meanwhile, has a Storage subtest that we use to assess the speed of the laptop's storage subsystem.
The result is also a proprietary numeric score; again, higher numbers are better.
Four of the laptops breezed through PCMark 8's Storage test.
(The Precision 5530 was just a bit off the pace.) All five aced PCMark 10's productivity suite, scoring well above the 4,000 points that we consider excellent, but the ThinkPad P52 was in a class by itself with a high score of 5,659 points.
Only a few laptops, mostly Core i9 screamers, have topped that in our testing to date.
Next is Maxon's CPU-crunching Cinebench R15 test, which is fully threaded to make use of all available processor cores and threads.
Cinebench stresses the CPU rather than the GPU to render a complex image.
The result is a proprietary score indicating a PC's suitability for processor-intensive workloads.
All of the notebooks posted impressive numbers, but the P52 powered past the Xeons to take first place.
It's a superb platform for animation, analysis, rendering, and video editing.
We also run a custom Adobe Photoshop image-editing benchmark.
Using an early 2018 release of the Creative Cloud version of Photoshop, we apply a series of 10 complex filters and effects to a standard JPEG test image.
We time each operation and, at the end, add up the total execution time.
(Lower times are better.) The Photoshop test stresses the CPU, storage subsystem, and RAM, but it can also take advantage of most GPUs to speed up the process of applying filters, so systems with powerful graphics chips or cards may see a boost.
The ThinkPad workstation finished in the middle of the pack here, trailing the Xeon-based Dells by about one second per graphic filter or effect.
Still, that's close enough, and its screen is attractive enough, to appeal to image editing professionals.
Graphics Tests
3DMark measures relative graphics muscle by rendering sequences of highly detailed, gaming-style 3D graphics that emphasize particles and lighting.
We run two different 3DMark subtests, Sky Diver and Fire Strike, which are suited to different types of systems.
Both are DirectX 11 benchmarks, but Sky Diver is more suited to laptops and midrange PCs, while Fire Strike is more demanding and made for high-end PCs to strut their stuff.
The results are proprietary scores.
Game-like graphics such as 3DMark's aren't really ideal material for workstation GPUs, which are optimized for different kinds of operations.
Nevertheless, the ThinkPad P52 performed well enough here to take the silver medal behind the MSI and its GeForce GTX 1070.
Next up is another synthetic graphics test, this time from Unigine Corp.
Like 3DMark, the Superposition test renders and pans through a detailed 3D scene and measures how the system copes.
In this case, it's rendered in the company's eponymous Unigine engine, offering a different 3D workload scenario than 3DMark, for a second opinion on the machine's graphical prowess.
We present two Superposition results, run at the 720p Low and 1080p High presets.
Again, this test isn't as relevant as our workstation-focused benchmarks, but the P52 didn't do too badly, easily dispatching the laptops with lesser Quadro GPUs.
Workstation-Specific Tests
POV-Ray 3.7 puts systems through an off-screen rendering exercise that taxes GPUs and multiple CPU cores to the limit.
The ThinkPad P52 completed the test in 114 seconds, barely slower than the Precision 5530 (112 seconds) but edging out the HP ZBook 15 G5, which combines a Core i7-8850H processor with Quadro P2000 graphics (117 seconds).
The Precision 3530 was well back at 146 seconds.
SPECviewperf 13 is a benchmark that renders and rotates 3D and wireframe models based on popular ISV apps' viewsets; it's the most realistic and challenging workstation test we run.
In the Creo and Maya workloads, the ThinkPad P52 managed 175 and 178 frames per second respectively.
That simply crushed the Dell 5530 (77fps and 90fps respectively) and ZBook G5 (77fps and 86fps respectively), showing that the VR-ready Quadro P3200 is in a different league than GPUs we've hitherto seen in 15.6-inch mobile workstations.
Video Playback Battery Rundown Test
After fully recharging the laptop, we set up the machine in power-save mode (as opposed to balanced or high-performance mode) where available and make a few other battery-conserving tweaks in preparation for our unplugged video rundown test.
(We also turn Wi-Fi off, putting the laptop into airplane mode.) In this test, we loop a video—a locally stored 720p file of the open-source Blender demo movie Tears of Steel—with screen brightness set at 50 percent and volume at 100 percent until the system conks out.
Here's where the P52 disappointed.
Mobile workstations aren't taken on plane trips the way ultraportables are—they're carried down the hall or across town to show renderings or scientific analyses to the boss or to a client.
Even so, six hours of stamina barely qualifies as average these days.
A Virtual Winner
Obviously, not every workstation customer needs to design VR environments; an architect focused on 2D CAD applications may be perfectly content with a thin-and-light model.
But the ThinkPad P52's formidable performance, along with everything from its build quality and keyboard to its range of options at ordering time, put it at the head of the class.
If we were concerned about maximum portability, we'd drop the hard drive to save a few ounces, but for buyers in technical fields that need equal parts workstation-GPU muscle, CPU grunt, and typing comfort, paired with the reasonable carry comfort afforded by a 15.6-inch mobile workstation versus a 17-incher, it's an irresistible Editors' Choice pick.
Pros
Powerful, VR-ready Nvidia Quadro graphics and six-core Intel CPU.
Gorgeous 4K touch screen.
Classic ThinkPad keyboard does not disappoint.
Cons
A pound overweight.
Brief battery life.
The Bottom Line
Thumping its peers in our testing, Lenovo's Quadro-based ThinkPad P52 raises the bar for beefy 15.6-inch mobile workstations in almost every regard.
