The Lenovo ThinkPad P1 ($1,655 starting price; $3,982 as tested) is a light mobile workstation, but it isn't a "lite" mobile workstation.
Instead, it's a lean, mean drafting machine—well outfitted for engineering work, rendering, animation and video editing, and scientific computing.
It comes perilously close to unseating our Editors' Choice among laptop workstations, the Dell Precision 5530, and arguably it does top the Dell in screen and keyboard quality.
For Lenovo loyalists who find the ThinkPad P51 or ThinkPad P52 too heavy, and the slimline ThinkPad P52s not powerful enough, the ThinkPad P1 is a must-have.
Honest, Objective Reviews
Daxdi.com is a leading authority on technology, delivering Labs-based, independent reviews of the latest products and services.
Our expert industry analysis and practical solutions help you make better buying decisions and get more from technology.
For Once, Light Makes Might
So, about that "lite" business: Before the Precision 5530, mobile workstations that weighed less than five pounds were, in my opinion, suitable mainly for minor touch-ups or showing finished renderings to clients or bosses, but they lacked the muscle to crunch through big workflows themselves.
The Precision 5530, based on Dell's sleek XPS 15, whittled serious power down to 4.4 pounds while giving up only a bit of the expandability of a system like the excellent-but-hefty HP ZBook 15 G5.
The ThinkPad P1 follows the same path: It's a workstation version of the ThinkPad X1 Extreme, Lenovo's 15.6-inch answer to multimedia stars like the XPS 15 and Apple MacBook Pro.
Prices start at $1,655 for a quad-core Core i5 version with 8GB of RAM, a 256GB solid-state drive, and a 300-nit, full HD (1,920-by-1,080-pixel) screen.
The unit tested here is a retail model (part number 20MD002LUS; the $3,982 cited above, from Provantage, was the lowest price I could find at this writing) with a six-core Xeon E-2176M processor, 32GB of memory, one 2TB Samsung NVMe SSD, the Max-Q version of Nvidia's Quadro P2000 GPU, and a 400-nit, 4K (3,840-by-2,160-pixel) touch display.
Memory peaks at 64GB of DDR4 (or 32GB for Xeon owners who want ECC memory) and storage at 4TB (two 2TB M.2 drives).
At 0.74 by 14.2 by 9.7 inches, the P1 is slightly larger than the Precision 5530 (0.66 by 14.1 by 9.3 inches), but it's even lighter—4.06 pounds for the touch-screen test unit, 3.76 for base models.
It's positively dwarfed by a full-sized 15.6-inch workstation like the HP ZBook 15 G5 (1 by 14.8 by 10.4 inches, 5.8 pounds).
Dressed in the traditional ThinkPad matte black with a carbon fiber/graphite hybrid lid, an aluminum alloy base, and a soft-touch palm rest, it's passed a dozen MIL-STD tests against shock, vibration, temperature extremes, and other hazards.
Despite its thin profile, the P1 makes room on its left edge for two Thunderbolt 3 ports, an HDMI port, a proprietary mini Ethernet port (you do get an RJ-45 dongle to use with it in the box), an audio jack, and Lenovo's proprietary (not USB Type-C or Thunderbolt) AC adapter connector.
Here's a look at the two edges...
On the right, you'll find a cable-lockdown security notch, two USB 3.1 Type-A ports, an SD card slot, and a SmartCard slot.
ThinkPad Through and Through
For those who hate typing passwords, the system has both a fingerprint reader and a face-recognition webcam—the latter, happily, is mounted above the screen instead of below as with the Dell.
The camera takes reasonably clear and well-lit images, though they are not overly sharp.
(My blue crosshatched shirt appeared as just blue.)
Audio from the bottom-mounted, side-firing speakers seems slightly muffled, though loud enough to fill a small room and free of distortion.
Plug in a set of headphones, and Dolby Atmos technology provides much richer sound.
Lenovo laptops, except perhaps for the cheapest and smallest, are known for their world-class keyboards, and the ThinkPad P1 lives up to that high standard.
The backlit keyboard's only flaw is in the lower left corner, where the Fn key is to the left of the Ctrl key instead of vice versa, though you can use the supplied Lenovo Vantage utility to swap their functionality.
(The keycaps will stay the same, of course.) Otherwise, it's a pleasure to type on, with ample travel and a firm, springy feel.
Both the TrackPoint nubbin in the home row and the touchpad below the space bar offer smooth cursor control.
The pad has no buttons, but the TrackPoint has three, and Lenovo Vantage lets you use the middle one as either a scroller or a middle button for CAD and other independent software vendor (ISV) apps.
The P1's screen is splendid—a 4K touch panel that supports 100 percent of the Adobe RGB gamut, with wide viewing angles and tack-sharp details.
It lacks the Dolby Vision HDR certification of the ThinkPad X1 Extreme's display, but colors pop, and the contrast is superb.
CAD drawings, 3D models, and YouTube movie trailers and HDTV demos all looked glorious.
My only gripe is that the brightness falls off quickly as you dial down the backlight.
Testing: Powerful, With One Anomaly
The 2.7GHz (4.4GHz turbo) Xeon E-2176M processor provides plenty of hexa-core horsepower, breaking the 1,000-point barrier in our Cinebench R15 CPU horsepower test and wrapping up our Handbrake video-editing exercise in a brisk 45 seconds—easily topping the quad-core Xeon in the ThinkPad P51 we tested last year.
The P1 also made short work of our PCMark 8 office productivity benchmark, showing that, like most workstations, it's overkill for mere word processing and spreadsheet jobs.
It was, however, oddly off the pace in our Adobe Photoshop image-editing test—perhaps a compatibility glitch with the version of Photoshop used.
The P1's thermally throttled Max-Q version of the Nvidia Quadro P2000 didn't give anything away to the full-bore version in the Precision 5530, as the two machines went toe to toe in our graphics tests.
And the ThinkPad's cooling fan, though noticeable, was relatively quiet.
See How We Test Laptops
In our workstation-specific benchmarks, the P1 handled POV-Ray 3.7's off-screen rendering test in 114 seconds, only 2 seconds slower than the Dell Precision 5530 and quicker than the HP ZBook 15 G5 (117 seconds) and ThinkPad P52s (211 seconds).
In SPECviewperf 13, which renders and rotates solid and wireframe models using viewsets from popular ISV apps, the P1 managed 77 and 83 frames per second (fps) in Creo and Maya respectively, versus 77fps and 90fps for the Precision 5530; 77fps and 86fps for the ZBook 15 G5; and 37fps apiece for the ThinkPad P52s.
Apart from Photoshop, the only test that caused the P1 to stumble was our battery rundown measurement.
It lasted two hours longer than the ThinkPad P52s, but its unplugged time of 7 hours and 39 minutes fell three-and-a-half hours short of the Precision 5530's.
Frankly, your choice between the two may come down to those extra battery hours favoring the Dell, or the conventional (rather than up-your-nose) bezel webcam angle favoring the Lenovo.
Slim, Sleek, and Workstation-Strong
It's hard to imagine the ThinkPad P1 not cannibalizing sales of the ThinkPad P52s; the former offers vastly superior performance in an elegant, trim package.
In everything from supporting Xeon power and ECC memory to fitting USB Type-A and HDMI ports alongside Thunderbolt 3, it's a dazzling design.
I could wish for a little more battery life, but otherwise the P1 belongs in the top echelon of mobile workstations and is a workstation bruiser that design or engineering professionals would be proud to carry.
Pros
Workstation power in a lean chassis.
Stunning screen and fabulous keyboard.
Strong six-core performance.
Two USB Type-A ports and an HDMI out, as well as two Thunderbolt 3 ports.
View More
Cons
Only fair battery life.
Expensive.
The Bottom Line
Lenovo blows away its other thin-and-light workstation, the ThinkPad P52s, with the ThinkPad P1—a fast, fully loaded sibling of the X1 Extreme that delivers serious power for ISV apps in a chassis pared down to 4.06 pounds.
The Lenovo ThinkPad P1 ($1,655 starting price; $3,982 as tested) is a light mobile workstation, but it isn't a "lite" mobile workstation.
Instead, it's a lean, mean drafting machine—well outfitted for engineering work, rendering, animation and video editing, and scientific computing.
It comes perilously close to unseating our Editors' Choice among laptop workstations, the Dell Precision 5530, and arguably it does top the Dell in screen and keyboard quality.
For Lenovo loyalists who find the ThinkPad P51 or ThinkPad P52 too heavy, and the slimline ThinkPad P52s not powerful enough, the ThinkPad P1 is a must-have.
Honest, Objective Reviews
Daxdi.com is a leading authority on technology, delivering Labs-based, independent reviews of the latest products and services.
Our expert industry analysis and practical solutions help you make better buying decisions and get more from technology.
For Once, Light Makes Might
So, about that "lite" business: Before the Precision 5530, mobile workstations that weighed less than five pounds were, in my opinion, suitable mainly for minor touch-ups or showing finished renderings to clients or bosses, but they lacked the muscle to crunch through big workflows themselves.
The Precision 5530, based on Dell's sleek XPS 15, whittled serious power down to 4.4 pounds while giving up only a bit of the expandability of a system like the excellent-but-hefty HP ZBook 15 G5.
The ThinkPad P1 follows the same path: It's a workstation version of the ThinkPad X1 Extreme, Lenovo's 15.6-inch answer to multimedia stars like the XPS 15 and Apple MacBook Pro.
Prices start at $1,655 for a quad-core Core i5 version with 8GB of RAM, a 256GB solid-state drive, and a 300-nit, full HD (1,920-by-1,080-pixel) screen.
The unit tested here is a retail model (part number 20MD002LUS; the $3,982 cited above, from Provantage, was the lowest price I could find at this writing) with a six-core Xeon E-2176M processor, 32GB of memory, one 2TB Samsung NVMe SSD, the Max-Q version of Nvidia's Quadro P2000 GPU, and a 400-nit, 4K (3,840-by-2,160-pixel) touch display.
Memory peaks at 64GB of DDR4 (or 32GB for Xeon owners who want ECC memory) and storage at 4TB (two 2TB M.2 drives).
At 0.74 by 14.2 by 9.7 inches, the P1 is slightly larger than the Precision 5530 (0.66 by 14.1 by 9.3 inches), but it's even lighter—4.06 pounds for the touch-screen test unit, 3.76 for base models.
It's positively dwarfed by a full-sized 15.6-inch workstation like the HP ZBook 15 G5 (1 by 14.8 by 10.4 inches, 5.8 pounds).
Dressed in the traditional ThinkPad matte black with a carbon fiber/graphite hybrid lid, an aluminum alloy base, and a soft-touch palm rest, it's passed a dozen MIL-STD tests against shock, vibration, temperature extremes, and other hazards.
Despite its thin profile, the P1 makes room on its left edge for two Thunderbolt 3 ports, an HDMI port, a proprietary mini Ethernet port (you do get an RJ-45 dongle to use with it in the box), an audio jack, and Lenovo's proprietary (not USB Type-C or Thunderbolt) AC adapter connector.
Here's a look at the two edges...
On the right, you'll find a cable-lockdown security notch, two USB 3.1 Type-A ports, an SD card slot, and a SmartCard slot.
ThinkPad Through and Through
For those who hate typing passwords, the system has both a fingerprint reader and a face-recognition webcam—the latter, happily, is mounted above the screen instead of below as with the Dell.
The camera takes reasonably clear and well-lit images, though they are not overly sharp.
(My blue crosshatched shirt appeared as just blue.)
Audio from the bottom-mounted, side-firing speakers seems slightly muffled, though loud enough to fill a small room and free of distortion.
Plug in a set of headphones, and Dolby Atmos technology provides much richer sound.
Lenovo laptops, except perhaps for the cheapest and smallest, are known for their world-class keyboards, and the ThinkPad P1 lives up to that high standard.
The backlit keyboard's only flaw is in the lower left corner, where the Fn key is to the left of the Ctrl key instead of vice versa, though you can use the supplied Lenovo Vantage utility to swap their functionality.
(The keycaps will stay the same, of course.) Otherwise, it's a pleasure to type on, with ample travel and a firm, springy feel.
Both the TrackPoint nubbin in the home row and the touchpad below the space bar offer smooth cursor control.
The pad has no buttons, but the TrackPoint has three, and Lenovo Vantage lets you use the middle one as either a scroller or a middle button for CAD and other independent software vendor (ISV) apps.
The P1's screen is splendid—a 4K touch panel that supports 100 percent of the Adobe RGB gamut, with wide viewing angles and tack-sharp details.
It lacks the Dolby Vision HDR certification of the ThinkPad X1 Extreme's display, but colors pop, and the contrast is superb.
CAD drawings, 3D models, and YouTube movie trailers and HDTV demos all looked glorious.
My only gripe is that the brightness falls off quickly as you dial down the backlight.
Testing: Powerful, With One Anomaly
The 2.7GHz (4.4GHz turbo) Xeon E-2176M processor provides plenty of hexa-core horsepower, breaking the 1,000-point barrier in our Cinebench R15 CPU horsepower test and wrapping up our Handbrake video-editing exercise in a brisk 45 seconds—easily topping the quad-core Xeon in the ThinkPad P51 we tested last year.
The P1 also made short work of our PCMark 8 office productivity benchmark, showing that, like most workstations, it's overkill for mere word processing and spreadsheet jobs.
It was, however, oddly off the pace in our Adobe Photoshop image-editing test—perhaps a compatibility glitch with the version of Photoshop used.
The P1's thermally throttled Max-Q version of the Nvidia Quadro P2000 didn't give anything away to the full-bore version in the Precision 5530, as the two machines went toe to toe in our graphics tests.
And the ThinkPad's cooling fan, though noticeable, was relatively quiet.
See How We Test Laptops
In our workstation-specific benchmarks, the P1 handled POV-Ray 3.7's off-screen rendering test in 114 seconds, only 2 seconds slower than the Dell Precision 5530 and quicker than the HP ZBook 15 G5 (117 seconds) and ThinkPad P52s (211 seconds).
In SPECviewperf 13, which renders and rotates solid and wireframe models using viewsets from popular ISV apps, the P1 managed 77 and 83 frames per second (fps) in Creo and Maya respectively, versus 77fps and 90fps for the Precision 5530; 77fps and 86fps for the ZBook 15 G5; and 37fps apiece for the ThinkPad P52s.
Apart from Photoshop, the only test that caused the P1 to stumble was our battery rundown measurement.
It lasted two hours longer than the ThinkPad P52s, but its unplugged time of 7 hours and 39 minutes fell three-and-a-half hours short of the Precision 5530's.
Frankly, your choice between the two may come down to those extra battery hours favoring the Dell, or the conventional (rather than up-your-nose) bezel webcam angle favoring the Lenovo.
Slim, Sleek, and Workstation-Strong
It's hard to imagine the ThinkPad P1 not cannibalizing sales of the ThinkPad P52s; the former offers vastly superior performance in an elegant, trim package.
In everything from supporting Xeon power and ECC memory to fitting USB Type-A and HDMI ports alongside Thunderbolt 3, it's a dazzling design.
I could wish for a little more battery life, but otherwise the P1 belongs in the top echelon of mobile workstations and is a workstation bruiser that design or engineering professionals would be proud to carry.
Pros
Workstation power in a lean chassis.
Stunning screen and fabulous keyboard.
Strong six-core performance.
Two USB Type-A ports and an HDMI out, as well as two Thunderbolt 3 ports.
View More
Cons
Only fair battery life.
Expensive.
The Bottom Line
Lenovo blows away its other thin-and-light workstation, the ThinkPad P52s, with the ThinkPad P1—a fast, fully loaded sibling of the X1 Extreme that delivers serious power for ISV apps in a chassis pared down to 4.06 pounds.
