Lenovo has simplified its mobile workstation lineup, though it still gives you three 15.6-inch models to choose from. The ThinkPad P15 (starts at $1,507; $4,886 as tested) replaces the ThinkPad P53 as the fully loaded flagship, leaving design and rendering pros and scientific and engineering analysts who want something lighter to pick the ThinkPad P1 or P15s. Equipped with a dazzling 4K display and a colossal eight-core Intel Core i9 processor and 16GB Nvidia Quadro RTX 5000 Max-Q GPU, our P15 test unit is as heavy as it is expensive, but it’s a spectacular performer—the fastest laptop workstation we’ve tested, and our new Editors’ Choice winner in the category. Its battery life is predictably brief, and its maximum storage is a “mere” 4TB, but otherwise it’s hard to find a flaw.
Power! More Power!
As a cost-no-object 15.6-inch workstation, the ThinkPad P15 faces formidable competition from the Dell Precision 7550 and the HP ZBook 15 G6 (recently supplanted by the ZBook Fury 15 G7). Like those models, it offers scores of configuration choices; the $1,507 base model ($1,420 with Linux) combines a Core i5 mobile CPU with 8GB of RAM, a 256GB solid-state drive, Nvidia’s Quadro T1000, and a full HD (1080p) display.
Our review unit, $4,886 at CDW, raises the ante with a Core i9-10885H chip, 32GB of memory, a 1TB NVMe SSD, the fastest of five available Quadro GPUs, and a 3,840-by-2,160-pixel IPS Dolby Vision HDR400 non-touch screen with 600 nits of brightness. Another 4K display option is a 500-nit touch panel with OLED HDR500 True Black technology.
Six- and eight-core Xeon processors are alternatives to the Core i7 and Core i9 options, with ECC memory if you like. You can get up to 128GB of RAM and two 2TB solid-state drives, which is a competitive disadvantage since the Dell can hold three and the HP four. Users who need gargantuan capacity will have to rely on an external Thunderbolt drive array.
While its matte-black-slab styling is blandly familiar to ThinkPad followers, the P15 is cased in glass-fiber-reinforced plastic instead of the magnesium alloy of other models. Rest assured, however, that it’s passed the same MIL-STD 810G torture tests against shock, vibration, and environmental extremes; there’s virtually no flex if you grasp the screen corners or press the keyboard deck. The laptop weighs a ponderous 6.05 pounds; it’s a bit bulkier than its Precision 7550 rival (1.24 by 14.8 by 9.9 inches versus 1.08 by 14.2 by 9.5 inches).
Ports are plentiful. The left edge holds HDMI and USB 3.2 Type-A ports, a SmartCard slot, and an audio jack. Another USB-A 3.2 port is on the right, along with an SD card slot and a Kensington lock slot.
That may not seem like many ports for a bruiser of a machine like this, but the rear edge saves the day. Three USB-C ports, two with Thunderbolt 3 capability, join an Ethernet port and the AC adapter connector on the back of the laptop. Bluetooth and Wi-Fi 6 are standard, as are two ways to sign in with Windows Hello: a fingerprint reader, and a face-recognition webcam with a sliding privacy shutter.
Large and in Charge
As a plus-size laptop, the P15 has room for a numeric keypad beside the keyboard and unfashionably huge bezels around the screen. Lenovo says the 4K displays feature from-the-factory color calibration, and our unit’s IPS panel covers 100% of the Adobe RGB gamut. (The OLED screen option covers 100% of DCI-P3.)
I might rate the screen just a shade below HP’s top-of-the-line DreamColor displays, but it’s exceptionally good. Brightness and contrast are off the charts, and colors are rich, vivid, and lushly saturated. Minute details are crystal clear. Viewing angles are wide. Everything from high-res photos and YouTube videos to CGI images look wonderful.
ThinkPad keyboards raise high expectations, and the P15’s doesn’t disappoint. The backlit keyboard has a crisp, slightly noisy typing feel and an exemplary layout, with dedicated Home, End, Page Up, and Page Down keys and cursor arrows in the correct inverted T arrangement. Top-row keys control volume and brightness and allow you to place and end conference calls at a touch.
The TrackPoint cursor controller between the G and H keys has three buttons south of the space bar, including the middle button beloved of independent software vendor (ISV) apps. The buttonless touchpad isn’t very big, but it glides and taps smoothly, with a comfortable click.
The 720p webcam’s images are well-lit and colorful, with minimal static, but so soft-focus that my face looked blotchy and unattractive. Sound from the speaker grille above the keyboard is loud and strong, with a slight echo; there’s a fair amount of bass, but overlapping tracks are flat. Dolby software lets you choose from music, movie, game, voice, or dynamic audio profiles or make adjustments with an equalizer.
The Windows 10 Pro software preload (Xeon models get Windows 10 Pro for Workstations) includes a few extras. A Lenovo Performance Tuner utility optimizes power and visual-effects settings for popular programs. Another, dubbed Commercial Vantage, centralizes system updates; camera, microphone, and keyboard settings; and Wi-Fi security. Lenovo Quick Clean is a pandemic aid that locks the keyboard and touchpad for a couple of minutes while you wipe down or sanitize the device.
Testing the ThinkPad P15: A High-End Workstation Brawl
The ThinkPad P15 bows to no mobile workstation, so for our benchmark comparisons I called on not only the HP ZBook 15 G6 and the Dell Precision 7550 but the Quadro RTX 5000-equipped Razer Blade 15 Studio Edition and comparably Core i9-powered HP ZBook Create G7, though the last has Nvidia GeForce instead of Quadro graphics and lacks formal ISV certifications. You can see their basic specs in the table below.
Productivity 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 wrangling, web browsing, and videoconferencing. PCMark 8, meanwhile, has a storage subtest that we use to assess the speed of the system’s boot drive. Both yield a proprietary numeric score; higher numbers are better. (See more about how we test laptops.)
The Lenovo finished handily in front, but all five systems obliterated the 4,000-point mark that indicates outstanding productivity in PCMark 10—they’re obscene overkill for Microsoft Office or Google Docs. Meanwhile, today’s speedy boot SSDs tend to score closely clustered on the PCMark 8 storage measurement, and the P15 was dead-on.
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.
Cinebench is often a good predictor of our Handbrake video editing benchmark, in which we put a stopwatch on systems as they transcode a brief movie from 4K resolution down to 1080p. It, too, is a tough test for multi-core, multi-threaded CPUs; lower times are better.
The P15 didn’t really shine in Cinebench, but it and its competitors all have much more than ample CPU horsepower. Pulverizing massive datasets is their daily routine.
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 add up the total (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.
The ThinkPad finished in the middle of a very fast pack. Between its scorching speed and gorgeous screen, it’s a first-class imaging platform.
Graphics Tests
We test Windows systems’ relative graphics muscle with two gaming simulations, 3DMark and Superposition. The first has two DirectX 11 subtests, Sky Diver and Fire Strike, suitable for mainstream PCs with integrated graphics and higher-end gaming rigs respectively. The second uses the Unigine engine to render and pan through a detailed 3D scene at two resolution and image-quality settings with results measured in frames per second (fps); 30fps is usually considered a fair target for smooth animation while avid gamers prefer 60fps or higher.
It’s built for professional apps, but the P15 is certainly capable of playing the latest games after hours, claiming the gold medal in both benchmarks.
Workstation-Specific Tests
In addition to our CPU measurement, Cinebench R15 has an OpenGL exercise that uses that popular vector graphics application programming interface (API) to tap the GPU for hardware-accelerated rendering of a brief animated movie of a car chase. Results are displayed in frames per second (fps); higher numbers are better.
We also use the POV-Ray 3.7 CPU benchmark. The Persistence of Vision Raytracer is a free software program that makes tons of calculations to determine pixel colors and (optionally) put them on screen. It exercises processor cores and threads and the floating-point unit, not the GPU (and it doesn’t use the ray-tracing features of Nvidia’s RTX silicon). The benchmark times (in seconds; lower is better) the off-screen rendering of a photo-realistic scene with multiple light sources.
First in one test and second in the other, the P15 is a force to be reckoned with. The Razer’s Core i7 would be a fine performer in a gaming laptop, but it’s punished by the Core i9s and Xeons in POV-Ray.
Finally, there’s SPECviewperf 13, the most realistic and challenging workstation benchmark we run and the one we give greatest weight. This test uses viewsets from actual ISV apps to render, rotate, and zoom in and out of wireframe and solid 3D models, with results listed in frames per second (higher is better). The viewsets we use are from PTC’s Creo CAD platform; Autodesk’s Maya modeling and simulation software for film, TV, and games; and Dassault Systemes’ SolidWorks 3D rendering package.
The ThinkPad crushed its competition in this important benchmark, setting a pace that no laptop and only a couple of desktop workstations have matched in our experience. We suppose its 4TB storage limit will be a deal-breaker for a few, but this is where the P15 clinched its Editors’ Choice award.
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 Blender Foundation short film Tears of SteelTears of Steel—with screen brightness set at 50 percent and volume at 100 percent until the system quits.
Workstations are usually plugged in for design and render sessions, only relying on battery power for brief demos in an executive’s office or at a client’s location, so we’re forgiving the Lenovo’s last-place finish in this event, likely caused by its extra-bright, pixel-packed screen. If its size and weight didn’t say “not very portable,” this would.
A Power Tool for Serious Tasks
The ThinkPad P15 is bulky and expensive (though not as expensive as our Dell Precision 7550 review unit), but it’s a mighty juggernaut among professional laptops and our new favorite mobile workstation. It shrugs off jobs that would strangle an ordinary notebook, and its display and keyboard make it a pleasure to use. Accept no substitutes.
