Lenovo ThinkPad P16 Gen 1 – Top 5 Pros and Cons

The market for mobile workstations is full of bulky laptops that try to appear as sleek and as professional as possible. The Lenovo ThinkPad P16 Gen 1 tries to spice things up a bit, with a refreshed design that reminds us of the Legion series. It doesn’t have RGB, but a red stripe and using a large part of the backside as exhaust will give you that gamer-y feel. The 55W Alder Lake HX-series processors and RTX A-series of GPUs make for a very potent combination that is seriously backed up by a serious cooling setup. You can also take advantage of all that power, thanks to a fantastic display selection, including the 4K UHD+ display that we have here.

Today we’re giving you a quick overview of the Lenovo ThinkPad P16 Gen 1.

Lenovo ThinkPad P16 Gen 1: Full Specs / In-depth Review


4 reasons to BUY the Lenovo ThinkPad P16 Gen 1

1. Upgradeability

The upgradeability of the laptop is very good, matching the ZBooks from HP. You get a service hatch on the bottom panel, which covers two SODIMM slots and one M.2 slot.

The keyboard is removable as well and below it, you get two more SODIMM slots, for up to 128GB of DDR5 RAM, along with a second SSD slot.

Here is our teardown video, which shows how to access all four RAM slots and the two storage slots.


2. Display quality

The 4K UHD+ IPS panel has amazing viewing angles and a pixel density of 283 PPI, which results in a very low Retina distance of 31 cm. It gets super bright, up to 740 nits, while covering 99% of the sRGB and 88% of the DCI-P3 color gamuts.

DCI-P3
sRGB

The panel reaches the lowest possible accuracy inside the DCI-P3 gamut and with our Design and Gaming profile, which gives us a dE value of 2.6. Here are the results of our accuracy test with the stock settings (left) and with our profile applied (right).


Buy our profiles

Since our profiles are tailored for each individual display model, this article and its respective profile package are meant for Lenovo ThinkPad P16 Gen 1 configuration with 16.0″ LG LP160UQ1-SPB1 (LEN41B1) (3840×2400) IPS.

*Should you have problems with downloading the purchased file, try using a different browser to open the link you’ll receive via e-mail. If the download target is a .php file instead of an archive, change the file extension to .zip or contact us at [email protected].

Read more about the profiles HERE.

In addition to receiving efficient and health-friendly profiles, by buying LaptopMedia's products you also support the development of our labs, where we test devices in order to produce the most objective reviews possible.

Office Work

Office Work should be used mostly by users who spend most of the time looking at pieces of text, tables or just surfing. This profile aims to deliver better distinctness and clarity by keeping a flat gamma curve (2.20), native color temperature and perceptually accurate colors.

Design and Gaming

This profile is aimed at designers who work with colors professionally, and for games and movies as well. Design and Gaming takes display panels to their limits, making them as accurate as possible in the sRGB IEC61966-2-1 standard for Web and HDTV, at white point D65.

Health-Guard

Health-Guard eliminates the harmful Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM) and reduces the negative Blue Light which affects our eyes and body. Since it’s custom tailored for every panel, it manages to keep the colors perceptually accurate. Health-Guard simulates paper so the pressure on the eyes is greatly reduced.

Get all 3 profiles with 33% discount


3. I/O

The port selection of the ThinkPad comes with two USB Type-A 3.2 (Gen. 1) ports, one USB Type-C 3.2 (Gen. 2) port, two Thunderbolt 4 ports, an HDMI port, an SD card reader, and a 3.5 mm audio jack. There is an optional SmartCard reader, as well as a Nano SIM slot.


4. Input devices

The keyboard, while removable, comes with spill resistance, a backlight, long key travel, and clicky feedback. It’s great for both typing and gaming. It houses a TrackPoint, which is a staple for ThinkPads. The touchpad also has a large size and is covered in Mylar, which is very smooth, while the physical buttons on top work very well with the TrackPoint.


1 reason NOT to buy the Lenovo ThinkPad P16 Gen 1

1. Heat and noise

While the cooling is capable, with four heat pipes and two fans, so are the CPU and GPU.


Max CPU load

Intel Core i9-12950HX (55W TDP)0:02 – 0:10 sec0:15 – 0:30 sec10:00 – 15:00 min
Lenovo ThinkPad P16 Gen 13.26 GHz @ 2.63 GHz @ 82°C @ 119W3.09 GHz @ 2.46 GHz @ 84°C @ 104W2.84 GHz @ 2.21 GHz @ 89°C @ 86W

The CPU maintains very high wattage, even after the 15-minute mark. However, it also runs a 89°C, which is reflected on the outside.

Real-life Gaming

NVIDIA RTX A5500GPU frequency/ Core temp (after 2 min)GPU frequency/ Core temp (after 30 min)GPU frequency/ Core temp (Max Fan)
Lenovo ThinkPad P16 Gen 11236 MHz @ 69°C @ 130W1188 MHz @ 76°C @ 130W

The GPU runs cooler and maxes out its 130W TGP both in short and long runs, however, the clock speeds dip to below 1200MHz.

Comfort during full load

The keyboard gets toasty, reaching 53°C. The laptop is noisy as well, with the two fans being quite the screamers.


All Lenovo ThinkPad P16 Gen 1 configurations:

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