Lenovo ThinkPad P15 Gen 2 review – a proper mobile workstation
Once again we are delving into the realm of mobile workstations. However, today we’re not going to look at some finicky thin and light machine, that claims it can handle your heavy workloads but ends up crying on the couch after the first CAD render. No, no, no. With us, we have the ThinkPad P15 Gen 2.
This time, you should expect not only a beastly processor but also a pretty capable roster of graphics cards, which maxes out with the NVIDIA RTX A5000. Of course, for this, one would need a good cooling solution, and as the ThinkPad P15v Gen 2 has shown us – this could be a problem.
However, it is not the pure power potential that got us excited about this guy. Once we heard about its customization and upgrade options, nothing else mattered. According to the specs, this machine comes with four RAM SODIMM slots for up to 128GB of ECC or non-ECC memory, and up to 6TB of NVMe storage, via 3 M.2 slots, one of which supports PCIe Gen 4 drives. And there is more to it on the inside, but we won’t spoil anything else.
Additionally, Lenovo state that their laptop can be configured with one of four display options – 300 nits 1080p IPS panel, 500 nits 1080p IPS panel with Dolby Vision, 600 nits UHD IPS panel with Dolby Vision and HDR 400, and a UHD OLED panel with Dolby Vision and HDR 500 support.
You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/lenovo-thinkpad-p15-gen-2/
Contents
Video Review
Specs Sheet
- HDD/SSD
- up to 24000GB SSD
- M.2 Slot
- 2x 2280 PCIe 3.0 x4 + 1x 2280 PCIe 4.0 x4 See photo
- RAM
- up to 128GB
- OS
- Windows 10 Pro, Windows 11 Pro
- Battery
- 94Wh, 94Wh, 4-cell, 94Wh, 6-cell
- Body material
- Plastic / Polycarbonate, Glass Fiber
- Dimensions
- 375.4 x 252.3 x 24.5 ~ 31.45 mm (14.78" x 9.93" x 0.96")
- Weight
- 2.87 kg (6.3 lbs)
- Ports and connectivity
- 2x USB Type-A
- 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps)
- 1x USB Type-C
- 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps), Power Delivery (PD), DisplayPort
- 2x USB Type-C
- Thunderbolt 4, Power Delivery (PD), DisplayPort
- HDMI
- 2.1
- Card reader
- SD
- Ethernet LAN
- 10, 100, 1000, 2500 Mbit/s
- Wi-Fi
- 802.11ax
- Bluetooth
- 5.2
- Audio jack
- 3.5mm Combo Jack
- Features
- Fingerprint reader
- Web camera
- HD
- Backlit keyboard
- optional
- Microphone
- Dual Array Near-Field Microphone
- Speakers
- Stereo Speakers by Dolby Atmos
- Optical drive
- Security Lock slot
- Kensington Lock Slot
All Lenovo ThinkPad P15 Gen 2 configurations
What’s in the box?
Inside the package, you will find the mandatory paperwork, and either a 170W or a 230W power brick.
Design and construction
It is no lie that the ThinkPad P15 Gen 2 is quite clunky. It has a profile thickness of 24.5-31.45mm and weighs 2.87 kilos. Moreover, the touch-sensitive model adds 200 grams for a total weight of 3.07 kg. Needless to say, this results in a pretty tough machine with no flex in the chassis and a very little one in the lid. Here, the body panels are made out of plastic and glass-fiber composite, and there is a rubber-like finish on top of it.
Unsurprisingly, the lid opens easily with a single hand. Additionally, the hinges are stable and are part of the structure of the device. On the other hand, it doesn’t look modern whatsoever. Lenovo has kept the industrial outlook of the product on the inside, as the bezels around the 15.6-inch matte display are humongous. As some consolation, you receive a privacy shutter over the HD Web camera, as well as an optional IR face recognition sensor.
Now, let’s move to the base. There, you will find the speaker grill, which hides two front-facing units. The area below them, as usual, is taken by the keyboard. It is a backlit, spill-resistant device, with 6 rows, super long key travel, and clicky feedback. Man, ThinkPad keyboards never disappoint. In addition to that, you get the traditional TrackPoint, which comes with a trio of buttons, placed right above the touchpad.
We don’t want to sound too harsh, but the touchpad feels a bit small on such a big laptop. Nevertheless, the Mylar surface offers a decent gliding experience, while the tracking is fairly accurate. In addition to that, you get the Power button, which is separated from the rest of the keyboard and lives on the top right corner of the base. Also, there is a fingerprint reader, placed just below the Arrow keys.
Given the fact that the speakers are located on the base, the bottom panel is now home only to the ventilation grill and the service lid. Additionally, you get four vents – two on the back, and one on each side, for the hot air to escape the chassis.
Ports
On the left side, you have an SD card reader, USB Type-A 3.2 (Gen. 1) port, and a Kensington security slot. Then, on the right, there is an HDMI 2.1 connector, a USB Type-A 3.2 (Gen. 1) port, a SIM card tray, and an аudio jack. Finally, the backside houses, a 2.5Gbps RJ-45 connector, the power plug, two Thunderbolt 4 connectors, and a USB Type-C 3.2 (Gen. 2) port.
Disassembly, upgrade options, and maintenance
This is not your ordinary device. Upgrades here are made easy, but there is some work to do to get to all internal ports. First, on the bottom panel, you will find a service lid. Undo its single Phillips-head captive screw, and pry it with a plastic tool. This will reveal two SODIMM ports for memory expansion, and two M.2 slots for storage.
To continue, you need to undo a couple more screws, which will set the keyboard loose. Then, turn the device the right way up, open the lid, and slide the entire keyboard upwards. After that, pull it away together with the secondary touchpad buttons. Be careful, as there are two ribbon cables that you need to unplug.
Then, you will see a metal cover, held in place by three Phillips-head screws. Undo them, and slide the cover upwards to remove it.
Ultimately, this leads to the rest of the upgrade option. Here, you have two more SODIMM slots, that combined with the two on the other side, support up to 128GB of DDR4 RAM. Also, you can see a third M.2 slot for storage.
Provided you want to continue with the teardown, and take a look at the cooling, you need to remove the entire bottom panel. After you undo all of the visible screws, remove the SIM card tray, using an ejection tool. Then, pry the bottom panel with a plastic tool and lift it away from the device.
Here, you will notice that Lenovo has integrated a rather large 94Wh battery pack inside of their notebook.
As far as the cooling goes, there are four beefy heat pipes. Additionally, the graphics card has a large heat spreader above it. What is more impressive here is that the graphics card is interchangeable.
Display quality
Lenovo ThinkPad P15 Gen 2 has an IPS panel, model number BOE NV156FHM-N65 (LEN4182). Its diagonal is 15.6″ (39.62 cm), and the resolution – 1920 х 1080 pixels. The screen ratio is 16:9, and we are looking at a pixel density of – 142 ppi, and a pitch of 0.18 х 0.18 mm. The screen turns into Retina when viewed at distance equal to or greater than 60cm (24″) (from this distance one’s eye stops differentiating the separate pixels, and it is normal for looking at a laptop).
It has comfortable viewing angles. We offer images at 45° to evaluate image quality.
Also, a video with locked focus and exposure.
The measured maximum brightness of 533 nits in the middle of the screen and 505 nits as an average for the whole area, with a maximum deviation of 9%.
The Correlated Color Temperature on a white screen is 6730K – slightly colder than the optimal for the sRGB standard of 6500K.
In the illustration below you can see how the display performs from a uniformity perspective. In other words, the leakage of light from the light source.
Values of dE2000 over 4.0 should not occur, and this parameter is one of the first you should check if you intend to use the laptop for color-sensitive work. The contrast ratio is good – 1340:1.
To make sure we are on the same page, we would like to give you a little introduction to the sRGB color gamut and the Adobe RGB. To start, there’s the CIE 1976 Uniform Chromaticity Diagram that represents the visible specter of colors by the human eye, giving you a better perception of the color gamut coverage and the color accuracy.
Inside the black triangle, you will see the standard color gamut (sRGB) that is being used by millions of people on HDTV and on the web. As for the Adobe RGB, this is used in professional cameras, monitors, etc for printing. Basically, colors inside the black triangle are used by everyone and this is the essential part of the color quality and color accuracy of a mainstream notebook.
Still, we’ve included other color spaces like the famous DCI-P3 standard used by movie studios, as well as the digital UHD Rec.2020 standard. Rec.2020, however, is still a thing of the future and it’s difficult for today’s displays to cover that well. We’ve also included the so-called Michael Pointer gamut, or Pointer’s gamut, which represents the colors that naturally occur around us every day.
The yellow dotted line shows Lenovo ThinkPad P15 Gen 2’s color gamut coverage.
Its display covers 91% of the sRGB/ITU-R BT.709 (web/HDTV standard) in CIE1976.
Our “Design and Gaming” profile delivers optimal color temperature (6500K) at 140 cd/m2 luminance and sRGB gamma mode.
We tested the accuracy of the display with 24 commonly used colors like light and dark human skin, blue sky, green grass, orange, etc. You can check out the results at factory condition and also, with the “Design and Gaming” profile.
Below you can compare the scores of Lenovo ThinkPad P15 Gen 2 with the default settings (left), and with the “Gaming and Web design” profile (right).
The next figure shows how well the display is able to reproduce really dark parts of an image, which is essential when watching movies or playing games in low ambient light.
The left side of the image represents the display with stock settings, while the right one is with the “Gaming and Web Design” profile activated. On the horizontal axis, you will find the grayscale, and on the vertical axis – the luminance of the display. On the two graphs below you can easily check for yourself how your display handles the darkest nuances but keep in mind that this also depends on the settings of your current display, the calibration, the viewing angle, and the surrounding light conditions.
Response time (Gaming capabilities)
We test the reaction time of the pixels with the usual “black-to-white” and “white-to-black” method from 10% to 90% and vice versa.
We recorded Fall Time + Rise Time = 29 ms.
After that, we test the reaction time of the pixels with the usual “Gray-to-Gray” method from 50% White to 80% White and vice versa between 10% and 90% of the amplitude.
PWM (Screen flickering)
Pulse-width modulation (PWM) is an easy way to control monitor brightness. When you lower the brightness, the light intensity of the backlight is not lowered, but instead turned off and on by the electronics with a frequency indistinguishable to the human eye. In these light impulses, the light/no-light time ratio varies, while brightness remains unchanged, which is harmful to your eyes. You can read more about that in our dedicated article on PWM.
Lenovo ThinkPad P15 Gen 2’s screen doesn’t flicker at any brightness level. Thankfully, this enables you to work for extended periods of time, without the risk of further damaging your eyes and brain.
Blue light emissions
Installing our Health-Guard profile not only eliminates PWM but also reduces the harmful Blue Light emissions while keeping the colors of the screen perceptually accurate. If you’re not familiar with the Blue light, the TL;DR version is – emissions that negatively affect your eyes, skin, and your whole body. You can find more information about that in our dedicated article on Blue Light.
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 P15 Gen 2 configurations with 15.6″ FHD IPS BOE NV156FHM-N65 (LEN4182).
*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
Sound
Lenovo ThinkPad P15 Gen 2’s speakers produce a sound of good quality. However, its low, mid, and high tones have some deviations from clarity.
Drivers
All of the drivers and utilities for this notebook can be downloaded from here: https://pcsupport.lenovo.com/us/en/products/laptops-and-netbooks/thinkpad-p-series-laptops/thinkpad-p15-gen-2-type-20yq-20yr/downloads/driver-list
Battery
Now, we conduct the battery tests with Windows Better performance setting turned on, screen brightness adjusted to 120 nits, and all other programs turned off except for the one we are testing the notebook with. The 94Wh battery here lasted for 12 hours of Web browsing, and 10 hours and 28 minutes of video playback.
Brightness: 180 nits; Display Mode: SDR
Time to Full Discharge: Higher is Better
In order to simulate real-life conditions, we used our own script for automatic web browsing through over 70 websites.
CPU options
This device comes equipped with one of the following CPUs – Core i5-11500H, Core i7-11800H, Core i7-11850H, Core i9-11950H, Xeon W-11855M, Xeon W-11955M.
Results are from the Cinebench R23 CPU test (the higher the score, the better)
GPU options
As far as the graphics, there is one Turing option – the NVIDIA T1200 (60W), as well as four Ampere options – NVIDIA RTX A2000 (80W), RTX A3000 (90W), RTX A4000 (90W), RTX A5000 (90W).
The results are from 3DMark Time Spy (Graphics). Higher is better.
Results are from 3DMark Fire Strike (Graphics) benchmark (higher the score, the better)
Results are from the Unigine Superposition benchmark (higher the score, the better)
Lenovo ThinkPad P15 Gen 2 GPU variants
Here you can see an approximate comparison between the GPUs that can be found in the Lenovo ThinkPad P15 Gen 2 models on the market. This way you can decide for yourself which Lenovo ThinkPad P15 Gen 2 model is the best bang for your buck.
Note: The chart shows the cheapest different GPU configurations so you should check what the other specifications of these laptops are by clicking on the laptop’s name / GPU.
The results are from 3DMark Time Spy (Graphics). Higher is better.
Results are from the 3DMark: Fire Strike (Graphics) benchmark (higher the score, the better)
Results are from the 3DMark: Wild Life (Graphics) benchmark (higher the score, the better)
Results are from the Unigine Superposition benchmark (higher the score, the better)
Gaming tests
Far Cry 5 | Full HD, Normal (Check settings) | Full HD, High (Check settings) | Full HD, Ultra (Check settings) |
---|---|---|---|
Average fps | 100 fps | 94 fps | 86 fps |
Rise of the Tomb Raider (2016) | Full HD, Medium (Check settings) | Full HD, Very High (Check settings) | Full HD, MAX (Check settings) |
---|---|---|---|
Average | 124 fps | 63 fps | 42 fps |
Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands | Full HD, High (Check settings) | Full HD, Very High (Check settings) | Full HD, Ultra (Check settings) |
---|---|---|---|
Average | 78 fps | 68 fps | 41 fps |
Shadow of the Tomb Raider (2018) | Full HD, Medium (Check settings) | Full HD, High (Check settings) | Full HD, Highest (Check settings) |
---|---|---|---|
Average | 90 fps | 80 fps | 51 fps |
Temperatures and comfort
Max CPU load
In this test we use 100% on the CPU cores, monitoring their frequencies and chip temperature. The first column shows a computer’s reaction to a short load (2-10 seconds), the second column simulates a serious task (between 15 and 30 seconds), and the third column is a good indicator of how good the laptop is for long loads such as video rendering.
Average core frequency (base frequency + X); CPU temp.
Intel Core i7-11850H (45W TDP) | 0:02 – 0:10 sec | 0:15 – 0:30 sec | 10:00 – 15:00 min |
---|---|---|---|
Lenovo ThinkPad P15 Gen 2 | 3.58 GHz (B+43%) @ 100°C @ 92W | 3.45 GHz (B+38%) @ 99°C @ 84W | 3.10 GHz (B+24%) @ 100°C @ 66W |
Officially, you can boil water on top of this CPU (of course at sea level). Other than that, the clock speeds are relatively high, but we’ve seen higher from the non-vPro version of the processor – the Core i7-11800H.
Real-life gaming
NVIDIA RTX A2000 | GPU frequency/ Core temp (after 2 min) | GPU frequency/ Core temp (after 30 min) |
---|---|---|
Lenovo ThinkPad P15 Gen 2 | 1780 MHz @ 81°C | 1742 MHz @ 86°C |
Here, we monitored pretty high clock speeds, as well as similarly high temperatures. Apparently, Lenovo is deliberate to provide the most out of the hardware, even though the cooling setup can barely handle it.
Gaming comfort
On the bright side, the laptop is neither too loud, nor too warm on the outside during combined load such as gaming.
Verdict
Lenovo had only one job when making this device. They threw away everything about looks and focused on performance and versatility. Ultimately, the ThinkPad P15 Gen 2 offers configuration freedom similar to some desktop machines. Yes, you won’t be able to change your processor, but there are four SODIMM slots for up to 128GB of DDR4 memory. And in contrast to the HP ZBook Fury 15 G7, you are not limited to 64GB if you want to use ECC memory. Also, you get three M.2 slots for up to 6TB of storage, which is a slight disadvantage to the four M.2 slots and 10TB of supported storage on the HP.
Nevertheless, Lenovo has a sleeve up its hand – its graphics card can be changed. We cannot confirm that you can upgrade it with a more powerful one, but looking at the images from Lenovo, they all seem to use the same connector. This, however, leads us to the configuration we had in hand – an Intel Core i7-11850H, and an NVIDIA RTX A2000.
Needless to say, it is a pretty powerful package, but we can’t say we were really impressed with the cooling solution. The processor in our case was outperformed by the Core i7-11800H inside of the ASUS ROG Zephyrus M16 GU603, which is a significantly thinner and lighter gaming laptop. And the RTX A2000 – well, it delivers a similar performance to that of an RTX 3050 Ti, and in this case, it worked with a TGP of 80W. However, the cooling once again barely copes with it, as the GPU reaches temperatures in excess of 80°C during graphics-intensive tasks like gaming. Considering the fact that we had there are three higher-tier GPUs available, we have our doubts.
Lenovo ThinkPad P15 Gen 2’s IPS panel (BOE NV156FHM-N65 (LEN4182)) has a Full HD resolution, high maximum brightness, good contrast ratio, and comfortable viewing angles. Moreover, it covers 91% of the sRGB color gamut, and its backlight doesn’t flicker. Thankfully, with the help of our Gaming and Web design profile, it achieves supreme color accuracy, which enables its users to work with color-sensitive content.
Thankfully, the I/O here is well populated, and this is one of the few devices that feature three USB Type-C ports, two of which have Thunderbolt 4 certification. Other highlights here are the 2.5Gbps Ethernet jack, the SD card reader, and the SIM card tray, with WWAN cards supporting 4G LTE (sadly no 5G here).
And to compliment the supreme security package, this workstation features a fingerprint reader, as well as an optional IR face recognition sensor and a privacy shutter on the HD camera. Not to mention the 12 hours of Web browsing, and 10 hours and 28 minutes of video playback that the 94Wh battery allows.
Ultimately, this can be your go-to mobile workstation. Even though the graphics card can get a bit toasty, it offers a ton of performance, and the ray-tracing features will surely be helpful in some situations, depending on your work. Make sure that you keep checking our Website, as we are trying to get our hands on the HP ZBook Fury 15 G8 with a very similar configuration, and we will definitely put them side by side.
You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/lenovo-thinkpad-p15-gen-2/
Pros
- Up to 128GB of RAM and 6TB of storage
- Very good thermals
- IPS panel with 533 nits of max brightness (BOE NV156FHM-N65 (LEN4182))
- No PWM (BOE NV156FHM-N65 (LEN4182))
- 91% of sRGB coverage and accurate colors with our Gaming and Web design profile (BOE NV156FHM-N65 (LEN4182))
- Comfortable spill-resistant keyboard
- Great battery life
- 2x Thunderbolt 4, SD card + optional IR face recognition and fingerprint reader
- LTE support
Cons
- Thick and heavy
- Quite pricy
- Could use a better cooling