Lenovo has announced its new ThinkPad P Series mobile workstations: the ThinkPad P1 Gen 4, ThinkPad P15 Gen 2, and ThinkPad P17 Gen 2. The generational refresh introduces the latest Intel and NVIDIA processors, faster memory, PCIe 4.0, enhanced thermals, and more.

The star of the new lineup is the ThinkPad P1 Gen 4, which after three successful generations has come due for a clean sheet design. The new ThinkPad P1 packs a bigger screen, bigger battery, bigger trackpad, and most importantly, bigger performance. For the first time, the ThinkPad P1 offers NVIDIA RTX graphics.

All of the new ThinkPads include NVIDIA’s latest Ampere-based RTX graphics cards. This is not big news for the ThinkPad P15 and P17, which have always had access to the top mobile graphics cards. But it’s huge news for the ThinkPad P1, which in its first three generations was limited to NVIDIA’s entry level graphics. Now, a whole bunch of graphical power has just opened up to the ThinkPad P1.

“We really wanted to bring a product to market that enabled more mobility but also more power. The [ThinkPad P1] was due for a clean sheet, a complete rip up and rebuild, and it was perfect timing to really max out the capabilities of that particular chassis,” explained Lane Jesseph, Lenovo’s marketing manager for the ThinkPad P Series mobile workstations.

The Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Powers Up to RTX Graphics

The Lenovo ThinkPad P1 is the beauty queen of the ThinkPad line. It’s Lenovo’s light, thin, premium mobile workstation, the one that looks just as good at a conference keynote as it does on the factory floor. Each of the major mobile workstation manufacturers has a model like this—Dell has its Precision 5000 series, HP has its ZBook Firefly series, and Lenovo has the ThinkPad P1. The defining features of these mobile workstations are their lightness, thinness, and stylishness. The standard tradeoff is less graphical power, with the best GPUs reserved for the heavy compute brutes higher up on the product line.

Not anymore. The ThinkPad P1 Gen 4 can now be specced up to the top mobile GPU, the NVIDIA RTX A5000, the same top GPU offered in the ThinkPad P15 and P17 Gen 2. In last year’s model, the ThinkPad P1 Gen 3, the top GPU available was the NVIDIA Quadro T2000—an entry-level mobile card that lacked the most exciting features of NVIDIA RTX, real-time ray tracing and AI acceleration.

There is a catch to the new RTX graphics in the ThinkPad P1, however. There’s always a catch. Even though the P1 has the same graphics options as its bigger brothers, it cannot provide the same level of graphical performance. It’s just a matter of physics.

The thin chassis of the ThinkPad P1 is smaller than the bigger chasses of the P15 and P17. These bigger mobile workstations simply have more physical space for thermal dissipation, which allows more power for the graphics card, which boosts graphics performance. So even though the ThinkPad P1 Gen 4 can pack an NVIDIA RTX A5000, it won’t run at the same power level as an RTX A5000 in the ThinkPad P15 or P17 Gen 2. Here’s how it breaks down:

80W of GPU power is still a big step up for the ThinkPad P1 Gen 4, which last year maxed out at half that value for the Quadro T2000. To accommodate the extra power, Lenovo has redesigned the thermals on the P1, adding a vapor chamber, upgrading the fans, and cleverly adding hidden air inlets on the keyboard.

“This is the first chassis that we're going to introduce a vapor chamber for,” Jesseph elaborated. “It's a vapor chamber plus traditional heat pipes. We moved up to 12 volt fans, so we can spin them faster, pull more air through the chassis. We also have air intakes through the keyboard now [complementing the prior intakes on the bottom of the chassis]. More air, more performance.”

Specs of the Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 4

Alongside the new RTX graphics options, the ThinkPad P1 Gen 4 packs Intel’s 11^th-gen Core and Xeon processors, which offer up to 8 cores and a 5GHz clock speed. Here are the specs of the new ThinkPad P1 Gen 4 compared to Gen 3:

The ThinkPad P1 Gen 4 offers faster 3200MHz memory than its predecessor and a jump from PCIe 3.0 to the higher-bandwidth PCIe 4.0. These updates are not surprising, as they’ve become the new standards in the mobile workstation world—Dell recently announced the same changes in its Precision lineup. Also in line with other mobile workstations this year is support for 5G WWAN, Wi-Fi 6E, and a shift from Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 4.

The physical I/O ports on the ThinkPad P1 Gen 4 remain the same as last year: 2x USB-A, 2x USB-C, 1x HDMI, 1x audio jack, 1x SD card reader, and an optional SIM slot.

The ThinkPad P1 Grows Up: New 16:10 Aspect Ratio

The most eye-catching change to the ThinkPad P1 Gen 4 is a bigger screen and a new aspect ratio, from the standard 15.6” 3840x2160 in the Gen 3 (a 16:9 aspect ratio) to the slightly taller 16” 3840x2400 in the Gen 4 (a 16:10 aspect ratio). More screen is always welcome, and Lenovo has added those 240 vertical pixels without compromising the P1’s existing footprint. The side-by-side below reveals that the P1 has had chin reduction surgery:

“It’s been a long standing request from a very broad set of end-users out there to have a physically taller screen. They want that vertical workspace in their workflows,” Jesseph said. The ThinkPad P15 and P17 Gen 2 still have the shorter 16:9 displays for now, but Jesseph revealed that we can expect to see the 16:10 ratio in upcoming generations of all P Series machines.

One consequence to the new 16:10 ratio in the ThinkPad P1 Gen 4 is that there’s no longer an OLED option available, as there was in the Gen 3. Lenovo’s OLED supplier hasn’t begun offering 16:10 displays yet, but Jesseph (a huge OLED fan himself) is hopeful the loss will be rectified soon.

Along with the screen, the touchpad on the P1 Gen 4 has also increased in size, from 100 to 115 millimeters wide. The new size more closely matches the proportions of the new display, a feature which aims to make for a more natural touchpad experience. Of course, the iconic red pointing stick remains for those users who don’t realize the touchpad exists. “There is a sizeable and very loyal set of ThinkPad users out there that live and die by their TrackPoint,” Jesseph said, counting himself among them.

Another visible change to the ThinkPad P1 Gen 4 is the addition of top-firing Dolby Atmos speakers on either side of the keyboard, which displaces the fingerprint sensor previously found to the right of the arrow keys. The sensor is now integrated into the power button (a much better spot for it).

On the inside, the ThinkPad P1 Gen 4 has a bigger 90Wh battery, another always-welcome upgrade that will hopefully boost the underwhelming battery life of its predecessor (Jesseph claims that, despite the higher power requirements, users will experience a net gain in battery performance). At a base price of $2099, the P1 Gen 4 is a tad costlier than the launch price of the Gen 3, and the most expensive of the new ThinkPad P Series at the entry level.

The Lenovo ThinkPad P15 Gen 2 and ThinkPad P17 Gen 2

The ThinkPad P15 and ThinkPad P17 are Lenovo’s mobile workstation heavy hitters, with the 15-inch P15 being the biggest seller of the P Series “by far,” according to Jesseph. Though neither of these laptops had a clean sheet redesign this year, both have benefitted from many of the incremental changes seen in the ThinkPad P1 Gen 4: the new Intel and NVIDIA processors, faster 3200MHz RAM, higher-bandwidth PCIe 4.0, the latest Wi-Fi 6E, and an upgrade to Thunderbolt 4. There’s no new 16:10 aspect ratio just yet, nor is there support for 5G WWAN, though both are likely on the docket for next year.

Here are the specs of the new ThinkPad P15 Gen 2 and ThinkPad P17 Gen 2, with Gen 1 specs for comparison:

One nice change to the ThinkPad P15 Gen 2 and ThinkPad P17 Gen 2 is an increase in storage capacity, from 4TB last year to 6TB this year (this is one upgrade we didn’t get in the ThinkPad P1, which remains maxed out at 4TB of storage). The base prices of the P15 and P17 have dropped by a few hundred bucks compared to the launch prices of the Gen 1 models, though the current Gen 1 prices are substantially lower.

The New ThinkPad P Series Responds to The Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has precipitated a shift in the workstation market, which we discussed earlier this year in an interview with Rob Herman, General Manager of the Workstation and Client AI Business Unit at Lenovo.

“What we've seen through the pandemic from a market standpoint is the mix between desktop and mobile shifted,” Herman explained. “Before the pandemic, it was 40 percent mobile and 60 percent desktop, and that's a worldwide number. The market has flipped. It's now 60 percent mobile, 40 percent desktop. Based on that shift… mobile is more top of mind [for Lenovo].”

That extra focus has come through quite clearly for the new ThinkPad P1 Gen 4, and not just because of the bigger screen and extra graphical horsepower. For the first time, the ThinkPad P1 offers a 1080p FHD webcam, perfect for those endless Zoom calls. “The webcam has just skyrocketed in importance,” Jesseph noted.

The ThinkPad P1 Gen 4, ThinkPad P15 Gen 2, and ThinkPad P17 Gen 2 will all be available starting in July.