Lenovo Brings ‘Alder Lake’ To ThinkPad P1 Mobile Workstation

Lenovo has updated its thin-and-light ThinkPad P1 mobile workstation with Intel’s “Alder Lake” platform and refreshed Nvidia graphics cards. This 16-inch laptop also now features 5G WWAN, up to 8TB of solid-state storage, and a 165Hz screen refresh rate.

Lenovo has updated its thin-and-light ThinkPad P1 mobile workstation with Intel’s “Alder Lake” platform and refreshed Nvidia graphics cards. This 16-inch laptop also now features 5G WWAN, up to 8TB of solid-state storage, and a 165Hz screen refresh rate.

We reviewed the ThinkPad P1 Gen 4 with acclaim – it’s as portable as you can expect a 16-inch laptop to be, yet packs enough performance to qualify as a mobile workstation. The Gen 5 model is a technology overhaul, most significantly moving to Intel’s Alder Lake platform, with up to a 12^th generation H-class (45-watt) Core i7 or Core i9 processor sporting up to 14 cores.

The top choice will likely be the 14-core Core i9-12900H. There’s no word on Xeon options (or ECC memory options) because Intel has yet to announce Alder Lake Xeons.  (See our Alder Lake review to understand its new hybrid architecture, which combines two types of processor cores onto the same chip.)

With Alder Lake also comes DDR5 memory support. (Our Kingston Fury Beast DDR5-5200 review explains the benefits over DDR4.) Like the ThinkPad P1 Gen 4, the Gen 5 model also supports PCIe Gen4 storage, this time with up to 8TB of solid-state storage via two M.2 2280 slots.

The ThinkPad P1 Gen 5 also receives Nvidia’s refreshed professional RTX A-series cards, up to the 16GB RTX A5500, as well as consumer GeForce cards up to the 8GB RTX 3070 Ti and 16GB RTX 3080 Ti, bumps over the Gen 4’s RTX A5000 and GeForce RTX 3070/3080.

There are four 16-inch screen options with 500 or 600 nits of brightness, 100% sRGB or 100% Adobe RGB color coverage, high resolutions (2560×1600 or 3840×2400), and a variety of technologies (touch, low blue light, HDR400, and Dolby Vision HDR). The displays are X-Rite calibrated from the factory.

Notable is the ThinkPad P1 Gen 5’s use of liquid metal thermal interface material to improve cooling. It also uncommonly supports various Linux distros.

Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 5 Specifications

The ThinkPad P1 Gen 5’s full specifications are as follows.

Processor	12th Gen Intel Core i7, i9 H-Series (up to 14 cores, up to 5.0GHz)
Operating System	Windows 11 Home Windows 11 Pro Windows 10 Pro for Workstations Ubuntu Linux Red Hat Linux (certified) Fedora Linux
Display	16” 16:10 display WQUXGA (UHD+) (3840×2400) IPS Touch, AR-AS, 600nit, 100% Adobe, Low Blue Light, HDR400, Dolby Vision HDR, X-Rite FCC IPS, AG, 600nit, 100% Adobe, Low Blue Light, HDR400, Dolby Vision HDR, X-Rite FCC WQXGA (QHD+) (2560×1600) IPS, AG, 500nit, 100% sRGB, Low Blue Light, 165Hz, X-Rite FCC WUXGA (FHD+) (1920×1200) IPS, AG, 300nit, 100% sRGB, Low Blue Light, X-Rite FCC
Keyboard	ThinkPad Keyboard, Backlit, Spill Resistant
Memory	Up to 64GB DDR5-4800 non-ECC 2 SODIMM slots
Battery	90WHr
Power Supply	135W Slim, 170W Slim, 230W Slim
Storage	Up to 8TB M.2 NVMe PCIe Gen4 SSD Up to 2 drives
RAID	0/1
Graphics	Discrete: Up to Nvidia RTX A5500 16GB VRAM or Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti/3080 Ti 8GB/16GB VRAM Processor Integrated: Intel Iris Xe
Camera	1080p FHD camera with webcam privacy shutter Optional: 1080p FHD hybrid IR camera with webcam privacy shutter
Dimensions (WxDxH)	(inches) 14.1 x 9.6 x 0.7
Weight	Starting at 3.99lbs
Security Features	dTPM 2.0 Fingerprint reader integrated with power button (match-on-chip) ThinkPad Webcam Privacy Shutter Kensington Lock Slot Tile Ready
Wireless Connectivity	WLAN: Intel WiFi 6E* AX211 + Bluetooth™ 5.2 vPro Optional: WWAN: Fibocom FM350-GL 5G sub-6 with eSIM Near Field Communication (NFC)
Ports/Slots	2 x USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 (1 powered) 2 x USB-C Thunderbolt™ 4 (Power Delivery, Display Port, Data Transfer) SD 4-in-1 card reader Headphone / mic combo HDMI 2.1*
ISV Certifications	ArcGIS® AutoCAD® CATIA® Creo® Inventor® Maya® Microstation® NX® Solid Edge® SolidWorks® Vectorworks®
Green Certifications	EPEAT® Gold ENERGY STAR® 8.0 RoHS compliant TCO 9.0
Material	Low-temperature solder 90% recycled and/or sustainable packaging
Additional Features	Modern Standby Wake on Voice Ultra Performance Mode Self Healing BIOS

Expect U.S. availability in late April 2022 starting at $2,329.

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