Lenovo ThinkPad Z16 G1 laptop review: Powerful AMD flagship with a hickup

[Redaktion]

A high quality, a high performance, and even relatively efficient with current AMD Ryzen CPUs and Radeon graphics - what could possibly go wrong? Quite a lot, actually. But it was really only one problem with the Lenovo ThinkPad Z16 G1, that created difficulties for our test evaluation.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-ThinkPad-Z16-G1-laptop-review-Powerful-AMD-flagship-with-a-hickup.658764.0.html

[Russel]

Thank you for the detailed review.
Much appreciated.
I guess it's better to wait for someone else to make a more stable amd laptop.

[LL]

Thanks for the Blender GPU tests.
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Those are serious issues and unacceptable big black eye for Lenovo.

Btw the 6850H  CPU have worse performance in Cinebench R23 in this installation than a 5800H in a Legion from last year.

[RobertJasiek]

Thanks for the Blender GPU tests.
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Those are serious issues and unacceptable big black eye for Lenovo.

Do the "issues" refer to the Blender GPU tests? If so, please explain! I have no experience with Blender but only look at the numbers. Can you provide some context for interpretation? So far, there are too few tests for Blender GPU so I cannot judge from the numbers alone yet.

[NikoB]

Well, about the short, funny keyboard from the 14 "model, I won't grovel, we'll immediately move on to the main jambs:
1. Exhaust under load exceeds 55C, which means that if such a jet hits the screen from below, there is a very high probability of failure of the panel electronics, which have a critical temperature of just 55-60C.
2. Again, absolutely disgusting ram tuning, and the latency is simply terrible - 132+ ns! The loss in comparison with Intel laptops, from the same Lenovo, is more than 35% in terms of memory bandwidth, despite the fact that the fastest chips are soldered here, while Intel has them "slower"...

I also have very strong doubts about the reliability of the noise level at an average load - because. further, the author indicates it in the region of 65W+, with such thermal dissipation, 25dB is simply impossible a priori, especially looking at similar speeds in other models and the noise produced at a much lower load. Although the temperature level signals that the engineers obviously deliberately went to overheat the hardware, which clearly does not add long-term reliability to this series under serious loads in the background.

It should also be noted that the screen does not represent anything outstanding, moreover, it is some strange pseudo "IPS", which usually (true IPS) have the same viewing angles vertically and horizontally. But in this case, Lenovo claims 178gr horizontally and only shameful 160gr vertically! This is clearly not IPS, although Lenovo marketers are trying to convince buyers of the opposite. The declared minimum contrast also does not shine from 1000:1. They already have a lot of series where they claim much more. The screen is too slow by response, which means your eyes will get tired when scrolling text and anywhere you need a quick response. The resolution of 1920x1200 is too small for a 16 "screen, very low ppi, the text will look like a little grainy for 50-60cm distance. Again, why bothered to install 4k@120Hz IPS here? But as an option, only a shimmering and glossy OLED 4k. And given its price, it has base must be a minimum of 4k@120Hz IPS.

I just can hardly understand why the buyer should pay almost $2500 here. There is nothing premium here. The usual 32GB of memory, and even with very slow settings in bios, not the fastest processor, a weak obsolete discrete video card, so-so screen even for work, well, this model is definitely not suitable for games, except perhaps only through an eGPU...

[LL]

Robert, not related to Blender, that was praise for Notebookcheck include that GPU test, that why i put the doted line separating subjects.

That serious issues are what Notebookcheck call "hickups"  : high temperature with a CPU that even is not pushed to the maximum, crashes in the 2 models they tested. That is unacceptable.

[RobertJasiek]

LL, Thx for your clarification! (In German, I also praise NBC when they do a GPU seriously with work benchmarks. :) )

NikoB, keep up your good job of exhibiting design weaknesses! Mutual education helps us all.

[fmyhr]

Those half-height Up/Down arrow keys on a laptop this large are even more of an abomination than usual.

I'm sad to read of the stability problems. I hope Lenovo (and/or AMD) can fix those.

Anyone have experience using USB 4?

[OmegaMalkior]

The restarts on the Z16 are due to an old bluetooth driver from Windows 10 installed on the Z16. If you change the bluetooth driver to a more later Windows 11 one it should be fixed. Credit to my friend who discovered this near the end of August with his Z16.

[Unknow]

What a rubbish laptop.

Nowadays, even gaming laptop like legion are better then those business laptop.

Need full keyboard like the legion.

Maintain the pointer.

And please, more ports!

This is just a frugling useless netbook!

[NikoB]

Select all images with
boats

[NikoB]

Nobody bothers you to buy Legion 7 with 6800H, it costs $1750 right now on newegg. Unfortunately, non-US buyers can only dream of such a price (even though median incomes outside the US are sharply below the US almost everywhere, especially in developing countries). And dream even more about the quality of warranty obligations in their countries vs in the USA. The United States is literally bathed in low prices (and huge discounts, simply unseen in other countries) for electronics and goods, thanks to the control of key technologies on the planet (although almost all production is concentrated in Asia) and dollar seigniorage at the expense of the whole world, as well as control over financial planetary system...

[eli k]

I own the computer for a few months, and it's performing great for me.
Except for one BIG issue, the system can crash anytime and will completely remove all the hard disk!!
I can understand that a first generation can have some issues , but this one is a deal breaker for me.
Many users had the same problem, and nothing from Lenovo yet.

[Indycat]

If AMD is supposed to be the more power efficient one, then why does this get only 10 hours of websurfing, whereas the Intel T16 gets 14 hours? I know the latter has a slightly bigger battery, but the numbers tell that the T16 consumes 6.1 W and Z16 7.3 W during the test.

With the power consumption of the T16 the Z16's battery would last 11 hours 49 minutes.

[Indycat]

Except for one BIG issue, the system can crash anytime and will completely remove all the hard disk!!

There are more than one hard disk? How does it remove them? Do they come flying out of the case or how?