Test Lenovo ThinkPad P16 G1 Laptop: Leistungsstarke HX55-Workstation in neuem Design

[Benjamin Herzig]

Clicked once - got faster (fps) and more battery life with fhd.

That isn't how display power consumption works. High res LCDs consume more energy, because their smaller pixel matrices have a worse light emittance - smaller sub-pixels with a higher amount of black border around each pixel means less light comes through, thus the backlight needs to be stronger to reach the same level of brightness. If you have a 4K screen and just set it to FHD, you don't change anything about this factor. Even if the screen displays a picture in FHD resolution, the underlying hardware is still a power hungry LED backlight for a 4K screen.

Manufacturers historically tried to engineer around this problem with RGBW-Pentile LCDs, adding a white sub-pixel to let light through. Of course, this is its own can of worms with many problems.

My personal prediction: As long as we don't move to significantly more power efficient processors (thus lowering the need for power efficient screens), a miracle battery technology with much better power density OR a different screen technology like microLED that might be more power efficient, 4K will never be standard for laptops. Because the need for battery life trumps the need for nicer screens.

Note that even Apple has not moved to 4K screens, despite their processors having made significant progress when it comes to efficiency.

[NikoB]

OR a different screen technology like microLED that might be more power efficient

news.mit.edu/2023/vertical-stacked-color-microscopic-leds-0201

If you have a 4K screen and just set it to FHD, you don't change anything about this factor. Even if the screen displays a picture in FHD resolution, the underlying hardware is still a power hungry LED backlight for a 4K screen.

Because the need for battery life trumps the need for nicer screens.

This is contrary to all the statistics I know about laptop sales in the world. Most of them are most often used 100% of the time from the outlet. Therefore, their owners do not care deeply about the battery life - it is just a UPS for them and nothing more to drag the laptop in sleep or work mode from room to room and occasionally drag it in sleep mode.

Moreover, against the background of modern processors and video chips, the difference in consumption of 4k@120-144Hz and fhd@120-144Hz is ridiculous and practically does not affect battery life.

All this affected before - when the cpu consumption did not exceed 25-35W.
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Therefore, I insist that all modern laptops, without exception, like smartphones (why don't they reduce the resolution then - if this will lead to greater autonomy? You contradict your own experience in the statements) must have a 4k@120-144Hz screen as perfectly versatile for both work and play/multimedia. And as the highest quality for human vision. No pixelisation.

There is apparently no pixelation at any distance from the screen, resulting in no eye accommodation problems due to spontaneous switching from picture elements to the pixel structure of the screen. The eye muscles tense up 10 times less and rest all the time, just like on smartphones from 25-35cm. I personally see a difference between 300 ppi and 440 ppi from 20-25cm.

All those who continue to put shameful fhd and 2.5k (and they are not able to clearly show either 4k content, let alone fhd content) spoil people's eyesight.

Completing the picture is the disgusting policy of Google (which I have been writing about on all forums for many years) with the intentional inclusion of the wrong mode of black and white (grayscale) font smoothing from version 50 of Chrome (you can easily verify this by comparing this anti-aliasing in FF52-68 c some editing in the settings) or in XP. They didn't give a damn about eye problems in people working on monitors and laptops with low ppi (<220), i.e. the main target platform (and monetization platform) for Google is smartphones, and there are no models left with ppi below 250, and most often above 300. Therefore, the crooked buggy anti-aliasing with shadows around the letters is simply invisible there. And at 141ppi (15.6" fhd), and even more so on a 2.5k 23-31" monitor, it looks HORRIBLE for eyes in Google Chrome.

It is worth putting FF68 and switching the anti-aliasing mode to the correct one, as it was in XP, and you will see what is out of your eyes, as if a film was removed from your eyes compared to the new versions of FF, Chrome, Edge and their clones.

FF at least allows you to disable anti-aliasing altogether with one flag, but Chrome does NOT have such a setting. Like Edge. On the most common browser on the planet - Chrome, fonts are ALWAYS cloudy on the x86 platform if ppi is below 220.

We need to stop spoiling people's eyesight with cloudy fonts in Chrome and put only 4k panels in laptops everywhere!

And also to ban AMOLED screens with a low flicker frequency LEGALLY, because. there have long been scientific papers (which are deliberately hidden and not published widely) that this flicker is especially harmful to children.

[Benjamin Herzig]

This is contrary to all the statistics I know about laptop sales in the world. Most of them are most often used 100% of the time from the outlet.

If you want to argue that way: Most laptops are also 100 % of the time connected to an external monitor, which makes the internal display irrelevant, thus definitely making customers likely to seek out cheaper FHD resolution screens in order to save money.

Moreover, against the background of modern processors and video chips, the difference in consumption of 4k@120-144Hz and fhd@120-144Hz is ridiculous and practically does not affect battery life.

Seeing that you are an avid reader of our reviews, I am kind of disappointed that you would write something that goes completely against all of our reviews and the battery life data we collect. Sorry, but this is flat out wrong.

These findings reliably show that a 4K screen always significantly cuts down the battery life, often up to 33 to 50 %,compared with similar configurations of the same laptop with an FHD display. One of these examples is this X1 Carbon G9 - we reviewed it twice, once with 4K and once with FHD. The 4K one scored a battery life 37 % lower than the FHD equipped model. Same processor, same battery, no difference in GPU.

While processors and GPUs are obviously main drivers of consumption, most laptops don't really put load on these components most of the time. The typical use case for a laptop is web-surfing, or office, neither of which puts load on the CPU or GPU that much. In these low-load scenarios, the screen becomes a main driver of power consumption. Not shown in the review of X1 Carbon G9 I linked is the power consumption - while the FHD one consumes a minimum of 3 W (minimum screen brightness), the 4K one always consumes at least 5 W. With the screen set to maximum brightness, the FHD unit consumes 5.2 W, the 4K one 10.2 W.

[SuperSuppenkasper]

If you want to argue that way: Most laptops are also 100 % of the time connected to an external monitor, which makes the internal display irrelevant, thus definitely making customers likely to seek out cheaper FHD resolution screens in order to save money.

I would disagree on that point. I use my notebook display most of the time as the only screen. And even connected to an external monitor the internal screen still is being used as second screen. So it is not irrelevant at all.

Other than that, thanks for the review! It is very refreshing to see that Lenovo also produces real workstation hardware instead of shitty ultra thin crap workstations!

I would like to see the P16's impressive looking cooling system with a stronger GPU though.

And PLEASE ALWAYS include Gossen Metrawatt screens from witcher stress in your reviews. Witcher 3 puts consistent stress on CPU and GPU. Having data like CPU and GPU power draw, temps and fan noise gives you an idea of how well the cooling works.

The 34 db on this P16 are insanely quiet, but the total power draw of 87 watts is a joke. I would like to see how well the cooling handles typical total power draws of at least 150 watts sustained.

Lenovo, please also make gaming laptops with these chassis dimensions and superiour cooling systems! Not all gamers wear headsets(!!) and gamers also do productive work! There is no point in making a workstation thicker for quieter cooling and gaming laptops thin with crappy cooling.

[NikoB]

If you want to argue that way: Most laptops are also 100 % of the time connected to an external monitor, which makes the internal display irrelevant, thus definitely making customers likely to seek out cheaper FHD resolution screens in order to save money.

But this is no longer true. Most laptops at home are used on sofas and beds because they are more comfortable for rest. And it is there that it is important to get the quality of the picture for the eyes.

These findings reliably show that a 4K screen always significantly cuts down the battery life, often up to 33 to 50 %,compared with similar configurations of the same laptop with an FHD display. One of these examples is this X1 Carbon G9 - we reviewed it twice, once with 4K and once with FHD. The 4K one scored a battery life 37 % lower than the FHD equipped model. Same processor, same battery, no difference in GPU.

But you haven't done any tests in fhd mode anywhere for 4k laptops. And it seems to me that there are some other problems, because the screen controller and its consumption itself are easy to detect on panelook and this does not agree with your battery consumption tests. As well as your PWM tests, where you measure frequencies of 50-100kHz on panels that 100% cannot give out that much, because in the datasheets they indicate the limiting PWM frequencies of 20kHz. I have repeatedly pointed out this strange fact and even wrote your employees about it by mail several years ago.

As well as repeatedly drew attention to your figures for the minimum consumption of a laptop at idle, which does not fit in any way with battery life measured by NB reviews, for everyone who studied arithmetic at school. Moreover, there are huge discrepancies, which excludes some methodological errors and impulse consumption.

The typical use case for a laptop is web-surfing, or office, neither of which puts load on the CPU or GPU that much. In these low-load scenarios

I am constantly surfing and I know how old and new processors are loaded and, besides, visitors to various forums help me with this. The load during typical surfing (even with banner/script cutter plugins) is significant and drastically reduces the time of real work from that declared in NB reviews for battery life. There are reviews of models exactly the same as yours on other sites and there are more adequate data on real-time battery life in surfing according to the feelings of the authors in practice, and not according to some method. It is less than your numbers by an average of 1.5 times. This means (to which I am leading) that the consumption of a 4k panel, especially in fhd mode, has practically no effect on the operating time, taking into account the real consumption of the processor in impulse and background load. But your eyes will immediately thank you with 4k panels and ppi >250. All owners without exception. Especially in Google Chrome with muddy text from v50 for the reasons I stated above.

Anyone who has ever sat at a laptop with a 4k panel at a scale of 200% will never voluntarily (if there is a choice) transfer to a laptop with an fhd screen and its terrible pixelation 40-60cm from the screen.

[NikoB]

If you want to argue that way: Most laptops are also 100 % of the time connected to an external monitor, which makes the internal display irrelevant, thus definitely making customers likely to seek out cheaper FHD resolution screens in order to save money.

I would disagree on that point. I use my notebook display most of the time as the only screen. And even connected to an external monitor the internal screen still is being used as second screen. So it is not irrelevant at all.

Other than that, thanks for the review! It is very refreshing to see that Lenovo also produces real workstation hardware instead of shitty ultra thin crap workstations!

I would like to see the P16's impressive looking cooling system with a stronger GPU though.

And PLEASE ALWAYS include Gossen Metrawatt screens from witcher stress in your reviews. Witcher 3 puts consistent stress on CPU and GPU. Having data like CPU and GPU power draw, temps and fan noise gives you an idea of how well the cooling works.

The 34 db on this P16 are insanely quiet, but the total power draw of 87 watts is a joke. I would like to see how well the cooling handles typical total power draws of at least 150 watts sustained.

Lenovo, please also make gaming laptops with these chassis dimensions and superiour cooling systems! Not all gamers wear headsets(!!) and gamers also do productive work! There is no point in making a workstation thicker for quieter cooling and gaming laptops thin with crappy cooling.

As I wrote many times a long time ago, I would like NB to include the following data in their reviews (the first one that came off the hook):
1. Screenshot from AIDA64, with a cache (L1..L3) and memory benchmark, and not as it is now (it was in this form that it was originally requested). Now there are no cache parameters in the reviews, but they differ significantly.
2. A full test of ports for throughput and declared features - now the false declarations of manufacturers are not checked in any way. For example, HP is already lying about the presence of HDMI 2.1 (without indicating any data on it) and DP2.1 (also without indicating any characteristics) even in G9 4xx models. As well as Acer.

Lenovo is lying too, but at least from psref it is immediately clear that there is no compliance with the full specifications of the latest standards. Exposing the lies of HP/Acer/MSI/Asus/Dell is much more difficult. That is, only Lenovo, with an in-depth study of its psref by specialists, gives more information, to their credit. Others have no such data at all and literally have to be pulled out with "pincers" under torture from their support departments. What takes a lot of effort and time for correspondence and does not always help to achieve key information. Sometimes they just ignore requests or write complete nonsense from outsourced support departments in India.

3. I have repeatedly asked to develop tests in which noise is measured at a load of 25-45% on the cores. This is the most typical workload with background software and parallel surfing. But in the NB tests, there are two edges of measurements - at rest and at full load, when the coolers are obviously already quite noisy. Thus, good models for typical use are eliminated for the buyer, because he sees terrible numbers at full load, but does not see what will happen in terms of noise at 25-45% load, and there everything can be very different.

[NikoB]

It's also a good idea to measure viewing angles in the form of specific numbers, as some sites do on monitors using brightness and contrast sensors. And there, very interesting things are immediately found out on monitors priced at $3000 or more. But the general words - that "viewing angles are good", this is subjective.

There really aren't that many good panels on the market with really reference IPS viewing angles...

[Chis]

Eigentlich brauche ich dringend einen Ersatz für mein P72 ThinkPad. Die Hoffnung lag also auf einem aktuellen 17" ThinkPad - doch hier hat mich Lenovo mit der absolut unverständlichen Produktpolitik mit dem Schrumpfen auf 16" doch sehr enttäuscht. Der Entfall des Ethernet-Ports ist auch ein No-Go.
Bei dieser Geräte-Klasse will ich Platz und Leistung. Größe und Gewicht sind da doch vollkommen egal.

Entweder es wird für 2023 noch ein 17" (oder eher 18" wegen 16:10 statt 16:9) nachgelegt, oder ich werde wohl den Hersteller wechseln müssen. Noch hält mein P72, aber vermutlich nicht mehr lange.

[Ampulle]

Bei dieser Geräte-Klasse will ich Platz und Leistung. Größe und Gewicht sind da doch vollkommen egal.

Sie werden dich nicht verstehen. Und auch das vermurksen. Daß es am Ende gleiche, aber vergrößerte Nachteile hat, wie davor. Und unbedingt noch teurerer, um vorzugaukeln, wie viel unnützliche Arbeit (Varpor) drin steckt.

Weil da einer kommt, welcher eigentlich 14 Zoll kauft und schreit, daß 17 Zoll nicht dünn, leicht, mobil ist, keine dünne Ränder hat und alles mögliches, was im Vergleich zu 14 auffällt. Darum schämen sich die Hersteller, wenn sie Größeres nicht klein genug rausbringen. Abgesehen von Preis. Weil hier auch die Logik, daß Helfte von APU-Leistung die Hälfte von Endpreis kosten muss, sonst ist das blöd. Leg das dann auf die restliche Bestandteile um. Vielleicht, darum gibt es nichts Vernünftiges für 17-18 Zoll.