Quote from: Philm on January 27, 2026, 22:34:59Can anyone explain why the P1 gen 8 has half the battery life of the T1g according to notebookcheck when they are virtually identical machines with the same tandem oled display?
Why did the ThinkPad P1 Gen 8 have dramatically worse battery life than the T1g Gen 8? The reviews show the P1 Gen 8's idle power consumption was much higher during its testing than the T1g Gen 8's:
P1 Gen 8: idle min/med/max = 15.4 / 16.5 / 23.1 watts
T14 Gen 8: idle min/med/max = 8.5 / 13.6 / 14.1 watts
So the P1 Gen 8 was drawing roughly 2x more power at idle, directly explaining the battery gap. As you stated the components are effectively identical. Power usage under load was also effectively identical.
My theory: Both models had early firmware/power management bugs, but the T1g Gen 8 review likely used a post-BIOS / software update unit that addressed high power usage during low intensity usage while the P1 Gen 8 was tested pre-fix.
Has anyone with a P1 Gen 8 or T1g Gen 8 purchased near launch seen their battery life improve with recent BIOS / software updates (as this review discrepancy suggests is what happened)?