Premium business laptop with a budget display - Lenovo ThinkPad T16 Gen 5 AMD Review

[Redaktion]

Lenovo updates the ThinkPad T16 Gen 5 with a new chassis, which improves the repairability as well as the speakers. However, the performance of the base model is very low and the biggest issue is the underwhelming screen quality, especially considering the high base price.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Premium-business-laptop-with-a-budget-display-Lenovo-ThinkPad-T16-Gen-5-AMD-Review.1307940.0.html

[menooki]

No PWM display ANY DAY

[RaulCT]

I have had this laptop (the Pro 7 version) for a week, but I noticed an annoying quirk (to me at least): there's no 'grip' on the side, edges (right next to the end of the keyboard keys). I have accidentally hit the backspace or other keys by accident whenever I tried to pick up the laptop. This laptop would be perfect if it had a non-numpad centered keyboard.

[vlado]

This laptop would be perfect if it had a non-numpad centered keyboard.

That's why Lenovo sells P1/T1g - 16inch with centered keyboard without numeric - as premium feature. For a kidney.

[Comparison--awful display]

It only covers the sRGB gamut by 60 % and the image quality is pretty poor, which is hard to accept for premium T-series. [..] The panel simply cannot represent colors accurately.

Crazy. This is not 2005. Maybe LENOVO should change the screen to an E-Ink one already (might actually be interesting, but use the black-and-while one, LENOVO, as it has better contrast than a color one)?

Considering the price range, an IPS screen with 100 % sRGB should be the default option.

sRGB has been superseded by Display P3 since 2015, so it really should be Display P3 at this point, like an APPLE Air has one.

Things the MacBook Air 15 (and partially the Air 13) M5/2026 has going for it over this:
(notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Air-15-M5-.1244905.0.html)
+ Much better screen:
-> Sharper text and more lively/"popping" colors due to no matte oil coating effect
-> Better screen ratio
-> Slightly brighter at 521 vs this' 452 nits
-> Higher resolution
-> Display can show more colors / covers Display P3 color space standard
(only the OLED on the ThinkPad is better (is it available for this model?), but it's even more expensive and it has its own disadvantages)

+ Higher memory bandwidth:

• this: 89.6 GB/s = 128-bit * 5600 MT/s / 1000 / 8
• MB Air 13 and 15: 153.6 GB/s = 128-bit * 9600 MT/s / 1000 / 8

(-> the Air is 71% faster)

+ Much faster iGPU:
3dmark.com/search - Steel Nomad:

• this/Radeon 740M: "Average score: 199 Points" (lines up with the 202 score measured in this review)
• MacBook Air 15 10-core GPU: "Average score: 1066"

(-> the Air is over 5 times faster!)

+ Same/similar quality keyboard: Lenovo reduced the key travel to 1.5 mm, so now their so called famous keyboard doesn't stand out anymore.

+ No fan that can clog up and no annoying and distracting fan noise.

+ Slimmer case.

+ The Air arguably looks better.

+ Still cheaper at $ 1299 (you can get it 150 bucks cheaper still, new).

Things the ThinkPad has going for it:
+ Reparability (mostly theory, you are not going to do any repair yourself, the stats on this are known), but you can get Air 15 with AppleCare and it's still a cheaper or similar price.

+ It is less likely to break from a fall (tho there are many reddit posts where a ThinkPad broke from a fall (and where it didn't, sure)), but you can get the Air with AppleCare and it's still cheaper.

+ The RAM is upgradable to 64 GB vs only up to 32 GB on the Air, which are not enough for agentic workflows based for SOTA LLM model quant Qwen3.6-35B-A3B-UD-Q4_K_M, based on:

.. I've come to the conclusion that (1) 32768 is the biggest context I can get away with in an adequately smart model, and (2) it just ain't enough.

[Comparison--awful display]

Forgot:
Things the MacBook Air 15 (and partially the Air 13) M5/2026 has going for it over this:
+ 6 speakers (4 in the Air 13)