Lenovo ThinkPad P1 16 Gen 8 review: Tandem OLED series premiere

[Redaktion]

The ThinkPad P1 Gen 8 may look the same as the previous generation model, but the new tandem OLED display option can improve the HDR viewing experience tremendously for those who value it.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-ThinkPad-P1-16-Gen-8-review-Tandem-OLED-series-premiere.1174965.0.html

[jhe]

cant believe you sh1theads, FINALLY a matte oled screen after years of fcking mirrors and you put it under cons.

[veraverav]

5.5 hrs battery life? Seems very low compared to reviews from consumers using this model.

Also, its a P1 Gen 8 not a P1 16 Gen 8.

[2k for 8GB VRAM gg]

matte tandem OLED can appear slightly grainy up close

How to destroy the beautiful popping colors and the sharp text of an (glossy) OLED? Take grinding paper/stone and rub it on the screen, then you get the screen in this laptop.

one-year base warranty instead of three years

Wow

no ECC RAM

This is a big one. Since this is a workstation, at least having the option?
Theoretically, providing real ECC is cheap (ASUS supports real ECC in mainstream AM5 motherboards (other brands may support it unofficially) and most AMD CPUs support real ECC too), so this looks like an artificial market segmentation.

LPCAMM2

This is modern, at what MT/s is this running?
Looking at AIDA64' 96582 MB/s, it's running at roughly 7500 MT/s.

For running local LLMs, can the RAM be extended to 64 GB or more? If this is a workstation, support for up to 128 GB RAM would be expected, especially with all the for-RAM-optimized  MoE LLMs.

[2k for 8GB VRAM gg]

8 GB VRAM

2000 for only 8 GB VRAM? Nice trolling.
Even games have a problem with only 8 GB VRAM: youtube.com/watch?v=ric7yb1VaoA: "Gaming Laptops are in Trouble - VRAM Testing w/ ‪@Hardwareunboxed‬"
Most big games are made for consoles first in mind and the PS5 has 16 GB VRAM, minus 4 GB for the OS, and games expect your GPU to have at least 12 GB VRAM.
Running local LLMs / AI has been a thing for a few years now, using llama.cpp and its webUI is all you need. A LLM can be fully loaded into the GPU's VRAM or, if the LLM can't fit, parts of it can be offloaded to system RAM. This laptop has 32 GB RAM + 8 GB VRAM. Small and better capable, big open-weights LLMs exist and the more RAM+VRAM your PC has, the better. Every GB helps. So, from 8 GB to 12 GB to 16 GB VRAM would already be a good to very good improvement.

[davidm]

"AIDA64 RAM benchmark scores are notably very good" when is notebookcheck going to do the PC industry a favour and stop qualifying. Any Strix Halo system will have RAM nearly twice as fast, not to mention Macs. That is a huge deal for many typical workstation operations.

[nick23]

matte tandem OLED can appear slightly grainy up close

How to destroy the beautiful popping colors and the sharp text of an (glossy) OLED? Take grinding paper/stone and rub it on the screen, then you get the screen in this laptop.

In a glossy OLED those beautiful popping colors and sharp text get utterly obliterated by reflections of any light source or window behind you, and you end up constantly fidgeting with the laptop position or trying to find a dark corner to sit in. I understand glossy screens for a desktop computer where you can control the ambient lighting, but not in a laptop.

Also, whenever the screen is dark, e.g. a dark theme of your code editor or a dark movie scene, you're constantly staring at your own face. Are you really that pretty?

It's precisely the matte tandem OLED that is the main attraction of this Thinkpad for me, and I'll happily take minimal grain to avoid strong reflections.