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.

[veraverav]

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.

But its not really meant to be a gaming laptop. Would plugging in an eGPU resolve this bottleneck for someone that absolutely has to game?

[Worgarthe]

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.

Genuinely curious - do you do anything else in your life apart from running local LLMs? Well, aside from spamming the same bs under quite literally every single existing review around here...

Would plugging in an eGPU resolve this bottleneck for someone that absolutely has to game?

Yes it would, and it's cheaper too (as opposed to getting an absolute top specs laptop with its insane price tag; talking in general here about laptops, not about the P1 G8 which tops at 8 GB VRAM).

I have an RTX 5070 Ti (16 GB) working perfectly fine with both of my ThinkPads (X1 Carbon and P16). There's a bit of bottleneck if you're chasing super-high fps (for example, if you can get, say, 350 in a desktop you won't really reach more than 300 here), but if you cap that to 60-165 fps there really is no difference in gaming experience and you save significant money in the process too (while getting more raw GPU power). That's a 780-ish € GPU, and it will completely stomp both the Blackwells here in this P1 (PRO 1000 and PRO 2000), even with the mentioned Thunderbolt bottleneck (which is marginal outside of games and very high fps).

The tradeoff is not being able to play ultra graphics on the go because some (homeless?) people apparently do that all day long, they simply travel and play continuously without doing anything else (apart from crying how 8 GB VRAM is insufficient for games), and those same people struggle to open their in-game settings to put textures to high instead of ultra to significantly lower their VRAM usage, but other than that - no complaints, all works flawlessly when I get home - I put my laptop(s) on a table, plug in a single cable and that's it. The eGPU gets activated automatically, and I can play immediately.

[veraverav]

Yes it would, and it's cheaper too (as opposed to getting an absolute top specs laptop with its insane price tag; talking in general here about laptops, not about the P1 G8 which tops at 8 GB VRAM).

I have an RTX 5070 Ti (16 GB) working perfectly fine with both of my ThinkPads (X1 Carbon and P16). There's a bit of bottleneck if you're chasing super-high fps (for example, if you can get, say, 350 in a desktop you won't really reach more than 300 here), but if you cap that to 60-165 fps there really is no difference in gaming experience and you save significant money in the process too (while getting more raw GPU power). That's a 780-ish € GPU, and it will completely stomp both the Blackwells here in this P1 (PRO 1000 and PRO 2000), even with the mentioned Thunderbolt bottleneck (which is marginal outside of games and very high fps).

The tradeoff is not being able to play ultra graphics on the go because some (homeless?) people apparently do that all day long, they simply travel and play continuously without doing anything else (apart from crying how 8 GB VRAM is insufficient for games), and those same people struggle to open their in-game settings to put textures to high instead of ultra to significantly lower their VRAM usage, but other than that - no complaints, all works flawlessly when I get home - I put my laptop(s) on a table, plug in a single cable and that's it. The eGPU gets activated automatically, and I can play immediately.

Thanks for this info! I have a P1 Gen 2 and I can't remember when I played a game on it, ever. If I am going to game, it will be at my desk, so I could just use a eGPU. I actually wanted the P1 Gen 8 without a dGPU but the 45% off was only on prebuilt machines with the dGPU. I'll buy an eGPU if I ever decide I have time for games :)

[Worgarthe]

Thanks for this info!

🫡

I have a P1 Gen 2 and I can't remember when I played a game on it, ever. If I am going to game, it will be at my desk, so I could just use a eGPU. I actually wanted the P1 Gen 8 without a dGPU but the 45% off was only on prebuilt machines with the dGPU. I'll buy an eGPU if I ever decide I have time for games :)

Exactly this! I really don't understand the obsession with "VRAM for gaming" (in laptops), when in reality even if there was 48 GB of it - who exactly would game on the go on battery power? And get not just reduced GPU performance, but also like 40 minutes of battery life. True gaming, yeah...
...not 😑

Laptops are awesome to carry them when you run & gun around, but when you get home you dock them (and/or plug into a nice eGPU setup) and get basically a desktop-like experience while still having full mobility if and when you need to pack and go. For less money than maxing a GPU in a laptop. Heck, it's even possible to have multiple GPUs in an eGPU setup, if one wants to do some heavy local LLM stuff - still for cheaper and with more VRAM than going crazy with max specs of a laptop, hah!

Update:

Ok, so about this part:

Heck, it's even possible to have multiple GPUs in an eGPU setup, if one wants to do some heavy local LLM stuff - still for cheaper and with more VRAM than going crazy with max specs of a laptop, hah!

I just checked prices in Germany, but for the P16 Gen 3 because it is possible to equip it with up to 24 GB VRAM (Blackwell 5000).

The base version 8 GB (Blackwell 1000) config goes for 2819 € currently. Prices for GPU upgrades are the following:

• 2000 Blackwell (8 GB) +230€
• 3000 Blackwell (12 GB) +790€
• 4000 Blackwell (16 GB) +1420€
• 5000 Blackwell (24 GB) +2980€ (😂)

The rest of the specs is untouched from the base config, so 245HX + 16 GB RAM + 512 GB SSD, with only the display being automatically improved to a 2400p panel (no option to keep the base 1200p panel with that GPU).

So I just added that GPU and literally nothing else, the laptop is now 6039€, that's an increase of +3220€ (!!) just because of 24 GB GPU!

Let's see how much VRAM we can get with 3220€, to put that in an eGPU setup while keeping the P16 Gen 3 at its base price: https://www.idealo.de/preisvergleich/OffersOfProduct/205942083_-geforce-rtx-5070-ti-gigabyte.html

3220/759=4. So four RTX 5070 Ti. Meaning 64 GB of VRAM. Meaning 40 GB more, for the same price. The 5000 Blackwell is similar in performance as a 4070 Super and 3080 Ti. The 5070 Ti is simply far ahead performance-wise, and with four of them at full power of 300W each - it's even more tragic to compare of what you get for the same amount of money... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[pascal76]

FYI, I found this comment in a YT video

"I ordered a P1 Gen 8 on release with a 265h, 64gb ram and no dedicated GPU because I wanted best battery life and lowest noise on this machine. Sent it back after a day, the fan is not just "you notice it", it's atrociously loud. Even in "everyday tasks" or on idle the fan kicks in all the time, extremely annoying."