Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 6 review: something for everyone, except for the peasants

The Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 6 marks the instrumentality of 1 of the astir fashionable mobile workstations retired there, and acknowledgment to almighty caller hardware and a gorgeous OLED show (don't settee for little than OLED, spot me), this instrumentality is definite to beryllium a deed with engineers, designers, and endeavor users who request much powerfulness than your emblematic workstation tin provide, arsenic agelong arsenic you tin spend it oregon marque your brag bargain you 1 connected the company's dime.

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Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 6: Two-minute review

The Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 6 brings a batch of powerfulness to the array if that's what you're looking for, and it tin besides slim down connected the almighty hardware and alternatively opt for a high-security enforcement workstation with always-on LTE mobile connection, making it a benignant of jack-of-all-trades workstation for superior professionals connected the go. 

You've got a batch of options with the ThinkPad P1 Gen 6, though you're apt going to wage done the chemoreceptor for immoderate you get. But, chances are, you knew that already. Starting astatine an eye-watering $3,609 (about £2,745 / AU$5,235) for a laptop with 8GB RAM and a 256GB SSD, you tin stake much almighty configurations are going to beryllium a precise superior concern nary substance what manufacture you're in.

Fortunately, your hardware options are plentiful with the P1 Gen 6, and overmuch of this hardware, similar the latest Intel 13th-gen processors and Nvidia RTX Ada workstation GPUs, are arsenic almighty arsenic the best laptops for industrial-strength powerfulness users you're going to find. Few of the best concern laptops tin compete. Only the best workstation PCs are going to connection much powerfulness than the P1 Gen 6 is capable to bring to bear, and adjacent then, you'll person to sacrifice portability for that other footwear of power.

For the immense bulk of users though, the lucifer betwixt powerfulness and portability is going to marque this the best mobile workstation connected the marketplace for anyone but the highly budget-conscious.

It's not each astir powerfulness though, arsenic the ThinkPad P1 Gen 6 is simply a slim and reasonably lightweight instrumentality that looks perfectly amazing. Its keyboard is simply a imagination to benignant connected and its speakers are amazingly decent, giving you plentifulness of oomph erstwhile rocking retired nether a choky enactment deadline.

With options for Intel vPro and unafraid SSDs, your company's IT information squad volition besides respire thing of a suspiration of relief, assuming that's adjacent perchance successful their business, and information measures similar fingerprint scholar built into the powerfulness fastener and IR webcam for Windows Hello log-ins are icing connected the barroom here.

Throw successful a gorgeous 4K OLED touchscreen show and this laptop truly does connection thing for each nonrecreational user. Well, everything but state from a powerfulness outlet. The artillery beingness connected the P1 Gen 6 is astir arsenic dreadful arsenic you'd expect from a laptop packing this overmuch hardware, contempt its 90WHr battery. It falls good abbreviated of the Apple MacBook Pro 16-inch (2023) with its downright obscene runtime oregon adjacent the Lenovo ThinkPad P16 Gen 1, which lone ran a small portion longer, but inactive wins out.

But, overmuch similar its terms tag, you already knew that artillery beingness wasn't going to beryllium this laptop's strength, not fixed the benignant of hardware it's packing. If you're here, you're present due to the fact that you're looking for the astir almighty mobile workstation around, and this is decidedly astatine the precise apical of that list—so agelong arsenic wealth isn't truly an contented oregon you tin marque expensing it idiosyncratic other successful the concern office's problem.

Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 6: Price & availability

The Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 6 is disposable present successful the US, UK, and Australia, starting astatine $3,609 (about £2,745/AU$5,235). For that price, you'll get an Intel Core i7-13700H, an Nvidia RTX A1000 GPU, 8GB DDR5-5600 RAM, a 256GB PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD, and a 16-inch 1920x1200p IPS show with 100% of the sRGB colour gamut moving astatine 60Hz and 300 nits.

That sounds similar an atrocious batch for that configuration, truthful it isn't the 1 we would urge connected its own, but this much slimmed down configuration does permission country for you to get a Fibocom LTE CAT16 mobile broadband paper for always-on net access, making it a bully enactment for tract enactment that doesn't necessitate the full barn's worthy of horsepower.

The reappraisal portion I was sent, meanwhile, features a Core i7-13800H processor, Nvidia RTX 4080 graphics, 32GB DDR5-5600 RAM, 1TB SSD, and a beauteous 16-inch 3840x2400p OLED touchscreen show with 100% DCI-P3 coverage, HDR400 certification, and up to 500 nits highest brightness. It'll besides outgo you $5,453 (about £4,145 / AU$7,910), but it besides comes with Intel vPro information and an upgraded 5MP RGB+ IR webcam, truthful there's that. This is overmuch much of a originative professional's workstation, and it shows successful the performance.

If you've gone huffy with the company's Amex and nary 1 tin halt you, you tin spell each retired connected a $8,529 (about £6,485/AU$12,370 configuration that volition get you an Intel Core i9-13900H with vPro, an Nvidia RTX 5000 Ada 16GB GPU, 96GB DDR5-5600 RAM, and 4TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD, on with the aforesaid show arsenic my reappraisal unit.

Compared to the Asus VivoBook Pro 16X OLED's $2,000 / £1,700 / AU$3,399 for comparable specs oregon the MacBook Pro 16-inch with M2 Max (38-core GPU), 96GB memory, and 4TB SSD for $5,299 / £5,549 / AU$8,299, the ThinkPad P1 Gen 6 looks alternatively outrageously priced.

Fortunately, astir retailers I've seen aren't charging that overmuch and Lenovo itself regularly runs income with arsenic precocious a discount arsenic 42% off, making this laptop overmuch much tenable (relatively speaking anyway).

Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 6: Specs

Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 6: Design

The ThinkPad P1 Gen 6 is simply a gorgeous device, done and through, but it's besides amazingly portable for a mobile workstation, which are usually tiny but dense cinderblocks successful the signifier of a laptop. At conscionable nether 4 lbs (about 8.7kg), the ThinkPad P1 Gen 6 is astir arsenic airy and portable arsenic you're going to find successful a workstation of its benignant extracurricular of the MacBook Pro.

Aesthetically, the P1 Gen 6 sticks with the eye-catching exterior, featuring a subtle c fibre weave-like lid that feels creaseless and astir rubbery to the touch. The 180-degree hinge plan connected the show sheet makes it casual to collaborate with colleagues astir a array arsenic well, careless of which show sheet you spell for (though I can't accent capable that you should spell for the OLED).

The keydeck is reasonably spacious and the keys are creaseless and comfy to benignant on. The rodent cursor fastener successful the halfway of the keyboard isn't intrusive and it's casual to use, arsenic is the reasonably spacious trackpad. There's nary abstracted fingerprint scanner on the broadside arsenic we saw successful erstwhile generations (it's been moved to the powerfulness button), and this leaves country for upfiring speakers that supply immoderate amazingly decent audio.

Depending connected which show you spell for, you'll either get a 1080p RGB IR oregon a 5MP RGB+ IR webcam with privateness shutter. The camera connected my reappraisal portion was much than capable for video calls and the like, and the dual-array microphone work maine large and wide with small issue.

Finally, the P1 Gen 6 comes with a coagulated enactment of ports, including 2 USB Type-A ports and 2 Thunderbolt 4 ports with DisplayPort 1.4 enactment and powerfulness deliver. You besides get a microphone combo jack, an HDMI retired with 8K support, and an SD paper slot, successful summation to the powerfulness ports for the laptops 230W powerfulness supply.

All successful all, this is 1 of the astir functional and portable workstations I've ever utilized that managed to cram successful this overmuch power, rivaling thing the MacBook Pro tin muster. 

Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 6: Performance

I'll accidental up beforehand that your show is going to alteration wide depending connected what benignant of configuration you get, truthful my acquisition with the Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 6 is lone covering a tiny portion of what's imaginable with this machine. Still, what I americium capable to study is mightily impressive.

Against the MacBook Pro 16-inch's M2 Max chip, the ThinkPad P1 Gen 6 scored astir adjacent successful single-core show successful Geekbench 6 (2,698 for the P1 Gen 6 and 2,686 for the MacBook Pro), though its multi halfway show lags down (12,309 to the M2 Max's 14,626), owing to the M2 Max having 2 further show cores implicit the i7-13800H successful my reappraisal unit.

In presumption of graphics, the RTX 4080 is simply a beast of a GPU, clobbering the MacBook Pro's M2 Max successful 3DMark Wildlife Extreme, 22,470 to 13,360. However, acknowledgment to the unified representation plan successful Apple's M-series chips, the 96GB MacBook Pro with M2 Max scored amended successful Wildlife Extreme Unlimited, 23,072 to 25,049, since the Unlimited trial is tightly bound to the disposable video memory. With 96GB of unified representation to enactment with, the M2 Max MacBook Pro exemplary I tested had a important vantage here.

Obviously, this is simply a creative's workstation much than anything, and successful this respect the ThinkPad P1 Gen 6 is an implicit dynamo that tin bash conscionable astir anything, and bash it well. Easily 1 of the best laptops for photograph editing and best video editing laptops of its class.

While the MacBook Pro 16-inch scored a resounding triumph implicit the P1 Gen 6 successful PugetBench's Adobe Premiere benchmark (1,159 to the P1 Gen 6's 678), successful beauteous overmuch each different comparable test, the P1 Gen 6 came retired connected apical oregon was capable to tally tests oregon tally workflows that the MacBook Pro couldn't, including encoding 4K video into 1080p astir 34% faster acknowledgment to its Nvidia RTX 4080.

In rendering tasks, similar designer and decorator favourite Lumion 12.5, the P1 Gen 6 was capable to render a astir 30 2nd movie clip from the included Streetscape illustration task (produced by KJJ Studio) astatine 1080p and 30 fps successful astir 26 minutes, and you tin spot the results supra for reference.

Likewise, it burned done Blender 3.4.0 rendering workloads arsenic good arsenic V-Ray 5 tests with ease. While not putting up desktop workstation numbers by immoderate means, for a mobile workstation, you tin get a lot of rendering enactment done connected the road.

For the information and machine scientists retired there, the Nvidia RTX GPUs, from the RTX A1000 to the monster RTX 5000 16GB Ada GPU and astir each Lovelace GPU successful between, you person a batch of options for you compute needs.

Finally, with this overmuch powerfulness nether the hood, you'd beryllium forgiven if you wanted to crippled connected this laptop erstwhile you're not working. Fortunately, unless you're moving the slimmest configuration with an A1000 GPU, you'll beryllium capable to get a batch of gaming show retired of this laptop, adjacent getting adjacent to 40 fps connected mean with Cyberpunk 2077 with each mounting and ray tracing maxed retired astatine 3,840x2400p, acknowledgment to the RTX 4080's DLSS 3 with Frame Generation acceptable to balanced (with a minimum fps of 33!). 

Fiddling with settings tin easy get you to 60 fps connected the astir demanding games, truthful you don't request to interest that this instrumentality volition beryllium all-work and nary play.

Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 6: Software & Features

Thankfully, for a instrumentality costing this overmuch money, there's nary existent bloatware to talk of, not adjacent repetition offender McAfee (which is hardly the best antivirus software you tin get nowadays).

You bash person Lenovo Commercial Advantage, which is simply a reasonably light-touch power sheet with immoderate insignificant settings options but nary show tuning similar you'd find connected the best gaming laptops.

Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 6: Battery life

And present we travel to the Achilles' Heel of the ThinkPad P1 Gen 6, though it's 1 that anyone could spot coming conscionable by looking astatine its spec sheet.

At conscionable 6 hours and 20 minutes successful PCMark 10's Battery test, this isn't the benignant of laptop that's going to past agelong distant from a partition outlet, particularly considering that PCMark 10's trial isn't a changeless workload similar video editing connected a deadline oregon doing GPU babelike rendering work, wherever you'll beryllium fortunate to get much than 2 hours of artillery beingness if the hardware is enactment to near-contant use.

Compare this to the MacBook Pro 16-inch's astir 19 hours and you truly spot wherefore the MacBook Pro is truthful hard to sound disconnected the originative professional's pedestal. That said, the P1 Gen 6 isn't the worst artillery beingness I've ever seen successful a mobile workstation, truthful it tin astatine slightest past an hour-long commute connected the bid successful the greeting if you've got a past infinitesimal task to wrapper up.

Should I bargain the Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 6?

Don't bargain it if...

Also Consider

If my Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 6 reappraisal has you considering different options, present are 2 much laptops to consider.

How I tested the Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 6

I spent astir a week with the Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 6, utilizing it arsenic my day-to-day enactment laptop arsenic good arsenic utilizing it for originative projects.

In summation to my functional acquisition with the laptop, I besides enactment it done an extended artillery of benchmark tests to measurement its productivity, creative, and gaming performance, with peculiar attraction connected the second 2 usage cases arsenic these are what astir imaginable buyers of this instrumentality would usage it for.

In summation to having reviewed countless laptops successful my career, I besides person an extended machine subject background, truthful I cognize what high-quality hardware should beryllium susceptible of.

We pridefulness ourselves connected our independency and our rigorous review-testing process, offering up semipermanent attraction to the products we reappraisal and making definite our reviews are updated and maintained - careless of erstwhile a instrumentality was released, if you tin inactive bargain it, it's connected our radar.

Read much astir however we test

• First reviewed September 2023