Lenovo ThinkBook 16P Gen 2

[Custom90gt]

I've been using this thinkbook for a few months now and I honestly like it a fair amount.  It's not the smallest laptop, fastest laptop, or even the best when it comes to battery life; but it works well.  I got a great deal with it from Lenovo with a 3 year warranty and so far I may just keep it for that long (if you know me, that's a pretty bold statement considering I usually upgrade every 6 months to a year at most).  This is my mini-review just for fun.  If you've got questions, let me know.

Specs:

Ryzen 5 5600H

Nvidia 3060 Max-Q

16" 2560x1600 IPS screen

16GB memory (8GB soldered, bummer)

 

Things I like:

The build quality is great.

It's quiet, even at "full tilt."

The screen looks nice, it's not the brightest but it doesn't ghost like my Inspiron 7610 did, and the extra screen real-estate is very nice for work.

It runs the occasional game well enough for me.

 

Things I don't like:

Soldered memory, what were they thinking.

The sound is lack luster compared to my XPS 9510.

The battery life is mediocre, but it gets me through the work day when I need to be unplugged.

 

Some benchmarks:

Just for fun I compared the stock setup vs installing a single 16GB of faster HyperX ram (for a total of 24GB), and as expected there really wasn't any difference:

 

[saturnotaku]

While I don't regret purchasing my P1 Gen 4, I wish I would have known about this laptop before getting it. 

[Custom90gt]

20 hours ago, saturnotaku said:

While I don't regret purchasing my P1 Gen 4, I wish I would have known about this laptop before getting it. 

Hah, actually the P1/X1 Gen 4 are the only laptops that I realistically see trading this in for.  But for the price I could get 2x of these.

[saturnotaku]

3 hours ago, Custom90gt said:

Hah, actually the P1/X1 Gen 4 are the only laptops that I realistically see trading this in for.  But for the price I could get 2x of these.

Pretty much, though I did pay less than $2300 for mine, which I think was a good price given the hardware inside, build quality, and overall design that's much more portable than the Legion. I think the P1 could have been just about perfect if they would have seen fit to include the 500-nit 165 Hz panel from the L7 because I very much miss having a high-refresh display. I know it's not meant to be a gaming machine, but it seems rather senseless to have a 1440p/60 screen just for these laptops - economies of scale and all that. Plus, Lenovo would have the extra marketing blurb of it being a 500-nit screen instead of the 400 nits of the 60 Hz option.

[Custom90gt]

4 hours ago, saturnotaku said:

Pretty much, though I did pay less than $2300 for mine, which I think was a good price given the hardware inside, build quality, and overall design that's much more portable than the Legion. I think the P1 could have been just about perfect if they would have seen fit to include the 500-nit 165 Hz panel from the L7 because I very much miss having a high-refresh display. I know it's not meant to be a gaming machine, but it seems rather senseless to have a 1440p/60 screen just for these laptops - economies of scale and all that. Plus, Lenovo would have the extra marketing blurb of it being a 500-nit screen instead of the 400 nits of the 60 Hz option.

I'm sure the build quality and package of the Gen 4 is much better than this 16P, but it's hard to justify the cost.  After cashback, I paid <$1000 for this laptop with a 3 year warranty. Having said that, I do frequently check Lenovo's website to see if there is a deal on a Gen 4, also awaiting the release of the Z16...

[saturnotaku]

Suspect I spoke a bit too soon about the goodness of the P1. For some reason, the mouse cursor would randomly develop a slight but noticeable lag when using the touchpad or trackpoint. What's weird is that it would go away and come back seemingly at random. It was enough to throw me off my productivity game. I spent the better part of two days troubleshooting with no success so I filed the return with fleBay on the last day it was available to me. In their infinite wisdome, fleBay's pre-paid return label was for USPS priority mail. My local PO refused to accept the package because of the lithium ion battery. When I attempted to explain that laptops are shipped next-/second-day air with UPS and FedEx all the time, they were having none of it. So I ended up paying UPS out of pocket to ship it back, and I'll be going after fleBay for a refund of that cost.

In the meanwhile, I've decided to give Asus another chance and ordered the 2022 Zephryus M16 when it went on sale at Best Buy the other day. I went with the 3060, which at $1649 is $200 cheaper than the outgoing 11th-gen one when comparing their MSRPs. I didn't feel like spending an additional $500 on the 3070 Ti model despite the GPU, CPU, and screen upgrades. I'm probably going to use that money to upgrade my desktop to Alder Lake.

[Custom90gt]

1 hour ago, saturnotaku said:

Suspect I spoke a bit too soon about the goodness of the P1. For some reason, the mouse cursor would randomly develop a slight but noticeable lag when using the touchpad or trackpoint. What's weird is that it would go away and come back seemingly at random. It was enough to throw me off my productivity game. I spent the better part of two days troubleshooting with no success so I filed the return with fleBay on the last day it was available to me. In their infinite wisdome, fleBay's pre-paid return label was for USPS priority mail. My local PO refused to accept the package because of the lithium ion battery. When I attempted to explain that laptops are shipped next-/second-day air with UPS and FedEx all the time, they were having none of it. So I ended up paying UPS out of pocket to ship it back, and I'll be going after fleBay for a refund of that cost.

In the meanwhile, I've decided to give Asus another chance and ordered the 2022 Zephryus M16 when it went on sale at Best Buy the other day. I went with the 3060, which at $1649 is $200 cheaper than the outgoing 11th-gen one when comparing their MSRPs. I didn't feel like spending an additional $500 on the 3070 Ti model despite the GPU, CPU, and screen upgrades. I'm probably going to use that money to upgrade my desktop to Alder Lake.

Super weird about the mouse cursor, no idea what that could be.

Let me know how you like the M16, you're just hitting all the laptops I constantly look at, lol. It's one laptop I have added to my cart at best buy so many times but chickened out at the last moment.

[win32asmguy]

5 hours ago, saturnotaku said:

Suspect I spoke a bit too soon about the goodness of the P1. For some reason, the mouse cursor would randomly develop a slight but noticeable lag when using the touchpad or trackpoint. What's weird is that it would go away and come back seemingly at random. It was enough to throw me off my productivity game. I spent the better part of two days troubleshooting with no success so I filed the return with fleBay on the last day it was available to me. In their infinite wisdome, fleBay's pre-paid return label was for USPS priority mail. My local PO refused to accept the package because of the lithium ion battery. When I attempted to explain that laptops are shipped next-/second-day air with UPS and FedEx all the time, they were having none of it. So I ended up paying UPS out of pocket to ship it back, and I'll be going after fleBay for a refund of that cost.

In the meanwhile, I've decided to give Asus another chance and ordered the 2022 Zephryus M16 when it went on sale at Best Buy the other day. I went with the 3060, which at $1649 is $200 cheaper than the outgoing 11th-gen one when comparing their MSRPs. I didn't feel like spending an additional $500 on the 3070 Ti model despite the GPU, CPU, and screen upgrades. I'm probably going to use that money to upgrade my desktop to Alder Lake.

How do you like the 16 inch 1920x1200 165hz panel on the M16? Any issues with fan whistle like some of the Legion's had? By chance do you know if the HDMI/USB-C/TB4 connect to the Nvidia GPU or Intel GPU, with the MUX set to hybrid mode? Either way sounds like a good deal and should compliment your desktop well.

[Jeezo]

On 2/1/2022 at 1:01 AM, Custom90gt said:

I've been using this thinkbook for a few months now and I honestly like it a fair amount.  It's not the smallest laptop, fastest laptop, or even the best when it comes to battery life; but it works well.  I got a great deal with it from Lenovo with a 3 year warranty and so far I may just keep it for that long (if you know me, that's a pretty bold statement considering I usually upgrade every 6 months to a year at most).  This is my mini-review just for fun.  If you've got questions, let me know.

Specs:

Ryzen 5 5600H

Nvidia 3060 Max-Q

16" 2560x1600 IPS screen

16GB memory (8GB soldered, bummer)

 

Things I like:

The build quality is great.

It's quiet, even at "full tilt."

The screen looks nice, it's not the brightest but it doesn't ghost like my Inspiron 7610 did, and the extra screen real-estate is very nice for work.

It runs the occasional game well enough for me.

 

Things I don't like:

Soldered memory, what were they thinking.

The sound is lack luster compared to my XPS 9510.

The battery life is mediocre, but it gets me through the work day when I need to be unplugged.

 

Some benchmarks:

Just for fun I compared the stock setup vs installing a single 16GB of faster HyperX ram (for a total of 24GB), and as expected there really wasn't any difference:

 

Thks for the feedback , i'm considering this bad boy for pro audio work and occasional COH gaming 😉

May i ask you if you could run a latency mon test during like 5 min each with Wifi on and off and different power scheeme (silent versus bala,ced for exempl)

Thks a lot i really need that info , results in noteboocheck are unconsistent ... the Slim 7 witch is the same has exellent results while the Thinkbook is catatstrophic.

 

Notice , system latency has a big impact in gaming also .... very few people understand this latency system thing ...

 

Thks