Announcing ThinkPad P-Series - P50 and P70

You could've gone for the P50

 

Great deal, I must say. I love new tech, but at that price I wouldve went same way.

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What's the main difference between the P and W series?

 

W-Series is the old, discontinued successor of P-Series.

 

I'm intending to get P50 but was wondering if Quadro M1000M 2GB and Quadro M2000M 4GB make a difference?

Quadro M2000M comes free with Xeon but I don't need ECC RAM so maybe i7-6820HQ is enough.

Using the laptop for CAD and ABAQUS.

Any views?

 

M2000M is like 20 % faster then M1000M. If you need every bit of GPU performance, I would go for it. If not, M1000M is a solid GPU as well, much faster then K2100M used in W541.

 

Does anyone know the current status on the 2.5" and m.2 Bay hardware/cables?

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But will it cost overheating issue with the power of xeon + m2000m?

It is bad if the laptop becomes a heat source.

 

I think the cooling powerful enough to handle it.

It seems people are starting to receive the M.2 tray.

 

6700HQ + M1000M is the best price/performance configuration, and is also the coolest running configuration as well. If you are just a student then it should be the perfect amount of performance. You can get 16GB of RAM and a 256GB+ SSD to go with it for a well rounded machine.

 

Just pulled the trigger on a P50 (Xeon, M2000M, FHD) for around $1360. Hoping for the Samsung screen but overall this was a long-overdue update.

 

Don´t worry about the screen. I have the LG screen, and honestly, there is nothing wrong with that screen. Yes, 67 % sRGB is low, but besides this, its a totally fine screen.

 

Where can you get it for so cheap?

 

I figured everything else is fine about it other than the gamut, but as I do some spare video/graphics work on the side I'll reserve judgement for when it arrives.

Discount through an employee rewards program. I think the price without it is around $1850.


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Since I'm saving $$ from not going xeon and M2000M, is it worth using that extra bucks for a 4k display?

 

Please note that if you manually select the i7-6820HQ, you can also select the M2000M.

 

But it doesn't make sense for M2000M with i7-6820HQ since M2000M comes free by selecting Xeon e3-1505.

i7-6820HQ + M2000M = +$200
Xeon e3-1505 + M2000M = +$200

 

Not sure which site you are looking at, but each country has its own pricing.

On the Canada site, the Xeon E3-1505 + M2000M is $180 more expensive than i7-6820HQ + M2000M.

 

My bad. You are right. The Xeon + M2000M package is indeed more expensive.

So is i7-6820HQ + M2000M worth it over M1000M for an extra of 2 GB for US$200?

 

It all depends on your application. If you are doing a lot of hard-core CPU intensive activities, then it makes sense to get the Xeon.

 

Got my P50 today. FHD Touch, 6820HQ 1000M. It is pretty dim, especially calibrated, but everything works great. Noticed the audio pop/crackle bug right away. Cloned the cheap 7200 RPM drive to a NVMe drive and with a little hammering, got windows working again and all is well. Tested the workstation docking station, HDMI, fingerprint reader, turbo boost, and touch display.

 

Thanks. I have decided on the specifications based on the views from here. i7-6820 + M1000M + non-4K display should be sufficient as a student.

 

I'm new to Lenovo so I'm checking that I'm right about the keyboard backlight. Once the backlight goes out, the only way it comes back on is by manually pressing the Fn - Spacebar combination. Correct? And there's no way to get it to come on automatically after reboot?

I just got the P50 and am liking it very much. It will be used for software development, not photography or CAD related work.

 

Yes. The backlit it not being enabled automatically. You have to manually enable it.

 

If you look under the notes when selecting xeon, it says something along lines that m2000m is automatically added, for extra $200. They're not throwing in m2000m with a xeon, they're forcing you to purchase that updated gpu

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Yeah, that was what I found out too. On my country's site, it doesn't state mentioned that line of yours and hence I was misled by the pricing. Anyway, I suppose M1000M will do for i7-6820HQ for an engineering researcher.

 

Yea I would agree with the m1000m being enough. I've always pushed myself broke getting the best gpu, I do alot of rendering converting Autocad etc. But what I always find, is yes gpu is used to accelerate, but it's always 100% cpu and maybe tops like 30% gpu. And even if gpu was taxed more by other programs, unless you know that you'll be using the program that uses it more and you'll be using it all the time, it might not be worth the $200 difference. But, that said, a $200 difference for what could be a 40% gpu performance increase, is extremely cheap and you'll only have that option when you first buy it, can't change your mind later, you can always buy more ram or hhd/ssd later though. Problem with that philosophy, there's still no great extent comparisons between the two (m1000m and m2000m). Any reference of comparisons between the two (although should be decent real world comparison) are done between different make/model/spec'd machines. So, what really real world difference would the m1000m upgrade to m2000m difference be? For me, and for $200, I'd opt for the upgrade.

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Thanks for the useful information. However, if you were to opt for M2000M, might as well go for Xeon E3-1505 too? Though, IMO, having the following configuration (my initial config.) don't quite make sense:

Xeon E3-1505 + M2000M + 32 GB RAM w/o ECC

I have read through articles saying that i7-6820 is simply comparable to Xeon E3-1505 except for ECC support. Since the laptop is more for personal use, I don't see the necessity in ECC RAMs and they cost a bomb!

Any views?

 

I agree. For the mobile platform, the only real benefit of the Xeon appears to be ECC support, so unless you go ECC, why go XEON?

 

Well from what little reviews on these I've seen, perhaps xeon runs cooler? Unlikely, but that's a back of my mind thing. I wouldn't go eec, I don't NEED it, and huge cost vs ddr4. No eec means no xeon for me. Save that few hundred for the m2000m upgrade. 4k screen for me a must, video editing 4k is a requirement.
2x8gb ddr4 is $100 on amazon, 8 to 16gb upgrade is $80, So I 8gb it and buy sticks on amazon, sell or save the 8gb stock. 500gb 950 pro is $300, 1tb 840evo m. 2 is $300, I belive same as 850 evo 2.5".

Back lite keyboard a must.

I7 6820k, 8gb ram, 500gb spindle, 4k, backlite and m2000m.

If xeon came with iris pro, I would pay up to $500 more for that. Iris pro kicks it for quick rendering and video converting, which are things I do daily.

This is just me, what I would do, and why.

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How is the screen?

Edited: OK saw it is FHD Touch.

 

Also add, Amazon has the configuration I would get for $2300, and ships in days vs the weeks from Lenovo. This is usa, not sure your country of origin.

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Your reply is really informative. I am nearer and nearer in sending my cart to Lenovo.

I agree that Xeon will most likely make the laptop hotter (won't want a hot keyboard to type on).

As for the 4K Display, I am interested in it too (too gorgeous to use it for CAD or numerical simulation) but heard about scaling issues with it on Win 10 and these software. Moreover, it would "strain" your battery and I suppose more "load" will be exerted on the GPU.

Not sure if I am right.

 

I'm pretty sure in ThinkPad settings program, you can have keyboard back light be 'adaptive'. I have this on, and in most cases my back lights always on except in bright rooms. Boots with it on, if it's bright, it turns off after booting into Windows.

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Scaling 'issues' windows 10,not really at all. A few lingering issues with specific programs, and icons in their tool bars (Autocad and Sony Vegas pro 13). Sadly two programs I use alot. I'm sure it'll get better with time. But for everything else, maybe a very few tweaks to Scaling settings, but it's really good. Battery life, yup, probably a 2 hour hit. Maybe bit more or less. Gpu usage, mmmmm, don't think noticeably no.


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I'm within days of my return policy window at bb for my Alienware 17 R3 4k, really good laptop, beautiful screen. Some issues, but good so far. Really want a p50, but want it to be great and lack of full reviews and past w541/540, still can't pull trigger. The whole m.2 and 2.5" Bay assemblies not included and not order able is really what's stopping me from pulling trigger. And I've got 2x m.2 and 1 2.5 to put into whatever laptop I'm going to use, and I need that storage space.

But, yea, make sure you cover all your basis and when you do click buy, your ready to live/love for the next idk 4 or 5 years 'hopefully'
Anything we can do here, just ask. Do take with grain of salt as most is personal preference suggestions or best of our knowledge answers, we're not perfect.

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That pop/crackle, is there a fix yet? I have had that in my Dell Latitude since day 1 and so annoying
Could you in the near future give an extremely nit-pick type review on your thoughts on your P50?

 

Yeah, that is why I have been consulting the people here for advice as I was a Mac user before my studies and everything in their website was "made" layman for easy purchase decision.

A noob question: If I didn't get the 4k display on P50, it is still possible to project a 4K resolution on a 4K monitor?

 

No worries on the questions. With so many makes/models/etc for everything now-a-days and so many of them just absolute crap, these forums are an absolute necessity.

As for the projecting to 4k, yes absolutely, and best thing to do. I only NEED 4k, as I do a lot of work away from my monitors and only on the laptop screen. But 1080p laptop to 4k monitor is best way to go if you can, with one huge factor. The 1080p screen better be decent for when you do need to use it. A lot of 1080p displays are crap, and the 4k option is usually a gorgeous panel. If you can live with lower brightness and lower color gamet/accuracy, then it is by far the best option for you.

 

Just make sure you use the right cable connection. HDMI versions below 2.0 don't support 4k above 30 fps, and this might sound livable, 30fps sucks as your mouse and everything you do just sucks. But Display port or Thunderbolt 3 support 4k at 60fps or higher. So know this ahead of time.

Also a note on external displays. If you have 4k on laptop and push to 1080p monitor, scaling sucks. As you'll have 4k scaling set to 150 or 200%, that also is default on the 1080p display that you'll normally want around 100% scaling, so everything is huge on the 1080p or extremely small on your 4k laptop display.

This also applies to 1080p laptop to 4k display, but not as bad at all. Just use 150% scaling on 1080p, which yea is kind of large but not horribly or unusably big. And on the 4k display, things are kind of small, but not horribly or unusually small.

For whatever reason, maybe just me, the 150% scaling 4k to 108p makes things suck, but 150% scaling 1080p to 4k is good. Yea, probably just me. But throwing this out there.

 

Yeah, I remembered how I fell in love with the Retina display of Mac years ago. Its really gorgeous.

Going back to a lower resolution 1080p may be a "problem" to my eyes. Haha!

I would expect it to be even better with a 4K display, which is now my final decision to make before sending the cart out. Shall do more research on reviews in the meantime.

 

Sure. I want to use it for a week or so. Everything is mostly moved over now so next week will be using it at least 8 hours a day. This is a work laptop. There are only two real choices, Dell or Lenovo right now that fit the bill. I need something with a good docking solution, Onsite support, powerful, latest ports (USB-C + Thunderbolt), still portable, touchscreen. The Dell line is lacking this go around plus their thunderbolt offerings were behind.

For my home setup, I'd go Clevo laptops almost across the board. You get way more for your money. My home laptop is a P870DM from Pro-Star. It includes everything needed to mount more 2.5" and NVMe drives. But it doesn't have the same build quality that I find in the Dell and Lenovo equivalent business lines so I would never consider it for work where I cart it around quite a bit.

The P50 so far seems solidly built, keyboard is pretty great, aside from the CTRL-FN debacle they have going on there. What's nice is the BIOS has a switch to swap the CTRL and FN keys to fix that, although the size difference might still catch people unaware. The screen is the dimmest I've seen at full brightness, but we'll see if that impacts anything as I use it. So far it runs pretty quiet, even while doing a full 8 core compile for 15 minutes, and seemed to sustain 3.3Gghz Turbo boost during it.

Not a big fan of the way they handled their drive expansion at all, but once done I'll probably never futz with it again.

 

Yea, I agree. My bedroom 24" is a 1080p, every other screen in my life is a 3-4k.

As for your final decision. My quick 'words/thoughts' of caution (things to consider).
-The drive bays available to add drives will be missing for anything you don't purchase. So if you purchase a m.2, you'll only have a bay (caddy more like it) for just that m.2. The other m.2 and 2.5 'areas' will be cutout of the laptop, but necessary cables and caddy will not be in there. As of now I believe you can order either the m.2 or 2.5 (cant remember which) but it is several weeks out. And no info and not able to order the other yet.
That is huge for me, your milage may vary.

Build quality from everything I've read seems to be better than the w540 series. Screen 1080p seems less than great, but tolerable. No real word on p50 4k screen yet. p70 has pvm issues, but totally different displays. But I could imagine 4k being worse than the 1080p, and the 3k in my 541 and 550s are really good and crisp. Not very bright though. The 4k is a different panel, but at worst brightness might not be the highest.

Battery I cant seem to find anywhere to order a second/spare.

On a note of warranties, you do have until just before either the end of first year or the 3 years, I cant remember. There is a 30 day period between purchasing and making a claim. But Lenovo's are built solid, my experience with their 'premium' on side warrenty has been great. I bought 5 year top one for my w550s, travel for work, had a problem on customer site, Lenovo tech met me out in Mississippi the next day at customer site during my lunch and swapped out motherboard.

But as long as you are ok with what 'might' be cons, and you've picked out the non user upgradable parts, then you should be set. By that I mean processor, graphics, screen, backlite, stuff like that. I'd personally get lowest ram and hard drives, and upgrade that myself or like half price, but your mileage may vary.

 

Thanks for this.

I've been cross between the Dell and Lenovo. And everything about them is 100%. Dell is available as of now (yesterday or day before) with thunderbolt and a 2 month ship time. I honestly think the Dell is the better laptop, screen and everything just seem at worst notch better. But I'll be going Lenovo. That keyboard, its like a kiss with every keystroke haha.

But the drive thing kills it for me right now. I locally need minimum 2tb of data. Vm's, work files, etc. Externals can only do so much (VM's on external, haha, right). Problem for me is I'm a process controls engineer, working with several DCS systems, on several versions of each. So Vm of this on 7.0/7.1/7.1sp3/8.0/8.0sp1/8.0sp3/8.1/8.1sp1OS, etc. with each being minimal 40gb, main ones around 70gb a pop. I need these on a daily basis at a moments notice sometimes.

I'm a very very picky person, live on my laptop for 12-16 hours a day, and often its just me and my laptop. Fly out for a day/week to customer site, its just me and my laptop. Its very important for me, and I'm willing to live with a few less than ideals on my laptop, but I'll pay whatever it takes to have one that's just perfect. My version of perfect is my W550s with more powerful hardware. But I go through laptops quickly, get bored, or ticked, or just don't like them and return them/sell them/whatever. Work likes it as I usually sell them to them, and a coworker gets a new laptop.

 

Your advice is really helpful. Saved me a lot of time from doing research.

Personally, I would prefer carrying an external portable hard drive (kinda old school me) around instead of having so many disks in the laptop. As such, I'm intending to just get it at a 512 GB SSD configuration. In fact, I am only using about 160 GB on my current 256 GB Mac.

For my country, Singapore, I have heard lots of bad reviews regarding their after-sales service for consumer side (IdeaPads); not much info on ThinkPads. So it is a gamble!

Dell-wise, the ProSupport Plus is awesome from reviews in my country but Precision 5510 is expensive as compared to P50 (20% discount for Lenovo Edustore).

 

No problem, I'm picky, and try to research everything beyond in depth on things I'm interested in.

Your storage solution is pretty much the norm, apparently I'm just the data hog. But it works for me.

And don't know to much about support in Singapore, but that's why I through out there that you can add the warranty after owning for a good chuck of time. So don't worry about it for now, unless you know you want it then by all means. Otherwise, sleep on it for like 360 days, haha.

Glad I could help, truly.

 

What I did was get the cheapest 7200 RPM drive + ordered the M.2 tray at the same time. Then I cloned the 7200RPM to a NVMe and put a 2TB 2.5" SSD in, so I now have over 2TB of drive space + the fast NVMe. Overall it supports plenty of storage (up to 3-4TB right now, depending if you use M2/NVMe), but it does make you go through hoops to get it. My Clevo, in contrast, came with all screws,doodads to fully load it up with drives, vs Lenovo having you order things separately (plus not even having the 2.5" kits available).

 

Good choice. I am currently battling with Lenovo tech to get my Turbo Boost to work.

On the RAM side of things I can confirm that if you're trying to save money but like the idea of a Xeon/ECC RAM, I would check out with 1 stick of 16GB ECC RAM and then buy the rest elsewhere for half the price (I got mine from Crucial via Amazon). The one stick of ECC RAM from Lenovo must be present otherwise the P50 will not boot.

As far as mixing different memory sizes, I was looking at the spec of the new skylake CPUs and they now have "Intel® Flex Memory Access" which means: "facilitates easier upgrades by allowing different memory sizes to be populated and remain in dual-channel mode." I'm not 100% sure but I understand that as meaning; you can mix your RAM without losing system performance. Certainly on my P50 Xeon it has been running smoothly with the 8GB ECC RAM I purchased with it and three of the four 16GB ECC Crucial sticks I bought separately.

As for the RAID capability it is looking like a BIOS revision in the future will probably be the only hope. I did read that in BIOS 1.13 RAID was supported:

<1.13>
UEFI: 1.13 / ECP: 1.10
- (New) Supported RAID model.
- (New) Supported "Core Multi-Processing" and "Hyper-Threading" BIOS setup item.
- (Fix) Fixed an issue AC adapter might not be detected correctly.

I would really like to get RAID working at some point but it's not that much of a big deal at the moment.


As things stand I am going to let my 2 weeks to return my P50 go and if the tech guys cant fix the Turbo Boost within 31 days I can apparently get a DOA code to return for a full refund. Think I'll try out the Dell 5510 Xeon if that's the case.

Overall not the most enjoyable 2 weeks with a new Laptop!

 

Fix coming in mid-March according to this support thread:

https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkP...ack-quot-and-then-normal/td-p/2244978/page/11

 

I don't get it, To get 64gb ram on the xeon you need 1 "special" Lenovo ECC 16gb chip and the rest can be aftermarket?