Some laptops, while powerful, are merely califragilisticexpialidocious. The Lenovo ThinkPad P16 Gen 2 (starts at $1,849.62; $4,019 as tested) earns the super- prefix: It's a sumo-weight workstation built for the most demanding CAD and CGI rendering, engineering, and scientific programs. The P16 combines ThinkPads' impeccable build quality with the raw muscle to crunch through the largest datasets. For those who can afford it (and lift it), the P16 sits just one rung below our Editors' Choice winner, the HP ZBook Fury 16 G11, on the workstation laptop ladder.
Configurations and Design: Endless Choice
While HP at least gives you word clues like ZBook Fury versus ZBook Power or ZBook Firefly, Lenovo makes you look for single letters to differentiate its three 16-inch mobile workstations. The ThinkPad P16s is the lightest (4.01 pounds) and least expandable (only 2TB of storage). The in-between ThinkPad P16v (4.9 pounds) holds up to 96GB of RAM and peaks with Nvidia's RTX 3000 Ada GPU.
The ThinkPad P16 Gen 2 seen here is the beefiest, both in terms of weight (6.5 pounds) and capability. Powered by 13th and 14th Generation Intel Core processors instead of the Core Ultras of its siblings, it allows up to 192GB of memory (128GB if you opt for ultra-precise error-correcting-code RAM), dual 4TB solid-state drives, and the flagship RTX 5000 Ada. It starts at under $1,900 for a Core i5 configuration that—with Windows 11 Home, only 8GB of RAM, a tiny 256GB SSD, and Intel UHD integrated graphics—doesn't deserve to be called a workstation.
Spending more ($4,019 for our test model 21FA0055US) brings a night-and-day difference: a 20-core Intel Core i7-14700HX CPU (two steps down from the Core i9-13980HX ceiling), 32GB of RAM, a 1TB NVMe solid-state drive, Windows 11 Pro, and Nvidia's second-fastest RTX 4000 Ada professional GPU with 12GB of display memory. It also replaces the 1,920-by-1,200-pixel base display with a 2,560-by-1,600 non-touch IPS panel with a rapid 165Hz refresh rate. Two 3,840-by-2,400-pixel displays top the options list, one a super-bright IPS unit and the other an OLED touch screen.
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Crafted from aluminum with a bit of magnesium in ThinkPads' trademark matte black, the P16 Gen 2 measures 1.19 by 14.3 by 10.5 inches, bulkier even than its fellow behemoth, the Fury 16 G11 (1.13 by 14.3 by 9.8 inches and more than a pound lighter at 5.3 pounds). By contrast, our favorite among slightly more portable and less expandable workstations, the Dell Precision 5690, is just 0.87 by 13.9 by 9.5 inches and 4.46 pounds.
Thickish bezels surround the display, with an IR face-recognition webcam centered above. (Lenovo cites an 83.4% screen-to-body ratio.) A fingerprint reader built into the power button gives you two ways to skip passwords with Windows Hello. Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth are standard; 4G LTE mobile broadband is optional. Three years of Lenovo Premier Support with on-site service are included.
The laptop's left side holds an always-on 5Gbps USB Type-A port, a data-transfer-only 10Gbps USB Type-C port, and an audio jack. On the right are SD and SmartCard slots, another USB-A port, and a Kensington security lock slot. Two USB-C Thunderbolt 4 ports join an HDMI monitor port and the connector for the bulky AC adapter at the rear.
Using the Lenovo ThinkPad P16: Sit Up Straight
We're so glad the ThinkPad P16's keyboard skips Microsoft's mandated, useless Copilot key that we forgive its putting the Fn and Ctrl keys in each other's place at the bottom left (you can swap them into proper alphabetical order with the supplied Lenovo Vantage software). The roomy, backlit keyboard has a numeric keypad, the trademark TrackPoint cursor controller with three mouse buttons, and a midsized touchpad with a comfortable click. It has the expected exemplary ThinkPad layout and a shallow, nearly silent typing feel.
The 1080p webcam captures well-lit, detailed images with decent color and minimal noise or static. It supports Windows' recently added auto framing and background blur options. Lenovo View software lets you tweak the video quality's light, intensity, and color and can overlay your headshot on a presentation; it can also warn you and blur the display if someone sneaks up behind, nag you about poor posture, and remind you to rest your eyes periodically.
Speakers above the keyboard produce loud and clear sound; it's a little harsh or hollow around the edges but has a decent amount of bass, and it's easy to make out overlapping tracks. Dolby Access software provides dynamic, game, music, movie, voice presets, and an equalizer. Lenovo Vantage centralizes system settings and updates, cloud-based Wi-Fi security, and zero-touch lock (putting the system on standby when the webcam detects your absence).
The 16-inch screen is delightfully bright, with wide viewing angles and pristine white backgrounds instead of dingy. Colors are rich and well saturated; contrast is deep enough to reveal details in dark areas; and viewing angles are wide. We might wish for 4K instead of 2.5K resolution, but the display is crisp with no pixelation around the edges of letters. Both photos and videos look handsome. The screen is X-Rite factory color-calibrated, with utility software that lets you select sRGB, Rec. 709 (HDTV), or DICOM (medical office imaging) color profiles.
Testing the Lenovo ThinkPad P16: (Almost) Second To None
For our benchmark charts, we pitted the ThinkPad P16 Gen 2 against two other mobile workstations, the HP ZBook Fury 16 G11 and Dell Precision 5690, and an Editors' Choice award-winning content-creator laptop, the Asus ProArt P16. The last slot went to an over-the-top gaming laptop in the Lenovo's price range, the Razer Blade 18.
Productivity & Content Creation Tests
Our primary overall benchmark, UL's PCMark 10, puts a system through its paces in productivity apps ranging from web browsing to word processing and spreadsheet work. Its Full System Drive subtest measures a PC's storage throughput.
Three more tests are CPU-centric or processor-intensive: Maxon's Cinebench 2024 uses that company's Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene; Primate Labs' Geekbench 6.3 Pro simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning; and we see how long it takes the video editing tool HandBrake 1.8 to convert a 12-minute clip from 4K to 1080p resolution.
Finally, workstation maker Puget Systems' PugetBench for Creators rates a PC's image editing prowess with a variety of automated operations in Adobe Photoshop 25. And Geekbench AI is one of the first AI processing benchmarks.
All these laptops are ridiculous, wild overkill for everyday apps like Word and Excel (roughly doubling what we consider a decent score in PCMark 10, for example). The Razer Blade cut ahead in most tests, but the ThinkPad more than held its own as the only Core i7 in a crowd of Core i9 and Ryzen AI 9 machines, never falling below the middle of the extremely fast pack.
Graphics Tests
We challenge laptops' graphics with a quartet of animations or gaming simulations from UL's 3DMark test suite. Wild Life (1440p) and Wild Life Extreme (4K) use the Vulkan graphics API to measure GPU speeds. Steel Nomad's regular and Light subtests focus on APIs more commonly used for game development, like Metal and DirectX 12, to assess gaming geometry and particle effects. A fifth test, Solar Bay, emphasizes ray-tracing performance.
Whether from the GeForce consumer or the RTX "Ada Lovelace" professional side, these systems represent Nvidia's finest and fastest mobile graphics. The Lenovo was a worthy runner-up to the Razer and its fiery GeForce RTX 4090. Neither demanding games nor 3D rendering apps can daunt it.
Workstation & Creative Tests
We challenge content creator laptops with two formidable video editing workflows via PugetBench for Creators, DaVinci Resolve and Adobe Premiere, and the official benchmark of the open-source rendering app Blender. Our ultimate workstation benchmark, SPECviewperf 2020, renders, rotates, and zooms in and out of solid and wireframe models using view sets from popular independent software vendor (ISV) applications.
The P16 Gen 2 won gold in both video editing contests and beat the ZBook in two out of three SPECviewperf runs. Even with the third-fastest available processor and second-fastest available GPU, it's a titanic performer for tasks that easily justify its high asking price.
Battery & Display Tests
We test each laptop's battery life by playing a locally stored 720p video file (the open-source Blender movie Tears of Steel) with display brightness at 50% and audio volume at 100%. We make sure the battery is fully charged before the test, with Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting turned off.
We also use a Datacolor SpyderX Elite monitor calibration sensor and Windows software to measure a laptop screen's color saturation—what percentage of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 color gamuts or palettes the display can show—and its 50% and peak brightness in nits (candelas per square meter).
All except the Razer Blade showed quite effective battery life for such powerful portables (we timed the ThinkPad with screen refresh set to 60Hz), and all have exceptionally bright and colorful displays. The Lenovo's color coverage is just a little disappointing—we don't expect IPS panels to match the vividness of OLED, but we like to see percentages in the 80s rather than 70s—so we might spring for the optional 4K OLED screen if we were buying.
Verdict: Toss a Coin, Spend Many Bills
The Lenovo ThinkPad P16 Gen 2 is a fabulously powerful and configurable top-end workstation. In our book, its superior keyboard outweighs the higher storage capacity of its superheavyweight rival, the HP ZBook Fury G11. (If you need more than 4TB, get an external Thunderbolt 4 drive array.) Only one of the two can claim our Editors' Choice award in the unlimited class, and HP's DreamColor display and Wolf Security suite narrowly favor the ZBook. Still, the P16 is a spectacularly compelling alternative.
Lenovo's flagship mobile workstation, the ThinkPad P16 Gen 2, is a heavyweight performer for demanding professional apps in every sense of the word.
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