How To Clean The Top Of A Thinkpad P51

The mobile workstation arena contains several key players, who create uber-laptops specifically to handle resource-hungry applications such as video editing, 3D modeling, animation, visual effects, and high-end scientific analysis. HP and Dell have dedicated brands for their portable workstations, the ZBook and Precision lines respectively. Lenovo's entries are part of its uniquely recognizable ThinkPad family, simply bear their ain suffix. If regular ThinkPads are powerful, the ThinkPad P serial are in a class all their own.

The example seen here is the ThinkPad P51, the next step in evolution from the 15.6-inch ThinkPad P50 that we tested in Apr 2022. Notation that the serial also includes the thinner and lighter P51s; the larger, 17.3-inch ThinkPad P71; and the 14-inch P40 Yoga, which features a 360-degree hinge and Wacom pen technology for cartoon and sketching.

Permit's get back to the ThinkPad P51, which starts at $1,117 on Lenovo'southward site. Our review unit, withal, with its high-stop processor and graphics options and high-resolution IPS display, rings upward at $2,799 at CDW and other retailers. Let'due south see what that investment buys you and how the P51'south performance compares to other leading mobile workstations in its class.

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Design

Right out of the box, the P51 touts its ThinkPad heritage, from its keyboard to the diagonal ThinkPad logo emblazoned on the lid...

This comes as no surprise; the style lends the system a certain familiarity. The expect has worked for Lenovo so far, so why alter it?

At the same time, in that location is a noticeable difference betwixt the P51 and civilian ThinkPads. While information technology's hardly the just one to wear matte black, nor the merely one to pass MIL-STD 810G tests against shock, vibration, extreme temperatures, and other travel hazards, one can sense its sturdier build and rugged constitution, which are essential for a workstation that tin can withstand punishing workloads. For example, a large 3D rendering job tin taxation a CPU non simply for minutes but for hours, even days. You need solid construction inside and out to handle such a heavy load, and the robustly built P51 is up to the challenge.

In fact, with its industrial-forcefulness attitude and style, nosotros notwithstanding find the ThinkPad P51 to have handsome expert looks and a smart-looking profile...

Its dimensions are 1.02 by 14.9 by 9.9 inches. Its lid has a soft-touch, rubber-like texture, which comes from glass-cobweb-reinforced plastic...

That ensures a secure grip without fingerprint smudges. The lesser is fabricated of aluminum and magnesium.

Overall, the Lenovo feels proficient in your hands. While it isn't exactly a slimline with its weight of 5.6 pounds, we institute information technology to be quite manageable to acquit. A picayune extra heftiness to handle the elements doesn't bother us in a mobile workstation. Desire an ultrabook? Look elsewhere, but don't expect the same muscle.

Features

One of the beginning things we noticed upon powering upwards the machine was the fifteen.6-inch brandish, which in this case is a 4K (3,840 x 2,160) anti-glare in-airplane switching (IPS) panel...

Information technology's around $200 more than the full HD (ane,920-past-1,080) screen option and about $100 more than the 1080p touch brandish, for those who prefer a hands-on arroyo.

The P51's screen looked groovy when viewing photos, watching 4K video, and surfing the internet. The anti-glare, matte surface of the screen minimized whatsoever distracting reflections, and the view from extreme angles was quite good. Although information technology doesn't match the ten-flake colour depth of HP'southward DreamColor panels, information technology'south nevertheless a very high-quality, pleasing display with good contrast and sharpness.

Speaking of the display, one of the almost unique things about the ThinkPad P51 is the integrated X-Rite Pantone color calibrator, whose sensor sits right under the keyboard, left of the bear on pad...

To use it, you launch the color calibration software that comes with the machine, choose the white point and gamma response you want, and close the lid (which basically pushes the screen correct confronting the sensor). At that point, the measurement process volition begin automatically. When the process is finished, a beep volition sound and the brandish will be calibrated. That's pretty bang-up, particularly if y'all're involved with the visual arts or filmmaking.

The touch on pad is nicely proportioned and has a smooth, notwithstanding grippy anti-glare surface (like the residuum of the machine). There are left, correct, and middle buttons above and below the pad, a vital characteristic for CAD work.

The keyboard of the ThinkPad P51 is a cut above...

The keys themselves are comfortable to blazon on, and there's a separate keypad for those who enter a lot of numeric data. The keyboard also features backlighting, which you tin can toggle through two effulgence levels (plus off) by pressing the Fn fundamental and space bar. Naturally, y'all'll find Lenovo'due south trademark TrackPoint nub embedded in the keyboard for moving the cursor without taking your fingers off the dwelling row.

There are also dedicated volume and mute keys located atop the numeric keypad. On the bottom right of the keyboard is a fingerprint reader for enhanced security.

Speaking of volume, there's a narrow speaker grille above the keyboard. While the sound level is decent, at that place is very little bass response. Therefore, music sounds somewhat tinny. Audiophiles or music producers will need to plug in speakers, sound interfaces, or at least headphones.

Most of the ThinkPad P51's ports can exist found on the back of the machine...

Nearly other mobile workstations have ports on the left and right sides. Lenovo's break from tradition here is fine with us; why not put them on the back, similar to where a desktop PC'southward would be?

Anyway, at the rear, you lot'll notice two USB three.0 (Blazon A) ports...

The one with the battery symbol is always available to power or recharge handheld devices, even if the P51 goes into sleep mode. There's too an Ethernet jack, a Thunderbolt 3 port, an HDMI video output, and the power connector. Additionally, you'll notice a vent for the cooling fan exhaust.

On the organisation's right side, there's a headphone/microphone audio combo jack, two more USB iii.0 ports, a mini DisplayPort, a Kensington lock slot, and another exhaust vent...

On the left side of the computer, you lot'll discover a full-size SD card reader (important for photographers) and an ExpressCard/34 slot (of import for, um, those who demand one)...

On the lesser of the P51 is a connector for a proprietary Lenovo docking station, if you don't want to attach 1 via Thunderbolt 3.

As with most mobile workstations, the P51 comes with a 720p HD webcam and a built-in microphone for videoconferencing or basic video recording.

Aside from the Pantone color calibration application we discussed before, software on the Lenovo ThinkPad P51 includes the Lenovo App Explorer, where you tin can browse through and install various programs (some by Lenovo, some not; some useful, some non), and the Lenovo Companion, a comprehensive, well-designed application that allows you to examination, configure, upgrade, and get information well-nigh your P51.

For networking, the ThinkPad comes with an Intel dual-ring 802.11ac Wi-Fi carte plus Bluetooth 4.1. Those who are on the road a lot might want to add a Qualcomm Snapdragon X7 LTE-A WWAN card for an extra $140.

Components

The ThinkPad P51 is available with your option of a 7th Generation Intel Core i7 processor or an Intel Xeon E3 chip. Our review unit came with the topmost Xeon bachelor, the E3-1535v6, which has an 8MB cache and a clock speed of three.1GHz (turbo four.2GHz). It also supports ECC retentivity for those who need incorruptible data storage. This quad-core Xeon screamer will get yous through heavy media, blitheness, and CAD projects in stride.

For graphics, the Lenovo ThinkPad P51 we reviewed packed a powerful Nvidia Quadro M2200 with 4GB of GDDR5 memory and 1,024 CUDA processing cores. This powerful ISV-certified GPU offers lots of ability for 3D professionals and is capable of GPU rendering jobs with Octane and Redshift. Core i7 buyers can opt for a Quadro M1200 instead, which comes with the same 4GB of GDDR5 memory but simply has 640 CUDA cores, so functioning will non be as bully. Information technology tin also play games rather well, but that'due south not what it's optimized for. The Quadro cards are built for production work, peculiarly within applications from the likes of Adobe and Autodesk.

Storage options on the ThinkPad P51 are considerable. In club to gain access to the storage, you'll need to remove a lesser panel of the workstation, which is done easily enough later on loosening a few screws. In that location are two M.two 2280-type slots where you can install NVMe solid-land drives (upwards to 1TB each), configurable in RAID 0 or 1. There is likewise a 2.5-inch hard drive bay that tin can also arrange upwards to 1TB. That ways the workstation can handle upwardly to 3TB of combined storage. That'southward impressive. Our review unit had a single, 512GB PCIe SSD.

As far equally memory is concerned, the Lenovo tin concord 64GB of either ECC or not-ECC memory (expect to pay a fleck more for ECC). That is an aplenty amount of retentivity, on par with other mobile workstations out in that location, and is more than than enough to handle most media and mail service-production challenges these days. Access to the two SoDIMM slots tin can be easily gained after removing the lesser console. The machine we reviewed had 16GB of RAM installed.

The ThinkPad P51 also has an easily removable six-cell lithium-polymer 90WHr battery, which slips out without removing the lesser panel. That means you tin can tote around an extra battery in case you run out of power.

Performance Testing

As mentioned before, pricing for the ThinkPad P51 starts at $1,117. The unit of measurement nosotros reviewed costs effectually $ii,799 and contained a 7th-generation Intel Xeon E3-1535M v6 processor; an Nvidia Quadro M2200 GPU; a fifteen.vi-inch 4K IPS display; 16GB of DDR4-2400 memory; and a 512GB NVMe SSD. The operating organization was 64-chip Windows 10 Pro.

For our benchmark charts, we matched the Lenovo ThinkPad P51 against a range of other fifteen.6-inch mobile workstations. It squares off confronting its previous-gen predecessor, the ThinkPad P50, as well as HP'south ZBook Studio G4 and ZBook 15 G4, Dell's Precision 3510 and Precision 5510, and the MSI WE62. Let'due south take a expect at the results.

Synthetic Tests

PCMark 8 is a holistic performance suite developed by the benchmark specialists at Futuremark. It contains several presets that simulate unlike real-world productivity and content-creation workflows. Nosotros apply the Work Conventional scenario to appraise overall organisation operation for role-centric tasks such as word processing, spreadsheeting, Web browsing, and videoconferencing. The test generates a proprietary numeric score; college numbers are improve.

The ThinkPad P51 finished in the center of the pack in this test, while the HP ZBook xv G4 powered to showtime place and the Dell 3510 and MSI WE62 were overachievers despite being the only Core i7 systems confronting a host of Xeons. Still, all of these scores and systems are sheer overkill for the likes of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

Adjacent is Maxon's CPU-crunching Cinebench R15 test, which is fully threaded to make use of all bachelor processor cores and threads while using the CPU rather than GPU to render a complex image. The result is a proprietary score indicating a PC's suitability for processor-intensive workloads.

In this test, which taxes the CPU in a 3D rendering challenge, the ThinkPad P51 excelled with a score of 843, handily surpassing every other auto in the roundup. The ZBook Studio G4 was surprisingly off the stride considering it has the same Xeon processor.

Cinebench is ofttimes a good predictor of our Handbrake video editing exam, some other tough, threaded workout that's highly CPU-dependent. In it, we put a stopwatch on test systems equally they transcode a standard five-infinitesimal clip of 1080p video (the Pixar brusk Dug's Special Mission) to a smartphone format. Considering this is a timed examination, lower results are ameliorate.

Once once again, the P51 led the pack. It barely edged out the HP ZBook fifteen G4, but a win's a win.

We also run a custom Adobe Photoshop image editing criterion. Using Photoshop version CS6, we apply a series of 11 complex filters and effects to a standard JPEG test image. We time each functioning and, at the end, add up the total execution time. Equally with Handbrake, lower times are better here.

The ZBooks asserted authority in the Photoshop test, putting the P51 in third place.

Graphics & Gaming Tests

Our first graphics test is Futuremark'south 3DMark, which measures relative graphics muscle past rendering sequences of highly detailed, gaming-mode 3D graphics that emphasize particles and lighting. The low-resolution Cloud Gate preset (meant for entry-level PCs) isn't much of a claiming for today's systems, merely the Fire Strike Extreme preset makes even high-end gaming systems pause a sweat.

In the 3DMark test, the Lenovo ThinkPad P51 went pretty much neck and neck with the MSI WE62 and the HP ZBook xv—not a stunning surprise, since the three share the aforementioned Nvidia Quadro M2200 graphics.

Next come two grueling DirectX 11 gaming simulations, Heaven 4.0 and Valley ane.0. Unigine's popular tests push graphics processors to the limit in flyovers of a skyborne steampunk village (Heaven) and a stormy nature scene (Valley), both packed with particle and lighting effects. We examination laptops at medium epitome-quality settings at i,366x768 resolution and once more at top or ultra quality settings at their native screen resolution.

The low-resolution tests are far too easy (and besides CPU-bound) for these mobile workstations, while the P51 is handicapped in the native-resolution subtests by having to push all the extra pixels of its 4K display. That left the MSI and HP ZBook xv G4 to cruise to a triumphant finish.

Battery Life

After fully recharging the laptop, we gear up the car in ability-relieve mode (as opposed to balanced or high-operation mode) and brand a few other battery-conserving tweaks in preparation for our unplugged video rundown test. In this test, we loop a video—a locally stored MP4 file containing the full The Lord of the Rings trilogy—with screen brightness set at 50 percent and volume at 100 percent until the system conks out.

Every bit far as bombardment life goes, the Lenovo P51 came in a respectable 2nd, just 23 minutes behind the stamina gnaw, the HP ZBook 15 G4. Both systems' battery life is beauteous.

Finally, we briefly tested the ThinkPad P51 with some workstation-specific benchmarks, and were impressed by the results. The system finished POV-Ray 3.seven's off-screen rendering exercise, for example, in a swift 143 seconds, outrunning the HP ZBook 15 G4 (161 seconds) and MSI WE62 (164 seconds). In SPECviewperf, a benchmark that renders and rotates solid and wireframe models based on popular applications' viewsets, the P51 posted lxx frames per second in Creo and 100fps in SolidWorks, compared to the ZBook 15 G4's 67 and 91, respectively.

Conclusion

At that place is no question that the Lenovo ThinkPad P51 is an impressive 15.six-inch mobile workstation and ane of the top-performing contenders in its grade. The 15.six-inch form factor is very popular amongst mobile workstation users, especially when it offers crystal-articulate 4K resolution, and although it's not super light, it'due south easy plenty to accept on the road. Those who require still more power at the expense of some portability tin bank check out the larger, heavier model P71.

There's really a lot to like nigh the ThinkPad P51: its sturdy build, topnotch Xeon processor and Nvidia GPU, flexible storage options, and ample memory capacity, among other things. If you lot are doing challenging media product and mail work, video editing, or estimator animation, put the Lenovo on your short list before buying. Thumbs upwards.

Lenovo ThinkPad P51

The Bottom Line

Lenovo's latest industrial-force mobile workstation delivers the goods for high-stop rendering and media creation while being surprisingly portable.

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Source: https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/lenovo-thinkpad-p51

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