The Lenovo ThinkPad P70 Review: Mobile Xeon Workstation
by Brett Howse on June 30, 2016 8:00 AM ESTWireless
The ThinkPad P70 features the Intel Dual-Band Wireless AC-8260 wireless card, which has become pretty popular on Skylake equipped laptops.
The new wireless implantation from Intel continues to impress. Only the Dell XPS 15 manages to beat it, and it is a 3x3 implementation, compared to the 2x2:2 offering from the ThinkPad. This is one of the few solutions where I don’t feel like I need to plug it into Ethernet to get any real work done, but of course there is Gigabit Ethernet available on the P70 if you do need it. The previous generation AC-7260 and 7265 would average around 400 Mbps, so Intel has done some great work on the new model to bump it up so significantly.
Thermals and Noise
The ThinkPad P70 is a large, hefty, mobile workstation, and it needs to be able to run without throttling under heavy workloads. To get a true sense of this, we really would have needed the model with the M5000M, since it would have the highest TDP, but we’ll still check out the M4000M model.
With a weight starting at over 7.5 lbs, and a large chassis to work with, the expectation is that heat and noise should not be the issue they are on smaller machines. On the noise front, there is good news. Most of the time when just doing tasks on the desktop, the ThinkPad P70 doesn’t make any noise at all. The noise floor in my office is about 35 dB(A) and the P70 doesn’t even register. Under load, the noise only goes up to 46 dB(A) which is very tolerable. Being a large machine, it has room for larger fans as well which also makes the pitch much lower. Noise on the P70 is not an issue.
A concern with a low noise level workstation might be that thermals are going to be affected. To test the P70 out, it was run with Furmark while GPU-Z was logging the GPU, and the results are below.
The ThinkPad P70 has no issues managing the heat output of the GPU at full load, with no signs of throttling due to power or GPU temperature. The GPU frequency remains locked on during the entire run.
A bigger test would be the M5000M, but judging by the review unit available, the ThinkPad engineers have done enough to have it handle the full GPU load, without having a very loud fan to get rid of the heat.
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JoeMonco - Friday, July 1, 2016 - link
He earn $7500 per hour with new laptop!Holliday75 - Friday, July 1, 2016 - link
$7500 per hour? Damn man I'm going to get one of those laptops right now!sorten - Sunday, July 3, 2016 - link
You just compared a Mazda Miata (SP2) with a Ford F150 pickup truck (P50). The SP2 has a TDP of 15W and weighs 2lbs. The P50 has a TDP of 45W and weighs 7lbs.lefenzy - Friday, July 1, 2016 - link
The placement of the Print Screen key is irritatingly non-standard.jonp - Saturday, July 23, 2016 - link
this lenovo line continues to use the non-professional dumbed down keyboard that plagues all of the lenovo thinkpads. the last great ibm inherited keyboards were in the x220, t420, t520... they are squandering their chance to build great laptops that they got from ibm...javishd - Friday, July 1, 2016 - link
I've got the p70 and I would really like to know if I can upgrade the gpu. It's mxm so it's physically possible. I'm just not sure about heatsink compatibility and if there is a hardware whitelist.Notmyusualid - Sunday, July 3, 2016 - link
You are right to be concerned about a possible hardware white-list, but if they GPU you intend to install is one that the manufacturer lists as an option - then you'll be just fine.If not, say you want a 980M in it, then you can take your chances, and probably be just fine. If NOT, then you need a custom bios, and there are people out there hacking bios for profit and fun. This I've used before with no issues, to unlock the ability to disable Hyper Threading that was seriously hurting an application that I needed to run.
Just be careful... recently there is a new MXM sized-gpu out there. Its much wider, and demands more power. Compare the dimensions of your existing GPU, and the '980 Notebook' to see what I mean.
Don't forget ESD!
lhl12 - Wednesday, July 6, 2016 - link
I'd love to see a review of the new Dell Precision 17" laptop as well, plus a comparison to the P70.noodleclaus - Thursday, July 28, 2016 - link
Note that the P70 is available in 1920x1080 with a touch screen. Incredibly, his screen does not have palm rejection!Lovely Sharma - Saturday, November 16, 2019 - link
No doubt, it's one of the most powerful mobile workstation that I found. I have been searching for a laptop for 3D modeling, and the Lenovo ThinkPad P70 everywhere on many blog such as: https://10hotdeals.com/best-laptops-solidworks/I am finally going to buy this machine. Thanks for the helpful review.