Lenovo ThinkPad P1, P72 mobile workstations pack plenty of power to go

Stack Lenovo's newest ThinkPad P1 and P72 mobile workstations up against any other notebook and there's a Crocodile Dundee joke lurking just around the corner. Something along the lines of "That's not a laptop... this is a laptop!”

These new additions to the ThinkPad portfolio aren’t just laptops – they’re portable versions of muscle-bound desktop workstations aimed at professionals who need plenty of grunt on the go for crunching 3D models, resource-intensive engineering and CAD/CAM apps, to name a few.

Lenovo ThinkPad P1: punches well above its weight

The all-new ThinkPad P1 takes centre stage as Lenovo’s “thinnest, lightest and sleekest” mobile workstation, measuring just 1.8cm at its black carbon-fibre waist and nudging the scales at a barely-there 1.7kg, which by way of comparison is less than Apple’s flagship MacBook Pro.

Yet there’s a lot of power in this surprisingly svelte ultralight, starting with 8th Gen Intel Core or Xeon processors – right up to the Core i9 – with up to 64GB of superfast RAM and a 4TB solid state drive matched to Nvidia’s latest Quadro P1000 or P2000 pro-grade graphics cards.

The 15.6 inch panel comes in your choice of HD or 4K resolution, with the latter option also landing as a touchscreen and the optional sliding ThinkShutter security cover to mask the inbuilt webcam.

Lenovo has even trimmed the size of the P1’s power supply, with the brickette now 35% smaller and lighter than its predecessors, although the P1’s Rapid Charge technology makes it quicker to juice up for a full 13 hours of battery life.

The P1 has a dollar each way for USB connectivity with a pair ofThunderbolt 3-enabled USB-C ports and two standard USB-A ports plus HDMI, Gigabit Ethernet and a smart card reader.

Lenovo’s ThinkPad P1 will be available in Australia from the end of August starting at $2,799.

Lenovo ThinkPad P72: when size matters

If the P1’s 15.6-inch display leaves you short of visual real estate, the flagship ThinkPad P72 stretches the screen to 17.3 inches, again in HD or UHD touchscreen variants.

The hulking P72 is more of a full-on desktop replacement than the P1, doubling the weight to 3.4kg as well as in RAM to a maximum 128GB, up to Nvidia’s Quadro P5200 GPU and an optional 16GB of Intel Optane memory cache.

The new P72 runs on Intel’s 8th Gen silicon, including the six-core i7, i9 and Xeon superslabs, and slots in above the P71, which Lenovo says will remain on the market “for the time being”.

The Lenovo ThinkPad P72 will be available in Australia from the beginning of September, starting at $2,599.

David Flynn

David Flynn is the Editor-in-Chief of Executive Traveller and a bit of a travel tragic with a weakness for good coffee, shopping and lychee martinis.