Lenovo ThinkPad P70 Review

For those who’re doing productivity work or picture editing, an ordinary business laptop will do just wonderful. However, if you want to use professional 3D modeling software; perform advanced engineering tasks; or edit uncompressed, high-res video, a mobile workstation just like the Lenovo ThinkPad P70 may very well be your best option. Beginning at $1,862 ($3,459 as examined), the ThinkPad P70 is a heavyweight in each sense of the phrase, tipping the scale at 7.6 pounds and providing an Intel Xeon CPU, a 4K panel with a color calibrator, Nvidia’s Quadro professional graphics, and a blazing-fast PCIe SSD storage. Regardless of some 4K video playback issues, the ThinkPad P70 stands out from the crowd with a in-class keyboard and touchpad, a sturdy chassis and extremely accurate color.

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Lenovo ThinkPad P70 Review – Specifications

Processor                         Intel Xeon E3-1505M v5

RAM                                  16 GB

Storage                             512 GB SSD

Display                             17.3″ 4K (3840 x 1080)

Operating System           Windows 7 Pro

Graphics                          Nvidia Quadro M4000M 4GB

Dimensions                    16.4 x 10.8 x 1.2 inches/ 7.6 pounds

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Lenovo ThinkPad P70 Review – Design

For those who need an extremely powerful laptop to use on an oil rig, in a production van or the workplace, you will find that the ThinkPad P70 is far more portable than a desktop. However, weighing 7.6-pound and measuring 16.4 x 10.8 x 1.2-inches, this behemoth felt bulky once we carried it around the office, and it wouldn’t fit in a regular laptop bag. HP ZBook 17 G3 is a lighter 6.6 pounds, and Dell Precision 17 7710 weighs a comparable 7.6 pounds.

The ThinkPad P70 has the same raven-black aesthetic as different Lenovo ThinkPads, with no distinctive design flourishes. It’s only dashes of color are supplied by the red TrackPoint, stripes on the TrackPoint’s buttons and red lights blinking in the ThinkPad brand on its lid and deck.

The ThinkPad P70’s massive chassis leaves loads of room for ports. The right side of the laptop has three USB ports, a 3.5mm audio jack, an SD-card reader and a mini DisplayPort. The left side homes a fourth USB port and an optionally available smart-card reader. The back side contains two Thunderbolt ports, an HDMI-out port, an Ethernet connection and the proprietary power port.

Lenovo ThinkPad P70 Review – Keyboard, TouchPoint, and TrackPad

Like most other Lenovo ThinkPads, the P70 provides a in-class typing experience with the deep key journey, snappy feedback, and well-spaced keys. Spreadsheet professionals, in particular, will admire the large numeric keypad. Whereas a typical laptop offers about 1.5 millimeters of the key journey, the keys on Lenovo’s laptop have a deep 1.9 mm, and a robust 60 grams of actuation force is required to depress the keys.

The 4 x 2.2-inch touchpad on the ThinkPad P70 provided an extremely accurate navigation experience throughout our tests. I was able to roam around the 4K screen without a trace of jumpiness or sticking, whereas the pad’s surface offered just the right amount of friction towards my fingers. Multitouch gestures corresponding to pinch-to-zoom, four-finger swipe, and two-finger rotate worked flawlessly.

For those who’re open to using a pointing stick, you will get an even more comfortable navigation experience by using the TrackPoint, which sits between the G and H keys. Using this nub, I was able to move around the desktop and edit documents with pixel-perfect precision, without ever lifting my palms off the home row.

Lenovo ThinkPad P70 Review – Display

The ThinkPad P70 features a  17.3-inch display with the 4K resolution that provided accurate colors, sharp pictures, and wide viewing angles. It nearly goes without saying that, to see the Windows icons and menus clearly, it’s essential to turn up the display scaling on the 4K display.

At 277 units, the ThinkPad P70 was more than bright enough in our testing, but it surely was a bit dimmer than the Dell Precision 5510 (322 the same) and the category average (293.6 nits). Based on our colorimeter, the P70’s display can reproduce a formidable 157.6 % of the sRGB color gamut, which is well above the desktop replacement category average (112 %) however slightly behind the HP ZBook Studio G3 (169 %) and the Dell Precision 5510 (177 %).

Maybe due to the calibrator, the ThinkPad P70 registered a sturdy Delta-E error score of 0.69 (zero is ideal), which is far better than the category average (2.3), the HP’s ZBook Studio (2.4) and the Dell’s Precision 5510 (2.6).

Lenovo ThinkPad P70 Review – Graphics and Audio

The ThinkPad P70’s workstation-class Nvidia Quadro M4000M graphics chip and its 4GB of VRAM are designed to deal with professional duties such as 3D rendering. The laptop scored a robust 144,030 on 3DMark Ice Storm Unlimited graphics test. That’s way higher than the 113,088 category average, and the Nvidia Quadro M1000M-powered both the Dell Precision 5510 (117,636) and the HP’s ZBook Studio G3 (117,745).

Lenovo’s ThinkPad P70 won’t change your stereo. However, it offered strong audio output in our tests. Lenovo preloads Dolby Audio software, which lets you adjust the equalizer and has presets for Movies, Music, Video games and Voice. However, we discovered the Dynamic setting, which picks automatically, worked the best.

Lenovo ThinkPad P70 Review – Hardware and Performance

The ThinkPad P70 is among the first laptops out there with an Intel Xeon CPU. With the 2.8-GHz Intel’s Xeon E3-1505M v5, 16GB RAM, Nvidia’s Quadro M4000M graphics and a blazing-fast 512 GB PCIe SSD storage, our review model was designed to deal with probably the most demanding 3D animation, CAD work and video editing. This machine is overkill for mere mortals who only want to do some productivity work and multitasking. However, it nearly goes without saying that it handled almost everything we threw at it.

The Lenovo ThinkPad P70 scored a strong 13,158 on Geekbench 3 test that measures overall performance. That’s higher than the desktop replacement category average (12,541) however lower than Dell’s Precision 5510 (14,316) and the HP’s ZBook Studio G3 (14,276), both of which have the similar Intel Xeon E3-1505M CPU and 4K displays.

If you need to transfer files around on the P70, you won’t have to wait long. The laptop’s 512GB PCIe SSD took simply 6 seconds to finish the Transfer Test, which includes copying 4.97GB of combined media files. That’s a transfer rate of 848.2 MBps, which is well above the typical (524.5), the HP ZBook Studio G3 (508.9) and the Dell Precision 5510 (565).

Lenovo’s workstation took just 3 minutes and 23 seconds to finish the Spreadsheet Macro Test, by matching 20,000 names with their addresses in OpenOffice. The HP ZBook Studio G3 completed in the same time, however, both the Dell Precision 5510 (3:40) and the typical average(3:45) had been a little slower.

Lenovo ThinkPad P70 Review – Battery Life and Heat

Considering its power-hungry components and bulky physique, the ThinkPad P70’s battery life is magnificent. The superpowered system lasted a strong 5 hours and 53 minutes on our Battery Test, which includes steady Internet browsing over Wi-Fi. That’s an hour and a half more than the typical desktop average (4:24) and longer than the HP’s ZBook Studio G3 (5:08) and the Dell’s Precision 5510 (5:34). Both the rivals have 15-inch screens, which should use less power than a 17-incher, the P70’s runtime is even more spectacular.

Regardless of its powerful components, the Lenovo ThinkPad P70 stayed very cool throughout our tests. You could even use it on your lap without feeling the heat — provided that you’ve got a big lap. After streaming a 4K video on YouTube for 15 minutes, the laptop’s touchpad measured relatively cool 73 degrees Fahrenheit, the keyboard measured 76 degrees, and the bottom registered 86 degrees, which are all well under our 95-degree consolation threshold.

Lenovo ThinkPad P70 Review – Configuration Options

Our $3,459.50 evaluation configuration of the Lenovo ThinkPad P70 has an Intel Xeon E3-1505M v5 CPU, a 4K display, 16GB RAM, a 512GB NVME SSD storage, and a Nvidia’s Quadro M4000M GPU with 4GB VRAM. The $1,862 base model of the laptop has an Intel Core i7-6700HQ CPU, 8GB RAM, a 256GB SATA SSD storage, a Full-HD display and a Nvidia Quadro M600M GPU with 2GB VRAM. You’ll be able to configure the ThinkPad P70 with a Core i7 or Xeon CPU, Windows 7 or 10, a Full-HD or 4K display, up to 64GB RAM, up to a 512GB SSD and up to a Nvidia’s Quadro Graphics M5000M card.

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Conclusion

Combining a comfy keyboard with best in class performance and an extremely accurate display, the Lenovo ThinkPad P70 is the 17-inch ultraportable workstation of choice for professionals and companies that can’t afford to compromise the productivity and can afford its premium price. If you need something more portable, think about a 15-inch competitor like the Dell Precision 5510. However, if you want probably the most powerful large-screen business laptop available on the market, look no further than the ThinkPad P70.

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