Poised to offer desktop levels of performance, Intel’s recently announced Alder Lake-HX CPUs have found their way into Lenovo’s latest business laptop: The ThinkPad P16 Gen1. This model sits between the P15 and P17 to offer the best performance in a manageable footprint. Given that the P16 can pack up to a 16C/24T Core i9-HX chip alongside other powerful components, Lenovo says its engineers had to come up with an all-new cooling solution comprising dual fans, heat pipes, a dual vapor chamber, dual bypass design, as well as a keyboard air intake.
Temperatures will also need to be kept in check for the 16GB RTX A5500 GPU, up to 128GB DDR5 4800MHz RAM and 8TB of PCIe Gen4 storage that comes in the flagship version. Although Lenovo didn’t quote any thermal figures, the company claims that its cooling solution enables greater airflow through the chassis and keeps the laptop quieter during the heaviest of workloads from animators, architects, engineers and designers. Other specs of the ThinkPad P16 includes the 16:10 display, which starts with an FHD+ (1,920 x 1,200px) non-touch IPS panel and goes up to a UHD+ (3,840 x 2,400px) touch OLED screen. Depending on the variant, buyers get a 170W or 230W Slim power supply to charge the laptop’s 94WHr battery.
Lower-end P16s get an FHD webcam with privacy shutter instead of an IR-capable unit, while ports are aplenty across all variants. These include dual Thunderbolt 4 and USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 ports, 1 x USB-C 3.2 Gen 2, 1 x HDMI 2.1, and a mic/headphone combo jack. Buyers can also opt for an SD card reader and 4G LTE connectivity on top of Wi-Fi 6E. Expect these options and the aforementioned silicon to add considerably to the $1,979 starting price of the ThinkPad P16 once it arrives later this month.
