Lenovo ThinkPad P70: The Price/Performance Leader

We have reviewed many Lenovo workstations over the years, most recently the flagship ThinkStation P900. But, we cannot remember the last time we looked at one of the company’s mobile workstations. With the arrival of the Lenovo ThinkPad P70, however, we rectify that situation.

According to Lenovo, the ThinkPad P series is a new line of notebooks created for professionals who need the highest performance from a mobile workstation. The P70 marks the top of the line, addressing the needs of designers and engineers who run the most demanding applications and want a large screen and lots of storage. It is also the first new 17-in. mobile workstation Lenovo has released since 2009.

The Lenovo ThinkPad P70 comes housed in a charcoal gray case. The base is sculpted from magnesium and aluminum and the top is molded in glass fiber and polyphenylene sulfide. The system measures 16.38 x 10.85 x 1.35 in. and weighs 7.9 lbs. The rather large, flat, 230-watt external power supply (7.81 x 3.87 x 1 in.) adds another 2.1 lbs., including its cables.

Raising the lid reveals a 17.3-in. display and a 105-key backlit keyboard with separate numeric keypad that ranks as one of the best laptop keyboards we’ve encountered in quite a while. Lenovo offers a choice of three different IPS (in-plane switching) matte surface displays, including FHD (1920x1080) with or without touch. Our evaluation unit came with a 4K UHD (3840x2160) panel rated at 92% of the NTSC color gamut, adding $260 to the price. A 720p webcam flanked by a pair of microphones is centered above the display.

A round power button is located adjacent to the upper-right corner of the numeric keypad while a fingerprint reader is positioned to its lower-right corner. A newly designed touchpad with three dedicated buttons is centered below the spacebar. The touchpad is coated with a premium material called “crystal silk,” which Lenovo claims helps resist wear and provides a smoother feel. There is also a red pointing stick nestled between the G, H and B keys with its own three buttons directly below the spacebar. A pair of stereo speakers are concealed below a perforated screen just above the keyboard. The caps lock and number lock keys each have their own LED as do separate keys dedicated to the speakers and microphone. There is also a hard drive activity light located below the display.

Recognizing that color temperatures and screen brightness can drift over time, Lenovo also includes a color sensor (a $70 option on the base model), located to the left of the touchpad. A color calibration tool appears in the Windows taskbar and turns red if you haven’t calibrated the display in more than 30 days. A single click starts the X-Rite Pantone calibration software that uses the sensor to ensure that the display quality remains consistent and accurate over the life of the computer. After choosing the desired settings, you simply follow the instructions to close the lid and allow the tool to calibrate the display, which takes just over a minute.

Lots of Choices

The Lenovo ThinkPad P70 is built around one of the latest Intel quad-core Skylake processors. The base configuration, with a starting price of $2,069, comes with a 2.6GHz Intel Core i7-6700HQ CPU. Other choices include the 2.7GHz Core i7-6820HQ and the 2.8GHz Intel Xeon E3-1505M v5 processor that came in our evaluation unit, adding $315 to the price. That CPU has an 8MB Smart Cache, a 45-watt thermal design power (TDP) rating, and a maximum turbo frequency of 3.7GHz. As we have witnessed in other reviews, systems equipped with these new 14nm processors benefit from significant performance improvement and much greater battery life. While not the fastest CPU in the new Xeon E5-1500 family (the Dell Precision 7710 came with the 2.9GHz E3-1535M and Intel just released several other processors with base frequencies between 2.8 and 3.0GHz), the E3-1505M delivered an excellent balance of speed and longevity.

Although the CPU includes integrated Intel HD Graphics P530, like other mobile workstations the ThinkPad P70 includes discrete graphics in the form of an NVIDIA Quadro GPU (graphics processing unit). The base P70 configuration uses a Quadro M500M with 2GB of memory. Other choices include the Quadro M3000M and M5000M. Our system came with an NVIDIA Quadro M4000M (adding $650), with 4GB of GDDR5 memory. This 100-watt GPU provides 1,280 CUDA (compute unified device architecture) cores, a 256-bit interface and a bandwidth of 160GB per second.

Lenovo offers lots of memory options. The base P70 configuration comes with 8GB of non-ECC DDR4 memory. Other choices include up to 64GB and ECC memory is an option. Our system came with 16GB of ECC RAM (adding $150 to the cost), installed as a single 16GB DDR4-2133MHz SODIMM (small outline dual in-line memory module) in one of the two memory sockets concealed beneath the keyboard. While these are a bit difficult to access, users can add more memory using the two additional sockets accessed by removing the bottom cover.

Although the entry-level system comes with a 256GB SSD SATA3 OPAL2.0 drive, our evaluation unit came with a 512GB SSD PCIe-NVMe drive, installed in one of the two PCIe slots and adding another $350. This is a very worthwhile choice, because PCIe-NVMe M.2 drives can achieve peak data transfer rates more than three times that of SATA drives. The P70 can accommodate a second identical drive ($950) as well as hard drives of 500GB and 1TB capacities, and the system supports RAID 0 and 1 configurations.

Connectivity options also abound. The right side provides a combo microphone/headphone jack, three USB 3.0 ports, a media-card slot, an ExpressCard slot, a mini DisplayPort connector, and a security lock slot. The left side houses an always-on USB 3.0 port that can charge USB devices whenever the computer is connected to AC power, even if the system is off. There is also a smart card slot and a serial ultrabay that can accommodate an optical drive or secondary hard drive on some models. The rear panel provides two Thunderbolt 3/USB Type C connectors that can be used with external displays or storage devices. There is also an HDMI port, RJ45 Ethernet jack and the connector for the external power supply. The bottom of the case features a docking connector and an easily removable battery. Inside the battery compartment you will also find a micro-SIM card slot. There is also a pair holes designed to drain liquids in the event you accidentally spill on the keyboard.

Dual-band Wi-Fi and Bluetooth come standard. Although an 8-cell 96Whr Li-Ion battery is the only choice, it kept our ThinkPad P70 running for a respectable 5.25 hours, just 15 minutes less than the Dell Precision 7710. The Lenovo mobile workstation remained cool and nearly silent throughout our tests, exactly what one expects from a high-quality workstation.

Lots of Power

The Lenovo ThinkPad P70 also lived up to all expectations in terms of performance. On the SPECviewperf benchmark, which focuses on graphics, the P70 scored near the top, even outperforming the Dell Precision 7710 on most datasets.

On the new SPEC SOLIDWORKS 2015 benchmark, the ThinkPad P70 also outperformed every other mobile workstation we have tested to date, with the exception of the Eurocom Sky X9, which was equipped with a CPU normally found in desktop systems and a more powerful GPU.

The Lenovo ThinkPad P70 also turned in excellent results on the very demanding SPECwpc benchmark, although its high marks were slightly below those of several other systems we recently reviewed.

And on the AutoCAD rendering test, the Lenovo ThinkPad P70 turned in the best results we have ever recorded for a mobile workstation, completing our test rendering in an average of 50 seconds despite being equipped with a slightly slower CPU than many of its modern competitors. These results continue to prove Lenovo’s ability to combine and configure quality components to achieve optimum performance.

Although the base configuration comes with Windows 10 Home (Windows 10 Professional is a $30 option), Lenovo pre-loaded Windows 7 professional 64-bit, likely due to the fact that some engineering applications are optimized for this older operating system. But Windows 7 is not optimized for 4K displays. As a result, even with display scaling set to 200% (the default is 150%), many dialog boxes were difficult to read. Those purchasing a system with a 3840x2160 display should consider switching to Windows 10, which is optimized for such high resolutions.

While the standard warranty covers the system for just one year with depot or carry-in service included, additional coverage is available at the time of purchase that can extend the warranty for up to five years, including accidental damage protection. We counted 18 different warranty options—our system came with a three-year warranty. Lenovo also offers a ThinkPad workstation dock ($299) that works with P50 and P70 workstations and provides lots of additional ports—a great option for anyone who travels often but works at a desk when in their office.

The ThinkPad P70 is certified on more than 100 different applications from ISVs (independent software vendors) including Autodesk, Dassault Systèmes, PTC and Siemens PLM Software. You can build a custom configuration via the Lenovo website (where our P70 priced out at $3,623 after an automatic 10% online discount) or purchase a fixed configuration through Lenovo’s Business Partner Channel (where our P70 was listed for $3,745). Either way, the Lenovo ThinkPad P70 is priced lower than its competition, making it the new price/performance leader.

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Mobile Workstations Compared 

	Lenovo ThinkPad P70 17.3-inch 2.8GHz Intel Xeon E3-1505M v5 quad-core CPU, NVIDIA Quadro M4000M, 16GB RAM	Lenovo ThinkPad P50 15.6-inch 2.8GHz Intel Xeon E3-1505M v5 quad-core CPU, NVIDIA Quadro M2000M, 16GB RAM	Dell Precision 7710 17.3-inch 2.9GHz Intel Xeon E3-1535M quad-core CPU, NVIDIA Quadro M5000M, 32GB RAM	Eurocom Sky X9 17.3-inch 4.3GHz Intel Core i7-6700K quad-core CPU, NVIDIA Quadro M5000M, 64GB RAM	Dell Precision M3800 G2 15.6-inch 2.3GHz Intel Core i7-4712HQ quad-core CPU, NVIDIA Quadro K1100M, 16GB RAM	HP ZBook 14 G2 14-inch 2.6GHz Intel Core i7-5600U dual-core CPU, AMD FirePro M4150 and Intel HD Graphics 5500, 16GB RAM
Price as tested	$3,623	$2,353	$3,890	$6,781	$2,109	$2,115
Date tested	2/12/16	3/21/16	1/23/16	1/23/16	5/25/16	2/20/16
Operating System	Windows 7	Windows 10	Windows 10	Windows 10	Windows 8.1	Windows 8.1
SPECviewperf 12 (higher is better)
catia-04	80.54	42.44	75.57	102.23	15.16	15.09
creo-01	66.69	43.01	55.78	84.55	15.36	16.57
energy-01	6.39	4.12	9.00	10.52	0.34	0.06
maya-04	54.93	33.08	43.43	75.56	13.85	9.09
medical-01	27.23	18.53	31.21	40.75	4.30	2.70
showcase-01	46.70	22.02	48.07	45.87	8.55	7.58
snx-02	112.86	60.01	63.33	87.30	15.30	20.06
sw-03	88.04	64.70	82.02	121.63	25.41	29.21
SPECapc SOLIDWORKS 2015 (higher is better)
Graphics Composite	4.62	3.56	3.88	6.07	1.85	1.75
Shaded Graphics Sub-Composite	2.41	2.89	2.40	4.36	1.70	1.30
Shaded w/Edges Graphics Sub-Composite	3.42	3.63	3.21	5.58	2.27	1.32
Shaded using RealView Sub-Composite	3.41	2.95	2.85	5.07	1.57	1.16
Shaded w/Edges using RealView Sub-Composite	5.89	4.92	4.93	8.36	2.76	1.88
Shaded using RealView and Shadows Sub-Composite	3.87	2.68	2.94	5.17	1.38	1.39
Shaded with Edges using RealView and Shadows Graphics Sub-Composite	6.19	4.30	4.85	8.11	2.29	1.61
Shaded using RealView and Shadows and Ambient Occlusion Graphics Sub-Composite	7.97	3.30	5.70	6.81	1.12	2.90
Shaded with Edges using RealView and Shadows and Ambient Occlusion Graphics Sub-Composite	12.01	5.01	8.74	10.28	1.74	3.40
Wireframe Graphics Sub-Composite	3.02	3.26	2.99	3.76	2.36	2.27
CPU Composite	3.47	2.51	2.56	3.03	2.41	3.14
SPECwpc v2.0 (higher is better)
Media and Entertainment	2.60	2.43	2.57	3.38	1.22	0.87
Product Development	2.32	2.05	2.73	3.16	1.08	1.05
Life Sciences	2.56	2.49	3.18	3.91	1.12	0.90
Financial Services	1.14	1.15	1.19	1.40	0.96	0.53
Energy	2.27	1.86	2.66	3.13	1.09	0.66
General Operations	1.41	1.25	1.48	1.70	0.82	0.76
Time in Seconds
Autodesk Render Test (lower is better)	50.00	82.80	85.60	64.90	79.83	124.28
Battery Test (higher is better)	5:15	4:37	5:30	2:17	5:34	7:28