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Laptops · Lenovo ThinkPad

Lenovo ThinkPad P16s

8owners with an opinion
71%of verdicts positive
5/2positive/negative since 2024
0happy after 3+ years

Praised for performance and display; criticized for reliability and value.

What owners wrote

Doesn’t like it
My Thinkpad p16s does not have s3 sleep. And s2idle lasts for a couple hours before it dies because every device has to sleep before it goes to true idle, but can never get all the USB devices to sleep. It's crap. S3 worked fine and was robust.
Neutral
I bought a Thinkpad P16s with 64 GB of LPDDR5x ram in October 2024 for just over $1100. 64 GB of LPDDR5x will add $849 to the price of a Framework 13 Pro. Thats insane. I would love a future Framework 16 Pro but that will probably run $3500 for the configuration that I would want if memory and storage prices don't come down.
Likes it
> (ive got a thinpad and the platic build is just terrible. The screen bends when pulling it to open the laptop). Which thinkpad? Typing on a loaded P16s currently; it's not metal like old MBP or even my travel surface pro, but it feels... fine.
Likes it
I have both a brand new M4 Macbook and a ThinkPad P16s. I run Arch with Hyprland on my P16s. They are both fantastic laptops but have clearly different use cases. My Macook is my browsing/YouTube/music/research/photo editing machine. It's fantastic at those things. It also integrates into FaceTime and iMessage which means I don't have to pull out my phone all the time. My P16s is my work laptop. I can disappear into it for 5 hours straight writing code. I'm either in Cursor or the terminal most of that time with a little browser use. And hyprland is freaking gorgeous, fast, and incredibly stable. I don't get nearly as good a development experience on my Macbook, mostly because so much of its navigation is based upon the trackpad vs. the keyboard in Hyprland. So, I enjoy both and each has their place. I think my only complaint about the P16s is while it has an extremely high res OLED display, it's not as bright as I'd prefer.
Likes it
My M1 Max MBP is a bit slower feeling than a new Lenovo Thinkpad P16s (Ryzen 7 Pro 7840U) I have, when using VS Code in Linux. But a M3 Max MBP I have blows it away. If you run Linux, and care about MacOS apps or need non-dev stuff like Outlook, then a Linux AMD laptop can be a really cheap, fast option. Unfortunately the manufacturers don't want to load them out... like my AMD chip supports 128GB, but no laptop manuf. will lay down more than 64GB.
Likes it
I own couple of ThinkPads myself: an old L-series one, a T490 and lately a P16s. They all are fine. 45 mins on battery on best performance mode is very bad. I am currently using a P16s with an Intel's meteor lake CPU and an RTX 500 Ada dGPU. I would say it is not that bad. Linux Mint worked OOB perfectly. I get 5-6 hrs of battery life which is fine for me (considering it has a 4K OLED display). The dGPU is mostly idle and the machine is mostly silent unless I am gaming. The only times I hear the fans going are when using it on my lap or playing games. I do run Windows VM for a big .NET Framework project (coding on JetBrains Rider) and at the same time some coding on Linux. The CPU handles those fine. These are my personal experiences though. The only issue I can pick is sometimes Chrome shows some artifacts (I think, related the iGPU driver)
Doesn’t like it
The Optimus-encumbered ThinkPad P16s Gen1 I'm currently stuck with has no exposed option to disable the Nvidia GPU in the UEFI. The environment variable trick, as far as I know, can't be used to prevent the entire desktop from touching the dGPU. Almost all of my issues are related to the desktop compositor crashing or freezing after too many DKMS power events, returning from sleep, [un]docking from my external display, or just plain running for too many hours. I'm on the latest firmware, kernel, and drivers, and it still gives me grief.