 Lenovo ThinkPad P15v. It's all about the software and the amazing UHD display. Usually, it takes us more than six months to take in a workstation laptop for a review. Now, this happens to be our fourth review of such a machine, in the span of three weeks, which is insane. This means we can provide a better insight on the ThinkPad P15v, given the fact we can compare it to some fresh devices, such as the HP ZBook Power G7. Similarly to the latter, the ThinkPad comes with almost every Comet Lake H processor. Maxing out with the Core i7-10875H additionally, you can find the laptop equipped with a Xeon W10855M, which is a 6-core or 12-thread CPU, which supports the V Pro platform, and crucially for a workstation, ECC memory. Of course, if you need a professional laptop, chances are high you want it for 3D modeling, which requires certain certificates to be covered. This is why most workstations come with a pro-grade graphics card. Here, you get the NVIDIA Quadro P620, 4GB, GDDR5. Yes, it is a slightly older unit, based on the GP107 chip, commonly found in the GTX 1050T, based on the Pascal architecture. However, the GPU inside of this laptop features 512 shaders, instead of the 768, found on the GTX 1050T. Also, it uses a TGP of 40W, making it more similar to a Max-Q version. This leaves us a bit puzzled, because obviously, this graphics card is not very powerful, and it might struggle with large, and more complex projects. On the other side, Lenovo has probably designed this laptop with comfortability in mind, and perhaps it doesn't have a big enough cooling solution to incorporate a better GPU. Of course, performance is nothing without security in this part of the market. This is why Lenovo has introduced the ThinkShield security suite, which takes care of this matter. Inside the box, you will find some paper manuals, a 135W power adapter with Lenovo's proprietary connector, as well as the laptop, itself. Unsurprisingly, this notebook's design is absolutely on track with the ThinkPad portfolio. Rugged edges, rough finish, and industrial looks. Yep, the entire assembly is made out of hard plastic, which doesn't feel cheap, whatsoever, and Lenovo says that the laptop has passed through mill spec testing. We can consider it as a pretty easy device to handle, since it only weighs 2.07 kg, as a profile of 24.2 mm. Of course, we adjust our standards to the type of device, so given the fact that this is a workstation, it has looser margins. Thankfully, the lid opens easily with a single hand. The screen surface is matte, and the bezels are relatively thin, at least the side ones. Also, there is a 720p camera with a ThinkShutter, and an optional IR sensor for Windows Hello features. By the way, the lid itself is very flexi which is not a nice thing to see on a laptop at this price point. Let's take a look at the keyboard, where you will see a typically great keyboard. To be honest, we haven't expected anything else from a ThinkPad, but it still feels good to use one of the best keyboards on the market. In addition to the long key travel and the clicky feedback, there is a two-stage backlight. We're also happy to see that there is a full-sized number pad here, and the only downside on the keyboard is in regards to its tiny arrow keys. As you can see, the track point is here to stay, and it is coupled with a set of dedicated buttons, placed right above the touchpad. Speaking of which, the touchpad feels relatively accurate, and the gliding is smooth thanks to the glass-like Mylar surface. Other miscellaneous features on the base include the speaker grill and power button above the keyboard, as well as the optional fingerprint reader, located just below the down arrow key. Should you turn the laptop upside down, you will see ventilation grills, which pretty much follow the tracks of the heat pipes, as well as the cooling fan. Also, since the heat sink is side-mounted, the heat exhaustion is happening from a slot on the left side of the machine. On the left side of the laptop, there is the power plug, a Thunderbolt 3 connector, and a smart card reader. Then, on the left, you get a Kensington security slot, an RJ45 connector, two USB type A3.2 Gen1 ports, an HDMI 2.0 connector, an SD card reader, and an audio jack. Also, there is a SIM card tray on the back. Before you start removing the bottom panel of this device, you need to remove the SIM card tray. Then, undo all eight Philips head screws, and pry the panel with a plastic tool, starting from the front edges. Battery-wise, there is a 68-watt-hour unit that should be unplugged before you remove anything from the motherboard. In terms of memory, you have two Sodom slots, which fit up to 64GB of DDR4 memory in dual-channel mode. And if you have the laptop configured with a Xeon processor, you can take advantage of ECC RAM as well. Thankfully, there are two M.2 PCI-EX4 slots for storage, which support the RAID technology. Two heat pipes are cooling both the CPU and the GPU. Interestingly, Lenovo used only one heat spreader and one fan to deal with heat dissipation. Also, you can see that while the graphics memory is cooled by some metal shrouds, the VRMs are left to suffer. Lenovo ThinkPad P15V comes with a UHD IPS panel. It has a diagonal of 15.6 inches, and a resolution of 3,840 by 2,160 pixels. The screen ratio is 16 to 9, and we are looking at a pixel density of 282 pixels per inch, and a pitch of 0.09 by 0.09 mm. The screen turns into retina when viewed at distance equal to or greater than 30 cm. From this distance one's eye stops differentiating the separate pixels, and it is normal for looking at a laptop. It has excellent viewing angles. We offer images at 45 degrees to evaluate image quality. The measured maximum brightness is 545 nits in the middle of the screen and 575 nits as an average for the whole area, with a maximum deviation of 15%. The correlated color temperature on a white screen is 6,830 Kelvin, colder than the optimal for the sRGB standard of 6,500 Kelvin. This notebook uses the X-Rite Color Assistant app. In the illustration you can see how the display performs from a uniformity perspective. In other words, the leakage of light from the light source. Values of DE 2000 over 4.0 should not occur, and this parameter is one of the first you should check if you intend to use the laptop for color sensitive work. The contrast ratio is very good 1,500 to 1. To make sure we are on the same page, we would like to give you a little introduction to the sRGB color gamut and the Adobe RGB. To start, there's the C1976 uniform chromaticity diagram that represents the visible specter of colors by the human eye. Giving you a better perception of the color gamut coverage and the color accuracy. Inside the black triangle, you will see the standard color gamut, sRGB, that is being used by millions of people on HDTV and on the web. As for the Adobe RGB, this is used in professional cameras, monitors, etc. for printing. Basically, colors inside the black triangle are used by everyone and this is the essential part of the color quality and color accuracy of a mainstream notebook. Still, we've included other color spaces like the famous DCI P3 standard used by movie studios, as well as the digital UHD Rec 2020 standard. Rec 2020, however, is still a thing of the future and it's difficult for today's displays to cover that well. We've also included the so-called Michael pointer gamut, or pointers gamut, which represents the colors that naturally occur around us every day. The yellow dotted line shows Lenovo ThinkPad P15V's color gamut coverage. Its display covers 99% of the sRGB, web, HDTV standard, in CIE1976. It also covers 98% of Adobe RGB and 90% of DCI P3. Our design and gaming profile delivers optimal color temperature, 650K, at 140K per square meter luminance, sRGB gamma mode, and X-Rite color assistant turned off. We tested the accuracy of the display with 24 commonly used colors like light and dark human skin, blue sky, green grass, orange, etc. You can check out the results at factory condition and also, with the design and gaming profile. You can compare the scores of Lenovo ThinkPad P15V with the default settings and sRGB profile enabled from the X-Rite color assistant, left, and with the gaming and web design profile, right. The next figure shows how well the display is able to reproduce really dark parts of an image, which is essential when watching movies or playing games in low ambient light. The left side of the image represents the display with stock settings, while the right one is with the gaming and web design profile activated. On the horizontal axis, you will find the gray scale, and on the vertical axis, the luminance of the display. On the two graphs you can easily check for yourself how your display handles the darkest nuances but keep in mind that this also depends on the settings of your current display. The calibration, the viewing angle, and the surrounding light conditions. Here, we see excellent default settings. We test the reaction time of the pixels with the usual black to white and white to black method from 10% to 90% and vice versa. We recorded fall time plus rise time equals 18 milliseconds. After that, we test the reaction time of the pixels with the usual gray to gray method from 50% white to 80% white and vice versa between 10% and 90% of the amplitude. Pulse width modulation, PWM, is an easy way to control monitor brightness. When you lower the brightness, the light intensity of the backlight is not lowered, but instead turned off and on by the electronics with a frequency indistinguishable to the human eye. In these light impulses, the light, no light time ratio varies, while brightness remains unchanged, which is harmful to your eyes. You can read more about that in our dedicated article on PWM. Lenovo ThinkPad P15V's display backlight doesn't use PWM to adjust its brightness levels. This means it is going to be comfortable in this aspect for extended periods of us. Installing our health guard profile not only eliminates PWM, but also reduces the harmful blue light emissions while keeping the colors of the screen perceptually accurate. If you're not familiar with the blue light, the TLDR version is. Emissions that negatively affect your eyes, skin, and your whole body. You can find more information about that in our dedicated article on blue light. Lenovo ThinkPad P15V's sound quality is decent. Moreover, its low, mid, and high tones are clear of deviations. On the other hand, it is nowhere near that of the HPZ Book Fury 15G7. Now, we conduct the battery tests with Windows Better Performance setting turned on, screen brightness adjusted to 120 nits, and all other programs turned off except for the one we are testing the notebook with. This device's 68-watt-hour battery pack, paired with the 4K display option, results in a battery life of 7 hours and 9 minutes of web browsing, and 5 hours and 16 minutes of video playback. There is a ton of processor options here. You can go for the Core i5-10300H, Core i7-10750H, Core i7-10850H, Core i7-10875H, and the Xeon W10855M. Here you can see an approximate comparison between the CPUs that can be found in the Lenovo ThinkPad P15V Gen 1 models on the market. This way you can decide for yourself which P15V model is the best bang for your buck. Note, the chart shows the cheapest different CPU configuration so you should check what the other specifications of these laptops are by clicking on the laptop's name, CPU. Whereas, the GPU choices are a lot more limited. You can either get only the integrated GPU or the Nvidia Quadro P620, equipped with 4GB of GDDR5 memory. Here you can see an approximate comparison between the GPUs that can be found in the Lenovo ThinkPad P15V Gen 1 models on the market. This way you can decide for yourself which P15V model is the best bang for your buck. Note, the chart shows the cheapest different GPU configuration so you should check what the other specifications of these laptops are by clicking on the laptop's name, GPU. Here are some gaming tests. In this test we use 100% on the CPU cores, monitoring their frequencies and chip temperature. The first column shows a computer's reaction to a short load, 2-10 seconds. The second column simulates a serious task, between 15 and 30 seconds, and the third column is a good indicator of how good the laptop is for long loads such as video rendering. As you can see, the ThinkPad P15V has no problems maintaining 3 GHz with its Core i7-10750H. However, it still lags behind some of its more gamer-centric counterparts. This GPU's 40W TGP is quite lenient on the cooling solution, and we see the maximum boost frequency available, at decent temperatures. Don't be fooled by the single fan design of this laptop, it can, and it will become quite loud when you apply a heavy load to it. Also, a longer session of image rendering, or playing a game will result in a bit warmer keyboard than what you ideally want. There are certain key points around this notebook, that sets it apart from the rest. First and foremost, it is the entire security platform, that it provides. Then, there are the privacy features like the optional fingerprint reader, and IR face recognition camera. As you can see, we are not discussing anything around the hardware. Well, this is for a reason. First of all, the Core i7-10750H and our unit was performing okay, but definitely not on the level of other machines on the market. Even the HP ZBook Power G7 was working at similar clock speeds but was 20°C cooler under stress. This may have to do with the use of a single heatsink, and a single fan, from Lenovo. And if you check our IR images, you will see that this is not the most comfortable laptop to work with, when you are pushing it to its limits. Lenovo ThinkPad P15V's IPS panel has a UHD resolution, supports HDR 400 and Dolby Vision, and offers really high maximum brightness. Additionally, it covers not only the sRGB, but also the Adobe RGB gamut, almost fully. Thankfully, its backlight doesn't flicker, and it also has a very good contrast ratio and comfortable viewing angles. Now, we have to mention that this machine comes equipped with a pretty elaborate color tweaking software. It is the X-Rite color assistant, and it offers a ton of options. Interestingly enough, even with the sRGB profile enabled, the color accuracy was a bit off, and even our gaming and web design profile wasn't able to improve the situation by a lot. Again, we see a very good idea, an excellent product, but the execution is not on point. Actually, there is only one place, where there are no compromises, upgradeability. You get two Sodom slots for memory upgrades of up to 64GB. Also, as we said earlier, the models, paired with Xeon processors, can take advantage of the ECC memory support. Not in the last place, there are 2 M.2 PCI-EX4 slots with RAID support. Ultimately, you are getting a decent package, full of tiny compromises here and there. And it's up to you if you're willing to take them or leave them. And since the I-O and the upgrade options are pretty much identical to that of the HP ZBook Power G7, we would suggest going for the ThinkPad P15V if you want a better display, and choosing the HP, if you need more performance, both in the CPU and in the GPU space. Thanks for being with us. If you'd like us to keep improving these reviews, please like the video or subscribe to our channel. Have a nice day.