ThinkPad P1 Gen 9 – 2 Weeks Hands-On Review

# ThinkPad P1 Gen 9 – 2 Weeks Hands-On Review

**My configuration:**

* **CPU:** Intel Core Ultra 3 386H
* **GPU:** NVIDIA RTX PRO 2000 Blackwell
* **RAM:** 64 GB LPCAMM2-8533
* **Storage:** 4 TB PCIe 5.0 NVMe
* **Display:** 16" 3200×2000 Tandem OLED, 40–120 Hz VRR
* **Battery:** 90 Wh

# TL;DR

# Pros

* Excellent performance while staying relatively quiet
* The display is a marvel
* Battery life is finally good
* WWAN is back
* Excellent keyboard and trackpad

# Cons

* Expensive
* Cooling system may be difficult to clean
* Some issues with VRR / Dynamic Refresh Rate

**Verdict:** This is the machine I've been looking for for a long time. It improves on previous P1 generations in several important ways, while finally addressing many of the compromises I've had with other high-performance laptops.

I received my ThinkPad about two weeks ago, and I think I've spent enough time with it now to write up a first review.

# Some background

I'm a programmer and a long-time Mac user. I started with the very first MacBook Air back in 2008 and then went through several MacBook Pros. Unfortunately, when Apple moved to ARM, I became effectively locked into x86 because of some of the software I need to run.

I was also getting increasingly frustrated with Apple's constant OS changes. With every new version, more old applications became incompatible, while performance on aging hardware seemed to get worse and worse.

So I eventually switched from my last Intel MacBook Pro to a **Lenovo Legion 7i** (Core i9-11980HK, 32 GB, RTX 3080 16 GB, 16" matte 500-nit IPS display).

The Legion was an absolute beast, but it had two major drawbacks compared with the MacBook: it was too loud and too big/heavy, especially when you include the 300 W power brick.

A couple of years later, I replaced it with a **Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i 14"** (Core i9-13905H, 64 GB, RTX 4070 8 GB, 14" glossy 1200-nit Mini-LED display).

Once again, this was a fantastic machine. The display was incredible, and the laptop was very compact and easy to carry. But it had its own problems.

After the Legion, the Yoga actually *felt* surprisingly slow, despite being more or less comparable on paper. Even something as simple as opening a new Finder window could have a noticeable delay, with individual UI elements appearing one after another.

I suspect there was something related to the PCIe implementation, because the SSDs never seemed to reach their expected performance. For example, my Samsung 990 Pro 4 TB was getting around 300–400K IOPS instead of the advertised 1.6M. I tried several different SSDs and always saw the same thing: significantly lower random read/write performance than expected.

The Yoga was also quite loud in Performance mode, with the fans quickly ramping up to full speed, while Balanced mode made it noticeably slower.

Battery life was another major weakness: around 1.5–2 hours of movie playback in my typical use.

And then there was the glossy screen. I often work outdoors, and even in the shade the Yoga's display was difficult to use because of reflections.

So I started looking for my ideal laptop again.

# What I wanted

My main requirements were:

* Matte 16" Mini-LED or bright OLED display
* 64 GB RAM
* Fast SSD interface, ideally PCIe 5.0
* Powerful CPU, preferably one that isn't heavily thermally restricted
* Slim and relatively lightweight
* As quiet as possible

I almost bought the P1 Gen 8, but then Panther Lake came along and the early reviews were extremely positive. I decided to wait for the P1 Gen 9.

And here we are.

# My P1 Gen 9

My configuration is:

* Intel Core Ultra 3 386H
* 64 GB LPCAMM2-8533
* RTX PRO 2000 Blackwell
* Tandem OLED display
* WWAN-ready
* NFC reader

I was initially very much in doubt about whether to get the P1 or T1g with the RTX 5070 12 GB, but eventually went with the P1 for several reasons.

First, I don't really game or run local AI models on my laptop. I have a desktop with an RTX 4090 for that.

Second, the P1 was available in a WWAN-ready + NFC configuration for only