graininess.

I honestly can't see any.

I've run various display tests and deliberately looked at small fonts, and everything looks perfectly sharp.

If you specifically try to find the graininess, you probably can.

I turned off the lights, set the display to its lowest brightness, displayed a dark gray image, and examined the screen from about 5–10 cm away.

Under those conditions, you can definitely see a colorful "grain" caused by the combination of the OLED panel and matte coating.

But that's an extremely artificial scenario. In normal use, even when looking at small text — both white-on-black and black-on-white — everything remains crisp and very readable.

So I wonder whether some of the reports of clearly visible graininess on the Gen 8 could have been related to variations or defects in the matte coating rather than being representative of the panel in general.

For me, the display is simply excellent.

# Keyboard & trackpad

It's a ThinkPad, so naturally it has a great keyboard — and it does. :)

The typing experience is probably the best I've had in years.

I thought the Yoga's keyboard was already quite good, especially compared with Apple's recent keyboards, but the ThinkPad made me realize what a really good laptop keyboard feels like.

I'm not particularly obsessed with the TrackPoint or physical click buttons, so the all-glass haptic touchpad works very well for me.

As a long-time Mac user, I'm used to good trackpads, and the P1's touchpad feels very natural.

It's a significant improvement over the mechanical touchpads in my Yoga and Legion.

# Performance

After installing Windows, I immediately ran some benchmarks. This was one of the things I was particularly interested in after my experience with the Yoga.

I haven't done any special tuning or optimization to squeeze out the maximum possible benchmark numbers.

# 3DMark Time Spy

* **Overall:** 10,673
* **CPU:** 15,937
* **GPU:** 10,086

https://preview.redd.it/bhggzw94hjmh1.png?width=2614&format=png&auto=webp&s=6c20e8c998828ba3cd0f5e7c832c4d994da4cc02

# CrystalDiskMark

**Sequential 1M Q8T1**

* Read: **14,145 MB/s**
* Write: **14,149 MB/s**

**Random 4K Q1T1**

* Read: **114 MB/s**
* Write: **261 MB/s**

https://preview.redd.it/dmz4qil9hjmh1.png?width=964&format=png&auto=webp&s=7a4c19539af459de2b867301ed2aba14a2d79877

The SSD performance is higher than I expected, especially compared with my Yoga.

Interestingly, I've also tried several games, and the FPS I get from the RTX PRO 2000 is significantly higher than what I was getting from the Yoga's RTX 4070.

But the benchmark numbers aren't actually the most important thing here.

What matters more to me is how the machine feels.

And here the P1 is excellent.

Just like with my old Legion, everything feels immediate. Applications open quickly, windows appear instantly, and the UI is responsive.

It definitely doesn't have the sluggish feeling I experienced with the Yoga.

# Thermals & fan noise

This is probably one of the biggest improvements compared with my previous laptop.

It looks like Panther Lake is a significant step forward in terms of efficiency.

First, the Gen 9 does not use liquid metal anymore, unlike previous generations.

Instead, Lenovo uses phase-change PTM 7958. That's a big plus by itself: no need to worry about liquid metal potentially causing problems with the motherboard, and it also suggests that Lenovo has improved the thermal efficiency of the system.

Lenovo has a video showing the cooling assembly removal here:

[Lenovo cooling assembly removal instructions](https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/solutions/ht518860?utm_source=chatgpt.com)

The cooling solution itself doesn't appear to be smaller than the one used in the Gen 8, while the CPU's power requirements are significantly lower.

The result is that the fans rarely need to ramp up, even in Performance mode.

Balanced mode is even quieter.

I tried measuring the noise with my phone, but the results weren't particularly useful — it was giving me numbers around 30 dB, which I don't consider reliable enough to