It was only a year ago that Lenovo expanded its mobile workstation lineup by a completely new model, the Lenovo ThinkPad P1. In terms of its design, this was very different than the other P-series ThinkPads such as the ThinkPad P52. The ThinkPad P1 was supposed to combine the powerful Intel Coffee Lake H processors and Nvidia Quadro GPUs (Quadro P1000/P2000) with the relatively slim and light design of a ThinkPad X1 Extreme.

Now the ThinkPad P1 goes into its second generation. The most important improvements compared to the predecessor generation include new graphics chips and processors, as well as new displays. In contrast, there are not many changes in the selection of competitors for our comparison: The HP ZBook Studio G5 and the Dell Precision 5530 are both from last year, since we have been unable to test their successors yet. Instead, we are adding the new Dell XPS 15 as a current competitor into our comparison.

The device we are testing has the model number 20QT000RGE. It contains a Core-i7 processor, 16 GB of RAM, a 512-GB SSD, a Full HD LCD (500 cd/m² brightness), as well as the Nvidia Quadro T1000. This configuration costs regularly about 2400 Euros (~$2657). Eligible members of the Lenovo-Campus program will be able to purchase the same configuration for 2075 Euros (~$2297; a configuration with a smaller SSD currently starts at $1599 in the US).

Since Lenovo did not make any updates in the basic design of the ThinkPad P1 2nd Gen, this review is a test update. This means that we won't discuss the design, connection equipment, and the input devices in more detail. For information in these areas, we refer to our review of the similarly built Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme.

Note: We updated our rating system to v7 recently (see here) and the rating of the ThinkPad P1 2019 drops from 90 % to 88 %.