If you need more power than the typical 13-inch Ultrabook can handle, Lenovo's new mobile workstations might be the answer.

The ThinkPad P1 looks like a 15-inch Ultrabook, 0.7 inches thick and under 4lbs, but inside, it has a mobile Xeon processor, up to 64GB of ECC RAM, and as much as 4TB SSD storage. A discrete GPU, up to the Nvidia Quadro P2000, drives that display (either 1920×1080 300 nit, 72 percent of NTSC, or 3840×2160 400 nit 10-bit-per-channel supporting 100 percent of the Adobe color gamut and touch). It has a good selection of ports—two Thunderbolt 3 USB Type-C, two USB 3.1 generation 1 Type A, HDMI 2.0, mini-gigabit Ethernet (with a little dongle), 3.5mm headset, and microSD, and it has 802.11ac and Bluetooth 5. The battery is a substantial 80WHr.

Lenovo

Lenovo

Lenovo

Lenovo

Lenovo

Lenovo

Lenovo

Lenovo

Lenovo

Lenovo

If that's still not enough—if you really must run dozens of virtual machines while on the go or need to work with huge 3D models—then the P72 may be of interest. This bumps the screen up to 17 inches (though otherwise the same specs as on the P1), the weight up to 7.5lbs, and the thickness up to 1 inch. But the GPU spec goes up to the Quadro P5200, memory goes up to a monstrous 128GB of ECC, and internal storage tops out at 6TB, with a 16GB Optane accelerator. Connectivity is better than the P1, too; there's one more USB 3.1 generation 1 Type A port, the Ethernet port is full-size, and there's also a mini-DisplayPort 1.4 port. The battery is bigger, too, at 99WHr.

Lenovo

Lenovo

Lenovo

Lenovo

Lenovo

Lenovo

Lenovo

Lenovo

The use of Xeon processors and Quadro-branded GPUs is what makes these "workstations;" the Xeon enables ECC memory, and the Quadro GPU means that the machines are certified for use with AutoCAD, CATIA, Maya, and a range of other engineering and CAD applications. Both systems have fingerprint readers and can include IR webcams for biometric authentications, and both use multiple storage units, enabling RAID 0 (for performance) and RAID 1 (for resilience) configurations.

Lenovo didn't supply us with price or availability information, but we imagine that fully specced machines will cost "a lot."

Listing image by Lenovo