For the original German review, see here.

Lenovo has offered notebooks for professional users in the ThinkPad W-series since 2008, and we reviewed the last 17-inch model ThinkPad W701 back in 2010. The manufacturer changed its product lineup for 2016 a bit and will now offer its mobile workstations in the new ThinkPad P-series. Besides the two 15-inch models ThinkPad P50 and ThinkPad P50s (successors to the W541 and W550s, respectively) as well as the smaller Yoga P40, you can also get the 17-inch model ThinkPad P70. While the Yoga P40 and the ThinkPad P50s are more focused on mobility, both the P50 and the P70 are focused on performance.

This claim is supported by the specs of our review configuration, although they do not even represent the most powerful version. Our test model for around 3,400 Euros (~$3671) is a more mainstream configuration with a Core i7-6820HQ processor (Skylake 45 Watts), Nvidia's Quadro M3000M graphics cards, 16 GB DDR4-RAM as well as a 512 GB M.2 SSD (SATA). Particularly interesting is the 4K display, which does not support touch inputs, but it has a matte surface and can be calibrated with the integrated color calibrator.

The smallest configuration of the ThinkPad P70 starts at around 2,100 Euros (~$2267), while you will have to pay almost 6,500 Euros (~$7018) for the biggest model with the maximum RAM equipment (64 GB DDR4-ECC). Besides many pre-configured models, which are available in many online shops, you can also configure the ThinkPad P70 in Lenovo’s web shop. The manufacturer is very flexible, because it is no problem to equip the base configuration with the most powerful processor, a better display or a more powerful graphics card, for example. It is therefore possible to customize the device based on your personal preferences. Lenovo also offers special education models, where students or eligible scientific employees can get a big discount; the education model of our review unit, for example, is 400 Euros (~$431) less expensive.

The biggest rivals for the 17-inch workstation are traditionally provided by Dell (Precision 7710, review will be available soon) and HP (ZBook 17 G2), even though the latter is still based on the Haswell architecture. The successor ZBook 17 G3 was already announced and should be available in January 2016. Besides those dedicated workstations, some manufacturers also offer devices with professional components (often the GPU), which are based on normal consumer devices and therefore lack some business features. Examples from this category are the MSI WT72 or the Bullman E-Klasse Xeon 17.