ThinkPad P1 Gen 7: What Real Users Actually Think

Loved mine, and I regret returning it every time I see one in the wild. But then I remember how much the fan noise bothered me, no matter which OS I had on it. Apple silicon has spoiled me.

I love my P1 gen 7, That 165hz screen is fantastic. Same specs but an ultra 9, which I sometimes wish I had the ultra 7, since it probably runs cooler than the 9, and I don't know if I'm getting a benefit for it.

Seems like people are assuming this is soldered LPDDR5 memory, so shocked to see LPCAMM2 in the news release. Finally, FAST, MODULAR and EFFICIENT memory!

Imagine P1 with AMD CPU. Instead they give us Z16.

I have the 165H, 165Hz screen, RTX 4070 with 32GB RAM and 1+1TB SSDs. I love it, though it is weird to have a 4070 in something this thin (of course that comes with its downsides, such as ±60W GPU TDP & fused keyboard; it would be even better if it were thicker and could accommodate these things). The battery life is great, TrackPoint and trackpad are great, performance is good.

I've had my gen 7 for a couple months now and just figured out the issue. Its the bloody Nvidia driver. The newest ones are broken on the 40 series cards. Moved to a known stable driver and solved every issue I was having with my machine. Now its cool, fans never run unless I slam the system, battery last for 8 hours of browsing. Can't believe Nvidia is shipping these drivers.

X1 Extreme and P1 were always my very soft spot but this G7 is almost certainly going to be my new laptop in relatively near future, everything about it looks amazing so far except no Thunderbolt 5.

Why would someone like a powerful and thin computer that has excellent build quality and specs? I literally just finished imaging a P1 i9 RTX 3080, and kind of wish it was mine. Other than them literally leaking oil from the SSD Thermal Pad, they're great machines. Wish they had Ethernet though.

Love my P1 Gen 7! Honestly this thing has exceeded my expectations. Get yourself the Legion 140W USB-C charger if you don't already have it!

I also am a new owner of the p1 gen 7, got it from an insurance replacement of my gen 5. Tho i have the ultra 9, 4070, 64gb with oled 4k+ touchscreen. Its a really nice laptop, tho i was comparing the proart p16 with this laptop and even tho this one is over a grand higher in price, the performance of the proart was far better. I did end up keeping the p1 and selling the proart to my brother. I kept it because of the build quality.

Is this T440 fiasco all over again with the P1 G7? Why are they repeatedly killing Trackpoint buttons? Good grief, so happy I've got my P1 G6 for work recently.

Your dGPU is not going to sleep. The latest Nvidia driver has this issue. Use the lenovo drivers and it will work.

Guys, the LPDDR5 CAMM2 RAM is upgradable. Please refer to iFixit guide to do so. https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Lenovo+ThinkPad+P1+Gen+7+LPCAMM2+Memory+Replacement/172267

The laptop doesn't make any noise unless it is plugged in. I didn't go for the OLED because it's a 60Hz panel, and I would rather have a better refresh rate than more pixels that the GPU can't handle anyway (at least in games).

Though I'm jealous of the battery life, I'm glad I got the last one with real trackpoint buttons.

p1 gen7 has hardware design bug, the haptic trackpad will be randomly triggered or become unstable when the motherboard undergoing several work load, like copying large files or fetching the file system large file tables etc.

I tried the G16 with ultra 9 and 4090. The performance is very solid, thermal is in check. It's a very complete package, except for the hinge. The new screen design is very wobbly/flimsy on a odd hinge which makes noises every time you move the machine. You can search for the creaking hinge on reddit. It's very annoying to me, especially when it's hot under load. At its price range, that type of hardware is unacceptable and I don't trust ASUS's customer service if anything happens down the road.

To make the P1 as thin as it is, it may not be as durable as something like the P16. On the Legion the keyboard and touchpad are a single unit (C cover) that has to be replaced as a whole. On the P1 G7, the touchpad is replaceable if needed. But the keyboard is one unit with the C cover. This is not as repairable as other Thinkpads where the keyboard is usually replaceable.

I was expecting it to be better than the P1G6. They are cutting high end GPUs out, top is RTX 3000 and an RTX 4070 (No 4080 or 4090). No WWAN on any config. Best screen is still a 4k OLED with a max nit brightness of 400.

Went through the Mobile Workstation/Gaming Laptop decision process for our son's engineering program, and settled on the exact same P1 config. Agree it's an absolute beast. It games well for him now, and should serve him very well in the fall. He did run into a bizarre issue with the trackpad after a firmware update a few months ago. It would randomly stop accepting continuous input. Lift your finger and set it back down and it resumes working for a few more seconds.

I was looking at the ProArt, but I was bothered by the inability to upgrade the RAM down the line, the lack of Thunderbolt, and ASUS's customer support horror stories. I also went to Best Buy to try out the keyboard and trackpad, and let's just say that I prefer the P1's inputs.

Owner of 195h and 4070x here, the computer literally sucks. It heats up so fast and I really don't know how they designed this thing. The screen freezes, if not the track-pad goes bananas. The performance is reduces at least by half when not connected to power and the 'new intel chip line gives the double battery performance' is a big lie with this configuration where battery lasts 3h if you are lucky.

Anywhere from 8-10 hours doing casual web stuff on medium display brightness, 4-5 hours when maxing out the RAM and high display brightness, 2 hours when using the dGPU and not gaming, and less than 1 hour when gaming.

I bought this laptop 2nd hand, and i needed the motherboard replaced and then they came and replaced it. Then the keyboard needed to be replaced, and so i send it in and they sent me back the gen 7, upgraded from gen 5. Still have another 2 years so it was a big selling point.

I have the exact same model (but with Ultra 7 CPU) - very happy with it except that when connected to two external screens the fans tend to run even with CPU at 10 to 20% overall, which is mildly annoying.

I totally agree with you. I'd went for Proart 100% if I didn't get an amazing deal on the P1. The Ryzen chip with G-helper on Asus laptop is an unbeatable combo.

It's still going strong after 8 months of daily usage. No flickering, that seems to be a unit defective. Lenovo customer service seem to be able to take care of it.

FYI - if it starts giving you issues such as BSOD, high thermals, fans always on, check the Nvidia driver. New ones are broken. I moved mine back to 566.36 and it fixed every single issue I had with the machine. Lots of people complain that it runs hot and fans are always on, that's the problem causing this.

I love my P1. The battery life is insane, the screen is great, it's built well. It's perfect, aside from not having an Ethernet port and there not being any higher capacity LPCAMM2 modules available for a reasonable price (highest capacity available is 64GB, and availability is limited).

Yes, I replaced it with PTM 7950. It virtually made no difference in the thermal performance. And yes, LM is truly the worst, and laptop manufacturers really need to stop using it. I wish I had taken pictures, but the LM absolutely mauled the original heatsink, and I had to buy a new one. The LM application wasn't even good, and they used way, way too much of it.

The P1 might be more durable because it's a workstation, those are built to last and be manhandled. But thermals and power (to the GPU) will be worse for gaming than a true gaming laptop.

The p1 g7 lacks a mux which could be a critical issue to game.

I actually REALLY like it. May be the best touchpad I've ever used! (And I was actually anticipating hating it)

It may be an unpopular opinion, but I prefer the new touchpad. It is larger, smoother, and the haptic feedback is nice.

I regret not buying it. Got a thinkpad p14s gen 5 but the graphics just ain't cutting it, then I decided to buy a legion 7i but the build quality is so bad and flimsy. Should have spent a little more for a p1 series.

So do I (dislike how hot the gen 6 gets) - and the battery life is abysmal. I have a 4060 and an i7 13700H.

I returned the P1 with 185H and 4070 in favor of the Proart P16. Both are great machines but the P1 is way too loud when just typing code / surfing (complete deal-breaker for me). ProArt is dead silent (in the Whisper mode) for my usage.

Overall it's a solid laptop, but there are clear opportunities for upgrades in the future. A higher refresh rate display would be one of them. Another would be if the keyboard could be upgraded to take advantage of the full 16". Right now they use the T14 keyboard, likely to save money. Sadly the keyboard is fused, which makes this laptop less repairable.

In the last 2 days I got an average of 8 hours of battery life with pretty heavy use. One day it lasted just over 7 hours, and the next was around 9 hours. Each day included continuous work in ChatGPT and Claude for text/image generation, working with 50+ Chrome tabs, writing and analysis multitasking, streaming course videos, heavy notetaking and word processing, some image editing, large file operations and network transfers, and 2 Zoom calls.

I actually got the model with 155h and rtx 4060. I am running Linux Fedora on it. Using thinkfan I was able to make it much much quieter (the fans are almost always off and when they run they are at their lowest setting). Note: I use the nvidia card only for compute, I have it running on the iGPU all the time.

Just got mine and it is as hot as a firecracker and the fans will not stop running.

I can confirm the touchpad issues. If this had the actual mouse buttons at the top of the touchpad, it would be the perfect laptop for me.

I have the Core 9. Most of the time it works fine, but once in a while the fan kicks really hard. The aluminum case looks nice, but is a bit too cold for my wrists in the winter. I am not a big fan of the haptic trackpad, but apart from that, fantastic laptop.