Lenovo ThinkPad T16 G1 Intel laptop review: 16-inch marathon runner

[crap]

You missed one detail in the review: you can't fit a standard SSD that has electronic components on the bottom side, you will break either the SSD or the M2 slot off the motherboard. The M2 slot has no distance to the motherboard, unlike seen on other laptops or desktop motherboards. That's probably also the reason why Lenovo does not offer it with a 4TB SSD - no model will actually fit.

Mine came also without a heat spreader with a Hynix SSD - it has no components on the bottom side (so lays flat on the system MB).

But... you have a soft start keyboard backlight.. yeah such details that everyone needs but can't fit a standard SSD.

Verdict: overengineered CRAP, don't buy this.

[Anatol]

The review is nice but in reality the things are a little different.
1. Everywhere is announced that the weight is 1.6 kg - the real weight is ~ 1.9 kg
2. The laptop the windows 11 boots very slow, about 50 sec. My 10 years old ThinkPad W530 boots win 11 in about 15-20  sec. Sometimes it does not boot at all, just black screen or hangs on Lenovo inscription. In such cases I have to remove the RAM temporarily and it will boot again, then I have to insert the RAM back and it works.
3. SSD has no Heatsink. It come with an SK Hynix SSD 256GB PC611 M.2 2280 80mm PCIe Gen3 x4 NVMe. I changed it to Seagate FireCuda 530 4 Gb which has no enough space on bottom and enters enter very tightly. On stressful tests gets very hot and needs Heatsink which is missing. This new SSD worked few days and now is not detected in BIOS any more! But it works as external disk. Now, I don't know what to do, to return the SSD or the Laptop.
4. Problems with external monitors. The laptop is connected via thunderbolt 4 to ThinkPad Thunderbolt 4 Docking station and 2 external monitors are connected to the station. These monitors periodically are flickering. I tried everything what I know and what I found in internet but nothing helps :(
So many issues but all hardware tests are 100% OK.

[Anatol]

Corrected version:
The review is nice but in reality the things are a little different.
1. Everywhere is announced that the weight is 1.6 kg - the real weight is ~ 1.9 kg
2. The Windows 11 boots very slow, about 50 sec. My 10 years old ThinkPad W530 boots Win 11 in about 15-20  sec. Sometimes it does not boot at all, just black screen or hangs on Lenovo inscription. In such cases I have to remove the RAM temporarily and it will boot again, then I have to insert the RAM back and it works.
3. SSD has no Heatsink. It come with an SK Hynix SSD 256GB PC611 M.2 2280 80mm PCIe Gen3 x4 NVMe. I replaced it with a Seagate FireCuda 530 2 Tb, which has no enough space on bottom and enters enter very tightly. On stressful tests gets very hot and needs Heatsink, which is missing. This new SSD worked few days and now is not detected in BIOS any more! But it works as external disk. Now, I don't know what to do, to return the SSD or the Laptop.
4. Problems with external monitors. The laptop is connected to ThinkPad Thunderbolt 4 Docking station and 2 external monitors are connected to the station. These monitors periodically are flickering. I tried everything what I know and what I found in internet but nothing helps :(
So many issues but all hardware tests are 100% OK.

[Benjamin Herzig]

@Anatol,
you cannot use double sided M.2 SSDs in ThinkPads. If you do, this can lead to catastrophic failure, as the SSD PCB will bend.

You need a single sided SSD, like the one shipped from factory.

[Brad Collins]

The throttling is a bit extreme and does result in lower performance than really necessary based on the throttlestop performance. My only question around that is how was the 30w figure decided on? IE was 35w tried but the laptop got too hot and throttled below that level?

[Marvin Gollor]

The throttling is a bit extreme and does result in lower performance than really necessary based on the throttlestop performance. My only question around that is how was the 30w figure decided on? IE was 35w tried but the laptop got too hot and throttled below that level?

Yes, 35 W will get too hot > 90 °C with throttling on the long run, which is really a shame. The T16i features just one heatpipe. The AMD model has two heatpipes and can cool ~40W. The P16s, either with AMD or Intel, has a 30 or 35 W power limit I believe.

[NikoB]

The T16i features just one heatpipe. The AMD model has two heatpipes and can cool ~40W.

This is about the same absurdity as in the Huawei D16 2022 - despite the fact that Huawei replaced the colder AMD processor with a hot Intel one, they removed the second cooler, heat sink and heat pipes. It's just wild. And even more wild that they cut off the power supply for the i5/i7 with only 65W PSU, which is not enough even to serve the i5 in an impulse (PL2 mode) with a consumption of up to 95W by Intel datasheet (i7 has 115W in PL2).

What is striking is that earlier, on the contrary, manufacturers tried to please solutions with Intel, and did everything there with the highest quality, compared to the reduction in price in the same models with AMD. But now it has taken on an absolutely fantastic form in terms of the degree of absurdity.

Although in 2022, when AMD appeared in SoC TB4 (USB40) and HDMI 2.1/DP2.0(but DP2.0 is cut in half by bandwidth up to Zen4), manufacturers, obviously in collusion with Intel, deliberately do not bring these ports out of the AMD SoC in exactly the same models as on Intel.

Moreover, if we take Intel AlderLake-H - there is generally NOT have TB4.0 logic in SoC by datasheet (it have only external TB4.0 controllers support), but unlike mobile AMD chips. Those. apparently, an external TB4.0 controller is installed there, which further increases the cost of the solution, but what is striking is that in AMD models, where USB40 is explicitly declared for SoC (Zen3+) and it is enough just to solder cheap chips and power circuit of the logic built into the SoC, they still intentionally do not output it on ports. And sometimes just disabling it in bios - like in Legion 5 Pro AMD 2022 vs L7 2022 - although Legion 5 Pro Intel soldered an additional TB4.0 controller!

[RobertJasiek]

Rather than collusion, I think it is penny-saving when not programming UEFIs and designing board layouts to meet USB4.

[NikoB]

Robert, your assumption does not explain why then Lenovo does not save on exactly the same models with Intel and, moreover, adds a more expensive external controller. In Intel's P/U series (and even in Gold series-type atoms) there is no need for this - there is a built-in TB4 controller.

It turns out that Lenovo (like others) intentionally worsens solutions with AMD, but deliberately increases the cost of solutions with Intel. A quick question - who will buy more expensive Intel solutions (and are guaranteed to be noisier and have worse operating time from exactly the same battery)? What are these buyers? And why is Lenovo targeting them and not those who want the full version with AMD?

I know part of the answer, but I wanted to know your point of view...

[RobertJasiek]

My theory assumes manufacturers have solved it for Intel but save to avoid solving it for AMD.

[NikoB]

It doesn't make sense to save pennies for power piping, unless Intel has a secret influence to sell more of their models - because in practice, for a non-expert, these models on the shelf definitely look more advanced right away - they have TB4.0 (despite the fact that they are also significantly more expensive), and many with AMD Zen3+ do not, although TB4 is built into Zen3+, but not in AlderLake-H (they put an external TB4.0 controller, which just additionally increases the price). It turns out absurd - Zen3+ has a built-in controller (for which the consumer still pays as part of the SoC forcibly), but negligent manufacturers do not output it, although power piping / interface chips are much cheaper than the same with the external TB4.0 controller in AlderLake- H.

And only in L7 there is no difference at all, except that since 2022 Intel has become 40-50% faster on average due to greater consumption and some progress in design. Previously, this difference did not exist, and until the 11th generation, Intel generally merged in speed with terrible force in Zen2 and there was nothing to cover them with, except for advanced chips, which, by a "miraculous" coincidence, AMD did not add to mobile processors for several generations. Although earlier Intel assured that it would be easy to license Thunderbolt to anyone. But obviously AMD she put a spoke in the wheel intentionally. Because only in Zen3 + there was an alternative right in the SoC - USB40. All this smelled bad initially and it was obvious to all experts.

Now, AMD has only 2 advantages vs Intel classmates - they are much quieter and last 25-30% longer on battery life, but slower in pulse and in PL1 mode, if Intel's laptop manufacturer did not give a damn about the noise level. There is nothing more to cover. In terms of chips (given the presence of neuroDSP version 3 already), Intel is one step ahead again.

Intel, with the help of the "invisible hand of the market", haha, makes it so that AMD has always been one step behind, and when this does not work, they simply seem to bring manufacturers down so that they do not make solutions based on Intel clearly more profitable in terms of a set of key characteristics.

Well, the fact that the AMD fabless company is guaranteed to give it a loss in the competition with Intel, because. when making a profit, Intel can cut prices much faster, but AMD can't, especially since Intel's market niche has again grown sharply in both laptops and PCs since Q3 2022. Intel can simply afford to dump when necessary and bring in a suitcase of money manufacturers. And when there is no such need to simply rest on our laurels for years collecting all the profits from the market, as it was before Zen and how it is becoming again now. AMD cannot win in a situation where the market is dictated by advanced factories of chip manufacturers, and not by buyers of their products, as happened successfully in the world at the time of the release of the Zen architecture, on which Intel temporarily burned out. But now everything is in the past for AMD and Zen4, this is apparently their swan song. Then there is no chance to compete without a significant breakthrough. Of course, assuming the old conspiracy theory that AMD is just Intel's antitrust pad in the US market, it won't go anywhere. But on the other hand, the times are not the same, and the global market and the economy are dying, and geopolitical interests are now even more important than competition. to which the US antimonopolists for decades, and so deliberately (or for a bribe) turned a blind eye.

[Brad Collins]

The throttling is a bit extreme and does result in lower performance than really necessary based on the throttlestop performance. My only question around that is how was the 30w figure decided on? IE was 35w tried but the laptop got too hot and throttled below that level?

Yes, 35 W will get too hot > 90 °C with throttling on the long run, which is really a shame. The T16i features just one heatpipe. The AMD model has two heatpipes and can cool ~40W. The P16s, either with AMD or Intel, has a 30 or 35 W power limit I believe.

Thank you for the reply, I found a review of a T16 with an i7 1260p and the MX550 with the twin heatpipe design. They only tested with Cinebench R23 but the result of 11843 is similar to the notebookcheck results on the Acer Swift X 16 and Lenovo Yoga 9i 14" of 11571 and 10735 respectively. On the R15 loop the long term TDP you measured on those two is about 35w and 37w so I'm guessing with the two heatpipes that 30-40w TDP as you mentioned is correct.

If so that might result in quite a large difference in CPU performance whether you pick the GPU or not - UNLESS the i5 ones have a really low TPD and the i7 ones have a higher TDP and perhaps a more aggressive fan speed. It'd be good to see an i7 1260/1270p review with and without the GPU to see what happens, then again a P16s version with the same CPU and GPU setup to see what happens.

[Indycat]

Anything to say for the battery life of T16 Intel versus AMD?

Can I expect AMD to be better or worse?

Also, does a Samsung 980 Pro SSD fit into this?

[NikoB]

It has already been written many times (and officially confirmed in psref descriptions from Lenovo) - with the same models, the difference is up to 30% in favor of AMD versions (although they can be up to 1.5 times slower when running from a power supply in performance mode, but they are also much quieter, on average). It should be borne in mind that the AMD memory controller is always 25-30% slower than that of Intel classmates, what is sucks AMD versions in software as Photoshop.

[TimC]

This laptop may not be a good choice for zoom type work.  The sound is scratchy and the video camera is low resolution.   I also found the position of the mouse pad odd -- it is big and awkwardly placed -- it is hard to navigate the keyboard and use the pad.  There is an extra key on the far left bottom row, that is dismaying -- it's not the usual key.  The killer problem is the display/sound together -- maybe would be OK for someone doing excel spread sheets or word, but it wasn't designed (evidently) for zoom.