Lenovo ThinkPad P15v G3 AMD laptop review: a ThinkPad workstation now with a Ryzen 6000H for the first time

[Redaktion]

The Lenovo ThinkPad P15v Gen 3 will be the final ThinkPad with the classic 1.8 mm keyboard. It's also the first workstation model in the ThinkPad series with the AMD Ryzen 6000H series - the mixture of old and new in this relatively inexpensive ThinkPad workstation is exciting.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-ThinkPad-P15v-G3-AMD-laptop-review-a-ThinkPad-workstation-now-with-a-Ryzen-6000H-for-the-first-time.710157.0.html

[NikoB]

AIDA64 tests show that the memory either works in single-channel mode, although there are 2 memory module in the photo (and in description 32Gb 16+16), or the author conducted incorrect tests in some heavily loaded environment, or it's a shame for Lenovo - DDR5 4800 is required to pump at least 60Gb/s in real dual channel mode.

Screen. It is obvious that this is complete stupidity on the part of Lenovo, because business series must have 16:10. The 4k screen is generally good in terms of contrast and color reproduction (but again, the author did not write a word about the operation of this screen in the sRGB profile and how adequate it is), although I would like to have a specialized panels from LG IPS Black, made specifically by LG for Lenovo - with real 2000:1+ a semi-matte, but the response is terrible and this is completely unacceptable in 2023. The response should not exceed 6-7ms for G2G/B2W.

The performance of the 6850H is low and obsolete compared to the 7945HX, even in the 40-45W mode, which has already been proven by tests. We need new 7940HS, not obsolete 6850H.

About the shameful camera from the early 2000s with 720p is out of the question - and this is in a business laptop, where a person will often conduct video conferences! Where is 1440p@60fps with autofocus and lighting optics?! Chromebooks already have 1440p webcams...

The review was carried out too carelessly on a number of measurements, which does not allow us to fully evaluate the laptop.

As a result, we still have a laptop obsolete for a year (and for some technologies for 10 years or more), with a real estimate of no more than $1400 - $1500. Maybe a year ago it cost $2000, but now you have to sell for a much lower retail price or only for kickbacks in a companies where purchasing managers do not care about the company's money, but more importantly a kickback...

[davidm]

+1 NikoB. It's weird Lenovo keeps making second-rate laptops with AMD chips.

[Poster]

It seems that AMD and/or the PC Manufacturers believe that anyone/entity that buys an AMD based product (especaily laptops) desires one or more of the following:
1. cheap components
2. not wanting certain components that intel buyers may want; e.g better build quality, 40Gb/s over USB4
3. to wait more than a year for the 'best current tech' they announce 1.5+ years prior

Concerning the laptop in review, Lenovo could have pulled all strings and made this something to remember in a positive note ending an era of a well liked keyboard experience, which most business and prosumer users want in a business laptop - make the entire experience complete! But no..

[LL]

Yeah i wonder who is calling the shots. We see very expensive laptops where you have flexibility changing GPU from 4070 to 4090. But with CPU's you are stuck with super expensive, very hot  Intel 13900 family. Not choice whatsoever.

Another point that i saw in a Tomshardware analysis is how to get a 2Tb ssd in a new laptop manufacturers force you to buy very expensive models, despite the fact that a 2Tb sdd is just 100 euros more than a 1 Tb.

So when manufacturers will be crying that people don't buy laptops and there is a "terrible" crisis they will be lying.  The crisis is their own making.

[RobertJasiek]

It is worse than that.

- Manufacturers are ripping off non-US countries by €100 ~ 1900 on the base price.

- Several manufacturers use astronomic fantasy surcharges for 4080/4090.

- Some models have a steep increase of base prices.

- Quite a few notebooks stop at 4070 and do not even offer limited TDP 4080.

- CPUs: yes, you are right. Manufacturers want to upsell without choice, especially for 4080/4090 models.

- RAM / SSD upgrades: yes. Manufacturers are insulting our intelligence.

- There are lots of basic problems. Every model has some: too short power cable, lights that cannot be deactivated, bad chip pasting expecting the endconnsumer to immediately repaste even liquid metal, very buggy system control software, its missing settings, weak hinges, prevented easy maintenance etc.

[NikoB]

This is a common confrontation between buyers and manufacturers. The greater the monopolization of the market, the more oligopolistic conspiracies in the market, the easier it is to arrange dictate. Buyers have only one right - not to buy overpriced goods. Demand eventually stabilizes at a level where buyers have a hopeless situation, the rest will prefer not to update the equipment. And the attempts of software companies led by M$, in collusion with hardware manufacturers, to forcibly transfer them to new hardware will meet with an increasingly harsh rebuff at the legislative level. How this war of societies with TNCs and corrupt officials of all countries will end depends only on the level of civil activity of the population. In each individual country. The lower they are, the worse things will be in this country with prices and availability. But they themselves will be to blame for this - the majority of the population. The salvation of the drowning is the work of the drowning themselves and no one else.

[usacomputer]

Honestly WE ARE NOT going to buy a processor from more than 1 year ago.
What we want is a 2.2lb ultrabook with AMD ZEN 4 Phoenix= DDR5 + RDNA 3 + USB 4.0 + HDMI 2.1 + Artificial intelligence. According to forums of computer specialists, we find the Best APU built so far and very useful for 90% of the population, not only for Office, also 3D Rendering and videos with its RDNA 3 Graphics and if we add to that its capacity in artificial intelligence that will be used in the future Windows 12, office because the choice is simple AMD ZEN 4 Phoenix that will now come with an ORANGE label, I don't want red labels from a year ago.

[Neenyah]

About the shameful camera from the early 2000s with 720p is out of the question - and this is in a business laptop, where a person will often conduct video conferences! Where is 1440p@60fps with autofocus and lighting optics?! Chromebooks already have 1440p webcams...

You are right but holy hell you like to exaggerate like nobody here. Early 2000s? 720p was, for example, added to YouTube back in December 2008 and that is definitely not "the early 2000s". And those early 2000s laptops used 720p cameras too? Lol.

[NikoB]

The first camera with 1280x1024 was in Mac Book Pro 2006.

In 2023, the minimum camera should be 1440p@60fps with autofocus and optics no worse than f/1.7. With on-the-fly compression in VP9/H265/AV1 with bitrates up to 120Mbps. With a total load on the SoC no more than 5-7% in the mode of encoding on the fly and decoding the same input streams from others (at least 4 at the same time).

Anything worse is a disgrace to the IT industry.

[Zanahorio]

A genuine question :  Could it be related (the absence of Zen4 uP) to China firms' sanctions ???

[NikoB]

Could it be related (the absence of Zen4 uP) to China firms' sanctions ???

This has nothing to do with the sanctions against China, because. mainland China is not involved in these supply chains and developments. This is a banal lack of sufficiently qualified personnel in AMD (and Intel) to complete tasks by a given deadline. The general degradation of education on the planet begins to severely affect the lack of a valuable layer of educated people with an extremely broad outlook and creative nature for scientific research and development.

You can, for example, look at Africa, India, China combined - how many Nobel laureates in natural sciences have they delivered to humanity over the past 30 years, despite an increase in the population there by more than 1 billion? Not a single person who would represent exactly their societies, and not expats in the Western world, who no longer have anything to do with them. What does it say?

But the problem is that censorship and the transformation of the Western world into an increasingly totalitarian society also leads to a sharp weakening of the creative layer of people in the West as well. Everything that is being successfully developed there now is people from the past, but not from the present, basically. It will only get worse and worse. The world is gradually slipping into the new Middle Ages, where science and scientific and technical progress will drag out a miserable existence due to the ever smaller number of creative people that humanity is capable of producing in each new generation.

The efficiency of civilization, in terms of creativity, began to decline rapidly, especially in the last 20 years.

[kuro68k]

This is actually pretty close to being a great laptop. The only major issue is the single USB4 port.

Socketed RAM, decent CPU, reasonably quiet, 2x NVMe slots.

I can live with the camera being average and stuff like that. GPU is fine for business stuff and video encoding. It's just the single USB4 port that makes it a bit of a stretch to be a desktop replacement.

[Indiana]

The world is gradually slipping into the new Middle Ages, where science and scientific and technical progress will drag out a miserable existence due to the ever smaller number of creative people that humanity is capable of producing in each new generation.

Actually, all real discipline related to thinking comes from medieval Aristotelian / Thomist philosophy and metaphysics. Modern thought is basically nominalistic in nature. You have laws and observations but no discipline or motivation for applying them. Except survival. Or greed. Or anger. Or lust. Or gluttony. Or sloth. Or pride. Or envy. Since all these are either satisfied without effort or impossible to satisfy or even destructive, the world is winding down.

Creativity is a myth. A remainder. An epiphenomenon. A way to credit these base instincts or mythical exceptional individuals for things that actually required something very different.

[NikoB]

Creativity is a myth. A remainder. An epiphenomenon. A way to credit these base instincts or mythical exceptional individuals for things that actually required something very different.

This is wrong. These are people who are not afraid to take risks and with a very liberated consciousness, a very broad outlook (and this is hard work on oneself all the time). Just a very good comprehensive education - and it is difficult to get it in any country and expensive, although the possibilities of self-education with the advent of the Internet are enormous.

For example, TSMC could not find several thousand ordinary engineers in the US in the right state and a couple of neighboring ones with sufficient qualifications to build and maintain new factories - they had to be imported partly from Taiwan and partly trained by Americans. A striking example of how broad sections of Americans and Europeans have degraded in the natural sciences and education.

It is not for nothing that schoolchildren and students of South Korea and Taiwan now have the highest scores in mathematics and exact sciences. The Americans are far behind. We are talking about a wide layer, not rare geniuses. This is the failure of the education system - a systemic failure. Everyone wants to be lawyers, economists, sociologists, actors, football players, hockey players, but not scientists and engineers. Most of the staff in the United States is filled with Chinese students (Asians in general) and Indians. Where is the "white" race? But where is it (although this is a sketch on the fan, but still): youtube.com/watch?v=i1r6VuE4qBM