Lenovo ThinkPad P14s Review – A Professional’s Perfect Companion

The Lenovo ThinkPad P14s price starts at Rs. 77,990. The variant I’m using for the review offers the Nvidia Quadro T500 DDR6 4GB dedicated GPU, Intel Core i7 11th Gen CPU alongside a couple other major upgrades that make it the top-of-the-line option. This variant comes with a price tag of Rs. 1,92,000 and offers 1TB PCIe SSD. Additionally, there are AMD variants for the laptop as well that are powered by Ryzen 7 CPUs.

When it comes to the availability of the laptop, you can easily get your hands on it via the official online and offline Lenovo Stores, Amazon and the like.

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Here’s a quick rundown of the Lenovo ThinkPad P14s specs:

Display: 14-inch FHD Anti-Glare
Processor: Intel Core i7 11th Gen
GPU: Nvidia Quadro T500
RAM & ROM: 16GB RAM, 1TB PCIe SSD
Software: Windows 10 Pro
Weight: 1.5 kg
Dimensions: 329 x 227 x 17.9 mm

If you are familiar with the Lenovo ThinkPad series of laptops or have used one, this one is no different. The build quality is exactly the same, sturdy and durable. The plastic used in making the laptop undergoes a lot of tests and the like to ensure that the laptop can survive through harsh usages. I can tell you one thing, this laptop can sure endure a lot of bumps and knocks without any issues. However, on my variant, there is an aluminium lid followed by a magnesium chassis covered by rubberized material.

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At 1.5 kg, this is not as light as you would expect it to be, going by the size of the laptop. However, it is perfect for you to carry around with relatable ease. There is not a whole lot going in terms of design and like other ThinkPad series laptops, this laptop has been made keeping minimalism in mind. Minimalism is the new style that people mostly like to go with. If you are such a person, the design of the Lenovo ThinkPad P14s will really appeal to you.

It’s just got this whole “professional” vibe to it and that is something that I really liked. Subtle yet powerful is what the laptop’s design tells you. All-in-all, the laptop is really built to last and designed to complete your professional look without trying too hard.

Right off the bat, you get to see a 14-inch display as soon as you open the lid. ThinkPad series of laptops are mostly known for their high mobility, a lot of it owing to the 14-inch displays that they come with. The Lenovo ThinkPad P14s is no different. My unit comes with a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels at full-HD. Diving deeper, it offers you a peak brightness of 250nits. Now, that should not be a problem for you at all when you are using the laptop indoors. However, I did feel that I had to stress my eyes a bit when using it outdoors as the brightness was not enough to cope up that well. The ThinkPad P14s has its fair share of bezels. However, not too distracting.

Another thing to note here is that you are not getting anything fancy in terms of refresh rate. You are getting the standard 60Hz so don’t keep your hopes up on that front. I do understand these professional laptops just do not offer that. It could be for n number of reasons, from not wanting display flicker issues to high battery consumption. I repeat, this is a professional laptop and you can’t really expect all of those things in this. This is a super durable and compact beast to carry out all your work and business-related functions.

Further, the colour accuracy on the laptop is good. Good enough for me to suggest that you could certainly do some light video editing and photoshop on it. The good viewing angles are icing on the cake. So, the laptop won’t let you down on the display front for sure.

Moving to the performance of the laptop, it certainly is mindbogglingly good. It surpassed all my expectations in not just your regular multitasking and browsing BUT, gaming as well! Yes, you heard that right. The Nvidia Quadro series of GPUs came into existence to offer the performance when carrying out tasks like CAD, DSS and CGI that normal GPUs couldn’t. One thing that they are not known for is their gaming performance. However, I just had to put that to the test with the Nvidia Quadro T500 4GB DDR6 GPU that you get on this variant.

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I played GTA V, Red Dead Redemption 2, Forza Horizon 5 and Cyberpunk on the machine. Wait for it, all of them ran on 1080p low to medium settings at over 60 FPS. I was taken aback big time. I did hear about the Quadro series GPUs not being good for gaming. Of course, by the end of the day, they do not really support the games on a hardware level. Still, the mere fact that it could achieve those frames, that too at 1080p blew my mind.

Additionally, adequate vents have been given at the bottom of the laptop as well. I must say, these vents do provide the laptop with sufficient ventilation. The laptop did get hot when I pushed it beyond its capabilities when gaming. Moreover, it did take some time for the laptop to cool down. When gaming I also noticed that the temps skyrocketed to 90 degrees as well. The area where the keyboard is placed gets pretty hot. Good thing is that the Core i7 11th Gen and Nvidia Quadro T500 handle everything seamlessly and don’t let thermal throttling get in the way.

My unit has 1TB PCIe SSD so, I had no issues with booting speeds and running out of storage is a far cry. With just the blink of an eye, the laptop turns on. Opening applications is blazing fast as well on the Lenovo ThinkPad P14s. The 16GB RAM at 3200MHz ensured that I have a zero-lag experience when multitasking. At one point, I probably had twenty tabs open on Chrome, video editing on Filmora and listening to music on Spotify. I faced absolutely no lag. I can tell you that the laptop offers THE performance that you would expect from a premium professional laptop at this price point. Definitely a beast.

The Lenovo ThinkPad comes with a backlit keyboard and that is something that is a major thing to have on paper. However, the thing is that it is not at all that bright. It is just alright to get by. There are only two levels of brightness after which it turns off. You can shuffle between these modes by pressing the Function Key and Spacebar simultaneously. You also get to see the famous red tracker in the middle of the keyboard. Mind you, that is not a bindi. It does work.

When it comes to the feel of the keyboard, it is really good and lives up to the ThinkPad series name. Although the keyboard comes in a small form factor, you will find it to be surprisingly good. In fact, the form factor makes travelling to each key easier. Now, that just maybe because I don’t have large hands, in the truest sense of the word. My hands are average sized and I did not face any difficulties while typing on the Lenovo ThinkPad P14s keyboard. Individual keys are quite large and the key travel distance is spectacular for typing. The keyboard and backlight is also spill resistance. Overall, the keyboard was a delight to use.

Moving on to the trackpad, I had no issues with the trackpad on the P14s. It is broad enough for my fingers to work with. The gestures were working really well. The smoothness of the trackpad and matte finish really appealed to me. This matte finish doesn’t let your fingers stick as much when they are sweaty, which is great. There is a decent amount of spacing which acts as your palm rest as well. So, there is nothing to complain about when it comes to the Lenovo ThinkPad P14s keyboard and trackpad either.

On paper, the laptop comes with a battery capacity of 50Whr. This is coupled with a 65W fast charging adapter. The battery brings Rapid Charge tech to the table. What this basically means is that the laptop can charge from 0 to 80 per cent in just an hour. You get the idea.

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Talking about the battery backup on the laptop, it is impressive. I did a number of tests at both 50 per cent and 100 per cent brightness and audio levels. Here are the results when the laptop was under 100 per cent load with screen brightness set at a 100 per cent as well:

Best Performance Mode:

In the best performance mode, the laptop could offer me a backup of roughly 1 hour 25 mins.

Better Performance Mode:

In this mode, I got around 1 hour 50 mins of battery backup from the laptop.

Then, I dropped the total load to 50 per cent. Additionally, I brought the screen brightness down to 50 per cent as well. With these settings, here’s how much battery backup I got in the different battery-friendly modes:

Better Battery Mode:

The better battery mode managed to offer a backup of 3 hours and 25 mins.

Battery Saver Mode:

With the same settings, I got roughly around 5 hours 40 mins when the laptop was in the Battery Saver Mode.

Ideally, you wouldn’t impose this much of load on the laptop on a day-to-day basis. So, I carried out another test which included the usual media streaming and typing. Note that the brightness was at 50 per cent. This gave me a backup of around 10 hours which is excellent if you ask me. All-in-all, the Lenovo ThinkPad P14s Gen 2 battery backup is excellent and definitely lives up to the expectations.

In terms of audio, you get two speakers on top of the keyboard. These are backed by Dolby Audio and I have to say, I was impressed. I had very low expectations from it on the audio front. Come on, it’s a business class professional laptop. You don’t get to see bombastic sound quality on such laptops. Although it was not incredible, it was really good. Good enough for a business class laptop. There was a bit of bass as well and the sound quality when using headphones was amazing. Definitely not what I expected, of course, in a good way.

There is a 720p webcam on the laptop to make use of. Cherry on top is the fact that there is a privacy shutter. In case you are not familiar with it, this privacy shutter allows you to close and block out the webcam. This allows you to stay more secure and relieved about your webcam not being turned on. The quality of the webcam was surprisingly good and performed well even in mildly lit rooms. Your online meetings are definitely sorted with this one.

Starting with the left side of the laptop, you can see two Thunderbolt 3 ports. While one is a Power Charging port, the other is a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port. Then there is the Lenovo Side Docking Connector alongside an optional RJ45 ThinkPad Ethernet Adapter for it. In addition, there is a USB Type-A 3.2 Gen 1 port, an HDMI v1.4 port and a combo 3.5mm headphone jack. There is a MicroSD card reader as well on the laptop.

At the back, there is an optional Nano-SIM card slot as well which is a huge plus for many. On the right, there is a security lock, an RJ 45 Ethernet port alongside an Exhaust Vent. Right beside the Exhaust Vent, you also get to see another USB Type-A 3.2 Gen 1 port. Now, this particular comes with PowerShare support as well. You get to see the optional Smart Card Reader as well on the right side. So, the laptop is indeed stacked in terms of port selection.

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