We review products independently, but we may earn affiliate commissions from buying links on this page. Terms of use. When we reviewed it in March 2019, the Lenovo ThinkPad P52's performance was so impressive that it claimed our mobile workstation Editors' Choice—at least until being unseated by the MSI WS75, mainly because that system's Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 was the first example we'd seen of the GPU maker's blazing "Turing" class professional graphics. So what did Lenovo do to improve its 15.6-inch workstation? Stuff the even mightier Quadro RTX 5000 into the ThinkPad P53 (starts at $1,259; $5,000 as tested). The P53 is dauntingly expensive, but its performance is overwhelming enough to retake the category crown. Configuration Overkill The $1,259 base model barely qualifies for mobile workstation status, with an Intel Core i5 CPU, Quadro T1000 graphics, 8GB of memory, a 256GB solid-state drive, and a 300-nit, 1,920-by-1,080-pixel display. My test unit elevates the ante with a six-core, 2.8GHz (4.7GHz turbo) Xeon E-2276M processor, the 16GB Quadro RTX 5000, 64GB of system RAM, and a 1TB NVMe solid-state drive. The IPS screen shares the base model's 1080p resolution but is a brighter 500-nit panel with Dolby Vision HDR support. The memory ceiling is 128GB of standard or, for Xeon models, ECC DRAM. Storage can be expanded to 6TB, and the top screen choice is a 4K (3,840-by-2,160) touch panel with OLED technology for even inkier blacks and more dazzling colors. Thread junkies can opt for the eight-core Core i9-9880H instead of the Xeon. View All 9 Photos in Gallery No lightweight at 5.5 pounds, the P53 measures 1.2 by 14.9 by 9.9 inches. That slightly undercuts the HP ZBook 15 G5's 5.8 pounds and 1 by 14.8 by 10.4 inches, but it's huge next to something like the 15-inch Apple MacBook Pro (4 pounds, 0.6 by 13.8 by 9.5 inches). The Lenovo has passed a dozen MIL-STD tests for durability, so there's almost no flex if you mash the keyboard or grasp the corners of the thick-bezeled screen. You want ports? You got 'em. On the laptop's left side are two USB 3.1 Type-A ports (one with device charging), an HDMI port, and SD card and SmartCard slots. On the right are a USB 3.1 Type-C port, an audio jack, and a SIM tray for optional mobile broadband. Finally, the rear edge holds two Thunderbolt 3 ports, an Ethernet port, and the connector for the beefy AC adapter. The ThinkPad's wireless credentials include the new Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) standard as well as Bluetooth 5.0. Windows 10 Pro for Workstations is preinstalled. Hello, Hello There are two ways to skip typing passwords with Windows Hello—a fingerprint reader and a face recognition webcam. The 720p camera, equipped with a sliding ThinkShutter panel to block online Peeping Toms, is a disappointment, capturing dark, blotchy images even in my fairly bright home office. Audio from the P53's speakers is above average except for an absence of bass; instruments and voices are clear and overlapping tracks are easily detected. Crank up the volume and the sound fills the room without buzzing or distortion. Dolby Atmos software offers dynamic, music, movie, game, and voice presets and an equalizer. The Fn and Ctrl keys are in each other's places in the bottom left corner—a supplied Lenovo Vantage utility lets you swap them if you can't relearn their positions—but otherwise it's impossible to find fault with the backlit keyboard. Equipped with a numeric keypad and dedicated Home, End, Page Up, and Page Down keys, it has the exemplary typing feel of ThinkPad keyboards before it. Also like other ThinkPads, the P53 has two pointing devices—the TrackPoint nubbin at the intersection of the G, H, and B keys and a smooth-gliding touchpad in the palm rest. Each has a set of soft, silent buttons above and below the touchpad respectively, including the middle button beloved of the independent software vendor (ISV) apps for which the workstation is certified. I was disappointed that Lenovo didn't send a loaner unit with the 4K OLED display (though that would have made the price even more stratospheric), but my test model's 1080p non-touch screen is one of the better ones I've seen. There's plenty of brightness and excellent contrast. Colors are lively and fine details are crisp. Matte Black Lightning For our performance benchmarks, I matched the ThinkPad P53 against one other 15.6-inch mobile workstation—the Dell Precision 5530—and three 17.3-inch entries that rank among the fastest we've tested, the HP ZBook 17 G5 and the Lenovo ThinkPad P72 as well as the abovementioned MSI WS75. You can see their basic specs in the table below. Except for a slower-than-expected result in one ray-tracing test, the P53 burned through our benchmarks with formidable heat. You shouldn't look for long battery life, but you can count on crushing tough design or scientific jobs, although the Core i9 may be a better choice than my Xeon for tackling CPU-intensive tasks. Productivity, Storage, and Media Tests PCMark 10 and 8 are holistic performance suites developed by the PC benchmark specialists at UL (formerly Futuremark). The PCMark 10 test we run simulates different real-world productivity and content-creation workflows. We use it to assess overall system performance for office-centric tasks such as word processing, spreadsheeting, Web browsing, and videoconferencing. The test generates a proprietary numeric score; higher numbers are better. PCMark 8, meanwhile, has a Storage subtest that we use to assess the speed of the system's storage subsystem. The result is also a proprietary numeric score; again, higher numbers are better. We consider 4,000 points a terrific PCMark 10 score, so the 15.6-inch ThinkPad's winning figure of 6,359 indicates absolutely devastating throughput for Microsoft Office or Google Docs. All five workstations' solid-state drives aced the PCMark 8 storage test. Next is Maxon's CPU-crunching Cinebench R15 test, which is fully threaded to make use of all available processor cores and threads. Cinebench stresses the CPU rather than the GPU to render a complex image. The result is a proprietary score indicating a PC's suitability for processor-intensive workloads. The six-core Xeons easily cleared the high hurdle of 1,000 points, so video editing or 3D rendering—even creating complex virtual reality (VR) worlds, in the P53's case—holds no terrors for them. The MSI's eight-core Core i9 is stronger yet. We also run a custom Adobe Photoshop image-editing benchmark. Using an early 2018 release of the Creative Cloud version of Photoshop, we apply a series of 10 complex filters and effects to a standard JPEG test image. We time each operation and, at the end, add up the total execution time (lower times are better). The Photoshop test stresses the CPU, storage subsystem, and RAM, but it can also take advantage of most GPUs to speed up the process of applying filters, so systems with powerful graphics chips or cards may see a boost. All five systems sped through this event, but the P53 and WS75 tied for the win. They won't keep you waiting for image touch-ups. Graphics Tests 3DMark measures relative graphics muscle by rendering sequences of highly detailed, gaming-style 3D graphics that emphasize particles and lighting. We run two different 3DMark subtests, Sky Diver and Fire Strike, which are suited to different types of systems. Both are DirectX 11 benchmarks, but Sky Diver is more suited to laptops and midrange PCs, while Fire Strike is more demanding and made for high-end PCs to strut their stuff. The results are proprietary scores. The two Quadro RTX workstations slugged it out in this event, which is really optimized for gaming GPU's like Nvidia's GeForce rather than Quadro series. They're not designed for playing games, but they can do a fair job of it. Next up is another synthetic graphics test, this time from Unigine Corp. Like 3DMark, the Superposition test renders and pans through a detailed 3D scene and measures how the system copes. In this case, it's rendered in the company's eponymous Unigine engine, offering a different 3D workload scenario than 3DMark, for a second opinion on the machine's graphical prowess. We present two Superposition results, run at the 720p Low and 1080p High presets. These scores are reported in frames per second (fps), the frequency at which the graphics hardware renders frames in a sequence, which translates to how smooth the scene looks in motion. For lower-end systems, maintaining at least 30fps is the realistic target, while more powerful computers should ideally attain at least 60fps at the test resolution. It was the same story here, though it's worth noting that the Quadro RTX 5000 didn't significantly outperform the RTX 4000. Workstation-Specific Tests We also run a few specialized benchmarks designed to simulate the challenges posed by common workstation tasks. One of these is Cinebench's OpenGL benchmark, which presents an animated scene measured in frames per second. Another is POV-Ray 3.7, which puts systems through a timed, off-screen rendering exercise that stresses multiple CPU threads and GPU compute units to the max (lower times are better). Likely boosted by its two additional processing cores, the MSI raced ahead of the P53 in both events—especially, as I alluded to earlier, the POV-Ray ray-tracing exercise, where having an RTX 5000 graphics adapter again proved no advantage over an RTX 4000. Finally, there's SPECviewperf 13, which renders and rotates 3D and wireframe models based on popular ISV apps' viewsets; it's the most realistic and challenging workstation test we run. This is where the ThinkPad P53 won its Editors' Choice medal, rocketing well past the Creo and Maya records held by its 17.3-inch sibling. Mobile workstation shoppers look for maximum performance, far more than a low initial price, and the Lenovo is nothing short of a holy terror. Battery Rundown Test After fully recharging the laptop, we set up the machine in power-save mode (as opposed to balanced or high-performance mode) where available and make a few other battery-conserving tweaks in preparation for our unplugged video rundown test. (We also turn Wi-Fi off, putting the laptop into airplane mode.) In this test, we loop a video—a locally stored 720p file of the Blender Foundation short film Tears of Steel—with screen brightness set at 50 percent and volume at 100 percent until the system conks out. The Precision 5530 was the only machine to distinguish itself in this event. Mobile workstations are rarely found on airline tray tables, or anywhere except perhaps a short hop from desk or rendering station to conference room, so the other four contenders' mediocre results aren't major drawbacks. Five and a Half Pounds of Potency It would be nice if the ThinkPad P53 weighed a pound less or lasted an hour longer away from a wall socket, but it wouldn't change the laptop's mission: to rip through enormous workloads in the shortest possible time. As of now, we don't know a machine better suited to that purpose, or one more likely to put a grin on demanding professionals' faces. Lenovo ThinkPad P53 Bottom Line: Nvidia's earth-shaking Quadro RTX 5000 makes the Lenovo ThinkPad P53 one of the most powerful mobile workstations you can buy. It's hefty and pricey, but it obliterates big workflows like nobody's business. Top Comparisons

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