The ThinkPad P50 is Lenovo’s thinnest and lightest full-function mobile workstation to date.
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Lenovo has introduced its new ThinkPad P series laptops at the SIGGRAPH 2015 conference.
At the unveiling Victor Rios, VP and GM, Workstations, Lenovo, claimed that “We’ve built features into these machines that were previously unachievable in a notebook, making them the most versatile and highest-performing mobile workstations ever”. Thunderbolt 3 is also included for fast external I/O.
In another improvement over prior ThinkPad workstations, the P series features a new kind of fingerprint reader that lets you log in with a single press rather than a swipe. Under the P Series, with a brand new Intel Sixth Generation Skylake processor mobile Xeon chip, users no longer have to make the compromise between power and performance.
Intel has its Core i7 processor for its notebook computing and we will see that lineup continue with the Skylake architecture as well but this is the first time the chip giant is deploying Xeon processors for notebook computing.
The two “mobile workstations” are premium machines designed for the most demanding professional tasks.
Both systems feature NVIDIA Quadro GPUs for unmatched graphics capability.
In addition, the laptop is ISV certified and includes a 4k Ultra HD display with X-Rite Pantone color calibration. It packs a 15.6-inch UHD 4K display that’s driven by Intel’s brand new mobile Xeon processors (E3-1500M v5 product family), Nvidia Quadro graphics and up to 64GB of DDR4 RAM. To keep the Xeon processor ticking over contentedly Lenovo has designed a new dual-fan FLEX Performance Cooling system.
The new reader takes up more surface area, but is far easier to use, said Flynn, because it doesn’t require you to hold your finger at a specific angle or swipe your finger at a specific speed. Aside from screen size, the main difference between the two machines is that the P50 supports up to three storage devices while the P70 supports up to four, including a DVD-RW bay that can also be used with an extra 1 TB HDD or 512 GB SSD. With a starting weight of 5.6 pounds and a thickness of 1.02 inches, the P50 can fit in a large bag, but it’s significantly bulkier than mainstream ThinkPads like the 3.5-pound, 14-icnch ThinkPad T450s or the 5-pound, 15-inch ThinkPad T550.
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P70 uses PCI-Express, which is five times faster than the SATA technology, and will also include two Intel Thunderbolt 3 ports for fast connectivity.
