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P16 Gen 3 first impressions after a few days

This P16 Gen 3 is replacing a P16 Gen1 machine that I bought very early in the Gen1 life cycle.

Happy to be back to black. When looking at the photos online I was wishing that the cover had a carbon fiber option like my X1 Carbon. Love that look. This Gen3 machine has a machined aluminum cover that looks very nice. The sides still show the mill marks and the top is bead blasted with a nice texture. Happy with the aesthetic.

I did a couple of benchmarks. My Gen1 has the RTX A4500. This machine has the RTX Pro 4000. GPU performance improvement shows 40-almost 300% improvement, depending on the benchmark. CPU performance benchmarks almost 2x from the old machine.

Performance was not a problem on the old machine, but I'll always take more.

From a size and weight standpoint, with the display closed, the front edge is the same thickness. The back of the machine is about 1/4" thinner. It's about 14 oz lighter than the Gen1. I know the smaller power adapter has been an issue for some folks, but at this point I've seen no reason to regret it. It's a lot smaller and lighter to carry. I'll take it.

The Gen1 machine had the 4K IPS display, and I made the same choice on the new machine. I haven't compared side by side, but it's a great display. I do a lot of photo editing on this machine and OLED is not considered a good option for image editing.

One thing I noticed when running benchmarks is temps are running lower. I keep the dust blown out of the heat sinks, but comparing a brand new machine to a 3-1/2 year old box might not be apples to apples.

One thing I did not expect, is the new machine actually has some battery life! The Gen1 machine might get 90 minutes on a good day, even when new. I replaced the batter about a year ago because it was getting to be ridiculously short.

Been using the new machine unplugged this evening. A variety of tasks - 3D CAD, slicing files for 3D printing, and more mundane web stuff and email.

I'm at 90 minutes of on-time now and the battery shows 62%. While that's not winning any prizes, for a machine with this kind of horsepower, I'm very happy. To get 3-4 hours of work done while unplugged was never possible with the Gen1 machine. If I needed more than an hour, I'd plug in.

While the Ethernet dongle never bothered me much, the RJ45 on the back is welcome. I'm usually docked when plugged in, so I very rarely used the dongle.

I also got the Thunderbolt 5 workstation dock. Haven't seen any issues with that. I was never real happy with the Thunderbolt 4 dock - just had issues with multiple devices on that. Only time will tell if the new dock/machine setup is improved. I have dual 4K screens on the desktop and a bunch of assorted peripherals.

I'll also mention that I went for all the storage - I got 4Tb drives in all three slots. I usually buy machines with a small SSD and replace it with a bigger drive myself. In the Gen1 machine the SSDs gave me some trouble. I put Seagate 4TB FireCuda 530 drives in both slots. In less than a year, one of the drives went bad on my - it was flaky and very slow. I got a warranty replacement on that drive, and then a few months later the second drive went - so switch over to the WD_BLACK SN850X drives. They have been OK. In the end, I don't think I saved money and had to deal with the hassle of drive issues. For this one I paid the premium price to have Lenovo install the drives, and if I have issues it's under warranty.

Overall, I'm happy with the new machine. Nicer looks, slightly thinner, less weight, more power, better battery life, enough ports ... I'm a happy customer. Two hours on battery now and still over 50%.

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