Lenovo Halves Its ThinkPad Workstation Range

Lenovo has halved its range of portable workstations.

The Chinese PC giant this week announced the ThinkPad P16. The loved-by-some ThinkPad P15 and P17 are to be retired, The Register has confirmed.

The P16 machine runs Intel 12th Gen HX CPUs, all the way to 16-core i9 models. Nvidia RTX A5500 graphics are an option.

Memory can reach 128GB and storage can climb to 8TB. Lenovo hasn't detailed other specs but the machine appears to have a single USB-A, USB-C, and HDMI port.

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Lenovo stated that the machine is “Built to combine the best features of the ThinkPad P15 and P17 into an all new compact and improved form factor” and offered the graphic below to show that combination.

Lenovo’s portable workstation roadmap

The Register inquired about whether that graphic means Lenovo now offers just one portable workstation and was told that’s the case.

What the graphic doesn’t reveal is that the P17 packs an Intel Xeon processor and a 17-inch screen – neither is now offered by the ThinkPad P16. The absence of a Xeon is not unexpected, as Intel’s new HX silicon is its replacement. Not catering to the Core i9 HX, however, means mobile workstation users can’t get Intel’s very best offering in the class. Moving to a 16-inch screen will improve portability for P17 owners, while robbing them of a little screen real estate. P15 users will need to lug a larger machine.

Speaking of the ThinkPad P15, didn’t offer Linux as a pre-install option and fell well short of the P16’s scalability for memory and storage.

So the P16 does look like a legitimate combo of Lenovo’s two previous mobile workstation offerings.

We await comment from Lenovo on why it has decided to reduce its range, but a likely reason is that mobile workstations are not a high volume product so the company can’t sustain two models. We will update this story if we receive substantive information from Lenovo ®

UPDATE: 20:45 UTC, May 20th. This article has been altered to correct errors in the laptop's specs.