Lenovo’s mobile workstation range is being expanded with rugged and reliable units: the Thinkpad P50 and P70. These models are the first in the world using Intel’s new Skylake platform. They are designed to run ‘the most demanding’ independent software vendor (ISV) applications.
The P50 is described as Lenovo’s thinnest and lightest full-function mobile workstation to date. The P70, though, is specifically aimed at professionals, in industries from media and entertainment to oil and gas.
Victor Rios – VP and general manager of workstations at Lenovo – says, “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”.
The Thinkpad P70 is Lenovo’s first 17″ Thinkpad mobile workstation. An IPS panel with UltraHD resolution (or 1920 x 1080 with touch) is built into the display. A Pantone X-Rite colour calibrator is featured in the laptop’s palm rest; to enable it, the user simply closes the unit.
Lenovo says that it has built the P70 with the most storage and RAM ever seen in a mobile workstation: 64GB of RAM and up to 1TB of SSD storage. The product has room for four storage drives, so the optical drive could be removed and replaced.
HDMI and USB-C (x2) ports are featured. These USB ports are special, because Lenovo has used Intel’s new Alpine Ridge controller – this means that the USB ports can reach the full speed of Thunderbolt 3 in Thunderbolt alt mode: 40Gbps. Other existing USB-C notebooks, like the Chromebook Pixel and 12″ Macbook, are limited to 10Gbps. (we asked Lenovo for more info on the graphics ports, but had not got a response at press time)/
Speaking of Intel, the P70 has a quad-core Xeon processor using the Skylake architecture and an Nvidia Quadro GPU.
Many of these features are shared with the 15.6″ P50. In fact, aside from its ability to hold up to three storage devices instead of four, and loss of a single USB-C port, the smaller workstation is almost identical to its larger cousin.
Both products have been MIL-spec tested. They also feature a Flex Performance Cooling systtem, with a dual-fan design. Lenovo will start selling both new workstations in Q4. The P50 will start at $1,600 and the P70 at $2,000.
