By far the fastest computer we have in the office.
Written by a customer while visiting lenovo.com
Customer Rating
3
Very Limited RAM Speed Options -- Missing XMP 3.0
on July 31, 2023
Posted by: iinspired
[This review was collected as part of a promotion.] I just got my P16 Gen 2 in and there are a couple of oddities. I was surprised that it did not have a LAN port but this is easily corrected by using a USB to LAN adapter or a docking station. I checked and the LAN connection does work when docked. What is bugging me about this high powered laptop right now is that it does not support Intel XMP 3.0 so as you add more RAM the speed of the RAM gets reduced. This is a known issue that XMP 3.0 was designed to work around by safely over-clocking RAM that is also designed for XMP 3.0 to bring it back up the rated speed. Without XMP, you can only run up to 16GB DDR5 @ 5200, Up to 48 GB @4800, Up to 64 GB @4000 and anything over is limited at 3600. I purchased 128 GB of 5600 CL40 to increase memory in my system. Now I have to run tests to see what that does to my application. Hopefully, the rest of the system is fast enough I won't notice. I don't know if the reduced speeds translate to even lower throughput due to the potentially magnified effects of a higher CL on higher speed RAM. I may have to return the memory I bought and stick with 4800 RAM CL 34 since that might actually run faster. I hope I'm splitting hairs on the memory speed but it's logical to assume that 5600 CL40 would run faster than 3600 CL38 or CL40 and be a noticeable difference. XMP 3.0 would have been very nice to have and logical for this workstation. BTW the brightness and range of brightness on my screen is fine (WQUXGA 3840x2400 non-touch 800 nits).
[This review was collected as part of a promotion.] This model is a Brick House! Very mighty... but weighs almost 7lbs. I wanted a system that had at least an RTX 3500 and 32GB RAM. It's great if it is going to live on your desk 90% of the time. I would have went a different direction if I needed more portability. The big chassis allows for the components to be spread so it seems to run optimally.
It does need some configuration out of the box and although willing to help, technical support doesn't get technical enough. I had problems where I had to change the frame rate to 59.94HZ on my two external monitors to help the flickering. I also had to change the virtual memory, configure the dedicated graphics card to work with certain programs, and configure Firefox so streaming sports wasn't painful. I would have given a rating of 2 stairs if I did not figure that out, but then I finally had a helpful tecnician and had me open ESPN in Edge and it worked fine. Then I found a fix for Firefox on YouTube (link below). I prefer not to use Edge. https://softwarekeep.com/blog/speed-up-firefox-browser
I do wish it was a little lighter and it had more memory... But the Black Friday Deal was amazing and I walked away with a machine that was half the price of a machine with the same components from a different company.
Any given day, I'll have Revit, Photoshop, Premier, Outlook, 15 taps of Firefox... including one that is streaming Youtube and have had no problems since I configured everything. My only complaints are the time to configure it, no XMP in the BIOS so the RAM speed that comes with the computer cannot be fully utilized, and the weight.
[This review was collected as part of a promotion.] Fast and stable. I upgraded from a p53 and I have no regrets. This machine beats it in almost every respect. I use a dock so the lack of an ethernet port may be an issue for some but for me it's the perfect machine.
[This review was collected as part of a promotion.] The build quality was good but the 4K OLED display was terrible. The resolution was good but there was a diamond pattern that overlayed the display and made things look fuzzy. It was particularly bad in white and lighter color solid block areas. Would not recommend using for visual media development or viewing. Initially I thought it was a defect in the display so had a replacement sent but the replacement had the same problem. So ended up returning the computer and purchased another laptop with 4k display from different company that did not have the diamond pattern overlay on the screen.
No, I would not recommend this to a friend.
Response from lenovo.comBy Poornima_Lenovo, Customer Service, January 19, 2024
Thank you for taking time to provide feedback on your experience with our Lenovo product. We apologize for the inconvenience caused. We are sorry to hear that your experience with our Lenovo product has not met your expectations. Customer satisfaction is our top priority, and we are truly sorry that wasn't demonstrated to you. While we'd love the opportunity to regain your trust, we understand how frustrated you must be.
We request you to please contact our technical team who should be able to fix your issue as early as possible, https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/
[This review was collected as part of a promotion.] Very good buy. Seems very solid. Amazing price at the outlet. Downside is battery time which is quite short