I was using a T490 (with i7-8665U CPU) as my daily driver, which sometimes struggles running JetBrains IDEs and VMs

Saved up and got myself a new P16s Gen 3 with

• Core Ultra 155H

• NVIDIA RTX 500 Ada GPU

• 64 GB RAM

• 4K OLED display

Here is my review:

Pros:

1. The build quality is the best I have ever had. Specially relative to the T490, it looks like a tank.

2. It is relatively light (just less than 2 Kgs)

3. The 4K OLED screen is super amazing (moving from the 45% NTSC 1080p)

4. It is my 2nd day and the fans are dead silent. The only time I heard them was when I opened up a 4K video (downloaded video) and was seeking.

5. I haven't tested the battery well ... but from what I can see it can go up to 7-8 hrs on Windows 11 'Best Efficiency' mode and probably around 5hrs on 'Balanced' mode.

   • Right now for example, I have been working on Visual Studio for more than an hour and at 82% Windows is reporting 6:30 hrs remain. That looks pretty good for me.

6. Performance difference from the 8665U is night and day. Everything butter smooth so far.

Cons:

1. Even thought the keyboard is good, I prefer the keyboard on the T490 (personal preference). I am planning on getting the TrackPoint keyboard II

2. The body and the keyboard pick fingerprints

3. The audio jack port is kind of tight. I found it very difficult to plug and unplug my earphones

4. I loved Debian 12 on the T490 with i3wm. It was rock solid. But now Debian might not support fractional scaling anytime soon (I read Plasma 6 isn't going to be included in Trixie), so I might have to try couple of distros. Any suggestions are really welcome in this department.

Let me know if anyone has any questions

Hi,

I'm looking at the various offers right now and have the hardest time comparing their value. I have configured them in a similar fashion (as much as possible) in terms of features and services.

I am located in France, all prices in Euros:

P16s Gen 2

• Core™ i5-1340P 13rd gen

• No OS

• 16 GB LPDDR5X-7 500MHz

• 1 TB SSD M.2 2280 PCIe Gen4 TLC Opal

• 16" WUXGA (1 920 x 1 200), IPS, 400nits

• NVIDIA RTX™ A500 4GB GDDR6

• Fingerprint reader

• Backlit keyboard

• 4-cell LiPo 86 Wh battery

• 135 W USB-C charger

• Premier Support Plus 3 years

Total cost: €1954.10 (Lenovo claims this includes a 30% discount which I find dubious as this would make its normal price much higher than an equivalent Gen3).

P16s Gen 3

• Intel® Core™ Ultra 5 125H

• No OS

• 16GB DDR5-5 600MHz

• 1TB SSD M.2 2280 PCIe Gen4 TLC Opal

• 16" WUXGA (1 920 x 1 200), IPS, 300 nits, 60 Hz (weird thing: there's two screen options there but the more expensive one seems to have the exact same characteristics... is it a typo and it's supposed to be 400nits?) - I selected the more expensive one

• NVIDIA RTX™ 500 Ada 4GB GDDR6

• Fingerprint reader

• Backlit keyboard

• 3 cell LiPo 75 Wh battery

• 135W USB-C charger

• Premier Support Plus 3 years

Total cost: € 2005.80

P16v Gen 2 (Intel)

• Intel® Core™ Ultra 7 155H

• No OS

• 16GB DDR5-5 600MHz

• 1TB SSD M.2 2280 PCIe Gen4 TLC Opal

• 16" WUXGA (1 920 x 1 200), IPS, 400 nits

• NVIDIA RTX™ 500 Ada 4GB GDDR6

• Fingerprint reader

• Backlit keyboard

• 4 cell LiPo 90 Wh battery

• Compact 170 W (non-USB) charger

• Premier Support Plus 3 years

Total cost: € 2215.80

A few questions to help me decide:

• Regarding the P16s Gen3, do you also think the screen thing is a typo?

• Which will offer the best battery life? How much battery life can I expect when doing office work, wifi on, screen backlight at ~80%?

• Is the difference in CPU worth the price? How different are these CPU overall?

• Can I add a second stick of RAM in any/all three models? Is there something particular I should know regarding this (e.g. regarding module compatibility etc.)?

• Is the battery user-replaceable without much hassle on any/all three models?

• Is there any difference in keyboard quality? (I'm a professional translator so typing is a MAJOR focus).

• Any other thing I should know?

The use-case will be a desktop-replacement for when I'm on the go (most of the time I have a real desktop PC), something as versatile as possible for light gaming, office work, photoshop, audio edition, basic AI inference (I want to be able to use tools that rely on Cuda such as Upscayl, UVR5, perhaps some basic stable-diffusion etc.). Battery life is an important factor. Being able to sustain a reasonable but prolonged workload without overheating also an important factor.

I don't need super heavy workload stuff like Premiere Pro, After Effects or training AI models.

I know it's a lot of questions. Thanks in advance if you can take the time to reply.