Got my first taste of ThinkPads 5 years ago when I got a T490 at work. Loved that machine. Now I've been using a T15 Gen 2 at work, and love how snappy the system is and how good the keyboard feels.

So when I got into the market for a personal laptop recently, ThinkPads were at the top of my list. I was using my previous personal laptop for the last 7 years, and really wanted something that would last. And after getting accustomed to the size of the T15 screen, I wanted something at least the same size.

Enter the P16s Gen 2. To be honest, going into this, I was a bit leery of the AMD processor. I know AMD has come a long way, but I've never used anything outside Intel before and wasn't sure if this would be as long-lasting. But doing some research and looking at other reviews convinced me to take the plunge.

Here are the specs that I opted for...

Processor: AMD Ryzen 7 Pro 7840U Graphics: Integrated AMD Radeon 780M Storage: 1TB SSD Ram: 64 GB Display: 16" WQUXGA OLED (3840x2400) Battery: 4 Cell, 86Wh Price: Came down to $1080 USD after the corporate discounts.

After using the P16s for a month, I'm so impressed. It's fast, super responsive with a really fast start-up time and multitasking abilities. I've yet to encounter any type of lag or slowdown despite running a multitude of apps. I love the keyboard and how balanced it feels between spongy and sturdy. The integrated GPU has been solid too, and I've been able to run most of my newer video game titles at high settings.

The OLED screen was something I was unsure about. But having an OLED TV at home convinced me to go for it. So far, I love the screen. It gets super bright and vivid, and watching movies and shows on it is an amazing exprience. I read on some reviews that browsing and reading on an OLED can be uncomfortable, but so far I haven't really had any issues with that.

The battery life does suffer a bit because of the screen. I think I get like 6-7 hours with the battery watching movies. Slightly less playing video games. And around 8-9 hours of browsing and reading. Keep in mind your mileage might vary depending on the brightness. I usually run my brightness at 80%. Speaking of portability, I love how light this laptop this. Despite the big 16" screen, the laptop weighs under 4lbs and is easy to store or carry due to its slim factor.

Personally, the 64 gig ram might have been overkill for my needs, but it only came out to like $60 more for the 64 gig version over the 32 gig version, and since I plan on having this laptop for the next 5-7 years at least, I decided to go for it.

The price definitely wasn't cheap. But I feel like based on the technology and the specs, it was pretty good value for the money. I know I might've been able to get a different brand with similar specs for cheaper. But durability, comfort and longevity were something that really drew me to the ThinkPad.

Overall, I really love this laptop and highly recommend it to anyone still on the fence. Happy to answer any questions!

Ordered the AMD 7840U / 64Gb Ram version and received the laptop a few days ago. So far, I must say I'm impressed.

As a context I currently have Macbook Pro 16 M2 Max (from work) and Samsung Galaxy Book3 Ultra (GB3U). I bought this was mainly for work / media consumption. The reason why I bought another laptop was I was not satisfied with neither laptops for the following reasons:

MBP

Pros:

• Mostly its advantages come from its CPU - the machine is powerful & quite.

• It also has a great battery life, but I don't think it is impressive given its weight (more on this below). This thing is 300-400g heavier than my Thinkpad P16s Gen 2 or Samsung GB3Ultra, which means that for the same weight, I can carry a 20,000mah battery pack and achieve similarly great battery life.

Cons:

• Its mini LED screen gives me headaches (I think it is due to strong blue light it is emitting, if I turn on night shift to max it goes away)

• Keyboard is better than GB3U but still it bottoms out so not suitable for a long typing session.

• Its speakers have mainstream bassy tuning which makes voices sound muffled --- I ended up using an equalizer to dial down the bass. But then I have to keep changing the eq settings depending on the audio output device which is annoying.

• Quite heavy for a non-gaming laptop --- the weight is unnecessary because I usually use servers for heavy workloads so I don't need that much CPU power on my laptop. You cannot game on this (pitiful support) so the weight feels very unnecessary. It can be unwieldy to carry by one hand.

• Have to use macOS, which I find too good, I much prefer to use Windows or GNU/Linux.

Samsung GB3U

Pros:

• Beautiful OLED screen. It is not a touchscreen so the screen door effect is not an issue anyway, but I found that Samsung Galaxy Book3 Pro 360 is the only OLED touchscreen that I have ever seen that doesn't show the screen door effect. So maybe Samsung OLED panels are better in this regard.

• It sounds great (I prefer this to MBP).

• It is pretty light for a machine with 16 inch screen & dGPU. Substantially lighter than the MBP.

Cons:

• Keyboard is worse than MBP, and also the FN key placement is different from MBP so I made a lot of typos when I switch machines.

• Its touchpad is somehow slightly not accurate, making it annoying.

• Its audio jack produces noise when I plug in sensitive IEMs (e.g., Sony MDR-EX800ST).

So mainly I was going for the great Screen / Keyboard / Touchpad combination, and Thinkpad P16s Gen 2 AMD satisfied all those. I've used multiple Thinkpads (X61, a few X1 Carbons, P51, X1 Yoga, etc), but I must say this one has been the most solid one so far.

Pros:

• OLED screen is of course beautiful, and it is much more comfortable to look at then the MBP's screen. Since it is not a touchscreen, it doesn't have the screen door effect. I was tempted to get ThinkPad P1 G6 so I can play video games, but the dealbreaker was that it only comes with either a QHD or a 4K OLED touch screens, which means I had to choose less pixel density or the screen door effect.

• Keyboard is of course much better than both MBP and GB3U. Also the FN key is located at the end just like MBP, making it easier to switch machines.

• Touchpad is really good, I actually prefer Windows precision touchpads to MBP's.

• I haven't run much of heavy stuff on this laptop but generally this laptop has been very quite. For normal web browsing, it is silent.

• Even with the OLED screen, the battery life seems to be pretty good, it looks like it will last longer than GB3U but shorter than MBP. (Added: Just used it for an hour browsing with brightness at 45% and white background, and it used 14% of battery, which means it can go 7 hours at this brightness level)

• Pretty light for the screen size, substantially light than the MBP (about 400-500 grams difference)

Cons:

• Bezels are a bit thick (especially the top bezel)

• Speakers have no bass.

To me, better screen/keyboard/touchpad are much more important than slightly thicker bezel. In terms of speakers, I don't care much as long as voices are clear (so I can do video chat / watch youtube videos), I use dedicated headphones for music / movies anyway.

This laptop just does not offend me in any way --- I haven't found anything annoying about this laptop, which is very rare --- usually even if I like a laptop, there are a few things that bothers me, not sure I have ever had this experience haha. Even webcam is pretty good and the finger print reader has been reliable.