Lenovo ThinkPad P Series (P52, P53, P16 Gen 1, P16 Gen 2) - Don't Even Think About It + Funny Warranty Service Tale

Last week, I got a refund for my Lenovo ThinkPad P16 Gen 1. On paper, it sounded like a dream machine, with insane specifications ready to tackle any computing task. It was also a good way to flex your choice of 128 GB of RAM which I actually did use.

You’d think spending thousands of dollars on a machine would grant you a premium experience, this post will make you think again about that. Consider buying a used car instead.

Now, after using it for a while, I started to notice some flaws that simply could not be fixed. Yes, there were hardware and software problems that could be tweaked or dealt with precise fiddling. However, other issues were due to the design of the machine and some of the bad decisions that Lenovo made. I constantly felt like I was wrestling with it to get it to do what I want, but even then it didn’t listen to me.

I have the impression that Lenovo never really stress tested their machines when designing them to go through the quality control process. It was a bit bewildering when I started to see oversights that even a layman would notice. I’m no hardware engineer, but even with my puny brain, I could tell some decisions were just not right.

Keep in mind that these issues are very anecdotal but I do have some technical analysis to prove that I’m not making this stuff up.

Thermals

I’ve had quite some bad luck when it comes to thermals for pretty much every laptop I’ve owned. I often pushed these machines to the limits and quickly realized that they weren’t designed for endurance.

Processors temperatures would shoot up, the laptop would become noisier than a 727 on takeoff and it would become so hot that you could cook breakfast on the keyboard.

Once the laptop started to turn orange from the heat, the CPU and GPU would give up and downclock until even solitaire ran at slideshow speeds. The P16 I’ve had was built with a really thick chassis and a gigantic heatsink, so you’d expect it to handle stress tests but it kept failing as the processors were saying good bye to their performance and dropping their TDP. Or in some cases, just shutting off the machine.

Under load, the CPU and GPU cannot maintain their maximum frequency for a very long time, having the core clocks go down dramatically on a regular basis. Specialized software reveals that the system is doing that in response to high temperatures and lack of power from the supply. Rarely can the CPU and GPU reach their maximum TDP when at load.

Here, the video card is under heavy usage. Notice how it never achieves it's maximum design frequency of 1500.0 MHz. The chart shows the GPU clock constantly fluctuating. (from a tool GPU-Z)

Here, the CPU and GPU are having their performance capped due to not having enough power from the AC supply. (from the CPU-Z and GPU-Z tools)

This creates stutters and frame rate drops, generating a very inconsistent experience with 3D applications or GPU heavy programs.

Not only do the internals get very hot, but the heat transfers to the case. Hot spots of over 60C were measured on top of the keyboard using a laser thermometer.

This is a reading from a laser thermometer after running some software intensive tasks. Although increased case temperatures are expected, this is the temperature on the keyboard surface. It is hot to the touch at 60C. The keyboard becomes very uncomfortable to use.

One solution that helped slightly was putting the laptop on a stand, but that ruined the ergonomics and usability of the system. It only delayed the heat issues by a few minutes, it did not solve them.

Temperatures for both the CPU and GPU hit 100C, which is their maximum design limits. Sometimes the temperatures exceeds those and the laptop shuts down suddenly to protect these components.

This is the temperature of the CPU (monitored using a tool HWInfo) after running some hardware intensive tasks, exceeding 100C, the safe design limit for the CPU.

Setting the "Ultra Performance Mode" in ThinkPad Vantage and ensuring that the Windows Power Management is set to "High Performance" does not solve the problem at all.

For something that is "workstation" grade, I'd expect that stress testing was done during the design process and quality control, but it doesn't seem like it.

I have not been able to find a reliable solution for these issues and simply had to endure poor performance and high temperatures. Neither via hardware fixes or software adjustments.

Power Supply Issues

The laptop cannot draw enough power to sustain the CPU and GPU at high loads. As a result, it will start draining the battery to be able to power the laptop. This is because the power adapter can only provide up to 230W of power.

It’s really embarrassing that no one did the simple math of calculating the total TDP of the CPU and GPU and designing an adapter with enough wattage to feed the machine enough power to keep the components alive.

However, even using a 300W adapter does not solve the issue. Using an external electricity usage monitor, only up to 230W is drawn despite the more powerful adapter.

As a result, after running under load for about an hour, the battery charge is fully depleted and the laptop shuts off suddenly and automatically.

Three official and certified Lenovo 230W Power Adapters were tested resulting in the same behaviour. The combined TB4 and AC port from the Lenovo ThinkPad Workstation Dock results in the same behaviour as well. Using a 300W adapter also from Lenovo causes the same issues.

A review by NotebookCheck.net for the Lenovo ThinkPad P16 G1 RTX A5500 confirmed similar behaviour under the same conditions.

Here, a reviewer notes the battery level drop after running some benchmarks while the laptop was plugged in

Here, using the BatteryMon tool, you can see the laptop battery discharging even though it is connected to A/C power.

If you think Lenovo has learned a lesson from this design, don’t worry, the upcoming Gen 2 model still has a 230W adapter.

USB Connectivity Issues

USB connectivity is unreliable especially when multiple devices are connected at once. After a USB device is plugged for a few minutes, they sometimes disconnect partially causing data corruption or completely. The devices are gone from Windows Device Manager. The problem is compounded when using USB Hubs (even powered ones) or a docking station. When the laptop is under heavy load, the time for the devices to disconnect is even less.

This happens with any USB slot whether USB-A or USB-C or Thunderbolt.

Enabling "Always On USB" and disabling "DMA Protection" does not solve the issue. Restoring BIOS settings to defaults didn't help either. Various versions of Windows were tested included 10, 11 and Insider Previews. Both the factory reset reimaging and clean format did not help.

These same devices function normally on other computers without any issues.

A full replacement of the mainboard did not fix the problem.

Here is the output of a USB Webcam after the USB connection failed. Again, this issue does not happen if the same device is plugged into another computer

Bluetooth Audio Issues

Bluetooth audio devices which combine output (such as a speaker) and input (such as a microphone) have an odd quirk. If the input is enabled, the audio through the output either cuts off completely or the quality of the audio is lowered dramatically.

Notice the output stream on the top and the input stream on the bottom. When input is enabled (such as a microphone in this case), the output cuts out.

This is because the built-in Bluetooth does not support the LC3 codec despite being officially Bluetooth 5.2.

These devices don't have issues when connected to other computers or mobile phones.

Docking Station

The Lenovo ThinkPad Thunderbolt 4 Workstation Dock has issues connecting and disconnecting reliably. Often, when connecting the laptop to the dock, not all displays get a video signal, and the only solution is to power cycle the dock by unplugging and plugging power back in.

Sometimes, the USB and Audio connectors do not function at all or disconnect at random times. Sometimes power cycling doesn't work and the computer needs to be restarted.

Updating the Docking Station Firmware did not solve or improve any issues.

Suspend and Sleep Issues

When closing the lid or pressing the "Sleep" button on the keyboard, the laptop will appear to enter a suspended state. The screen will turn off and the ThinkPad LED indicator will slowly flash. However, the laptop is clearly still on, as the fans are still running. This also results in the battery being drained. This happens in both Windows 10 and 11.

Battery Life and Throttling

Although the Lenovo website claims that the laptop can have up to about 5 hours of battery life, I've never been able to exceed 2. This is even making sure only the minimum of software is running, minimizing CPU usage and lowering brightness. This was both the case with the P53 and P16.

Even under ideal conditions, battery life can be quite poor. The battery is nearly full, but only has a little more than an hour of available run time

In addition, when the laptop is on battery power, the CPU is heavily downclocked generating an unusable experience. Software runs extremely slowly. There are some utilties that can disable this but I didn't use as it can damage the components on the mainboard.

Although it's normal for Intel SpeedStep to lower CPU clocks under light loads to save power, this is the maximum frequency recorded (by HWInfo) when under battery power

The only solution is to always keep the laptop plugged into an outlet thus tethering me to a power outlet.

Bonus Story: A Funny Tale About a Motherboard Replacement

There was an issue with the USB ports on the machine and they determined that the solution would be the replace the mainboard. I spent an inordinate amount of money to have premier warranty support. This story happened when the technician inspected the motherboard replacement. We both had quite a laugh and it made his day. I was supposed to be angry but I found it funny instead.

The original motherboard is on the left, the replacement motherboard is on the right. Pay close attention to the DIMM heat shields.

The first thing that caught my attention is that the heatshield in the replacement motherboard wouldn't fit over the DIMMs.

However, I noticed that they both look very different. The obvious difference is the missing serial number and black tape, but that can happen with replacement parts, this is normal.

Take a closer look at the two pieces, I put them side by side for comparison.

The right one is from the original motherboard, the one that shipped with the new machine. The left one is from the replacement motherboard that was delivered. Notice the size difference? The new one is too small.

However, look even closer, there are creases, it almost looks like it was taped together. Turns out, it's not a heat shield, it's actually improvised from tape.

This isn't the worst part yet, the tape is actually aluminum foil. I tested it for conductivity and it's actually conductive.

This means that this piece, that was touching the pins and the DIMMs, would cause an electrical short, which is obviously dangerous. If I didn't have an eye for this, and left this odd piece, it would have damaged the laptop permanently.

I'd like to know how can someone improvise something like this, and then have it pass QC? This isn't even a manufacturing defect, not even shoddy workmanship.

So it looks like Lenovo is so cheap that they’re ready to put aluminum foil as a replacement for a supposedly brand new part.

Conclusion

I’m not the only one to think this, but many agree that ThinkPad laptops have gone down in workmanship and quality since Lenovo bought the series from IBM (well actually it was the other way around, IBM sold it to them).

The problem with laptops, I always felt like that I was picking the least worst laptop rather than the best laptop. Laptops seem to be a story of compromise and you’ll always be losing somewhere. If I didn’t need to take my work with me and wasn’t a nomad, a desktop would have been a no-brainer. It’s half the cost and easy to modify and upgrade.

Now, I’m desperately looking everywhere for a replacement that will hopefully work well enough to help me get things done, even if there are a few bugs and papercuts. And of course, last me more than a couple of months.

Bracing myself to overdraw my account!

Thank You!

I really didn't expect that I'd get so much responses and support after posting March's rant. My inbox got flooded with emails quite quickly and I'm going to have to respond to each one of you. I kind of cried a bit. I appriciate so much what you have sent me, it means a lot. It's nice to know that outside of my circle, that other people care about me. Thank you!

Things are looking up at this point, after doing additional assesmments and put on more pills and other adjustments. My life is about to resume it's normally scheduled program, and soon enough the projects will resume, just not yet.

Also in the way is not having a good machine to work with. I had to say good bye to my Lenovo ThinkPad P16, which honestly was a mixed bag. I'll leave the rant for another time, but let's say some design flaws got into the way of actually getting things done. So for now, I'm typing this from a 9 year old computer, I don't know how I'm going to survive with 4GB of RAM for a few weeks.

Stay tuned for more. Cheers!

Breaking Point

I have to apologize for the recent silence and lack of progress in my various projects. My mind hasn't been wired properly for a while now and going to difficult and troubling times. I mentioned before that I'm bipolar schizoaffective and borderline but my symptoms have reached their peak in somewhat recent times. I was promised that my illness would be a prodrome to grow bigger and bigger and they were absolutely correct. My onset of thirteen years ago never hinted at me that I'd be battling a monster that vies to be victorious over my frailty.

This is a very sensitive and personal subject for me and it's guaranteed to make me vulnerable and a target for all sorts of missed opportunities. However, I'm at a breaking point where I just can't hold in the tears anymore. I have to spit everything out in the most embarrassing of places, my blog. At the end of the day, I'm a human being who's going through some tough challenges and if this is a point of judgement for you, please move on and don't waste my time. At least I'm brave enough to put this in public for everyone to learn about.

The subject is graphic both emotionally and physically so I'm going to throw some massive trigger warnings here for those who hold trauma or are so neurotypical that thoughts like these never entered their minds. If you fear seeing a drop of blood coming out of your body or the most painful thing you've ever had was broken nail, this is not for you. In other words, if you've never suffered and take everything for granted, we're just not going to vibe.

My account starts with something in the present. Permanent marks and cuts on my arms that will never heal. I'm not ashamed of them nor do I regret committing the act. It has become part of my story giving a glimpse into who I am and the pain that I had to endure. I've had the bravery this fall to wear short-sleeves for all to see and had people courageous enough to ask me questions about it. It doesn't take much to explain other than admitting that it's self-harm and that 80% of my kind engages in activities like these.

A select few have asked me why I would do something like that. My answer was always the same: because I had to. It's impossible to feel emotional and physical pain at the same time, so this act provides me with consistent relief and distraction from what's going on inside my head. Never has blood looked so tantalizing to me seeing it flow down my arms spoiling my blanket. In my naïve years of teenagerhood, I though that something like that was just so stupid, but now I have total respect for it and fully understand how necessary it is.

Last weekend, I developed a panic attack because I knew I was about to have a psychotic break. No matter how much I was trained to recognize them, they still scare the shit out of me knowing that soon, my reality will melt and I'm going to be in a strange world. The delusions became so real and the paranoia started to hunt me down. I watched the world getting foggier and foggier and losing track of the real world becoming derealization. Imagine yourself not being able to trust your thoughts anymore and everything fading to obscurity revealing a new existence that even a bad trip on psychedelics can't recreate.

That night, my delusional self was keeping me away from my treatment. I thought that something mysterious took over me and that magic will banish it to eternal suffering. However, I had to do what they call opposite action, a very difficult technique that is ingrained in your psyche so deep learned in Dialectical Behavioural Therapy. I struggled to convince myself to get off my couch with all the colours swirling everywhere and swallow giant doses of antipsychotics. It took five hours to regain my consciousness, so to speak, and end the day with bedtime. I was still afraid.

So that's what happened recently, but the cocktail of symptoms has been presenting me with surprises and put me on the path of relapse. A mixed episode out of nowhere collapsed onto my taking me over along with the dreaded short shots of emotions from borderline personality. However, this one wasn't going to be covered by massive doses of Seroquel, it was going to last and for the past few months, I've been in it. The darkness is seeping in dimming even the dimmest of lights, I just can't anymore.

My functioning and cognition took the biggest hit, the thing that I value the most in my mind, is starting to fade away. There's no trigger, it's just the genetic switches that keep being turned on, one by one, and it seems like it's still growing. Every night, I dissociate because of how hopeless I feel and realize that I just had another empty day of nothing. It hurts, a lot.

Throughout my career of mental challenges, I would get lapse of relief, thinking that whatever combination of medications has settled me down. Sometimes it was relief but other times it was just a hypomanic episode giving me the illusion of a cure.

Where I am now is a painful but empty existence. There's nothing inside me, I feel nothing but a void. There are emotions but I can't feel them except through the filter of borderline, and my mood swings are just something to witness through the state of the world around me. Every morning, I start hallucinating and it ends when I go to sleep. However, my symptoms still haunt me in my dreams because the nightmare is both when I'm awake and when I'm asleep.

But, I'm trying to be hopeful and care-seeking. I want to get better and resume my life, but it won't be an easy path. The expression 'live day by day' is insipid and an extreme insult for me, because you can't plan a mental illness like that. The episodes last weeks and months, with no end in sight even if you are aware that there will be finality, but only for that episode. Because, another one is lined up for me.

My condition has taught me to be strong and forced me to become resistant of the ramblings of my mind. I can't get them out of head, or even ignore them, but just let the demons live inside my head and have the party they so badly want. I've brushed death and literally met it a few times so I know what it's like on the other end. I've learned to keep myself safe but the thoughts will never leave me, not even for a day.

On the other hand, I can't let myself submit to my circumstances but I have to cope with them in the best way possible, even if it means hitting the pause button for a while.

What's coming up next for TopRoms...

I’m currently hard at work expanding and assembling the TopRoms collection to include even more goodies. The collection is getting quite large, but stay reassured that only quality content will make it to the package. Here’s a taste of what’s coming up next:

• Japan only releases that are translated into English. This will be very time consuming because the Japan region has been the recipient of a swath of great RPG games. I know these are very popular so expect them to be included eventually.

• Addendum: I forgot to mention that I will be adding sport games as well since virtually none are included in the collection.

• Investigate CHD CD images that are failing to load in certain emulators. Almost all the disc-based systems have been converted from ISO to CHD but some have reported issues using them. The systems still ISO work fine.

• Add more high-quality and playable games. Thanks to the emails from my readers with suggestions. I’ll also be taking a deeper look on the web and magazines to find even more great games.

• Attempt to add every system that has an emulator working up to the fifth generation (PlayStation 1, Nintendo 64, Sega Saturn and so on).

• I know some of you really want more modern systems but I don’t have the disk space to actually include those systems too and finding good dumps for them is still challenging. Emulation isn’t that far either for these newer systems.

If you have noticed, the torrent has become much more reliable and provides better download speeds. I moved everything to an actual physical server on a good internet connection. My experience with seedboxes has been sour with broken software and limited bandwidth. The higher bandwidth servers are even more expensive. Hosting it on a VPS is out of the question because of the cost of storage.

Stay tuned but this may take a while to take shape. Keep seeding and sharing the collection with your friends!

My biggest failure, the FreeBASE console...

It’s been almost 10 years since the FreeBASE idea was initiated. However, it was a massive failure due to realizing that we were competing in the wrong field and honestly being afraid of our shadow.

The biggest problem that I didn’t understand back in my university days is that good ideas don’t make good products. I mean, how great of a proposition is it? A game and media console that would play free content with thousands of freeware and open-source games and popular online series that were viewable at no cost.

We had a great team each with their own speciality me being software, someone else doing research for the free content, a web developer, a DevOps (before the term was even coined) expert but still looking for more. Several times, we even had amateur investors meeting with us because they were interested in taking the idea even further though all of them, at the end of the day, were skeptical of the idea and threw us out of the window.

At the time, the landscape was shaping up to be a quite competitive one and I was slightly scared of them. I mean, the giants Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo had a foothold on the market and we realized that we could never compete with them. But we had a bit of hope because other players tried to enter the market such as Boxer8’s OUYA and Valve’s Steam Machine made us feel like we can squeeze into the market too.

However, in retrospect several years later, after the project was canned, we saw Boxer8 and Valve fall flat on their faces with disastrous results. We were naïve at the time and couldn’t see the faults in our ‘competitors’. But, just like us, they were short-sighted, and failed to understand the market. Julie Uhrman, the founder of the OUYA project, had no idea what she was doing. For example, she claimed that the OUYA controller was the first to have a touchpad while she was oblivious to the fact that Sony’s Dual Shock controller beat them to it. What an embarrassment!

Valve’s idea fell on it’s face after selling so few Steam Machines that many people ended up buying them because they were cheap computers installing Windows on them to get rid of the subpar SteamOS. OUYA was even more embarrassing. The best selling game was TowerFall, but the developers revealed that only 7000 copies were sold. It was ported to PC and become a massive hit there.

At this point, I have to give up on insulting the other projects because ours was a much bigger failure. I was so confident that we would get somewhere but I began to feel fear and the whole team got disillusioned and split apart shortly after. The only evidence left is an idiotic YouTube video that looked like a teaser, for a teaser.

Our proposition brought challenges that our much larger competitors didn’t have to face.

First, we couldn’t build or design our own hardware, we decided to use off-the-shelf components but building such a machine was very expensive. We tried to make tiers to create multiple markets but it was as confusing as Windows Vista’s swath of editions. Our projections showed that our systems would be at least twice as expensive of current consoles with much less horsepower.

Second, we had to make money on hardware, we couldn’t sell it at a loss like the others. Since the games were free, we couldn’t make the creators pay licensing fees to have their game featured on the console. We saw Microsoft try this business model with making money on the console but they had to take so much shortcuts that the rings of death became a meme. In other words, these companies had such deep pockets that they could recuperate their losses with licensing fees, and that made their products make millions and billions of dollars.

Third, we made no market analysis at all. We didn’t know if anyone was actually interested in playing shoddy indie games made by someone in their free time. The quality of the games didn’t even touch the ones made by AAA publishers.

My main partner, who was helping me with building the software, put it so elegantly that we hit emotional walls and still haven’t learned our lessons from the failed project. It became really obvious that we didn’t have our shit together.

To this day, I still ruminate about the project because I wish it would be alive and successful. I did consider turning the hardware idea into just a Linux distro. There are already some poorly polished ideas such as Lutris which handles pretty much everything up to even installing patched versions of Wine for better compatibility.

The project still left a legend or legacy behind it, so here’s some images that invoked what we thought the FreeBASE interface would be like.

Leave some notes in the comments sections on your opinions and ideas on this failed project, or similar ideas you had, or even if you want to bring it back again.