I bought a Lenovo P1 Gen 7 ThinkPad this year and have been enjoying it. But every computer has its quirks so here's a few things I don't like about my P1.

It's a Fingerprint Magnet

The aluminum top feels sturdy and high quality but ultimately is a fingerprint magnet. Over time it's going to pick up fingerprints from carrying it around / opening the lid and eventually start to look like a kindergarten fingerpainting project. There's not much you can do about this as aluminum is known to do this but it is unfortunate.

Loud Fans

I want to start by saying the P1 Gen 7 is a very powerful machine. I'm able to easily play AAA games like Indiana Jones on high graphics and hit a good 50+ fps.

However this power comes at a cost and that cost seems to be heat management. The machine itself has never gotten uncomfortably warm for me even under high graphics loads but that's probably due to the fans going over time.

These fans are not super loud - it's not like a jet engine. But it is loud enough for my wife to get concerned if I'm sitting next to her and ask if my computer is broken.

The answer ofc is no - these fans are doing a great job at managing the heat of so much power in such a small frame. But the fans are noticeably loud and they do come on if the laptop is doing anything even remotely taxing - like sometimes having 20+ tabs open in Chrome.

Personally I think this is fine as it doesn't bother me much but if you're going to be working in a place where you need to be quiet / don't want to disrupt people around you - might take this into account.

As a point of reference - my previous Lenovo T14S Gen 3 AMD never had noticeable fans but it was also not able to run very intensive workloads.

The Trackpad is Quirky

The P1 Gen 7 has a ~new trackpad than other Lenovo's I'm used to. My previous T14s's trackpad was pretty standard if a bit basic - it had some buttons and could do basic tap controls.

The P1 Gen 7 seems like a more advanced one - it has no buttons, relying solely on tap controls. In theory this is better but in practice I've found it a bit cumbersome at times.

Some examples:

• If I hold my fingers on the trackpad (like if slowly scrolling through a Twitter feed) the scroll often gets really unstable. My guess is this is because the trackpad is sensitive and my fingers are heating up the area / doing micromovements which makes the trackpad think I'm scrolling but I've never had this happen on other trackpads. Feels more like a shoddy touch screen in this regard.
• The trackpad is pretty large, coming almost to the front edge of the computer. In practice this means if I'm hovering over the trackpad, sometimes the palm of my hand will activate the trackpad making the computer think I'm doing a triple touch which will do a quick swap to desktop or weird zoom in things which is pretty annoying.

After about a month with the laptop I'm getting a bit more used to it and am avoiding these things but just seems weird and not a problem I've had with any other trackpad I've used.

Next

Despite the quirks, overall I'm really happy with the P1 Gen 7. It's a bit larger than my T14S but packs so much more power in there that I'm finally achieving something close to a fully portable workstation (gaming rig, coding workstation, portable entertainment) which is what I've hoped laptops could become. I'm not ready to ditch my desktop yet but if this trend continues I might be close.

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