The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
I have a t560 now and really like it but it doesn't have the performance to be my main machine. The p52s looks like it does... my big questions are performance differences between the i5-8350u base and it 97-8550u. Its a minor upgrade, the i7 will have better resale value but with the variable performance on these chips depending on specific implementations tie 8550u isn't necessarily going to be the faster of the two.
Id also like to know about the screens... typically on the T5xx series (and p51s/p52s based on it) the 1080p screen will be ok but not outstanding... the touch version will lose about 30 nits of brightness and the 3k/4k display will be the best of the three. But with each revision the base screens have been getting a little better so details on them would be great.
I would also love to see someone hooking this up to an eGPU box.
Like all things it depends on what you want... comparing the base model t580 ($1089) vs the p52s ($1189) the p52s is more $100 more... but starts with the 8350u cpu ($95 option on the t580), 8gb ($53 option on t580) and GPU ($125 option on t580). So you get $273 bang for your $100 going with the p52s if you want those things.
Also since all p52s have the GPU, you can do the $32 upgrade to the i-7 8550u and still get the GPU. The GPU is only available in the 8350 or 8650 cpus on the t580.
Likewise if you don't want the GPU the t580 is your only option... and if you want the base 8250u CPU its your only option. But any CPU upgrades are going to cost $95+ putting the cost about equal to the p52s where your getting a lot more bang for that $100.
Lets say you went with the 8350u in a t580. that raises the cost $95... so your saving $5 over the p52s. So the p52s gives you 8gb or ram and a NVidia GPU for $5.
I also recall seeing throttling and heat mentioned in a separate article posted on notebookcheck but I was unable to find it.
I had been keeping an eye out for the P52s for quite some time, it seemed promising on paper as a lightweight, yet powerful laptop, but after reading the overheating issues, I've scratched it off for now.
The fan/heat issues are troubling... it sounds like they didn't make any improvements to the cooling solution while taking advantage of the variable TDP on the 8th gen CPUs. If I remember correctly the p52s momentarily allows the CPU to consume 44w and averages out at 22w on repeated runs of cinebench 15. Thats higher than the default 15tdp. But if they didn't improve the cooling system designed for the 7xxxu 15w tdp chips... its going to run hot. Not good.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
