ThinkPad P1 Gen 3 Review Part I: disassembly and assembly pleasure

I'm sorry that my English is not good. Here is machine translation:
There are many pictures in the original text, so it's not easy to upload them. Please see the original text:
https://forum.51nb.com/thread-1982794-1-1.html





Preface
Two months ago, I did not intend to see someone in a QQ group released a US version of ThinkPad P1 Gen3, and it was just paid tariffs and has not been opened. The author thought, this ThinkPad P1 Gen 3 is called by the Bank of China as " The allotrope of the "Hermit" ThinkPad X1 Extreme only uses professional graphics cards to enter the ThinkPad P family. It is now Gen 3 (third generation). I wonder how it has been polished in the past three years?
So, immediately contacted the seller to win Xianyu.
On the third day, SF Express arrived and started operations immediately.

Unboxing
Consistent packaging: brown-yellow outer box, black ThinkPad with red dots, and Lenovo logo with white lettering on a red background.


The outer box contains the following three pieces: a brown-yellow power supply and power cord independent packaging box, a black inner box protected by two pieces of black buffer foam, and a transparent plastic bag containing relevant paper documents and an adapter cable.
In the lower right corner is the customs import tax payment certificate, which proves that this machine has paid an import tax of RMB￥260 yuan at a rate of 13% of the price of RMB￥2000 .


The accessory in the transparent plastic bag is a Lenovo USB-C to Ethernet adapter. Because ThinPad P1 Gen 3 does not have a built-in RJ45 port, this machine is equipped with this accessory at the factory.


The power supply is 170W/20V, ThinkPad square connector, American standard B type (two flat plugs and round grounding).


The front cover of the inner box, the whole body is light black background, plus the black red ThinkPad logo and the black Lenovo logo on the red background, the author feels serious and vigorous.


The tray at the bottom of the inner box is all red, instantly tall and tall-----similar to what a strategic hero sees with a certain brand of high-heeled soles using red.


Open the cover of the inner box, ThinkPad P1 Gen 3 (hereinafter referred to as P1G3) sleeps peacefully.


Take out P1G3, the inner box tray under the body also has safety guide and setting guide.


Exterior
The upper cover (A side) of this P1G3 is a carbon braided texture version. According to the official instructions, whether it is the carbon braided braided texture version or the black version, the material is Carbon Fiber + PC + PPS Hybrid. In the process of using the author, I found that the upper cover of this version is easy to leave finger marks and is not easy to clean.


The bottom of the P1G3 (side D) is black, and there is a long supporting foot pad near the bottom, and a heat dissipation grille of equal length. You can already see the internal heat pipe and the left and right cooling fans.


There is also a foot pad on the left and right at the front of the bottom. The left foot pad at the bottom is also deliberately marked with a large C and Carbon Fiber+Magnesium Chassis (carbon fiber + magnesium body), and a large C on the front. I guess it should Is the abbreviation of Chassis.



In addition, in the official Product Specifications Reference, it is clearly marked as shown in the figure below, that is, the bottom cover material is Aluminum + PC / ABS (aluminum and plastic).
Therefore, if all the official labels are correct, the material of the entire P1G3 body should be carbon brazing composite plastic for the upper cover of the screen, the frame part of the body is magnesium alloy, and the bottom cover is aluminum alloy supplemented by plastic.


There is no port on the front of P1G3.


The back of the P1G3 also does not have any ports, and the shaft is a through-type, as can be seen in the above picture, its length is the same as the long foot pad behind the bottom.



On the left side of the P1G3, from left to right, the ports are the power interface, two Thunderbolt 3 interfaces, HDMI 2.0 interface, and 3.5mm audio input and output composite port.


On the right side of the P1G3, the ports from left to right are the SD card reader slot, two USB-A 3.2.1 ports (one of which supports power off), and a security keyhole.


Reminder, if it is the version with the WWAN card pre-installed at the factory, the P1G3 is on the right side of the fuselage, and there is a Nano-SIM card slot to install the SIM card required for WWAN, as shown in the position 1 in the figure below.


P1G3 continues to maintain the fine classic tradition of most ThinkPad models, and the screen cover can be expanded 180 degrees.


The C side is also a 6-row keyboard. The power button is located in the upper right corner of the keyboard. It is a prototype button with an indicator light in the center. Its surface is different from the ThinkPad P15/P17, with a concentric brushed metal texture. Observing from different angles will have a more obvious reflection effect.


The dual-pointing device layout consisting of a pointing stick and a touchpad is no different from the previous generation.
How to use the keyboard and pointing system, the next part of the actual test.
The lower left corner of the keyboard is marked DOLBY ATMOS, indicating that its speakers use Dolby Atmos technology.


At the top of the screen is the camera and microphone array. This P1G3 is equipped with an infrared camera, combined with an ordinary camera, and supports Windows 10 face recognition login technology. At the same time, the camera also has a physical shield switch-the official name is " "ThinkShutter", Chinese is "Black Valve".


The front view of the screen (side B), the bottom left corner of the screen is labeled Lenovo, and the bottom right corner is labeled P1.
From the picture below, the physical size of the left and right screen frames can be said to be narrow frames.


The palm rest of this P1G3 has two stickers on the lower left corner, one indicates that the machine uses Intel 10th generation Core i9 processor supporting vPro technology, and the other indicates that the screen of this P1G3 passed the X-rite PANTONE color at the factory. Calibration (Factory Color Calibration on UHD panels).
The screen of this P1G3 is a 15.6-inch UHD (3840x2160) wide-viewing angle screen. The specific performance will be tested in detail in the next article.


The side view of P1G3, the upper cover part of the screen formed by the AB surface looks very thin at this time. The body base composed of the CD surface adopts a tapered shape with the front gradually shrinking and retracting inward, so visually P1G3 is even thinner.
In fact, the physical size and weight of the P1G3 is 361.8x245.7x18.4mm/1.7kg. If it is a model with an OLE touch screen, the thickness is 18.7mm and the weight is 1.8kg. The above weight does not include the weight of the power supply.


Disassembly
P1G3 is a mobile workstation that strives to be thin and light but wants to maintain performance. What about its maintenance, disassembly, internal structure and scalability? The author has not used any P1 and its allotrope X1 Extreme before, and has no experience in its disassembly and assembly, so I began to dismantle the machine with the anxiety that the disassembly and assembly of the thin and light model is not easy.


The maintenance and disassembly of P1G3 is mainly realized by opening the bottom cover of the fuselage, which is locked by 7 screws (please refer to the picture above).
Surprisingly, after loosening the 7 screws, the author found that the bottom cover does not require tools such as a plastic opening pick, so it can be removed very easily. No double-sided tape is used. The 7 screws are ready to be used with anti-lost design. The buckle design adopted is also very scientific, making it easy to disassemble and assemble.


The picture below is the bottom cover of the P1G3, which has a beautiful interior and a light structure. The material of the bottom cover mentioned above is Aluminum + PC / ABS, which is completely true.


P1G3 bottom internal overview map


The upper right corner of the D side direction (equivalent to the upper left corner of the C side keyboard) is the CPU cooling fan. The official term for the fan blade is "eagle wing" --- the "eagle" of an owl, which ensures heat dissipation while flying like an owl Just as silent.
Below the fan are two M.2 2280 slots, and one M.2 2280 SSD is pre-installed.


The upper left corner of the D side direction (equivalent to the upper right corner of the C side keyboard) is the GPU cooling fan. The red and black wires below the fan are connected to the COMS button battery, and the black insulating paper part is an empty M. 2 The 3042 slot is designed to install the WWAN card-the WWAN card model used by the management is Fibocom L860-GL, MIMO 2x2 antenna design.
This P1G3 has no WWAN card in the factory configuration. Unfortunately, the current official policy for the P1G3 is that if there is no WWAN card in the factory configuration, there will be no reserved antenna and SIM card slot. Therefore, if users want to add a WWAN card by themselves, it is more difficult. In addition to installing an antenna, how to install a SIM card slot is a big problem.


The USB ports on the side of the GPU cooling fan are all reinforced with good materials. The screen cable passes between the GPU cooling fan and the USB port.
You can also see that the WLAN card is packaged on the motherboard, and the antenna is MIMO 2x2.


Carefully observe the structure of the right screen axis, it looks very reliable.


The structure of the screen axis on the left looks good, and the reinforcing member also includes the power interface.


The heat pipes are relatively thick, one large and one small penetrate the GPU and CPU. The middle part is covered by a copper-clad black sticker. The function is to keep this section of heat pipe and related parts at a proper distance from the bottom cover, while ensuring that there should be Insulation and shielding.



The lower part of this black sticker is an opposing dual memory slot, with two memories pre-installed at the factory.


The memory is two Samsung DDR4-3200 16GB, if users need to upgrade further, they can only install a higher capacity memory.
The pre-installed hard drive is also from Samsung, the model is MZVLB1T0HBLR, namely PM981a, the capacity is 1TB.


On the left side of the memory is the battery interface, and there is a bottom cover opening detection switch between the two.


Here I add an important reminder: For ThinkPad models with built-in batteries, before disassembly, it is best to disconnect the external power supply according to the official requirements, then boot into the BIOS settings, and then disable the internal battery (Config—>Power--->Disable Built-in-Battery).
Choose to disable the internal battery. After pressing OK, it will automatically power off and shut down to ensure that there is no live operation for all subsequent disassembly and assembly.
After disassembly and assembly are complete, you need to connect an external power source to boot, and the internal battery will be automatically activated.


The P1G3 battery is very convenient to disassemble and assemble, with only 4 locking screws and a connection cable to the motherboard.


The battery of this P1G3 is produced by the Taiwanese manufacturer Jiabaiyu in Kunshan. The model is L19C4P71. The standard capacity is 15.36V*5235mAh=80Wh and the rated capacity is 78Wh. Official data shows that it supports fast charging (80% full in 1 hour), and the battery life of MobileMark 2018 is 12 hours. How about the actual use, I will conduct the actual test in the next article.


After removing the battery, you can see that there are many cables in the battery compartment: the white cable near the center is the connection line between the pointing stick and the touchpad control board and the motherboard; and the speaker cable extends from the lower right side of the motherboard and passes through the right speaker , All the way to the left speaker.


There are many cables and a daughter card connected to the right part of the battery compartment.
These cables and this daughter card are all required by the keyboard-P1G3 separates the keyboard control board from the keyboard and the main board, and makes a separate daughter card, which is placed between the palm rest and the battery. It is to control the thickness of the keyboard-try to make the P1G3 body thinner.


At the same time, the author also noticed that on the right side of the motherboard connector of the above figure, there is another interface that is vacant. After consulting the official hardware maintenance manual, it is used to connect to the proximity sensor. This P1G3 does not have this function. The author has gone through it. Inquiry, I didn't find the official description of this function in P1G3 or X1 Extreme Gen 3.


By the way, the author also studied the empty M.2WWAN card slot of P1G3 and found that the slot interface is limited, and M.2 PCIe/NVMe SSD cannot be installed, only M.2 SATA SSD can be installed.


Although the length is limited, there is still enough space to install the M.2 2280 SATA SSD, and after the safety insulation is done, the bottom cover can be installed and booted smoothly.
Regrettably, it cannot be recognized at boot. It is proved that this M.2 slot does not support the use of SSD.


As mentioned above, it is difficult for users to install WWAN cards on their own. Fortunately, the antennas are the official WWAN antennas are arranged in the left and right corners of the battery compartment. If there are materials, it is not too difficult to install them by themselves.


However, it is very difficult to install the SIM card slot. Even if you don't consider the way of digging the shell, just connecting the SIM card slot to the WWAN card slot smoothly requires craftsmanship.
Therefore, the author recommends that if users are indispensable to WWAN requirements, they must choose models with pre-installed WWAN cards.


The author's dismantling of P1G3 ends here, which is enough for most users to carry out daily maintenance and upgrade and replacement of common parts.
Of course, if you need to replace the keyboard, P1G3 needs to disassemble the motherboard. The steps are very cumbersome and costly.
As far as the current level of disassembly and assembly is concerned, I think the daily disassembly and maintenance of the P1G3 is very surprising to the author. It is easy and simple. Compared with the common thin and light models, the whole process is very pleasant.
The only regret is that the models with no WWAN card pre-installed at the factory do not allow users to easily install WWAN on their own, and the empty WWAN card slot does not support the use of SSD.


Okay, so far, the picture is full of 50 pictures. According to the author's practice, this article will stop.
In the next part, I will try my best to conduct a comprehensive test on the P1G3 to see how the ThinkPad P1 has been polished by the first two generations, its comfort, performance, and battery life.
Stay tuned!