Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 8 with tandem OLED is insanely bright at almost 1500 nits

The ThinkPad P1 16 Gen 8 may look identical to the ThinkPad P1 16 Gen 7, but it actually sports a handful of new features worth mentioning. One of these is the new tandem OLED touchscreen option which carries several benefits over traditional OLED including extremely high brightness levels. In this case, the ThinkPad P1 16 Gen 8 can reach 600 nits on SDR or 1500 nits on HDR which we can confirm with our independent X-Rite colorimeter measurements.

Even at 600 nits, the Lenovo workstation is already brighter than most IPS or OLED multimedia laptops where 400 to 500 nits is a common maximum range. When enabling HDR, the 1500 nit maximum becomes brighter than even expensive gaming laptops with mini-LED like the Razer Blade 18. Tandem OLED does not suffer from the halo effect infamously associated with mini-LED laptops and so HDR content appears extremely vibrant on the ThinkPad P1 16 Gen 8.

The tandem OLED display option is nonetheless strange to see on a mobile workstation where the target audience of professionals is unlikely to need such high HDR brightness levels. We expect Lenovo to offer this same panel option on some of its higher-end multimedia and Legion gaming laptops in the future where HDR capabilities are arguably a stronger selling point.