Lenovo ThinkPad P14s shows: AMD Ryzen Pro can work in workstations

AMD has expanded its processor portfolio step by step in the last years. For business laptops, AMD has brought out Ryzen Pro chips to rival Intel vPro. For more performance oriented consumer machines, there is the Ryzen H series that is optimized for maximum performance.

What is missing is a combination of the two: Powerful AMD Ryzen Pro CPUs of the H series. Such mobile workstation CPUs are not there in AMD's selection of CPUs, so AMD is essentially ceding this market to Intel. It likely is not a coincidence that there is no HP ZBook, Dell Precision or Lenovo ThinkPad P series with AMD processors.

There is a small exception though: The Lenovo ThinkPad P14s Gen 1 is sold by Lenovo with Intel and AMD Ryzen Pro CPUs. The ThinkPad P14s is a compact entry-level workstation with U CPUs, which enables the usage of AMD CPUs.

In our comprehensive review of the Lenovo ThinkPad P14s AMD, we observed some platform-specific limitations, such as the missing Thunderbolt port or the lack of a dedicated GPU. Luckily, the integrated AMD Radeon GPU can deliver roughly the same GPU performance as the low-end Nvidia Quadro of the Intel counterpart, and the CPU performance is absolutely phenomenal compared with the ThinkPad P14s Intel.

We hope that AMD tries to tackle the workstation sector in the year 2022 and that we see more than just the ultrabook workstation P14s. Maybe this will be the right time for AMD workstations, as it is rumored that AMD will adopt USB 4.0 in 2022 as well.

The ThinkPad P14s AMD is available over at Amazon.com.