Lenovo ThinkPad X9-15 vs X9-15p laptop comparison: Cheaper or faster

When a PC manufacturer releases a new version of an existing product, it is usually pretty clear which one is superior. The new version - in most cases - will be better, because it has faster CPUs, better GPUs, possibly better screens and so on.

In the case of the Lenovo ThinkPad X9-15 Gen 1, things are not quite as clear, at least on paper. This 15.3 inch premium business laptop came out in 2025, and it featured the Intel Lunar Lake platform. It received a great score in our testing, but so far, Lenovo has not released a successor to this ThinkPad laptop, as there is no ThinkPad X9-15 Gen 2.

There is, however, a new product, which looks almost identical to the ThinkPad X9-15, and almost bears the same name: The Lenovo ThinkPad X9-15p Gen 1, which we recently reviewed. This is not a straight successor, it is a new model. While aspects like the screen and the keyboard stay identical to the X9-15, the newer 2026 ThinkPad has some additional features, like a third Thunderbolt 4 port and a full-size SD card slot, as well as user-facing speakers.

More important than these surface-level features, however, are the changes under the hood: The ThinkPad X9-15p has a much cooling system that takes up a much bigger volume of the chassis, allowing Lenovo to use the powerful H class Panther Lake Core Ultra X7 CPUs with 50 W of sustained performance. In comparison: The X9-15 was only able to sustain 25 W. Overall, this, together with the new Intel platform, results in a 44 percent improvement on CPU performance and 76 percent better GPU performance. And the X9-15p does this without compromising other aspects, as the X9-15p still does very well on fan noise, temperatures and battery life.

If the X9-15p is so much better, are there any reasons to buy the X9-15? Of course, there is one: Pricing. While the X9-15 starts at around €1,500 here in Germany as of this article, you have to pay at least €2,500 for the X9-15p. Not everyone needs the extra performance, so if you just need a great everyday PC, the X9-15 can still serve you well. Still, the upgrade of the X9-15p is quite obvious, and quite hard to ignore.