Lenovo ThinkPad Z16 Gen 1 – Top 5 Pros and Cons

The ThinkPad brand, while being exceptionally popular in the business industry, does have a sort of bland look, with all laptops coming in black, with the same rectangular industrial design.

This is what Lenovo is trying to change for the 30th anniversary of the brand, by introducing a new series, the Z-series, which has totally revamped the design. While the Z13 does struggle with cooling, due to its small stature, the larger Z16 is much better equipped for handling high-powered processors from the Ryzen 6000H-series.

Today we present you with LaptopMedia’s top 5 picks about the Lenovo ThinkPad Z16 Gen 1.

Lenovo ThinkPad Z16 Gen 1: Full Specs / In-depth Review


3 reasons to BUY the Lenovo ThinkPad Z16 Gen 1

1. Cooling

The setup here is improved, with two fans on the sides and two heat pipes that stretch along them.


Max CPU load

D Ryzen 7 PRO 6850H (45W TDP)0:02 – 0:10 sec0:15 – 0:30 sec10:00 – 15:00 min
Lenovo ThinkPad Z16 Gen 13.68 GHz @ 84°C @ 62W3.47 GHz @ 88°C @ 54W3.40 GHz @ 95°C @ 53W

As you can see, the cooling is enough for the Ryzen 7, as the clock speeds are high and the wattage is consistent. Yes, the CPU heats up significantly, but we’re happy overall.

Comfort during full load

The fans get really loud, and the base heats up significantly, hovering close to 50°C.


2. Display quality

The 16-inch FHD+ IPS panel on the front has great viewing angles, a peak brightness of 455 nits in the middle of the screen, 437 nits average across the surface, and a maximum deviation of 9%. The contrast ratio is pretty high, at 1670:1. You’d be able to do Creator work on the display, as it covers 98% of the sRGB color gamut, while colors get really accurate, reaching a dE value of 1.0 when using our Design and Gaming profile.

Here are the results of our color accuracy test with both the stock settings (left) and with our Design and Gaming profile (right).


Buy our profiles

Since our profiles are tailored for each individual display model, this article and its respective profile package are meant for Lenovo ThinkPad Z16 Gen 1 configurations with 16.0″ BOE NE160WUM-N62 (LEN41B5) (WUXGA, 1920 x 1200) IPS.

*Should you have problems with downloading the purchased file, try using a different browser to open the link you’ll receive via e-mail. If the download target is a .php file instead of an archive, change the file extension to .zip or contact us at [email protected].

Read more about the profiles HERE.

In addition to receiving efficient and health-friendly profiles, by buying LaptopMedia's products you also support the development of our labs, where we test devices in order to produce the most objective reviews possible.

Office Work

Office Work should be used mostly by users who spend most of the time looking at pieces of text, tables or just surfing. This profile aims to deliver better distinctness and clarity by keeping a flat gamma curve (2.20), native color temperature and perceptually accurate colors.

Design and Gaming

This profile is aimed at designers who work with colors professionally, and for games and movies as well. Design and Gaming takes display panels to their limits, making them as accurate as possible in the sRGB IEC61966-2-1 standard for Web and HDTV, at white point D65.

Health-Guard

Health-Guard eliminates the harmful Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM) and reduces the negative Blue Light which affects our eyes and body. Since it’s custom tailored for every panel, it manages to keep the colors perceptually accurate. Health-Guard simulates paper so the pressure on the eyes is greatly reduced.

Get all 3 profiles with 33% discount


3. Battery life

The 72Wh battery pack gives us exceptional results, lasting for 20 hours of Web browsing, or 18 hours and 31 minutes of video playback. Now, we conduct the battery tests with the Windows Better performance setting turned on, screen brightness adjusted to 120 nits, and all other programs turned off except for the one we are testing the notebook with.


2 reasons NOT to buy the Lenovo ThinkPad Z16 Gen 1

1. I/O

The port selection isn’t up to ThinkPad standards, offering two USB 4.0 ports, one USB Type-C 3.2 (Gen. 2) port, an SD card reader, and a 3.5 mm audio jack.


2. Upgradeability

The laptop arrives with soldered LPDDR5 RAM, with up to 32GB that works in quad-channel mode and runs at 6400 MHz. Storage-wise, there’s a single M.2 PCIe x4 slot that supports Gen 4 SSDs.

Here is our detailed teardown video, which shows how to access the single storage slot.


All Lenovo ThinkPad Z16 Gen 1 configurations:

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