By Brady Betzel

In a world where pros are embracing ultrasmall and ultraportable workstations, Lenovo has met that need with the P360 Ultra — at under 10 pounds, it’s a RAID-0/1-capable, Nvidia-backed workstation with high-level performance.

Much like the Apple with the Mac Studio or HP with the Z2 Mini G9, Lenovo has seen the need for a small form-factor workstation with the power of a full-size tower. The Lenovo P360 Ultra has modern exterior styling and is small enough to travel with you between home and the office, but it’s packed with power close to that of a full-size desktop workstation.

Here are the specs and costs of the Lenovo P360 Ultra I received for review:

• Base system: $1,969
• Processor: 12th Gen Intel Core i9-12900 vPro (E-cores up to 3.8GHz, P-cores up to 5GHz) (+$859)
• Memory: 32GB DDR5-4000MHz (+$230)
• GPU: Nvidia RTX A5000 mobile 16GB GDDR6 (+$4,349)
• 2 SSD: 1TB SSD M.2 2280 PCIe Gen4 (+$70)
• Ethernet: Intel i350-T2 Dual Port (+$89)
• Wi-Fi Adapter: Intel Wi-Fi 6E AX211 2×2 AC vPro (+$25)
• Power Adapter: 300W (+$59)
• Warranty: 3-year parts and labor. Repairs are done at your location.
• Total price: $7,650 with about 90-day lead time for delivery.

Putting It to Use
So how is the P360 Ultra in a modern editing or color correction environment? It holds its own. On the surface, I was able to edit and color-correct 4K, 6K and 8K footage coming from multiple codecs in Adobe Premiere Pro 23.2 and Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve 18.1.4.

Was the P360 Ultra always able to play in real time? No, but it did hold its own and was in the realm of acceptable. However, if you use proxies in either app, you will be working fluidly. The Lenovo P360 Ultra is a great assistant editor or assistant colorist workstation that takes up minimal real estate, is somewhat portable, can connect to up to eight monitors and would line up well with the Lenovo P620 Gen 2.

Lenovo (and other companies, for that matter) are able to fit so much power and performance in such a small form factor by using laptop-style components, such as the Nvidia RTX A5000 mobile GPU and SODIMM memory. This doesn’t mean they are “bad,” per se, but they are thermally throttled, so when it gets too hot in the chassis, the speed and power decrease. Heat is the enemy of power and speed, and with such a compact form factor, Lenovo is leveraging the best of both worlds.

Intel’s E- and P-cores are another advancement that helps fit so much power into a small form factor. E-cores, aka efficiency cores, focus on background tasks that run constantly but with low energy usage. P-cores, aka performance cores, focus on heavier tasks, like multimedia rendering in apps like Resolve.

Testing
Up first are the tests I run in typical Windows-based nonlinear editing applications: Premiere Pro 23.2 and DaVinci Resolve 18.1.4. Using the same clips I always use for my reviews, I apply a basic color correction in a 3840×2160 timeline. The clips include:

• ARRI RAW: 3840×2160 24fps – 7 seconds, 12 frames
• ARRI RAW: 4448×1856 24fps – 7 seconds, 12 frames
• BMD RAW: 6144×3456 24fps – 15 seconds
• Red RAW: 6144×3072 23.976fps – 7 seconds, 12 frames
• Red RAW: 6144×3160 23.976fps – 7 seconds, 12 frames
• Sony a7siii: 3840×2160 23.976fps – 15 seconds

\I then add Blackmagic’s noise reduction, sharpening and grain. Finally, I replace the built-in noise reduction with Neat Video’s noise reduction to really ride the system hard. From there I export multiple versions: DNxHR 444 10-bit OP1a MXF, a DNxHR 444 10-bit Mov, H.264 MP4, H.265 MP4, and an IMF package using the default settings.

In comparison to the Lenovo P620 Gen 2, straight exports with only color-correcting take about double the amount of export time with the P360 Ultra. Adding in Resolve-based noise reduction and then sharpening and grain is surprisingly faster, for the most part. Finally, adding Neat Video noise reduction is about one minute slower.

I ran a similar test inside of Premiere 23.2, except for Neat Video noise reduction. In this version of Premiere Pro and Media Encoder, I was able to get much more accurate export times than I have in the past, so these numbers are reliable:

Benchmarks

• Blackmagic RAW Speed Test:
  • 8K CPU – 52fps
  • 8K CUDA – 75fps
• Blender – Gooseberry: 08:24.46
• Cinebench R23:
  • CPU (multi-core) – 20840pts
  • CPU (single-core) – 1975pts
  • MP Ratio – 10.55x
• Corona 1.3 Benchmark:
  • Render Time: 00:01:17
  • Rays/sec: 6,258,630
• Neat Video – Neat Bench:
  • Best combination: GPU-only 11.2fps
• OctaneBench 2020.1.5:
  • Score: 386.52
• PugetBench:
  • PugetBench for After Effects (0.95.7 – After Effects: 23.2.1×3)
    • Overall score: 864
    • Multi-score: 144.5
    • GPU score: 62
    • RAM preview score: 87.3
    • Render score: 79
    • Tracking score: 99.4
  • PugetBench for Premiere Pro (0.95.7 – Premiere Pro 23.2.0)
    • Extended overall score: 732
    • Standard overall score: 840
    • Extended export score: 73.5
    • Extended live playback score: 81
    • Standard export score: 77.1
    • Standard live playback score: 109.9
    • Effects score: 65
    • GPU score: 70.5
  • PugetBench for DaVinci Resolve (0.93.1 – Resolve Studio 18.1.4)
    • Extended overall score: 1598
    • Standard overall score: 1803
    • 4K media score: 118
    • 8K media score: 98
    • GPU effects score: 93
    • Fusion score: 330
  • RealBench 2.56:
    • Image editing: 119,995
      • Time: 44.4018
    • Encoding: 278,760
      • Time: 19.1132
    • OpenCL: 276,627
      • KSamples/sec: 50916
    • Heavy multitasking: 154,708
      • Time: 49.3316
    • System score: 207,522
  • V-Ray:
    • V-Ray vsamples: 13539
    • V-Ray GPU CUDA vpaths: 1257
    • V-Ray GPU RTX vrays: 1657

These benchmarks all have different purposes and mean much more if you head over to their result postings. Puget Systems has a great benchmark and results page where you can compare systems like the Lenovo P360 Ultra.

For the last test, I ran media through the Blackmagic Proxy Generator:

Sony a7iii UHD (3840×2160) MP4 master files

• Proxies: H.265/10-bit 1080p – 46 files
  • 125fps

Red RAW – various resolutions

• Proxies: H.265/10-bit 1080p – 2 files
  • 17fps

These speeds are pretty good considering how compact the Lenovo P360 Ultra workstation is. For comparison, a desktop system using an Nvidia RTX 4070ti was processing the Sony files at 166fps and the Red RAW files at 28fps

Improvements?
What would I like to see improved? Once I get going in Resolve with transcoding, rendering or even just playing back effects, the fans start to hum. If you like to keep your workstation close by, you will definitely notice the fans kick into high gear. Not a deal-breaker, but it is something to be aware of.

One way to get around a bulky internal power supply is to use a laptop-style power brick. The P360 Ultra has a rather large power brick — it measures 9.3 inches by 5.6 inches by 2.1 inches and weighs about 1.3lbs. I would love to see that shrink down to a more manageable size somehow.

Summing Up
In the end, the Lenovo P360 Ultra is a compact-size powerhouse. With the Nvidia RTX A5000 mobile GPU, which supports up to eight independent displays to the 12th Gen Intel i9-12900 vPro processor, the Lenovo P360 Ultra has the power to handle most midlevel requests from a video editor or colorist. It makes a great assistant editor station that can double as a backup in case your main system goes down.

And I mention this in all my workstation reviews: The term “workstation” is not just an adjective to describe a highly powered system. Lenovo-powered workstations are military-grade-tested (MIL-STD-810H) computer systems, with each component tested against industry-leading software like Adobe’s Premiere Pro and After Effects and Avid’s Media Composer to ensure rock-solid driver compatibility.

In addition, Lenovo’s included Commercial Vantage software helps keep your workstation’s drivers and hardware up to date with the latest versions that ensure little downtime.

And you can check out my other recent Lenovo review here: Previously, I have reviewed their monster workstations, the Lenovo P620 Gen 2.

Brady Betzel is an Emmy-nominated online editor at Margarita Mix in Hollywood, working on shows like Life Below Zero and Uninterrupted: The Shop . He is also a member of the Producers Guild of America. You can email Brady at bradybetzel@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @allbetzroff.