Lenovo ThinkStation P3 Tiny Black 2024

The ThinkStation P3 Tiny is a compact, ISV-certified workstation with a strong 14-core CPU and fast storage. The integrated graphics are its biggest weakness, so it's strictly for CPU-bound work. At the low end of its price range, it's a solid buy for space-constrained professionals.

The i5-14500 is a solid workhorse, landing in the upper-middle of our CPU rankings. 14 cores chew through multitasking and productivity apps without breaking a sweat. The 1TB NVMe SSD is quick and roomy, and 16GB of DDR5 is fine for most office and light engineering work. But the integrated Intel UHD 770 graphics are the bottleneck. It sits in the bottom third of our GPU charts, so don't expect to render anything complex or play anything beyond 2D indie games. For a workstation, that's a trade-off, not a dealbreaker, unless your workflow is GPU-heavy.

Against something like the Apple Mac Studio M4 Max, the P3 Tiny gets absolutely smoked on graphics and raw compute, but it costs a fraction of the price and runs Windows, which matters for a lot of engineering software. The HP OMEN GT16-0364 and ASUS ROG GM700 are gaming desktops with real GPUs, so they'll crush this in any 3D workload, but they're also huge towers. The Dell Tower ECT1250 is a more traditional workstation, but it lacks the Tiny's space-saving trick. If you need a small, quiet, ISV-certified Windows box, this is a unique option. If you need GPU power, look at literally any of the other competitors.

Pricing is all over the place. We're seeing this unit listed anywhere from USD 1,050 to USD 1,600 across three US sellers. At the low end, it's a reasonable deal for a compact, certified workstation. At the high end, you're paying a premium for the Tiny form factor and the ISV badge. If you can snag it near USD 1,050, it's worth a serious look. If it's closer to USD 1,600, you're better off shopping around or stepping up to something with a discrete GPU.

The Lenovo ThinkStation P3 Tiny is a workstation crammed into a box that's basically the size of a thick paperback. You get a 14-core i5-14500, 16GB of DDR5, and a 1TB NVMe SSD, all running Windows 11 Pro. It's built for desks where space is tight but the workload isn't a joke.

This isn't a gaming rig, and the integrated UHD 770 graphics make that painfully clear. But for CAD, MATLAB, or running three monitors of spreadsheets, it's a serious little machine. The ISV certifications for AutoCAD and SOLIDWORKS are the real selling point here.

Skip this if you need any real GPU horsepower. Video editors, 3D artists, and gamers should look elsewhere, because the integrated graphics will bottleneck almost everything you throw at it. Also skip it if you're paying near the USD 1,600 mark, at that price you can get a much more capable machine with a discrete GPU.

Buy this if you're an engineer, architect, or office power user who needs a certified Windows workstation in a tiny package. The i5-14500 and 1TB SSD will keep your daily work snappy, and the ISV certifications mean your critical apps won't randomly crash. Just don't expect to do any serious rendering or gaming on it.