PS, you were not negative. I think you’re right.
I may try to hold on for a few months to see if 128 GB ram machines become less exotic and prices become a bit more accessible.
You think right: it has an inbuilt gpu: Intel® Iris® Xe Graphics.
It has a TDP lower than 30W, a base clock close to 3GHz, RAM can reach 64Gb, 4 cores is not that bad for a small laptop. Many laptops don’t have such a « good » CPU. So, which CPU for a laptop would you advice? (And I would say a reasonable Laptop, because for some laptops the power supply is as big as small desktop PC 
… e.g. Clevo)
Thanks, David and everyone, it’s not quite the right one.
But, do we agree Lenovo has fewer issues than Dell with this (audio) use?
Jeff
Ok. I use a laptop myself, but because I’m rather nearsighted, I go for at least 17”. So I do not care about the size of the powersupply, because the laptop is rather heavy anyway.
About the cpu: until the 10th gen intels laptop I7 cpu’s not being an ‘H’ or ‘HK’ performed rather average, especially the ‘U’ version. An mobile I7-xxxxU performed comparable to a desktop I5 (experience figures), so thats where my tendency to only go for ‘H’ versions originates from.
Some Gen 11 cpu’s do still follow that naming scheme, but I admit: more than 4 cpu cores is not very common. So, 
maybe the cpu proposed by @jeffn1 is really not bad. But (to my humble defense) the laptop itself is a thinkpad and that range focuses primarily on reliability, long battery-life and other aspects that are important from a business perspective. This range focuses not so much on sheer power (unless you’re willing to pay >= $3000,00).
My laptop has an I7-10750H @ 2.6GHz. 6/12 cores/threads.
I think the “U” is the one to avoid. But, I agree H or HK seem good.
I think I want to look for a Lenova laptop with a higher end processor and 64 GB of ram that can be expanded to 128 in the future. (Right now the $$ premium for 128GB ram is nuts).
So, I think I need to be able to confirm that my prospective laptop can definitely be upgraded in the future to 128 GB of ram.
I’d love to avoid paying for multiple cores (more than 4, I think), a high-end graphics card, a larger display, a touchscreen, more than one TB of internal storage, etc.
Jeff
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I actually bought an external touchscreen: It saves me buying a fixed midi controller: I created a gig file with all the buttons and texts I need.
Not usable as foot-controller though 
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Okay, I went with a Lenovo that I think includes everything I want, without the things I did not need (no separate graphics card, etc.)
64GB ram upgradeable to 128 GB.
It is a bit larger than I would have preferred, but I don’t think I could get the specs I got with a smaller machine.
(If someone is interested in the details, I will post it).
Not exactly a Laptop, as I rather need to replace my NUC PC by something with a similar form factor and more RAM, but I found, this which could possibly do the job:
I didn’t see a DPC Latency for this model, but it performed well with the older IT 8.
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It seems like some of this is a crap shoot.
I think I got lucky my Dell XPS 13 that I converted to this use. (Or maybe it is more accurate to say I was not among the percentage of GP users who are “unlucky”).
Fingers cross with this new Lenova Thinkpad 16…
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I’m interested in hearing are you satisfied with the results
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You know you’ll hear from me, like it or not! Hah!
Jeff
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PS: I’m still spending stupid time researching this (event though I already bought it).
I “think” this is pretty much considered the top line intel chip for a laptop (but heavy due to power consumption/cooling demands)
12th Generation Intel® Core™ i9-12900HX Processor (E-cores up to 3.60 GHz P-cores up to 5.00 GHz)
But, it seems base cpu is only 2.4 (maybe 2.3). I suppose I could overclock it, but never did that before. Or maybe the turbo will always kick in when needed.
I guess I’ll see how it goes and report back! Hah!
Jeff
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It is indeed their top-range. It seems Intel is going to use the same approach for all laptop cpus, because it’s the same for gen 12 I7 cpus, etc.
But my cpu has also only 2.5GHz base freq, but sometimes runs prolonged times on 3 or 4GHz, so the automatic adjustment of the cpu seems to work.
My 2 cents.
For a given TDP, when they increase the number of cores, because of the heat, they have to reduce the base frequency. Which is not an advantage if you are mainly using one core…
Thx, David, so a good reason to possibly overclock if you are not using many cores.
In this case (Lenovo 16 Thinkpad), they sort of seem to anticipate that people using few cores will overclock. I think in their marketing materials they acknowledge that this is not locked.
With my current Dell XPS 13 I have not run into a problem with CPU. I tend not to use heavy synthesis or effects. Sample libraries are more my thing.
In general, CPU use should not change much over years of use. In contrast, as I continually add sample libraries and new rackspaces to my computer, loaded ram (not using predictive loading) will continue to (gradually) increase. I would like to avoid predictive loading (though it is a great resource). I really like the luxury of immediate access to all “songs” (rackspaces).
But, I am learning now that based on default status (not overclocked) status, my current Dell XPS laptop seems to have a base cpu of 2.6 instead of 2.4 (or 2.3, I’ve read both) on my new Lenovo.
So, if necessary, I may want to consider conservative overclocking.
We’ll see…
Frank, that is good to know (I responded to David’s post first).
So, maybe their turbo works well enough that I will not need to consider overclocking.
Jeff
My impression is Intel hardly mentions base frequency in new chips (I know from a marketing perspective that makes sense).
They seem to view it as a floor for low cpu tasks (idling, reading a document, etc.)
They seems say the important CPU speed to consider is the Turbo speed and that that CPU speed will automatically increase up to the turbo max whenever needed.
So, if it operates the way they say it does, maybe for their new chips base frequency is no longer too relevant (?):
Yes but the problem is that for audio applications we don’t want to work at low frequencies, but processors have difficulties to continuously work at high turbo boost frequencies and goes to the base frequency following rules which are perhaps OK for word processing, but not for real time audio applications.
Thanks, David, yes I started reading some prior threads about the issue.
I suppose there is a possibility that this Turbo 3.0 technology will play better with audio applications (?) (Maybe not).
If not (and I have an issue), I can learn about overclocking.
Thanks again for sharing you knowledge.
Jeff