I am still in the midst of switching over to the i5-1240P DIY Edition (Batch 4), but as of now, I am happy with my choice (with occasional fits of rage).
My use case is primarily software development (JVM ecosystem & a bit of golang/rust) and I am pleasantly surprised by the i5’s CPU. If I let it run wild (not setting PL1/2 limits, with turbo boost on), it far surpasses my Thinkpad P1 Gen 5 (i7 12800H) when it comes to compile times of some of my projects (Kotlin/Scala). Granted it sounds like a hurricane, but after playing with the power limits, I could get a near-silent machine that still manages to satisfy my needs (Found this helpful). I reckon for CPU-intensive workloads, the upgrade is definitely worth it.
I run 6.0.1 kernel on it (on Arch) and haven’t had any issues so far related to glitches some users have reported on the forum. I do experience battery drain(only unscientific test for 2 nights, but can report back as I continue using it) from the USB-A expansion card that’s reported by others.
Battery life for me is so-so as expected and about 2-3 hours for my workflow (2-3 IntelliJ IDEA sessions, occasional compiling, a few tabs on Firefox, Microsoft Teams + 2-3 video conf calls, Synology Drive client that syncs certain folders in the background) and I don’t expect it to drastically improve.
Coming from aThinkpad P1, I was unsure if the 13.5" screen would be too small, but I am happy with the additional vertical screen real estate that the 3:2 aspect ratio offers.
The fan noise was the only thing that gave me buyer’s remorse at the beginning, but with the RAPL limits it’s no longer headache-inducing for me. I hope to also try the fw-fanctrl over the weekend.