Eight pounds of computing muscle car: Hands on with the HP ZBook seventeen G2

It wont to be that to try to to serious engineering work, you required a monster desktop souped up with an enormous graphics card. Now, you'll get all the figure power that your desktop had a couple of years past in a very portable computer that weighs beneath ten pounds. Similarly, high-quality displays wont to be large, specialised devices, however they too have migrated to a number of the most effective of the moveable workstations. I went active for one or two weeks with one among these, HP’s latest and greatest ZBook seventeen G2, and came away affected.


While there square measure a couple of users that purchase a 17-inch ZBook just because they have the massive screen — thought large-screen laptops square measure nearly extinct, therefore big-screen lovers are reduced to chase down engineering or gambling models — most patrons square measure in it for the performance. thereon score, the ZBook seventeen delivers. rating a wonderful 5255 in PCMark 8’s Work benchmark, the unit has the speed you’d commonly expect from a desktop. It conjointly achieved smart millions of 4386 within the Home benchmark and 3467 within the artistic benchmark. pic manipulation in Photoshop and Lightroom was as quick and sleek as on my GPU-assisted quad-core i7 desktop. equally 3D drawings revolved terribly swimmingly. Since the unit I tested had the top-of-the-line Nvidia K5100M GPU, that didn’t come back the maximum amount of a surprise.

To test scientific-computing performance, I ran the SPECviewperf twelve benchmark. The Zbook seventeen came out round the terribly prime of the mobiles tested, aboard a equally organized dingle exactness M6800 — that conjointly featured the Nvidia K5100M GPU (both had slightly below fifty eight on the Catia score, and comparable different scores across the board). Out of the systems I checked against, solely high-end desktop workstations scored higher. For those still victimization Window’s own expertise Index, the machine scores a seven.7 — restricted by the computer hardware, because the remainder of the elements enter at seven.9.

The unit I reviewed had a extremely bright and gorgeous-looking DreamColor liquid crystal display. Its gamut is larger than Adobe RGB, and it are often set either to 1 of many default colorspaces, or maybe matched to a custom colorspace — that is outwardly quite common among HP’s Hollywood customers. Resolution is proscribed to 1080p on the 17-inch model, except for most uses that’s not a problem, and it really helps the frame rate for a few applications. The DreamColor is Associate in Nursing choice, that is perhaps a decent issue, since it forces the unit to accept the separate GPU in the slightest degree times. That cuts battery life in [*fr1] — HP claims from around eight to nine hours for the non-DreamColor version all the way down to around four hours. thanks to its direct reliance on the separate GPU, DreamColor is additionally not compatible with Intel’s WiDi capability — aka Miracast.

As a reality check on battery life, I set the unit to HP’s Optimized power set up (I ran the benchmarks for score victimization High Performance) so ran SPECviewperf to administer the unit a physical exertion. calculable battery life quickly plunged to ninety minutes, though it's love it is nearer to a pair of to three hours with a additional cheap engineering employment. therefore this unit is unquestionably happiest once it's pretty close to a plug for its husky 200w AC adapter.

PCIe SSDs square measure the future: HP’s Z Turbo

Most SSDs square measure tied into a SATA interface. However, having them directly on the PCIe bus will double or maybe triple output. one among the primary computers to try to to this was Apple’s waterproof professional, and currently HP says it's the primary to include this capability into a mobile digital computer. HP’s version decisioned|is named|is termed} Z Turbo — as a result of why simply call a feature by its name once you will invent a term folks need to look up? MacBook professional users are going to be fast to suggests that its newest models conjointly feature PCIe-connected system SSDs, however the feature has been scarce within the Windows laptops.

As a part of its commitment to making sure your ZBook can perform its best, HP bundles its Performance authority package with the units. It provides an intensive summary of system specs and settings. it's conjointly designed to spotlight potential troublespots. In my case, it warned Maine that i used to be victimization HP’s Optimized power set up, so I wouldn’t be obtaining most performance.

Don’t be fooled by the bottom value

The base value for a dual-core ZBook seventeen G2 is “only” regarding $2,000. For that, though, you get a reasonably minimalist configuration. you'll pay another $4K-$5K if you would like a top-of-the-line version with DreamColor show, larger SSD, 32GB of RAM, and a husky Nvidia K5100M GPU. Amusingly, if you would like the system to ship with Windows seven rather than Windows eight.1, HP charges a $50 fee to form the switch.

Personally, being low-cost, I typically purchase laptops with the borderline specs so upgrade them myself — apart from processor and GPU. However, a part of the charm of the ZBook like is HP’s intensive support and ISV certification offerings, therefore it looks unlikely too several of their customers go that route. HP will create it straightforward to feature additional storage and memory, though, with a straightforward to open, tool-free, back cowl that reveals 2 drive bays and also the second 2 memory slots (the 1st 2 inhabited square measure placed beneath the keyboard). this can be particularly helpful for people who need to swap drives on a shared laptop, or have totally {different|completely different} comes on different drives. HP has this video illustration of however straightforward the duvet is to use:

The ZBook seventeen conjointly options HP’s dock connective that, combined with the unit’s own extensibility and computing power, mean that if you'll bear the worth, you won’t need to create several compromises with this machine as your primary laptop. The Zbook’s integral keyboard is huge and full-featured, and includes a TrackPoint-like stick, touchpad, and numeric keyboard. Even fickle typists square measure unlikely to search out they have to feature Associate in Nursing external keyboard.

Mobile workstations that appear as if laptops: HP’s fourteen and 15-inch ZBooks

If the thought of carrying nearly ten pounds of laptop isn’t for you, HP offers 3 different models that also carry the ZBook complete, and have several of a similar options. The fifteen could be a scaled-down version of the seventeen, and still uses the Haswell family of Intel processors. The fourteen and also the 15u square measure even smaller and lighter, that includes newer Broadwell computer hardware style, however a couple of additional compromises yet. as a result of they're solely on the market in dual-core configurations, they're restricted to 16GB of RAM, and use less-expensive AMD GPUs. surprisingly the fifteenu is really slightly lighter than the dingle XPS 15, however offers a couple of workstation-like upgrades together with the straightforward exit door, and PCIe SSDs. The 14-inch version is additionally the sole model within the ZBook family that provides a touch-enabled show as Associate in Nursing choice. So far, HP has not found that to be a problem, since most of its customers square measure still ordering models with Windows seven, that had terribly restricted support for bit.


I went into this review centered principally on the ZBook seventeen, however became even additional intrigued by the new ZBook 15u. It looks to supply the sort of high-end performance several professionals would like, however at Associate in Nursing surprisingly light-weight four.23 pounds — but either the MacBook professional fifteen or the dingle XPS fifteen — though the MBP & XPS fifteen each provide the choice for a quad-core i7 computer hardware, that isn’t on the market for the ZBook 15u. Associate in Nursing increasing variety of engineers I talk over with square measure victimization mobile workstations as their primary machines — even at the workplace. a part of that's owing to the expansion in tools being run on the network or within the cloud, half is thanks to the expansion in mobile usage situations, and half is as a result of mobile workstations (and high-end laptops) have gotten adequate that they will deliver performance even beneath a tightened engineering employment.


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