It used to be that to do serious engineering work, you needed a monster desktop souped up with a massive graphics card. Now, you can get all the compute power that your desktop had a few years ago in a laptop that weighs under 10 pounds. Similarly, high-quality displays used to be bulky, specialized devices, but they too have migrated to some of the best of the portable workstations. I went hands-on for a couple weeks with one of these, HP’s latest and greatest ZBook 17 G2, and came away impressed.
Desktop performance that you can take on the road
While there are a few users that purchase a 17-inch ZBook simply because they need the large screen — mainstream large-screen laptops are almost extinct, so big-screen lovers have been reduced to tracking down engineering or gaming models — most buyers are in it for the performance. On that score, the ZBook 17 delivers. Scoring an excellent 5255 in PCMark 8’s Work benchmark, the unit has the speed you’d normally expect from a desktop. It also achieved good scores of 4386 in the Home benchmark and 3467 in the Creative benchmark. Photo manipulation in Photoshop and Lightroom was as fast and smooth as on my GPU-assisted quad-core i7 desktop. Similarly 3D drawings rotated very smoothly. Since the unit I tested had the top-of-the-line Nvidia K5100M GPU, that didn’t come as much of a surprise.
To test scientific-computing performance, I ran the SPECviewperf 12 benchmark. The Zbook 17 came out around the very top of the mobiles tested, alongside a similarly configured Dell Precision M6800 — which also featured the Nvidia K5100M GPU (both had just under 58 on the Catia score, and comparable other scores across the board). Out of the systems I checked against, only high-end desktop workstations scored better. For those still using Window’s own Experience Index, the machine scores a 7.7 — limited by the CPU, as the rest of the components clock in at 7.9.
You can get dreamy color, but beware the battery life
The unit I reviewed had a really bright and gorgeous-looking DreamColor LCD. Its gamut is larger than Adobe RGB, and it can be set either to one of several default colorspaces, or even matched to a custom colorspace — which is apparently quite popular among HP’s Hollywood customers. Resolution is limited to 1080p on the 17-inch model, but for most uses that’s not an issue, and it actually helps the frame rate for some applications. The DreamColor is an option, which is probably a good thing, since it forces the unit to rely on the discrete GPU at all times. That cuts battery life in half — HP claims from around 8 to 9 hours for the non-DreamColor version down to around 4 hours. Because of its direct reliance on the discrete GPU, DreamColor is also 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 plan (I ran the benchmarks for score using High Performance) and then ran SPECviewperf to give the unit a workout. Estimated battery life quickly plunged to 90 minutes, although it looks like it is closer to 2 to 3 hours with a more reasonable engineering workload. So this unit is definitely happiest when it is pretty near a plug for its beefy 200w AC adapter.
PCIe SSDs are the future: HP’s Z Turbo
Most SSDs are tied into a SATA interface. However, having them directly on the PCIe bus can double or even triple throughput. One of the first computers to do this was Apple’s Mac Pro, and now HP says it is the first to incorporate this capability into a mobile workstation. HP’s version is called Z Turbo — because why just call a feature by its name when you can invent a term people have to look up? MacBook Pro users will be quick to point out that its newest models also feature PCIe-connected system SSDs, but the feature has been scarce in the Windows laptops.
As part of its commitment to ensuring your ZBook will perform its best, HP bundles its Performance Advisor software with the units. It provides a thorough overview of system specs and settings. It is also designed to highlight potential troublespots. In my case, it warned me that I was using HP’s Optimized power plan, so that I wouldn’t be getting maximum performance.
Don’t be fooled by the base price
The base price for a dual-core ZBook 17 G2 is “only” about $2,000. For that, though, you get a pretty minimalist configuration. You can spend another $4K-$5K if you want a top-of-the-line version with DreamColor display, larger SSD, 32GB of RAM, and a beefy Nvidia K5100M GPU. Amusingly, if you want the system to ship with Windows 7 instead of Windows 8.1, HP charges a $50 fee to make the switch.
Personally, being cheap, I often buy laptops with the minimal specs and then upgrade them myself — except for processor and GPU. However, part of the appeal of the ZBook like is HP’s extensive support and ISV certification offerings, so it seems unlikely too many of their customers go that route. HP does make it simple to add more storage and memory, though, with a simple to open, tool-free, back cover that reveals two drive bays and the second two memory slots (the first two populated are located under the keyboard). This will be especially useful for those who want to swap drives on a shared computer, or have different projects on different drives. HP has this video illustration of how easy the cover is to use:
The ZBook 17 also features HP’s dock connector which, combined with the unit’s own extensibility and computing power, mean that if you can live with the price, you won’t have to make many compromises with this machine as your primary computer. The Zbook’s built-in keyboard is massive and full-featured, and includes a TrackPoint-like stick, touchpad, and numeric keypad. Even fickle typists are unlikely to find they need to add an external keyboard.
Mobile workstations that look like laptops: HP’s 14 and 15-inch ZBooks
If the idea of carrying nearly 10 pounds of computer isn’t for you, HP offers three other models that still carry the ZBook brand, and have many of the same features. The 15 is a scaled-down version of the 17, and still uses the Haswell family of Intel processors. The 14 and the 15u are even smaller and lighter, featuring newer Broadwell CPU design, but a few more compromises as well. Because they are only available in dual-core configurations, they are limited to 16GB of RAM, and use less-expensive AMD GPUs. Amazingly the 15u is actually slightly lighter than the Dell XPS 15, but offers a few workstation-like upgrades including the Easy Access door, and PCIe SSDs. The 14-inch version is also the only model in the ZBook family that offers a touch-enabled display as an option. So far, HP has not found that to be an issue, since most of its customers are still ordering models with Windows 7, which had very limited support for touch.
I went into this review focused mainly on the ZBook 17, but have become even more intrigued by the new ZBook 15u. It seems to offer the kind of high-end performance many professionals need, but at an amazingly light 4.23 pounds — less than either the MacBook Pro 15 or the Dell XPS 15 — although the MBP & XPS 15 both offer the option for a quad-core i7 CPU, which isn’t available for the ZBook 15u. An increasing number of engineers I talk to are using mobile workstations as their primary machines — even at the office. Part of that is due to the growth in tools being run on the network or in the cloud, part is because of the growth in mobile usage scenarios, and part is because mobile workstations (and high-end laptops) have gotten good enough that they can deliver performance even under a demanding engineering workload.
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Eight pounds of computing muscle car: Hands on with the HP ZBook 17 G2
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