HP ZBook 8 Gli 14-Inch Review: An Unimpressive Workstation

The conception behind the portable workstation isn’t a caller oregon peculiarly challenging one. Load up a laptop with top-tier specs to marque it arsenic almighty and future-proof arsenic possible, and ne'er caput if it adds a fewer ounces and inches to the load. Ostensibly, these machines are designed with dense grind tasks successful mind, specified arsenic video editing oregon CAD work. Money has historically been nary entity with the mobile workstation. If you needed this benignant of juice, it was expected that you (or, much likely, your employer) would person to wage for it.

HP’s caller ZBook 8 G1i checks disconnected each those boxes, though it arrived with a funny twist: A heavy discount of much than $2,500 disconnected an over-$4,000 asking price, dramatically bringing the terms of the instrumentality down to thing successful enactment with a accepted laptop. I’m listening.

Thick arsenic a Brick

If it weren’t for the other girth (27 mm) and value (3.8 pounds), this laptop would easy walk for immoderate aged 14-inch system. (It’s besides disposable successful a 16-inch version.) It’s anonymous otherwise, and small thought has been fixed to concern plan here. Standard HP branding is affixed to a metallic grey chassis composed of partially recycled aluminum and plastic. Gently rounded corners bash small to conceal the amazingly wide bezels astir the display, and the keyboard and trackpad are perfectly functional if utilitarian successful appearance. If you’d been handed this instrumentality connected your archetypal time of enactment successful 2014, you’d astir apt beryllium beauteous jazzed.

Mobile workstations are each astir the specs, and to that end, the ZBook 8 is alternatively surprising. While the inclusion of 64 GB of RAM is connected point, the prime of CPU—an Intel Core Ultra 7 265H—is odd, landing conscionable astir successful the mediate of the Core Ultra Series 2 powerfulness spectrum. At the precise least, it seems similar an Ultra 9 would beryllium successful order. A 1-terabyte SSD was included successful my trial configuration. The surface size of 2560 x 1600 pixels is good for a 14-inch (non-touchscreen) device, but shy of thing I’d see dazzling.

Discrete graphics—common for a workstation—are present, but the strategy includes an Nvidia GeForce RTX 500 Ada Generation GPU, a niche processor I’ve ne'er really encountered successful the wild. Nearly 2 years old, the 500 Ada is simply a stripped-down mentation of the GeForce RTX 4060. Benchmarks peg its show arsenic astir connected par with the mobile GeForce GTX 1000 series. Again, it’s a funny prime for the machine.