HP ZBook 15 G5 - Review 2022

Want a 15-inch mobile workstation? HP gives you most too many to choose from, ranging from a convertible (the ZBook Studio x360) to a model for engineering students and others on tight budgets (the ZBook 15v) to not ane but two sparse-and-lights (the ZBook Studio and ZBook 15u). But the head of the class—and, HP claims, the height-selling mobile workstation in the world—is the full-size ZBook 15. (It starts at $1,699, and rings up for $3,436 as tested.) The "G4" fourth generation of the ZBook xv was only recently replaced every bit our Editors' Choice past the Dell Precision 5530. The Precision 5530 keeps that crown for its mix of power and portability, just the new ZBook 15 G5 has its own strengths: It can hold twice equally much RAM (64GB) and half again as much storage (6TB) equally the Dell. It'southward a near-flawless pick for serious pattern, rendering, simulation, and scientific professionals.

Worth the Weight

The ZBook 15 G5 abandons the two-tone blueprint of last year's model for a monochromatic silver, CNC-machined aluminum chassis. The visitor's stylized iv-slash logo decorates the lid, while diagonally cut (HP calls them dog-eared) rear corners add a touch of flair. The sturdy organisation has passed a slew of MIL-STD 810G tests against stupor, vibration, temperature extremes, and other corruption; if you're looking for flex in the screen or keyboard deck, you'll have to wait elsewhere.

The G5 is no ultraportable—for a moment when taking it out of the box, I actually mistook it for a 17-inch laptop. It measures one past fourteen.eight by x.4 inches, versus 0.66 past 14.1 past 9.3 inches for the Precision 5530 or 0.61 past 13.8 by 9.v inches for the 15-inch Apple MacBook Pro. At v.8 pounds, it'south an anvil compared to the Dell or Apple (iv.4 or 4.1 pounds, respectively).

But anvils aren't usually this configurable. The $1,699 base model features a quad-core Core i5-8300H processor, 8GB of RAM, a 256GB PCI Limited solid-state drive, a 1080p IPS display, and Nvidia Quadro P1000 graphics. My $3,436 review unit stepped up to a half dozen-cadre, ii.6GHz (4.3GHz turbo) Cadre i7-8850H chip, 32GB of memory, a 512GB NVMe SSD, HP's 1080p Certain View touch screen with congenital-in privacy filter, and Nvidia's step-up Quadro P2000 GPU.

As I alluded to earlier, the RAM and storage ceilings are high. Four SO-DIMM sockets and two M.ii slots, plus a ii.5-inch bulldoze bay, accommodate up to 64GB of RAM and 6TB of storage. CPU choices include an upgrade to one of two Xeons, with ECC memory (not bachelor on the MacBook Pro or Dell 5530) an option if you insist on absolute data integrity. The pinnacle screen pick is HP's 4K-resolution, 600-nit, billion-color DreamColor panel with a color-scale sensor in the touchpad to set the system to 100 percent of the Adobe RGB gamut before each workflow.

Left-side ports include two USB 3.0 Type-A (one for charging handheld devices), Ethernet, an SD card reader, and a security lock. On the right side, you'll find a third USB 3.0 port, a SmartCard reader, an audio jack, an HDMI video output, and 2 Thunderbolt three ports with USB-C and DisplayPort functionality, forth with the connector for the AC adapter.

Superbly Uncomplicated Access

The HP makes upgrades like shooting fish in a barrel, fifty-fifty without a screwdriver in sight: Merely sliding a latch on the laptop's bottom lets y'all remove a panel and reveal the hard bulldoze bay, two Thou.2 slots, and the third and fourth memory sockets (the offset two are under the keyboard), as well as the bombardment.

The ZBook supports password-costless Windows Hello sign-ins via both a fingerprint reader and face-recognition webcam. The camera captured fairly detailed but noisy images in my office on an overcast twenty-four hour period; turning on a couple of lamps made the paradigm washed out. The Bang & Olufsen speakers higher up the keyboard are startlingly loud (anything over 70 or 75 percent volume gets rough and raucous) simply impressively rich, with punchy bass and articulate highs.

The spill-resistant, backlit keyboard follows HP's ungainly row-fashion rather than inverted-T layout for the cursor-arrow keys—half-size upwards and down arrows sandwiched between full-size left and right—merely is otherwise pleasing. There'due south acceptable travel and a well-baked typing experience; the numeric keypad not found on the Precision 5530 or MacBook Pro; and your pick of an embedded pointing stick or somewhat glace touchpad for cursor control, both with iii good-size, soft-touch buttons. The keyboard likewise has the "collaboration keys" found on HP's EliteBook business laptops, shortcuts for making a presentation or answering or hanging up on a Skype call.

Another feature borrowed from the EliteBooks is the test unit of measurement's 15.6-inch, full Hard disk (1,920 by 1,080) bear upon screen with built-in Sure View privacy filter. The latter, activated by pressing the F2 key, narrows the display'due south legibility to the user seated directly in front end of it, so someone next to y'all on a plane or train tin't sneak a peek and see your confidential data. It's a great idea that's disappointing in practice, because making the screen invisible to prying eyes also makes it murky and barely visible to you. More than a few minutes with Certain View is a guaranteed eyestrain headache.

With Sure View turned off, the screen is much better, though information technology never seems equally brilliant as its rated 650 nits. Sharing its sleeky mirror finish with many bear on screens, it offers vivid colors, wide viewing angles, high contrast, and fine details. Web pages, videos, and SPECviewperf benchmark viewsets from popular independent software vendor (ISV) apps all looked sharp.

Six-Core Strength

Not surprisingly, the ZBook does only fine in performance tests. The system posted a sky-loftier score of three,879 in our PCMark 8 productivity benchmark, showing information technology to be massive overkill for Microsoft Office, and crushed its G4 predecessor and other quad-core models in our Cinebench processor measurement and Handbrake video editing exercise. It was a little off the pace of its six-core peers in our Adobe Photoshop image editing workload, but by less than a second per filter or issue.

And the G5 edged the Dell 5530 (though the latter was slightly handicapped past its college 4K screen resolution) in our graphics tests. Information technology produced playable frame rates in our Sky and Valley gaming simulations at top screen-quality settings, fifty-fifty though its Quadro P2000 graphics aren't optimized for gaming every bit Nvidia'south GeForce products are. The HP was also the longest-lasting Windows workstation in our battery rundown test, managing 12 hours of unplugged video playback, though the fifteen-inch Apple topped that at almost 16.5 hours.

In workstation-specific benchmarks, the ZBook completed POV-Ray 3.7's off-screen ray-tracing practise in 117 seconds, just a tick behind the Precision 5530's 112 but ahead of the Precision 3530's 146. In SPECviewperf xiii, which renders and rotates solid and wireframe models using selected ISV apps, the HP posted 77 frames per second (fps) in Creo and 86fps in Maya, compared to 77fps and 90fps respectively for the Dell Precision 5530; 57fps and 58fps for the Dell Precision 3530; and 37fps apiece for another "slimline" workstation, the Lenovo ThinkPad P52s.

Large and in Accuse

The HP ZBook 15 G5 is an outstanding mobile workstation. Its flexibility and component accessibility make it the best we've seen in the traditional size and weight class. The Dell Precision 5530 holds our Editors' Selection for thinking exterior that traditional size and weight grade—while it has negatives, like its 32GB RAM ceiling and the unusable webcam placement inherited from the XPS fifteen, its smaller, lighter form cistron makes it more convenient for taking workflows on the route. Simply if you've got an appetite for power, this ZBook is ready to serve.