HP ZBook 14 Review: Mobile Workstation Meets Ultrabook
by Jarred Walton on June 20, 2014 2:30 AM ESTHP ZBook 14: A Good LCD
It's worth noting up front that the display included on the unit we're testing is the 1080p IPS (UWVA) panel, with a matte finish. There's an option to get a touchscreen display, but it would be lower resolution (1600x900), glossy, and it would also make the unit thicker. Yeah, that's three strikes in my book. Anyway, the display is actually one of the best element of an already good design, and I'm always happy to see a good IPS (or similar technology) panel.
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The colors ended up being some of the most accurate I've seen from a laptop – ever! What's more, even prior to calibration the colors are still quite good, so if you're not a stickler for perfect colors you could use the screen as-is and still be quite happy. As we're now focusing our testing on the out of box experience and haven't tested a lot of laptops with the new methodology, I won't include a bunch of LCD charts here, but you can view and compare scores in Notebook Bench. Let's start with the charts that haven't really changed, which focus on the contrast and brightness:
There's not much to report here; the display gets reasonably bright at 330 nits, and thanks to the matte coating it can still be used outdoors without too much trouble. The contrast is decent, particularly for a matte display, but we've seen a few better panels. At least we're not seeing anything like the poor panel used in the old Folio 9470m.
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As you can see from the pre-calibration results, the display is really quite good at delivering the correct color. While we normally look for Delta E of 3.0 or less for something to be more or less unnoticed by the naked eye, for laptops I'd say even 4.0 is still acceptable. What's interesting with the ZBook 14 display is that the colors are all consistently around dE of 3-4. Normally we'll see a lot of colors below 2.0 and some spikes up to the high single digits – or even double digits. HP manages to keep nearly all of the colors below 5.0, and I think a couple shades of blue just barely break 6.0, but in general the results are good. Errors in shades of blue also tend to be the least visible to the human eye, so for most users the display will look quite accurate.
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Post-calibration, the color accuracy is pretty much perfect. The grayscale results are all below 1.0, with the average being just 0.54; that's not entirely unheard of, but frequently when we see very good grayscale we'll still get a few colors that are off. That doesn't happen here, as the Color Checker chart is below 3.0 on all colors with an average of just 0.86, and the same holds for the saturations and gamut charts. Imaging professionals should be quite happy with this display; if they're not, I can't name another laptop that will deliver superior color accuracy. HP's DreamColor panels might deliver 10-bit color and a wider color gamut, but our past testing has shown them to still have a few issues with certain colors.
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Connoisseur - Friday, June 20, 2014 - link
Wait...when did you guys review the razer blade 2014? I've been waiting on the review for ages and now I see the benchmarks plastered all over the zbook review!wrkingclass_hero - Friday, June 20, 2014 - link
It lives with the infamous Mac Book Pro Retina review.Connoisseur - Friday, June 20, 2014 - link
I mean benchmarks are great but, as Jarred himself mentioned, subjective reviews are just as important. I'd like to know how it is in day-to-day use, whether the temps are manageable and any speculation on longevity or quality of the components. Come on AT, give me a great review :( Or at least a mini review.MonkeyPaw - Friday, June 20, 2014 - link
"Our final benchmark is a test of battery life. Here's where HP runs into a bit of trouble, as the default software installation ends up negatively impacting battery life."Had a similar issue with my Yoga 11S. The preinstalled anti-virus program (McAfee, I think) bogged the machine so badly that it made it nearly unusable. I uninstalled it and let MS Security Essentials take over and it was completely different. I don't know why an AV program would be so resource heavy as to make a machine feel worthless.
skiboysteve - Saturday, June 21, 2014 - link
I wish I could do that. My enterprise forces McAfee on and it is really really horribleSlackMasterDoug - Friday, June 20, 2014 - link
Did you notice any temporary (2-10 second) screen burn in during your review? I've had the ZBook 15 since it launched and have it bad. External screen's work just fine but the laptop's 1080p non-dreamcolor display with the K1100M does it daily. We have two in our office and they both do it.JarredWalton - Friday, June 20, 2014 - link
I've noticed a lot of IPS displays seem to have image persistence if left on a static screen for hours. I didn't notice any issues with the ZBook 14, but then I have the screen set to turn off after 10 minutes of inactivity. I learned my lesson that burn-in is a real problem even with modern displays if you leave them active 24/7 with a relatively static image, plus there's always the power consideration.SlackMasterDoug - Friday, June 20, 2014 - link
Funny thing is I get burn in from having a web browser open. I get to see a lovely burned in tab display over top of a Windows server desktop daily.Drumsticks - Friday, June 20, 2014 - link
Wait a minute, where's our Surface Pro 3 review??Thanks, guys! Me and my T420 are watching wistfully at all of the fancy stuff coming out. I think I'm going to wait for broadwell to pick up a new consumer PC, and my work laptop isn't due for upgrade for another year so... Haswell sucks :P
nerd1 - Friday, June 20, 2014 - link
I feel quite bad about anandtech now - just EVERY apple devices get reviewed within days and surface pro 3 hasn't got full review after one full month since its debut.