HP ZBook 14 Review: Mobile Workstation Meets Ultrabook
by Jarred Walton on June 20, 2014 2:30 AM ESTHP ZBook 14: General Performance
For our remaining benchmarks, we'll drop desktop workstations from the charts and simply focus on laptops. We're including a few more recent consumer laptops along with the older mobile workstations from the previous page. These results aren't likely to be anywhere near as meaningful as the workstation tests, however, as just about any modern system can handle any day-to-day task you might want to run.
Interestingly, several of the PCMark 8 tests didn't want to run to completion when I first tried benchmarking the ZBook – probably related to the FirePro drivers, and more specifically Enduro. Changing Enduro to "Optimize Performance" instead of "Maximize Performance" did the trick. You can see by the scores that there's nothing to worry about in terms of general performance – any decent laptop with pure SSD storage will start to look about the same in PCMark.
For CPU performance, we see the usual law of diminishing returns in full effect. The i7-4600U is the fastest dual-core ULV part that Intel currently ships…but it's nowhere near as fast as even the slowest quad-core i7-4702MQ when it comes to multi-threaded performance. It's also only slightly faster than the i5-4200U; is it worth the added cost for the extra ~200MHz you get? Perhaps, but it's still a steep increase in price for a small bump in performance.
The 3DMark results were a bit interesting, in that the first time I ran them the performance was much higher than in subsequent runs. I don't think this was a case of throttling either, but rather those FirePro drivers are again coming into play. I saw as much as a 30% drop in performance on some runs of 3DMark, and eventually settled on a "median" score –I took the second highest result. Know that the drivers are very much tuned for professional OpenGL applications first, and things like games and 3DMark are a secondary (if that) concern. In fact, let's just put the gaming results right here – this isn't a gaming laptop by any definition, and while it can in theory play games, again the drivers are not optimized for that use case.
AMD's Kaveri prototype is pretty much faster in every game we tested, which is surprising considering we're looking at a discrete GPU with plenty of memory bandwidth. Even the old Trinity IGP isn't too far behind – and sometimes ahead – while NVIDIA's consumer-focused GT 650M and GT 750M easily beat the ZBook 14 in gaming prowess. For that matter, Intel's Iris Pro (that's in the Clevo W740SU) is also quite a bit faster in the tests we've run, though power requirements are likely higher for that single chip than for the CPU + GPU in the Zbook 14. Updated drivers could improve the situation perhaps, but I already updated to the May driver release and didn't see any major changes; being a mobile workstation GPU, gaming clearly isn't a primary consideration.
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WeaponZero - Saturday, June 21, 2014 - link
I have this laptop for a few months already. The laptop is awesome but I wish it would stop BSOD every day or 2. I really hope HP fixes this issue as it is not acceptable for a 2k+ laptop.Side note, the laptop comes in 2 possible screen options AU Optronics panel or LG panel. Make sure you have the AU panel and the LG panel is worse. (still good but worse)
chribro - Thursday, July 31, 2014 - link
Do you know what % of the sRGB is covered with the AUO panel. The LG panel only covers 80% (according to the review on Notebookcheck).Any idea which panel this review has?
deontologist - Saturday, June 21, 2014 - link
Lol is Anandtech ever going to review the Surface 3?Dr.Neale - Saturday, June 21, 2014 - link
Jared, in the specs you list the dGPU as an M1400 instead of the M4100 cited throughout the article. Could you please fix this typo?JarredWalton - Monday, June 23, 2014 - link
Fixed, thanks!JFish222 - Tuesday, June 24, 2014 - link
Jared, it would be helpful to show images of the service panel. For a shop with IT personnel (or technically competent staff) on hand, this is indispensable.We've purchased a handful of these for the office.
We required
1) A high HD display
2) Light/ultrabook class 14"
3) Min. 5+hrs battery life running excel/word proc/internet
4) Ability to hit min 16GB of RAM
5) Ability to take punishment (you should see the dings one has received in its first week! Still runs great though!)
6) End user serviceability.
7) A myriad of ports (especially VGA without DVI adapter)
8) Docking station compatible with 2 DVI outs (an older Sony failed in this department.)
We originally had a couple of Lenovo X1 and X1 carbons floating around, and I've been an avid T series user myself.
Two things, however, made us move away from IBM:
- Soldering DIMMs to the motherboard, and limiting the ultra-book form factors to 12GB.
- To much work to service. Seriously.
We've already had two X1 batteries die right after the service contract was up (a 3rd went, but was still covered), and servicing those things was a nightmare. Between the screws and man hours . . . not worth the trouble.
And upgrades? The oldest X1 Carbon has 4GB of RAM. Great for the first few years, but while its CPU and SSD are quite serviceable, the RAM limitation became a major liability.
I can't begin to tell you how easy it is to service these HP's.
The docking station has been flawless, they look "professional" (staff members are VERY picky and refused to use Dell).
I'm in a difficult environment where the applications are memory intensive (large excel models), the unit has to be durable, a jack of all trades, and easily serviceable. These fit the bill and I'm moving to standardize on these units.
I don't buy from HP directly, we're low volume and better deals can be had elsewhere. The upgraded screen is worth it. If you don't start with an SSD, I recommended you get one eventually. Fortunately these take standard height units as well as an additional M2