hp zbook 15u g4

| | PRICE From $1,029 COMPANY HP WEBSITE www8.hp.com

The new, super-slim mobile workstation has a lot to offer at an affordable price

F or 3D production and post, not many machines compare to HP’S powerful Z series of workstations. This includes HP’S line of Zbook mobile workstations that offer walloping power on the go.

While the Zbook 17 and 15 are the most expandable in the Zbook family, there are thinner and lighter options, namely the premium Zbook Studio and HP’S super slim entry-level workstation ultrabook, the HP Zbook 15u G4 (Generation 4), which has just been released.

As soon as I pulled the Zbook 15u G4 out of the box, I was impressed by how slim it was: it’s just 4.18 lbs and 19.9mm wide. The machine handled 3D modelling, painting and video editing challenges nicely, thanks to the new state-of-theart 7th generation (Kaby Lake) Core i7-7600u CPU at its heart. The Zbook 15u supports up to an impressive amount of 32GB of DDR4 memory.

graphic goodness

For discrete graphics, the 15u has an Isv-certified AMD Firepro W4190M, a professional graphics card with 2GB of memory, which scored a very respectable 49.16 fps on Cinebench for the GPU test. The CPU test was also impressive at 369, and Cinema 4D users will appreciate the use of AMD Firepro now that Maxon is incorporating AMD’S Radeon Prorender rendering engine natively into C4D R19.

For storage, the 15u came with a 512GB Z Turbo Drive G2, a super fast NVME SSD that connects directly to the PCIE bus via an M.2 port. It scored incredibly fast transfer speeds of 2,590 MB/S Read and 1,410 MB/S Write, multiple times faster than SATA SSDS. This Zbook comes with an internal 2.5 inch bay for a SATA HDD. Total storage capacity is 2TB.

I/O ports include USB 3.1 Gen 1, USB 3.0 and Displayport 1.2 for connection to highresolution external displays. There’s also an SD slot and a VGA port. Audio sounds great thanks to the built-in Bang & Olufsen speakers.

light Work

For the display, you have the option of FHD (available with touchscreen) or UHD. Battery life is long thanks to the 51 Whr battery with HP Fast Charge, which provides up to 50 per cent battery life after just 30 minutes. Being a professional workstation, the 15u passes 14 MIL-STD tests, more than any other workstation in its class, and has undergone 120,000 hours of testing.

In summary, the HP Zbook 15u G4 is a thin and light workstation ultrabook that offers excellent performance at an affordable price. Entry-level animators as well as media pros will find it an attractive and compelling mobile workstation.