HP ZBook 15u

Now that HP has migrated its mobile workstation laptops from EliteBook to ZBook, we find two distinct versions of the 15in workhorse.

The regular ZBook 15 G2 is closer to the original brick-built EliteBooks, around 40mm thick and bending the scale needle close to 3kg – although that’s still a trim and toned-up take on the classic bombproof mobile power laptop.

Coming in at a little over 2kg and just under 25mm thick, the new 15u is the more fashionable variation of ZBook. The added U in the name seems to point to Ultrabook, Intel’s for a MacBook Air-style ultraportable running Windows.

The 15u appears to be in its second generation (G2) although since this is a brand new product we suspect the suffix was added so it wouldn’t look out of date next to the revised G2 version of the ZBook 15. While far from emulating the carry-anywhere sub-20mm, sub-1.5kg notebooks of today, it’s relatively compact form puts it alongside other thin and light workstation notebooks such as the 15in Apple MacBook Pro and Dell Precision M3800 (page 40).

Build and design

The case is almost entirely constructed from metal, a lightweight cast alloy for the main chassis, with metal top plate around the keyboard and lid back. The 15.6in widescreen display with matt anti-glare finish is available as either a budget TN or higher-grade IPS version, both at 1920x1080 resolution. There’s no option for a touchscreen display, arguably a wasteful frippery on a professional mobile workstation.

On the left side is the exhaust outlet for the single internal cooling fan, a VGA D-Sub video port, two USB 3.0 and a slot for smart cards. Along the right there’s a 3.5mm headset jack, full-size DisplayPort 1.2, another two USB 3.0, gigabit ethernet (with sprung flag, to help fit into the slim edge), DC power inlet, and a docking slot. There’s no underside dockingstation port as you’d find on most business laptops, but HP promises to supply an adaptor to fit this side port with two more digital video outputs. Missing from the port line-up is the Thunderbolt 2 port now found on the non-U secondgeneration ZBook 15.

The entire case bottom is easily removable from one slide-release button, providing access to most of the upgradable components such as memory and wireless connectivity.

Our sample had 16GB of memory on two 8GB SO-DIMM modules and a PCIe-attached M.2 SSD, 256GB in size. You can add a 4G LTE module, access the 802.11ac mini-PCI card and change the 50Wh battery from here too. Even with the solid-state drive fitted, there’s also space to add a 2.5in SATA drive.

For main processor duties, this model had a new Broadwell series 2.6GHz Intel Core i7-5600U, and unusually for a notebook billed as a professional workstation, this is a dual- rather than quad-core chip. This is the top specification, with an option on the 2.4GHz version of the same chip (5500U)

HP explains that thermal issues prevented it from fitting a quadcore processor into this relatively thin case. In contrast, both Apple and Dell do use quad-core Intel Core i7 mobile processors in their counterparts, although the latter at least can suffers from cooling issues, requiring its fans to rev up to high speed to keep internal temperatures within limits.

For graphics processor there is a choice of just the integrated Intel HD Graphics 5500 from the Intel CPU, or this with an additional AMD FirePro M4170 dedicated GPU. Unlike the fat ZBook 15, there’s no nVidia option here.

The AMD FirePro includes 1GB of GDDR5 memory, and is designed to switch into action when required with AMD’s Enduro Technology, a rebrand of its Dynamic Switching Graphics (DSG) system.

At time of writing, the only variants of the ZBook 15u G2 we could find offered from the HP UK website were without discrete AMD graphics, and up to 8GB of system RAM only. With the lower 2.4GHz processor, integrated graphics powering the IPS display, and 256GB Z Turbo Drive (HP’s name for the PCIe-attached SanDisk SSD), the ZBook 15u G2 is priced at £1,320 (inc VAT).

Performance

In Geekbench 3, the ZBook 15u G2 averaged 3281 points in singlecore mode, and 6862 points multi-core. The quad-core chip in the non-U ZBook is clocked 0.1GHz slower, but scored 3472 and 12,914 points respectively.

Cinebench 11.5 rated the ZBook 15u G2 with 1.50 and 3.38 points for each mode, while v15 of the graphics rendering benchmark scored it