REVIEW: HP Zbook 15u

This new addition to the HP ZBook family goes all out for portability but still retains the key enterprise features of its older siblings

Portability is clearly a big focus for HP at the moment, launching not one but two slimline 15-inch mobile workstations in the space of six months.

The HP ZBook 15u is the more enterprise-focused of the two (the HP OMEN Pro (p22) being the other) and delivers many of the features you would expect to see in a higher-end mobile workstation. This includes fingerprint scanner, Smart Card reader, (side) docking port and the impressive HP Easy Access Door (more on this later).

The big pitch for the ZBook 15u is its portability and HP is focusing much of its marketing efforts around the machine’s ‘Ultrabook’ standing. For those not familiar with this Intel classification, for a laptop to be called an Ultrabook manufacturers have to meet certain specifications relating to battery life, thickness, performance, wake from sleep time and others.

With the HP ZBook 15u (and Lenovo ThinkPad W550s) things get a little confusing as not all models qualify as an Ultrabook — specifically, we think, those that do not use an SSD for the OS — but on the whole one can expect all models to come close. K

ey to the ZBook 15u achieving its Ultrabook status is the Intel Core i7-5600U, an Ultra low voltage (ULV) dual-core CPU based on the Broadwell architecture.

This CPU might lack the multi-threaded power of the quad core chip found in the HP OMEN Pro and Dell Precision M3800, but with a clock speed of 2.6GHz rising to 3.2GHz, it still delivers where it matters for CAD and BIM. And it does so without breaking into a sweat. Fan noise was kept to an absolute minimum, even under heavy loading.

Like most mobile workstations, the HP ZBook 15u relies on switchable graphics with a view to saving power. It uses the built in Intel HD Graphics 5500 for mainstream apps and swaps over to the higher performance CAD-focused AMD FirePro M4170 (1GB GDDR5) as and when required.

This should happen automatically, as it did for our CAD test suite, but individual apps can be matched to GPUs in AMD’s Catalyst Control Center software.

Despite its entry-level positioning, the AMD FirePro M4170 delivered some decent scores in our 3D tests.

Compared to the more powerful Dell Precision M3800 with Nvidia Quadro K1100M, it was only 19% slower in Creo and 27% slower in SolidWorks. In practice it should give users a good experience when working with small to medium-sized CAD and BIM models.

While compromises have been made with CPU and GPU, there is nothing entry-level about the storage with a PCIe-based 256GB HP Z Turbo Drive for operating system and applications and a 512GB SATA-based SanDisk X210 2.5-inch SSD for data.

Our tests showed that the HP Z Turbo Drive delivered around 70% better sequential read speeds and 40% faster sequential read speeds than the SanDisk X210, which is great news if you frequently copy large files. 3ds Max also opened slightly quicker, taking 17.3 secs on the HP Z Turbo Drive and 18.4 secs on the SanDisk X210.