Review: HP ZBook Firefly 14 G11 A

Posted on February 9, 2025 at February 9, 2025 by Greg Corke

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This pro laptop is a great all rounder for CAD and BIM, offering an enviable blend of power and portability in a solid, well built 14-inch chassis, writes Greg Corke

A few years back, HP decided to simplify its ZBook mobile workstation lineup. With so many different models, and inconsistent product names, it was hard to work out what was what

HP’s response was to streamline its offerings into four primary product lines: the HP ZBook Firefly (entry-level), ZBook Power (mid-range), ZBook Studio (slimline mid-range), and ZBook Fury (high-end). HP has just added a fifth—the ZBook Ultra—powered by the new AMD Ryzen AI Max Pro processor.

This article is part of AEC Magazine’s 2025 Workstation Special report

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The ZBook Firefly is the starter option, intended for 2D and light 3D workflows, with stripped back specs. Available in both 14-inch and 16-inch variants, customers can choose between Intel or AMD processors. While the Intel Core Ultra-based ZBook Firefly G11 is typically paired with an Nvidia RTX A500 Laptop GPU, the ZBook Firefly G11 A — featured in this review — comes with an AMD Ryzen 8000 Series ‘Zen 4’ processor with integrated Radeon graphics.

Weighing just 1.41 kg, and with a slim aluminium chassis, the 14-inch ZBook Firefly G11 A is perfect for CAD and BIM on-the-go. But don’t be fooled by its sleek design — this pro laptop is built to perform.

Powered by the flagship AMD Ryzen 9 Pro 8945HS processor, our review unit handled CAD and BIM workflows like a champ, even when working with some relatively large 3D models. The integrated AMD Radeon 780M graphics delivered a smooth viewport in Revit and Solidworks, except with our largest assemblies, but showed its limitations in real-time viz.

In Twinmotion, with the mid-sized Snowden Tower Sample project, we recorded a mere 8 FPS at 2,560 x 1,600 resolution. While you wouldn’t ideally want to work like this day in day out, it’s passable if you just want to set up some scenes to render, which it does pretty quickly thanks to its scalable GPU memory (see section at end of article).

On the CPU side, the frequency in single threaded workflows peaked at 4.84 GHz. In our Revit and Solidworks benchmarks, performance was only between 25% to 53% slower than the current fastest desktop processor, the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X, with the newer ‘Zen 5’ cores.

Things were equally impressive in multi-threaded workflows. When rendering in V-Ray, for example, it delivered 4.1 GHz across its 8 cores, 0.1 GHz above the processor’s base frequency. Amazingly, it maintained this for hours, with minimal fan noise. With a compact 65W USB-C power supply, the laptop is relatively low-power.

The HP DreamColor WQXGA (2,560 x 1,600) 16:10 120Hz IPS display with 500 nits of brightness is a solid option. It delivers super-sharp detail for precise CAD work and good colours for visualisation. There are several alternatives, including a WUXGA (1,920 x 1,200) anti-glare IPS panel, with 100% sRGB coverage and a remarkable 1,000 nits, but no OLED options, as you’ll find in other HP ZBooks and the Lenovo ThinkPad P14s Gen 5 (AMD) (read our review).

Under the hood, the laptop came with a 1 TB NVMe SSD and 64 GB of DDR5-5600 memory, the maximum capacity of the machine. This is possibly a tiny bit high for mainstream CAD and BIM workflows, but bear in mind some of it needs to be allocated to graphics. Other features include fast Wi-Fi 6E, and an optional 5MP camera with privacy shutter and HP Auto Frame technology that helps keep you in focus during video calls.

There’s much to like about the HP ZBook Firefly G11 A. It’s very cost-effective, especially as it’s currently on offer at £1,359 with 1-year warranty, but there’s nothing cheap about this excellent mobile workstation. It’s extremely well-built, quiet in operation and offers an enviable blend of power and portability. All of this makes it a top pick for users CAD and BIM software, with a sprinkling of viz on the top.

Specifications

AMD Ryzen 9 Pro 8945HS processor (4.0 GHz base, 5.2 GHz max boost) (8-cores)
Integrated AMD Radeon 780M GPU
64 GB (2 x 32 GB) DDR5-5600 memory
1 TB, PCIe 4.0 M.2 TLC SSD
14-inch WQXGA (2,560 x 1,600), 120 Hz, IPS, antiglare, 500 nits, 100% DCI-P3, HP DreamColor display
316 x 224 x 19.9 mm (w/d/h)
From 1.41 kg
Microsoft Windows 11 Pro
1 year (1/1/0) limited warranty includes 1 year of parts and labour. No on-site repair
£1,359 (Ex VAT) CODE: 8T0X5EA#ABU
www.hp.com/z

What does the AMD Radeon 780M GPU offer for 3D design?

Integrated graphics no longer means designers must compromise on performance. As detailed in “The integrated GPU comes of age”, the AMD Ryzen 8000 Series processor impresses. It gives the HP ZBook Firefly 14 G11 A and Lenovo ThinkPad P14s Gen 5 mobile workstations enough graphics horsepower for entry-level CAD and BIM workflows, while also allowing designers, engineers and architects to dip their toes into visualisation.

Take a complex motorcycle assembly in Solidworks CAD software, for example — over 2,000 components, modelled at an engineering level of detail. With the AMD Ryzen 9 Pro 8945HS processor with AMD Radeon 780M integrated graphics our CAD viewport was perfectly smooth in shaded with edges display mode, hitting 31 Frames Per Second (FPS) at FHD resolution and 27 FPS at 4K.

Enabling RealView, for realistic materials, shadows, and lighting, dialled back the realtime performance a little, with frame rates dropping to 14–16 FPS. Even though that’s below the golden 24 FPS, it was still manageable, and repositioning the model felt accurate, with no frustrating overshooting.

AMD Radeon 780M GPU — Autodesk Revit BIM software

The processor’s trump card is the ability of the built in GPU to address lots of memory. Unlike comparative discrete GPUs, which are fixed with 4 GB or 8 GB, the integrated AMD Radeon GPU can be assigned a lot more, taking a portion of system memory. In the BIOS of the HP ZBook Firefly 14 G11 A, one can choose between 512 MB, 8 GB or 16 GB, so long as the laptop has system memory to spare, taken from its maximum of 64 GB.

8 GB is sufficient for most CAD workflows, but the 16 GB profile can benefit design visualisation as it allows users to render more complex scenes at higher resolutions than typical entry level discrete GPUs.

This was demonstrated perfectly in arch viz software Twinmotion from Epic Games. With the mid-sized Snowden Tower Sample project, the AMD Radeon 780M integrated graphics in our HP ZBook Firefly G11 A took 437 secs to render out six 4K images, using up to 21 GB of GPU memory in the process (16 GB of dedicated and 5 GB of shared). In contrast, discrete desktop GPUs with only 8 GB of memory, took significantly longer. It seems the Nvidia RTX A1000 (799 secs) and AMD Radeon W7600 (688 secs) both pay a big penalty when they run out of their fixed on-board supply and must borrow more from system memory over the PCIe bus, which is much slower.

Of course, all eyes are on AMD’s new Ryzen AI Max Pro processor. It features significantly improved graphics, and a choice of 6, 8, 12 or 16 ‘Zen 5’ CPU cores — up to twice as many as the 8 ‘Zen 4’ cores in the AMD Ryzen 8000 Series.

However, AMD’s new silicon star in waiting won’t be available until Spring 2025, which is when HP plans to ship the ZBook Ultra G1a mobile workstation. Pricing also remains under wraps.

As we wait to see how AMD’s new chips sit in the market, the HP ZBook Firefly 14 G11 A and Lenovo ThinkPad P14s Gen 5 continue to shine as excellent options for a variety of CAD and BIM workflows — offering impressive performance at very appealing price points.