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Packing a lot of power in a small package, HP has released an updated version of its HP ZBook 15u, a mobile workstation with prices starting at $1,079.
While going to a mobile form factor often means sacrificing power versus traditional desktop workstations, the ZBook 15u offers a number of high end performance features.
Buyers have a choice of Intel’s Core i5 or i7 processors, up to 32GB of memory, AMD FirePro graphics chips and up to 2TB of storage. The Windows 10 Pro notebook includes a 15.6-inch FHD touch or 4K UHD non-touch display.
Mobility traditionally hasn’t been a top request for engineers, designers and others users of high-powered PC workstations. “There are millions of engineers who don’t see the light of the day,” Jon Peddie, president of Peddie Research, told eWEEK.
“But there are also still plenty of folks who need to get out and about like architects going to a job site or someone working on an airplane. Even being able to easily move your system from the third floor to the fifth floor for a presentation is useful.”
For these users Peddie says mobile workstations like the ZBook 15u are ideal. Traditionally, Peddie says mobile workstations have been underpowered versus their desk-bound systems, or very expensive to match that power. But he says HP and its chief rival Dell now offer powerful mobile workstations at a good price. “When you think about $1,079 for the HP, gosh you can easily pay more for a MacBook,” said Peddie.
For users on the go, the system includes HP Fast Charge enabling a quick recharge of up to 50 percent battery life in just 30 minutes.
The ZBook 15u also includes a number of security and manageability features including the HP Sure Start Gen3 which monitors in-memory BIOS watching for rootkit malware infections, recovers the platform without intervention, restores the BIOS to a custom state, and, according to HP, and is enterprise-ready for centralized management.
The unit’s embedded Trusted Platform Module (TPM), Smart Card Reader and optional Finger Print Reader are designed to help secure data, e-mail and user credentials.
The mobile workstation comes preloaded with HP Remote Graphics Software for remote collaboration, HP Performance Advisor for optimal performance and HP Velocity for more reliable and fast network performance.
On the reliability front, HP says it put the ZBook 15u Mobile Workstation through 120,000 hours of testing as part of the company’s Total Test Process. HP said the mobile computer is designed to pass MIL-STD 810G standards. MIL-STD 810G is a military specification required for devices to be approved for use by all departments and agencies of the U.S. Department of Defense and is often used to benchmark commercial products as well.
For transferring data and connecting to other devices, the ZBook 15u includes a number of ports including a USB 3.1 Gen 1 port and DisplayPort 1.2. Options include the HP Z Turbo Drive G25, which is designed to reduce boot up, calculation, and response times when working with large files.