When it comes to professional laptops, HP isn't playing games. The company isn't interested in fancy features or alternative designs—its simply out to make a product that delivers. Inside and out, that philosophy is clear in the HP ZBook 14, which the vendor claims is "the world's first workstation ultrabook."
Weighing just 3.57 pounds and measuring 0.83 inches thin, the ZBook 14 is quite the mobile machine. The notebook was a breeze to carry around in my shoulder bag for the past week or so, and wasn't a pain to pull out either. The fact that HP ensured that its workstation ultrabook was a looker certainly helped.
The ZBook 14 comes in a gray brushed aluminum finish on its lid surrounded by black soft touch plastic accents and a classy chrome HP logo front and center. Smooth magnesium coats the laptop keyboard deck in an almost gunmetal hue, surrounding a chiclet-style, backlit and spill-resistant keyboard with matte plastic keys replete with drain to offset liquid damage.
To please the veteran business users, HP included a gray rubber pointing stick between the G, H and B keys with two dedicated buttons just below the spacebar. Most users will be served just fine by the snappy, smooth touchpad with firm physical buttons.
Above the keyboard is a 14-inch, 1920 x 1080 LED screen that users can upgrade with 10 point multi-touch capability. Look even further up, and you'll find a 720p webcam—both of which are surrounded by a black, matte plastic bezel wrapped by a thick band of rubber.
Easy access? On a laptop? Blasphemy!
Despite its boring plastic construction, this ultrabook's undercarriage has a terribly useful feature: easy removal for access to the laptop's innards. Coined by HP as the "Easy Access Door," this allows for easy upgrades to this ZBook 14's 240GB solid-state drive, 16GB of DDR3 RAM and more.
Held by one simple-but-sturdy sliding lock, this should come in especially handy for the business user or IT pro when hardware issues rear their ugly heads. But there's more to be said of a feature like this: HP is focused on function more so than form, for a product that would be the most useful for business-class users.
Specifications
This laptop won't bend 360 degrees on a whim or detach into an enormous, unwieldy tablet, but how useful is that, really? The ZBook 14 is a focused ultrabook outfitted with the hardware and features needed to get the job done in a shape that won't break your back. To the no-nonsense business user, that's all that should matter. Well, that and price, but more on that in a bit.
The ZBook 14 measures 13.35 x 9.33 x 0.83 inches (W x D x H) and weighs 3.57 pounds. That's a bit thicker than the 3.52-pound Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga, but isn't even a tenth of a pound heavier. That HP's ultrabook accomplishes this while offering a larger screen is impressive. Of course, the 13-inch MacBook Air outclasses both of these laptops when it comes to portability.
Spec sheet
This is the ZBook 14 configuration HP sent to TechRadar:
- CPU: 2.1GHz Intel Core i7-4600U (dual-core, 4MB cache, Intel vPro security)
- Graphics: AMD FirePro M4100 with 1GB GDDR5 RAM (switchable with Intel HD Graphics 4400)
- RAM: 16GB DDR3L
- Screen: 14-inch 1920 x 1080 LED FHD UWVA with anti-glare
- Storage: 240GB SSD
- Ports: 4 USB 3.0 (1 charging); DisplayPort; stereo mic/headphone jack; RJ-45 Ethernet; side docking connector; VGA, SD card reader, SmartCard reader
- Connectivity: Intel 7260AN 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0
- Webcam: 720p front-facing camera
- Security: Fingerprint sensor; lock slot
- Weight: 3.57 pounds
- Size: 13.35 x 9.33 x 0.83 inches