HP ZBook 17 G5

With the HP ZBook 17 G5, HP has refreshed its 17-inch workstation with a sleeker design, beefed-up internals and some useful security features. The Intel Xeon CPU powering the HP ZBook 17 provides blistering performance, and the vivid 4K display offers a theater-like viewing experience. Unfortunately, the workstation gets below-average battery life and its shallow keyboard is less comfortable than those on competing laptops. Still, if you want raw horsepower and a jaw-dropping screen, the ZBook 17 G5 won’t disappoint.

Design

The ZBook 17 G5 is a massive machine with a chunky chassis that feels like an anvil in your hands. The laptop is so large that my co-worker grew facetiously frustrated as the beastly computer overlapped onto his desk.

Aggressive edges on the back corners of the aluminum and magnesium laptop provide some flair but not enough to shift my focus away from this monster’s gargantuan size. Seriously, if you want to avoid spending money at the chiropractor, keep this thing at your desk.

While the ZBook 17 G5 looks much better than its predecessor, the large naked, grey surfaces dilute welcome design elements. That’s especially true when you compare the 17-inch giant with the ZBook Studio x360 G5, whose smaller size better fits the stylish, aggressive look HP was going for.

The ZBook 17’s lid has a stylish chrome HP logo in the center and a rough gray texture on the lip. Opening up the screen reveals more smooth gunmetal surfaces. A small ZBook logo sits to the left, below the keyboard, diagonal to the Bang & Olufsen branding. Above a thin, light-up power button is a wide speaker grille with conjoined triangle patterns.

The HP ZBook is larger than its rival giants. At 16.4 x 11.3 x 1.3 inches, the ZBook takes up more surface area than the Lenovo ThinkPad P71 (16.4 x 10.8 x 1.2 inches) and the Dell Precision 7730 (16.3 x 10.8 x 1.2 inches). The ZBook 17, at 7.7 pounds, is heavier than the Precision 7730 (7.5 pounds) but doesn’t weigh as much as the hefty ThinkPad P71 (8 pounds).

Ports

The ZBook 17 G5 has every modern connection you could ask for, including five USB ports.

On the left side of the laptop resides an optional Smart Card Reader, an SD Card slot, three USB 3.0 ports, an RJ45 Ethernet input and a lock slot.

The right side of the laptop is an odd mix of new and old. There are two Thunderbolt 3 ports alongside a Blu-ray CD/DVD drive, an HDMI, a headphone jack and a mini DisplayPort.

Nearest the hinge is a standard power connector and a tiny power LED indicator.

Durability and Security

This colossus can survive a fall or two. According to HP, the machine has undergone 120,000 hours of testing. Rated to 14 MIL-STD-810G tests, the ZBook 17 can withstand excessive temperatures, high altitudes, dust and sand, and drops, among other extreme conditions.

There are tons of security features on the HP ZBook that will protect your privacy so you can sleep well at night. HP’s Sure Start software is designed to automatically detect, stop and recover from a BIOS attack without help from IT. Every time you turn on your PC, Sure Start validates your BIOS code, then continuously monitors memory.

Above the display is a privacy shutter that slides in front of the webcam and protects you from snooping deviants. The ZBook also has a fingerprint sensor on the deck, a Smart Card reader on the left side and a lock slot.

Display

The marvelous 17-inch, 4K nontouch display on our ZBook 17 G5 review unit is extremely sharp and soaked in rich, vibrant colors. With such a beautiful display, the ZBook 17 might be the closest a laptop will get you to a home-theater experience.

When I watched a trailer for the upcoming thriller film Serenity, the 3840 x 2160-pixel display captured the thin wrinkles in Matthew McConaughey’s weathered, scruffy face. In one particularly creepy scene, Anne Hathaway wakes up next to sheets covered in bright-red blood. The display was so crisp that I could see the tiniest details in the crime scene, from the brown leather dress shoes splayed across the bathroom floor to a key sitting on the edge of the bed, adding intrigue to this riveting mystery.

Keyboard, Touchpad and Pointing Stick

Business professionals who type for hours a day deserve a better keyboard than what the ZBook 17 has to offer. There’s no excuse for it, either; this massive workstation is 1.2 inches thick, and yet, its keyboard keys have a measly 1.2 millimeters of travel, which is well below our 1.5mm preference. For comparison, the slimmer Precision 7730’s keys have 1.6 mm of key travel, and the ThinkPad P71’s have 2.2 mm.

The shallow, backlit keyboard with numpad feels weighty and somewhat stiff. I also find the curved keys on the Thinkpad P71 and Precision 7730 to be more comfortable than the flat caps on the HP. On the bright side, the keys have nice tactile feedback, are well-spaced and require 72 grams of actuation force, which is above our recommended minimum (60 grams).

I banged out 105 words per minute with an accuracy rate of 89 percent in the 10fastfingers.com typing test. Both of those results are worse than my usual 109 wpm at a 5 percent error rate, but not by much.

Performance

This blazing-fast workstation didn’t break a sweat when it was challenged with a heavy workload. Twenty Google Chrome tabs including two 1080p YouTube videos and two more full-HD Twitch streams were no match for the HP ZBook 17 G5. I didn’t notice any stuttering or lag as I flipped through the tabs and watched full-screen videos.

Graphics

Armed with an Nvidia Quadro P4200 GPU with 8GB of GDDR5 VRAM, the ZBook 17 can run graphically intensive programs, like Photoshop or 3D-rendering software. It can even power modern video games as demonstrated on our real-world gaming test, in which it played the racing game Dirt 3 at a silky-smooth 225 frames per second.

The ZBook 17 G5 scored a 184,848 on the 3DMark Ice Storm Unlimited synthetic graphics test, topping the ThinkPad P71 (Quadro P5000, 173,153) and the workstation average (151,284). The Quadro P5200-equipped Precision 7730 (188,813) just edged out the HP.

When the HP stops running games or intensive programs, it switches from dedicated graphics to an Intel UHD Graphics P630 GPU

.

Audio

The ZBook 17’s powerful speakers filled a large conference room with booming sound, but you should avoid blasting your music too loud.

Battery Life

Powerful workstations aren’t meant to last a full day on a charge, but the HP ZBook 17 G5 powered down a few hours earlier than I would have liked.

Webcam

Business professionals who frequently make video calls will want to replace the ZBook 17 G5’s 720p webcam with an external camera, like the Logitech C920. Selfies I took with the ZBook 17’s front-facing cam were grainy and unfocused, even though the lens gathered a good amount of light in our dim office.

The ZBook 17 G5 is an excellent machine for the most-demanding power users. If you can get past the sheer size of this laptop, you’ll appreciate its gorgeous 4K display, superfast performance and reassuring cooling.