HP ZBook Studio G8 Review: Powerful, Portable, and Pricey

The ZBook Studio G8 looks more like traditional thin and light laptops than a workstation. That’s deliberate, given that the laptop is meant to appeal to both consumer-oriented power users and professionals looking for a highly mobile solution. Look at the ZBook Studio G8, and you’ll find a striking resemblance to an HP Spectre of a few years ago. There’s an aggressive angle along each side, sharp chamfers on various edges, and the rear edge is a sharp wedge that adds some flair to the design.

My review unit was equipped with the 8-core/16-thread Core i9-11950H vPro CPU, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 GPU, 32GB of RAM, and a 2TB PCIe SSD. You can also choose up to an Nvidia Quadro A5000 GPU if you want truly professional graphics, but otherwise, my review unit was maxed out. I ran it through our suite of benchmarks and discovered that although it’s a fast laptop, it doesn’t outclass some consumer-grade laptops that cost less than half as much.

Given that HP explicitly mentions gaming as one of the ZBook Studio G8’s strengths, and that it offers a per-key RGB-lit keyboard and ithe OMEN Gaming Hub utility, it’s fair to evaluate its gaming performance. The RTX 3070 should make it a competitive gaming machine, but as it turns out, its performance was decidedly mixed.

My review unit came with the 4K (3,840 x 2,160) OLED display, one of four choices, along with two Full HD (1,920 x 1,080) options and HP’s DreamColor 4K display running at 120Hz. You typically can’t go wrong with OLED displays, and mine certainly looked great. Colors were dynamic without being oversaturated, the display was plenty bright in all of my working environments (which doesn’t include outside in the Southern California sunlight), and I enjoyed inky blacks.

My colorimeter was mostly pleased with the display, but it wasn’t quite as spectacular as some OLED panels I’ve tested. It was bright at 413 nits, well above our 300-nit threshold, and contrast was excellent at 28,880:1 (note that this is a lower score than some of my previous OLED tests, but I changed colorimeters, and it apparently tests OLED displays differently). Colors were wide at 94% of AdobeRGB and 100% of sRGB. Color accuracy was just OK at a DeltaE of 2.16 (1.0 or less is considered excellent). This compares to the Dell XPS 15 OLED display at 397 nits, 27,770:1 contrast, 97% of AdobeRGB and 100% of sRGB, and color accuracy of 0.41. The ThinkPad 15 had a more average IPS display that was very bright at 542 nits, and had a 1,040:1 contrast ratio, 76% of AdobeRGB and 100% of sRGB, and color accuracy of 1.49.

Creative types will love this display, although they’d want the colors to be a bit more accurate. Everyone else will also enjoy the colors, brightness, and contrast, making the ZBook Studio G8 an excellent laptop for both creative and productivity work.

Four speakers, two tweeters and two woofers, provide the audio, and they put out copious amounts of volume when turned all the way up. There was zero distortion as well, with clear mids and highs and a touch of bass. These are some of the best speakers you’ll find on a Windows laptop, rivaling the Dell XPS 15 that’s the Windows benchmark, but not quite rising to the level of the excellent MacBook Pro audio.

You can use these speakers for all your listening needs, from gaming to Netflix bingeing to music. No headphones or external speakers are required.

The keyboard on the ZBook Studio G8 looks a lot like the one on HP’s Spectre line, with plenty of key spacing, large keycaps, and a row of cursor movement keys along the right side. Its switch mechanism is very different, though, being equally deep but with more of a click than a snap. It’s a comfortable and quiet keyboard that’s the equal of the Spectre’s excellent version, even given its different feel. My review unit featured the optional per-key RGB lighting that can cycle through 16.8 million colors, and it’s as good as you’ll find on a gaming laptop like the Razer Blade 14. It’s odd to have such lighting on a portable workstation, but again, that demonstrates how HP sees its customers using the laptop.

The touchpad was large and comfortable, with a glass surface that made swiping precise. As a Microsoft Precision touchpad, it supported Windows 10’s multitouch gestures and was a pleasure to use. The display was also touch-enabled and as precise as usual.

Windows 10 Hello support is provided by both an infrared camera for facial recognition and a fingerprint reader in the upper-right corner of the palm rest. Both worked quickly and reliably.

There’s no privacy switch or slider for the webcam, which was disappointing. And the webcam itself is stuck at 720p.

The ZBook Studio G8 has an 83 watt-hour battery installed inside, which isn’t huge for this class of machine. The Lenovo ThinkPad P15, for example, has 94 watt-hours of capacity and the Dell XPS 15 almost matches the HP at 86 watt-hours. Toss in some high-end components and a power-hungry 4K OLED display, and my battery life predictions were dire.

Things were just as bad as I expected. Starting with our web-browsing test that cycles through a series of popular and complex websites, the ZBook Studio G8 managed just five hours, about half of what we like to see on this test. The XPS 15 OLED went for nine hours and the ThinkPad P15 hit 9.5 hours. In our video test that loops a local 1080p movie trailer, the ZBook Studio G8 lasted only 6.25 hours, compared to the XPS 15 OLED at 11 hours and the ThinkPad P15 at 11.15 hours.

I also ran the PCMark Applications battery test, the best indication of productivity performance, and the ZBook Studio G8 hit 5.5 hours, where the XPS 15 managed eight hours and the ThinkPad P15 hit 6.35 hours. Finally, in the PCMark Gaming battery test demonstrating how hard a laptop works while running on battery power, the ZBook Studio G8 went for 91 minutes, around the same as the XPS 15 OLED and about 40 minutes more than the ThinkPad P15.

Overall, the ZBook Studio G8’s battery life was poor. You’ll need to haul around the large power brick and plug in well before a working day is complete. In fact, if your workload is at all demanding, you’ll be plugging in before lunchtime.

The ZBook Studio G8 succeeds at packing workstation-level components into a thin and light chassis. However, it does so at the cost of pure performance and expandability. In fact, other than a few professional features that may or may not be useful to the typical creator or even engineer, the ZBook Studio G8 doesn’t exceed some consumer 15-inch laptops like the Dell XPS 15 and the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 4 (which is actually more expandable than the HP).

That makes the ZBook Studio G8 an odd laptop. It’s a great machine, no doubt about it. But it’s also horrendously expensive without adding much to justify the investment.

Are there any alternatives?

The ThinkPad P15 performs similarly to the ZBook Studio G8, but is much more expandable, at the cost of extra thickness and weight. It’s equally expensive, but you’ll be happy that you can upgrade the RAM and storage if the need arises.

You can also consider MSI’s WS65 Mobile Workstation. It supports the same basic components and can be configured with up to 64GB of RAM, but it’s also thinner and lighter and doesn’t have the same expandability as some workstations.

Finally, the Dell XPS 15 is an excellent choice if you don’t need those professional features. It’s equally well-built and good-looking, and it’s almost as fast in our review configuration that wasn’t maxed out. Buy an XPS 15 with its highest-end components, and you’ll likely get similar performance for thousands less.

How long will it last?

The ZBook Studio G8 is solidly built and will last for years and years of productive service. It’s not as expandable as many workstations, though, so what you buy is what you get. The three-year warranty is welcome, however.

Should you buy it?

No. Again, the ZBook Studio G8 is a great machine. It’s just too expensive compared to the competition.

Editors’ Recommendations