Maxed-out HP Zbook Ultra 14 G1a with 128GB RAM, 4TB SSD and AMD Ryzen Strix Halo costs over $8,000

[Redaktion]

AMD's Ryzen Strix Halo with 16 performance cores and the integrated Radeon 8060S GPU is incredibly powerful, but apparently very expensive, especially in business notebooks. For example, HP is officially asking over $8,000 for the new Zbook Ultra 14 with Ryzen AI Max Pro 395.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Maxed-out-HP-Zbook-Ultra-14-G1a-with-128GB-RAM-4TB-SSD-and-AMD-Ryzen-Strix-Halo-costs-over-8-000.990551.0.html

[vasra]

One can get 16" MacBook Pro with M4 Max, 1TB PCIe SSD and 128GB of NUMA RAM for ~6000€ and it will wipe the floor with that Zbook ULtra G1a even in LLM duties.

Total fail from HP. Priced way too high.

[shawman]

Its cheaper than maxed out MBP M4 Max laptop. But performance wise Strix Halo cannot hold a candle to M4 Max or effiency either.

[Russel]

You're gonna find these laptops at a fraction of that price.
HP's laptops (and Lenovo's) are always on 'sale'. You're really unlucky if you miss these deals 😂.

Anyway, even with such discounts after using those codes, you're still gonna find the asking price to be over 2500 for 64GB RAM and 2TB disk space, which in my opinion, is too much.

HP has some real issues with their professional laptops that they have failed to address since a long time after all..

[will blake]

You're gonna find these laptops at a fraction of that price.

which in my opinion, is too much.

Yeah, and that's the problem. Seems like the entire strix halo launch is mainly geared towards nucs as those are the only reasonably priced options in general, like the Ryzen ai max 385 framework one.

If I'm spending over 2000 on a laptop, might as well get a rtx 5070 Ti with updated dlss4 transformer model.

While the efficiency of Ryzen ai max is good under lighter loads it's not all that much better under heavy load than dgpu laptops it seems. Flow z13 gets like 50 min to 1.5 hours while gaming depending on power profile. RTX 5000 laptops are getting 2 hours and 20 min. Granted it had a bigger battery capacity, but still. What's the point of igpu anymore if it's not substantially more efficient while being just as expensive?

Interested in seeing the upcoming Xbox Asus handheld collaboration as laptops in general seem to be insanely overpriced in EU atm. (Without getting something 5 years old or Chromebook)

[Ypsilon-25]

Total fail from HP. Priced way too high.

Who is the target group of such a notebook that is advertised as a "workstation"?
Companies

What do companies get for high-volume orders?
A quantity discount.

How else do companies benefit compared to private consumers?
They can depreciate the equipment, which reduces their profits and ultimately their tax burdens.

[Tebs]

$8000 won't mean squat if HP can't push AMD's new APU past 120W. But even with that, all the HP-infused additions won't make this device worth that much money - although I loathe Apple, I'd rather get a fully-spec'ed MBP M4 Max for half the price.

[LAWRENCE]

$8,000? You must be joking. Virtually no one is crazy enough to buy this thing. Just look at the ASUS Flow X 2025 – that represents a realistic price point.

I don't know when Lenovo, HP, and Dell developed this habit of slapping on these utterly baffling 'suggested retail prices'. These price tags are, frankly, laughable, because absolutely no one is going to fall for them. Do they seriously think $8,000 USD is treated like 8,000 RMB? This machine is manufactured by an OEM in Chongqing, mainland China, where it's known as the 'Zhan 99 Ultra'. If you calculate the cost backwards – factoring in China's 13% VAT and 3% customs duties (bringing the price towards 26,000 RMB), then accounting for potential 2,000 RMB subsidies and the 16% tax – the initial base quote comes out to only around $3,070 USD.

And yet, even at that price in China, nobody wants it. People aren't fools; they know this machine is nowhere near worth that much.

Honestly, I have to wonder if Notebookcheck was paid off or something, constantly using these kinds of headlines for clickbait. In reality, this approach achieves nothing except further eroding their own credibility in the eyes of the public.

Let's break down exactly why this device supposedly justifies an $8,000 price tag: an AMD AI+ 395 chip, some Samsung LPDDR5X memory chips, a Kioxia XG8 SSD, a Samsung E4 OLED screen that's already four years outdated (with a mediocre ~372 nits average brightness and PWM flicker), a 6-cell 75Wh battery specification straight out of 2020, and it even uses the same aluminum alloy found in HP's standard 800 series laptops. They cobble these parts together and expect us to shell out $8,000?

Nobody is that stupid. There's simply no way people will buy it at that price.

Mark my words: This machine's price will be slashed by at least half upon release. By early next year, it will be discounted down to 30% of its initial MSRP, or perhaps even less. If you don't believe me, just wait and see.

[HpZbook]

In my North European country, the maxed out Zbook Ultra 14 G1a with Ryzen 395, 128GB RAM, 4TB SSD, costs around 3800€ VAT0. Don't understand where that 8000$ comes from, some kind of error or placeholder price perhaps?

[Worgarthe]

Don't understand where that 8000$ comes from, some kind of error or placeholder price perhaps?

Isn't that $8,000 "price" the same crap as Lenovo is doing with their ThinkPads? They slap an artificially huge price, then they run "sales" for 50-70% so you get a normal price then, lol. Funny tactics but there must be a reason why many OEMs use the same approach for their business-oriented lineups (because those same OEMs rarely ever do the same with their regular consumer laptops).

[Cormac]

Most vendors make the mistake of placing these chips inside laptops that are way out of most buyers budgets. If AMD really wanted to get them in the hands of a larger group of buyers, they'd try to address this.