HP ZBook Ultra G1a 14 workstation review: MacBook Pro alternative for gamers

[Redaktion]

HP weren't exaggerating when they said their latest ZBook would be the "world's fastest 14-inch workstation PC". The Ryzen AI Max+ 395 runs well on specialized desktops and mini PCs, but it's even more impressive on a thin-and-light 14-inch form factor.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/HP-ZBook-Ultra-G1a-14-workstation-review-MacBook-Pro-alternative-for-gamers.994758.0.html

[MMMM]

Why hdr is not supported?? it's an oled!!!

[Nits]

Why hdr is not supported?? it's an oled!!!

Isn't HDR useless unless you've a super bright 1000+ nit panel? I believe most important requirement for HDR is brightness. Just because it's OLED doesn't necessarily mean it automatically deserves HDR certification.

On a positive note, atleast subpixel layout seems to be pure RGB and no pentile with reduced resolution to be found. The vapour chamber system cooling system seems to be quite robust for a laptop as well.

Just that battery life. Gonna assume it's a combination of that high res
high refresh display that's increasing power draw. Have no doubt as well further low power optimization could be done by both AMD and HP with subsequent bios/firmware updates.

I do hope NBC tests a model with the low power WLED backlight FHD IPS panel as well, just to compare runtimes.

[ArsLoginName]

Asus ROG Flow Z13 with 70 Whr battery and 180 Hz IPS gets 33% better wi-fi battery life. HP needs to reduce OLED refresh rate to 30 Hz on battery or find a lower power, brighter OLED. Terrible choice of display.

[ArsLoginName]

It's probably the firmware and not the OLED (although it could still be a major part of it since not all OLEDs are equal). But Lenovo Ideapad Pro (it was just reviewed a few days ago) with 475 nit average and 1100 peak OLED gets almost double (833 min) wi-fi runtime from just a 15% larger battery.

[RobinLight]

Isn't HDR useless unless you've a super bright 1000+ nit panel? I believe most important requirement for HDR is brightness. Just because it's OLED doesn't necessarily mean it automatically deserves HDR certification.

No, HDR has independently from the highest brightness its advantages because e.g. darker scenes have more details and those details don't vanish when there is e.g. a bright light source in the scene.
The maximum brightness is only relevant when you watch in a bright room or not optimal conditions or when you have a really large surface. In a rather dark room even some smaller details with just 400nits put a lot of strain to the eyes.

[RobinLight]

1. I don't understand the low battery life. Because the idle and low power consumption looks pretty good.
And doing a test with just 60hz would be beneficial, too.

2. The part about the fan noise could be a bit more elaborating, especially which energy profile leads to how much fand noise under load.

3. The biggest bummer: As always there is not a single test regarding AI model inference using llama.cpp or ollama. This notebook has been especially made for this purpose so please add some benchmarks using at least a 70b Q4 model and do the same on a similar performing MacBook Pro.

[JJL]

Is Adaptive Sync is different from VRR ?
Because the specsheet of the laptop says, OLED panel should have VRR 48-120hz.

[will blake]

Could the author please run the battery runtime cyberpunk test on it?

Also, in the flow z13 review I believe it was made clear how much wattage is used in each power profile mode, plugged in vs on battery. If I recall correctly, there was even a nice table showing all this info concisely. Could you do the same here? As it's not entirely clear. Also add the dB fan noise in every mode too if possible.

Trying to figure out, if it's using 110W while cyberpunk gaming on high performance profile on mains here... how much does it use while on battery? 66W? And how much can this be further optimized, like using lowest power mode while in battery, does it use 35W then? Would that give 2 hours in that mode playing cyberpunk? How much does this effect the FPS vs using full power, unthrottled mode? What's the dB fan noise like in these different profile modes while gaming on battery running Cyberpunk?

[tokens per second]

3. The biggest bummer: As always there is not a single test regarding AI model inference using llama.cpp or ollama. This notebook has been especially made for this purpose so please add some benchmarks using at least a 70b Q4 model and do the same on a similar performing MacBook Pro.

I agree. You can still roughly calculate the speed (works for "dense" models like the LLama-70B):

Code Select Expand

tokens per second = bandwidth  / filesize
                  = 121177 MB/s / 39600 MB (Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct-Q4_K_M.gguf)
                  = 3.06

[Anders Andersson]

Asus ROG Flow Z13 is around 10% faster in single core Geekbench 5 and 6.
Is the HP badly optimized for single thread load?

[Dont_Look_Up]

This is by far the best mobile workstation of 2025!

Unfortunately, the power profiles are not properly optimised yet but they can be customised for even better performance and battery life.

There is a setting to improve significantly the battery life by giving power priority to CPU or GPU. The APU state can be set to P=0 or P=90 to save battery from the part of the APU that is used the least.

ThePhawx on youtube review: Asus ROG Flow Z13 - Strix Halo Review, explains this on his review. Most people do not know about this setting. (I can't post the link)

He gets 9.5 hours of battery life while gaming! And much better for web surfing. Just watch his video.

[Worgarthe]

He gets 9.5 hours of battery life while gaming!

Playing Minesweeper and Solitaire?

[gc]

"Dual-Channel" seems wrong even on HP's datasheet and quickspecs.  Ignoring that LPDDR5 channels are 32bit, the Ryzen AI Max 256-bit memory bus should have 4 64bit channels ("Quad-channel").  AMD's specs do not list a channel number.  Memory channels are not mentioned on this site's review nor in Apple's specifications (though some sites say the MacBookPro M4 Max 128GB has 8 channels).  For accuracy maybe the channels should be omitted here as in the MacBookPro review.  (Or make it "multi-channel" if you need to contrast with "single-channel".)

[Dont_Look_Up]

He gets 9.5 hours of battery life while gaming!

Playing Minesweeper and Solitaire?

No he is playing "Celeste" at 1080p with full effects for 9.5 hours!
Check his video at 34min (I can't post the link).