This article originally appeared in DP 02 : 2015.
The company HP has a stylish notebook and would like to have it tested by the relevant press. Not a bad idea, actually. Not such a good idea was choosing Digital Production’s most Mac-affine authors and having the device compete directly against a MacBook Pro.
When the brown package from HP arrived at our office and we had unpacked the ZBook in amazement, the entire team initially stood around it like sheep and stared at it. “So this is a PC!”, “IBMcompatible”, “a real notebook”, “Ooh!”.
We would have liked nothing better than to lick it to see what it tastes like. As a production company that works exclusively with Macs, HP’s ZBook is in fact rather alien, comparable to a chunk of Martian rock. Fascinating, but at first really more of a superior paperweight.
What one does not expect at all at first as a Mac user is loose plastic parts falling out of the packaging. We also found out during our test that this was the protective shield for the ExpressCard slot. Far more frightening than loose plastic parts, however, is the ZBook’s power supply: as large as a Perry Rhodan paperback, the beast weighs around 900 grams (for comparison: a MacBook power supply weighs 330 grams). Together with the associated cabling, it feels as though one were carrying another litre of milk in one’s laptop bag alongside the ZBook.
Fruit versus Z(ombies)
In the absence of further IBM-compatible test devices, one of our MacBook Pros had to serve as the comparison candidate. At a price of 2,500 euros (including VAT), the current MacBook Pro (MBP) is certainly comparable with the ZBook F0U69ET (ZB) we tested, which costs 2,250 euros (both list prices according to the manufacturer’s website). Both notebooks have quad-core i7 processors at 2.5 GHz (MBP) and 2.7 GHz (ZBook), 8 GB RAM (according to the list) and Nvidia graphics cards, with the GeForce GT750M in the MBP and the Quadro K2100M in the ZBook. The only significant difference inside is the SSD drives, which are 500 GB in the MBP and only 250 GB in the ZBook.
We already knew before the test that no great design could be expected from a PC notebook. Just how dull a ZBook looks next to a MacBook becomes particularly apparent when the two devices are placed side by side: at 1.8 cm high, the MBP is relatively flat and weighs only around 2 kilograms. The ZBook, by contrast, at 3.05 cm high is almost 70 percent taller and, at 2.8 kilos, weighs a modest 40 percent more (without an optical drive, mind you, plus the heavy-duty power supply). In defence of the ZBook, however, it must be said that it is very well made, appears extremely solid and also feels good to the touch: the rubberisation around the display is sensible, the keys do not flex when typing, and the display and latch also appear very stable. In terms of stability, it naturally cannot be compared with the MacBook’s UnibodyHousing. On the other hand, the battery and other parts of the ZBook can be replaced at any time, something that only (expensive) technicians can do at Apple.
The countless ports and the “G-spot trainer” (the small mouse substitute between the G, H and B keys) look rather very retro on the ZBook; although it was still very popular and useful at the beginning of the 90s, it no longer has any reason to exist in the age of integrated touchpads. The same applies to the VGA port. What does one need a VGA port for? By contrast, one searches in vain for an HDMI port on the ZBook. A dedicated USB 2 port also seems somewhat pointless, as does the product description “1 Thunderbold” and “1 Displayport”, although, misleadingly, these are the same port.
Inner Values
But let us be fair – it is the innner values that count. The first thing that stands out here is that the ZBook supports a maximum Full HD resolution (1,920 x 1,080), which is of course an exclusion criterion for a production company like ours: when we edit video, we want to see it in full, plus a few palettes, menus and perhaps a timeline, which is not possible on the ZBook. The MBP’s Retina display, by contrast, supports a resolution of 2,880 x 1,800 pixels, which can admittedly look very small on 15.4 inches, but is still easily sufficient for After Effects or Mocha.
To give the ZBook another chance, we carried out further tests, specifically with Adobe Premiere CC 2014, Adobe Bridge CC and Adobe After Effects CC 2014. The first task was quite simple: open Bridge and display photos in raw format that had been taken with a Canon EOS 5D. Both candidates passed this test almost equally quickly, at approximately 8.5 seconds for 30 raw files in the preview.
The second test was already a little more tricky: calculate a four-minute timeline with subtitles in Premiere. In both cases, identical projects with MXF data from a Canon C300 on a native timeline served as the basis. While the MacBook calculated the entire timeline in 3 minutes and 44 seconds, the ZBook required 11 minutes and 39 seconds. Spontaneous comment from colleague Torben: “Employee-friendly device”.
The third and final test involved rendering a fairly complex After EffectsComposition that we had recently created for a report. The raw material for the composition consisted of all sorts of different formats, but we rendered an animation file. In this case, we deliberately dispensed with the otherwise common ProRES HQ so as not to make a possible “AppleAdvantage” audible. Nevertheless, the MacBook literally ran away from the ZBook and calculated more than 85 percent faster (the MacBook’s 14:06 minutes versus the ZBook’s 26:52).
Conclusion
We really tried to remain neutral, but we cannot find a single advantage of the ZBook over a comparable MacBook Pro. The price difference of 250 euros is not drastic for devices in this category and is marginalised by the MacBook’s SSD drive, which is twice as large. The ZBook does claim to have a larger display (15.6 inches compared with the MPB’s 15.4-inch monitor). But because HP uses a 16:9 display with a maximum Full HD resolution, one de facto sees less than on the MacBook Pro with a 16:10 resolution and 2,880 x 1,800 pixels. The ZBook is 70 percent taller and weighs 40 percent more; the power supply alone weighs almost three times as much as Apple’s power supply.
For the work relevant to us, the ZBook is only just as fast on simple tasks. With more elaborate renderings, however, it falls significantly behind – by as much as a truly astonishing difference of more than 300 percent. For us AppleSheep, the HP device is therefore rather not for us. We licked it and found that we do not like the taste. Unfortunately, we cannot judge whether and how the ZBook performs compared with other PC notebooks, or what Windows users could improve and accelerate with the necessary optimisations or customary tools. And we are glad about that.
