HP ZBook Studio G3 Mobile Workstation

This is a google cache of where it's mentioned

https://webcache.googleusercontent..../help/whats_new.htm+&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

I think since it's called "Studio" that it must have a 30-bit display panel like the DreamColor but I can't believe it would be only Full HD.

In other links it's the CPU is a Skylake mobile Xeon.

 

Here are a couple of articles...looks like it was announced today. Looks beastly....I had been using ZBook 15u since earlier this year lol....looks like im going to upgrade now

http://www.slashgear.com/hp-zbook-studio-is-gunning-for-the-macbook-pro-11414107/

http://liliputing.com/2015/11/hp-zbook-studio-mobile-workstation-is-a-4-4-pound-powerhouse.html

 

http://www8.hp.com/us/en/campaigns/workstations/zbook-studio.html

Nice that they are offering the highest end Iris Pro P580. Reduces overall heat and should offer pretty good performance if Intel does their job with the professional app drivers.

But HP's management is pretty idiotic by making those cheap statements in the Slashgear article. Zbook Studio is essentially competing with the Precision 5510 and whatever Lenovo has in store for their thinner workstation. Whichever models offer only the M1000M but still choice of quad-core unlike the dual-core ultrabook series.

It's not competing against Apple if the two target towards different audiences. You wouldn't use a Macbook Pro for SolidWorks or Revit if a job depended on it; likewise, those needing FCP or whatever need to be on OSX anyways. I'd worry more about other PC competitors with pretty similar models.

 

Ugh,

The Studio does not have buttons below the trackpad and the 15u g3 has gone to a full keyboard with numpad. All I need is the dedicated home/end/pgup/pgdn buttons like the Studio without the numpad. Still both are a better solution than the XPS 15 or Latitude version of the XPS 15, IMO. I'm just bracing myself for the reviews or poor battery life and/or loud fans. Hope it's not the case since I really need to upgrade ASAP.

 

Specs say a 64Whr battery. So about 5-6 hours I guess on medium, 2-3 on demanding work.

 

Interesting. Looking at the quickspecs it appears that HP intends to offer an option with the i7 but not the Quadro card, similar to how Apple has its base model 15 inch Macbook Pro. This could end up being a really awesome Linux development notebook!

 

I hope it isnt only 64 Whr :/, really hoped it would at least meet the Dell XPS 15 standard.

 

I wonder if the 15u G3 is really going up from 0.84" to 1" thick? Hoping that's a typo since it's the exact same as the 15 G3, but the dimensions on the website and spec sheets for both of those models say 1" thick too.

 

From online site the entry class ZBook 15u G3 will be 0.78 or 19.9 mm - the fully featured 15 G3 will be 26 mm , 1" inch thick. Sounds like they may still be working the online links kinks

 

The Studio looks like a contender. Curious if any one can shed light on how well HP thin'n'light business-class machines are built compared to Dell's equivalent (Precision M3800 or new 5510) and what sort of travel and feel the keyboards tend to have. I'd be coming from a Lenovo T440p, so am used to over 2mm of springy travel.

 

I am not sure if this have been posted before, however, here they are (again)

 

mmkay. Now if I could convince my boss that I need one.

 

Next year, the ZBook Studio G3 will come with an Intel Xeon E3-1545M v5, according to HP.
This CPU includes Iris Pro P580.
Does this mean: no dGPU, only iGPU?

(Only iGPU seems fine to me, because: less heat.)

 

Sigh, looks such a good unit,,,wish it had option for Smart card reader.

Just for that I might have to look at ZBook 15 instead of Zbook Studio.

 

I was looking for a good screen with lot of storage and portability for photo editing as well as office meetings. Budget not too much of an issue. Looking at XPS 9550 (or Precision 5510), Thinkpad P50 and now zBook Studio has come up.

XPS - seems to be having some QC/driver issues, two drive options not that great(issues with SATA cable availability as well as battery size options) - but sleek infinity edge screen

P50 - most powerful and configurable but the bulkiest of the lot with dated looks

zBook Stdio - Seems to be best of both worlds for my needs (though I will not be able to use my exisitng 1 TB 2.5" SSD)

Any thoughts?

I am a little bit invested in Dell with lots of Dell laptops in office and home - have a Dell charger in every room of the house as well as in office conference rooms . Have served me well in the past - have no experience with HP (in terms of reliability / support)

 

Well of course I need one with a mobile Xeon, 64GB of DDR4, 1TB M.2 & 2 TB of SATA. Probably won't BYOD in that config though...

 

Studio will have dual 1TB PCIe drives and is military spec tested unlike the consumerish XPS. P50 is looking pretty obsolete now based on its size and weight. Also, if you get the XPS or Dell 5510 you'll have a glossy UHD screen while Studio has a matte antiglare UHD screen.

Easy choice to go with the HP me thinks. I'm patiently waiting to order it next month

btw, this newsbit just came today...you'll get a free Superfish security issue with the new XPS ...lol

http://arstechnica.com/security/201...ships-pcs-with-self-signed-root-certificates/

 

And watch out for the new Precision/XPS's gimped keyboard layouts, with secondary Home and End keys embedded in the arrow key cluster. This is the case even on the 17" Precision model. It's been discussed at length in this thread in the Dell forum. For that reason alone, I'm not considering them.

I'm going to see what the pricing is like on the ZBook Studio G3 but am currently eyeing the ZBook 15u G3 since, outside of occasional Photoshop usage, I have a hard time justifying the quad-core. Also, the 15u has a numeric keypad whereas the Studio does not.
I wonder what HP is planning to charge for the 4K DreamColor display upgrade - I paid $600 to get the DC panel on my 8740w years ago. So I can't see getting OTD with a DC-equipped ZBook for under $2,500.

Charles

 

Yes. My parameters for zbook:
Pros:
- - - Dedicated Home/PgUp/PgDn/End keys
- - - Anti glare Dream Color 4K screen
- - - 2 M.2 drives slots - always available (and not some convoluted battery/screen cofig dependent as in Dell
- - - small footprint, highly portable workstation class machine
- - - Seems like rugged metal body tested for mil specs


CONS
- - - Can't use my existing 2.5" 1TB SSD
- - - Non touch screen. Frankly have never used a touch screen but recent converts say it is great - so ideally would not like to miss out
- - - BIG ONE - availability/delivery date. According to HP site, 4K Dream color will be "Available 1H2016" - 6 months is a long time to wait for a new machine!


Unknowns:
- - - Real world reviews
- - - Heating and throttling issues if any
- - - Fan noise/ventilation direction


MISC:
- - - Power cord on the right side - My work desk has the power plug on the right side
- - - Might need to buy couple of extra power adapters for my home and my office (apart from one in my bag). (Already had lots of extra dell power adopters all over the place)

 

Thank you for doing God's work. I have completely dismissed Dell's XPS15/Latitude15 solely because of their inane decision to omit these keys.

Kind of wish the Studio G3 had the dedicated mouse buttons or the 15u G3 omitted the numpad and kept the same keyboard layout as previous, but both are better alternatives to the Dells.

 

Agreed around your Pros list 100%.
Thanks for pointing out the inability of the ZBook Studio to accept 2.5" drives. That spoils my plan to have a 2.5" 2TB hard drive for storage. It certainly drives up the total cost of ownership as you'd have to convert to SSD-only storage (or go external).

Touch screens are hit and miss. I've reviewed many notebooks with them, and the only ones I tend to bother using touch on are the small 13.3" and under models. With the larger notebooks, it's more awkward to reach out and touch the screen since it's further away and you have to make larger gestures.

Inane, now that's an accurate term. I'd like to see a transcript of the conversation that led to the decision to omit Home and End. In over 10 years of reviewing notebooks, it's one of the most shortsighted decisions I've seen. It's a shame because the Precisions otherwise look very comparable to the HP's.

Charles

 

Does anybody know if HP managed to implement NVidia Optimus with UHD Displays in the ZBook G3-series? I learned the hard way that Optimus does not work in the ZBook 15 G2 with QHD+displays... If this problem isn't solved, that would be a no-go for me.
I'm also curious about the question if ZBooks G3 can use the existing Docking stations or if they are limited to the new Thunderbolt dock. And what about the "Extended life batteries"? Can they still be used?

 

Couldn't agree more. I used to be a Dell Precision guy in this class of machines, and wouldn't even give any HP a second look. However, now that Dell seems to have completely lost their mind (they've even eliminated the Home/End keys on the 17" Precision models, for cryin' out loud!) I'm taking a hard look at the alternatives. In the 17" class, the Lenovo P70 looks good, and in the workstation ultrabook class it looks like the HP ZBook Studio may be the way to go.

Given the continuing issues with Windows applications on UHD screens, I will be interested in the standard FHD screens. Frankly, for somebody at my age, with the accompanying eyesight, UHD screens at that size are completely and utterly pointless. Also, the FHD screens are less power hungry, so there's no good reason to go UHD for me at all, but lots of reasons to not go there. And of course, just about nobody ends up using touchscreens on laptops anyway, so I for one think that it's a plus to NOT have one.

 

I love my Home and End keys. Is it also too much to ask to get full sized cursor keys? I still tend to do vertical scrolling with the up/down keys and also use them to navigate through text while editing.

 

No kidding. This is what I'm using now and the layout is perfect. No, the full size arrows aren't flush with the bottom row of keys, but that does not matter to me in the slightest.



As for the touchpad, it doesn't have two finger scrolling but that ribbed part on the right is for scrolling and it works perfectly and without delay. None of this nonsense you have nowadays where you have to try a couple times to get a webpage to scroll (if it even works). No phantom cursor jumps. And if I want to drag and drop or drag and copy it has those excellent two REAL buttons that work 100% perfectly all the time. No trial and error. It really feels like the laptop manufacturers speccers have gone backwards over the years in terms of usability. Still not sure if it was all to copy Apple's symmetrical looking keyboard, to save money, or both.

 

I just realized the 15 u g3 will not be offered with a quad core option, and it is still using a battery with mediocre capacity. This may push me more towards the studio despite the lack of dedicated mouse buttons. Then again, the studio's starting price is putting me off.

 

Does anyone know if the new G3 ZBooks drive 30-bit color (10-bit per R,G,B channel) whem equipped with DreamColor?

On the ZBook 17 G2, the specs were 30-bit. This detail is missing in the G3 datasheets.

I am assuming that DreamColor is still 30-bit because there is a note in there about how Nvidia Optimus won't run with DreamColor.

What effect do you think DreamColor will have on battery life on the ZBook Studio? Will the GPU need to run in performance mode all the time?

 

I think all Dreamcolor screens are 30 bits (except the first Elitebook years ago). As for battery life, in the presentation video that was posted they said they got the Dreamcolor screens from the 20 watts like the G2 down to 6 watts. That shuld improve battery life. I'm hoping that at least the new Xeons can handle 30 bit color so we can have longer battery life when we don't need the full power of the discrete GPU.

 

Thanks Comal. I am excited to see this new display.

Does anyone have an inside track on when the ZBook Studio is going to be available for ordering? And when the DreamColor displays will be available as an option to order?

 

Unless I see a solid confirmation about it, I doubt that it's a 30-bit panel, most likely 24-bit (or 8-bit as it is commonly referred). Don't forget that it was widely advertized as such (10-bit panel), and there's nothing to be seen on the matter right now, just the resolution bump (4K).

 

The new high resolution panels are NVIDIA optimus capable since they are powered thru the Intel on-board graphics unlike prior generation where they were powered thru discrete graphics - prior intel architecture didn't allow for this. Think Intel has some documentation online about this

 

That's great news.

I just noticed these two notes in the datasheet.

"NVIDIA® Optimus Technology supported"

"NOTE 1: Color management on the UHD DreamColor panel is not supported while NVIDIA® Optimus Technology is activated."

What do you think this means? Does this mean we need to choose between calibrated color and good battery life? Or is this something more subtle?

 

I think it means you can choose when you want to use it at the BIOS level rather than having to decide to order it without that option.

 

I think i saw from documentation that two UHD panels are available - one UHD IPS Panel and the other is UHD w DreamColor - both are available w NVIDIA Optimus. However, color management is disabled when Optimus is activated on the UHD DreamColor panel. That's how I understand it from the documentations.

 

I was just reading through the (pretty thorough but oddly not proofread) spec sheet for the ZBook Studio and noticed that HP is using Samsung SM951 SSD drives as their "Z Turbo" drives.
http://www8.hp.com/h20195/v2/GetDocument.aspx?docname=c04832209

SM951 is similar (~10% slower reads, ~5% faster writes) to the aftermarket Samsung 950 Pro SSDs. Hopefully this means that the new 1TB offering will be a speedy Samsung 1TB SM951, potentially available months before a retail version is available.

I would still rather switch to the Samsung 950 Pro since it is the cheetah of M.2 SSDs...but I could definitely live with the SM951 as well.

Much nicer than the PM951s used in the Dell Precision 5510s.

 

Digging more into the HP ZBook Studio specs.

It looks like the ZBook Studio comes with a "long life" battery. That means that they warranty the battery's performance during the laptop's entire 3 year warranty as well.

Does anyone know what HP's performance metric for this is? 75% or the "new" battery runtime? 90%? This is new to me but appreciated.

 

anyone has any idea when the zbook 17 g3 will be available for sale?

 

I believe that the ZBook Studio is the one shipping this month, with the other new ZBook G3 laptops shipping in January.

 

Would getting the Xeon processor be a good move just to get the Iris Pro graphics if I care about battery life? I do not run anything graphically intensive, but I don't wan't a dedicated gpu sucking up battery.

 

The higher-end Xeon with Iris Pro doesn't ship until next year. If you're concerned about battery life, waiting for the Iris Pro may help somewhat. Choosing a 1920x1080 FHD display may also give you more battery life vs. 4K UHD.

But if you are not running anything graphically intensive, the integrated Intel HD graphics in the current Xeon chips will be driving your display most of the time anyway. Nvidia Optimus will kick on the dedicated GPU when necessary.

You will also be able to build a custom ZBook Studio sometime soon--and could probably just leave out the Nvidia GPU if you don't want it. HP might also have additional GPU options down the road, but it's too early to tell and the spec sheet only shows one GPU for launch.

 

Thanks for the reply...ideally I would like to configure a lower end processor (i7 or even i5) as I'm not running anything intensive, and am more interested in the form factor than anything else... and the integrated hd530 would be just fine then... so hopefully we can configure without the gpu

EDIT: according to page 6 of the quick spec guide, the gpu is an optional add on, so looks like it can be configured with only the integrated graphics

 

Anyone knows if the Samsung SM951 SSD (aka. HP Z Turbo Drive) would work as expected on Linux? I doubt HP would deliver custom kernel modules for its machine and I'd bet it will work flawlessly, but better safe than sorry..

 

Although HP Store has several models of the Studio G3 offered for sale, the most expensive being
http://store.hp.com/us/en/pdp/Laptops/hp-zbook-studio-g3-mobile-workstation-(energy-star)-p-t6e17ut-aba--1
at $2.5K... the specs don't disclose which display is included. Obviously a work in progress at the HP Store. Chatted with an agent who said .... call SMB sales at 1.866.625.0242, Option 2, and ask what display is included on a given model.

 

Did a bit of research that I'd pass along - looks like HP ZBook Studio uses the higher performance PCIe NVMe drive from Samsung than what Dell Precision 5510 uses.

ZBook Studio uses Samsung SM951 version which is 2X faster (~2GB/s SR) than Dell Precision 5510's which only uses the Samsung PM951 device (~1GB/s SR). (From photos posted in the other section)

Makes the decision even easier - not just offering 2 PCIe NVMe drives but being 2X faster

 

Does anyone know whether the ZBook Studio uses the more common size 2280 PCIe NVMe drives rather than the shorter 2260 ones I believe were in previous G2 models? It would be much easier to find upgrades down the line if so.

 

Pretty sure that they use the full-size drives. The Samsung 950 Pro and SM951 drives are full-length I believe. And the HP ZBook Studio uses "SM951" Z Turbo drives.

Even better...you can install two 1GB drives for a total of 2GB of super-fast SSD.

 

2TB of PCIe SSDs and yes they are 2280 modules

 

Just bought the $2499 list price unit in the HP store for $150 off, called SMB sales. That unit (T6E17UT#ABA) comes with the non-DC UHD (4K) panel. The DC panel is not yet offered, even in the OTS Xeon units ($2899 in the store). Ships 05 Jan 2016.

 

Great news that they're using the 2280 modules - I'll probably buy with less storage and upgrade I think to save a bit. Will probably do the same with RAM. Shame the 4K DC panel doesn't sound like it will be available immediately though.

 

Anyone know what the options are for adding a second drive? It sounds like there's a second, empty M2 slot, but is that SATA or PCIe (or both)?

Also curious if anyone has thoughts on the single exhaust fan... is that going to be able to deal with the CPU and GPU going at full tilt?