HP ZBook 14 G2 Mobile Workstation Review

With a sleek form factor and elegant design, this notebook is composed of a stylish brushed aluminum finish surrounded by a textured magnesium alloy. This is an MIL-STD 810G certified ultrabook meaning it can withstand drops from as high as 4 feet. Also, it can hold its own against dust, functional shock, vibration and both high and low temperatures.

HD display and robust keyboard: Weighing only about 1.76 kg, this mobile workstation has a 14-inch LED-backlit FHD touch display. The sharp display offers crisp and clear picture quality. Operating the system using the touch screen was a cool experience as it responded well. It has 256-lux of brightness which is quite good but may trouble you in direct sunlight. As it is a business ultrabook, so you can’t expect a great audio quality, yet offers decent experience.
It has a quality backlit Chiclet-style keyboard with a lightly textured surface that enhances the typing experience.  The workstation has spill-resistant keyboard, so you won’t have to worry if you drop your coffee on it. The ZBook 14 has a 3.8 x 2.2-inch touchpad, which is smooth and accurate. There are four physical buttons, two above and two at the bottom of the touchpad, which ease the operating experience. Also it comes with a rubber pointing stick at the center of its keyboard for navigation.

It has a quality backlit Chiclet-style keyboard with a lightly textured surface that enhances the typing experience.  The workstation has spill-resistant keyboard, so you won’t have to worry if you drop your coffee on it. The ZBook 14 has a 3.8 x 2.2-inch touchpad, which is smooth and accurate. There are four physical buttons, two above and two at the bottom of the touchpad, which ease the operating experience. Also it comes with a rubber pointing stick at the center of its keyboard for navigation.

Enhanced security features: The ZBook 14 comes with a biometric fingerprint reader for additional security to your data. You can record fingerprints for two fingers by simply swiping across the scanner. Also, in case you forget your password, you may still login by answering the security questions.

The HP Client Security also enables you to manage your Windows passwords, encrypt your storage drives, wipe your hard drive and limit device access to the ZBook’s ports, to prevent someone from stealing data via a USB drive. Moreover, you can sign up for Absolute Software’s LoJack that allows you to track the notebook in case of theft.

Performance: The business ultrabook has a 2.6 GHz Intel Core i7 processor, 16GB of RAM, 500 GB SSD and runs on Windows 7. This is capable of handling even the most demanding productivity tasks. We opened 20 tabs in Chrome and Mozilla simultaneously out of which there were 5 tabs playing YouTube videos. There was no lag in performance. We also ran a few of applications like PhotoShop and MS Word simultaneously. We didn’t notice any performance lag in the system even while switching between the two apps. In our benchmark tests, it scored well and resulted in P2112 on 3DMark and 3743 on PCMark.

The laptop is also equipped with a 720p HD webcam for video conferencing. The video quality of the webcam is quite decent, and even when using it indoors there was very low noise. Its cooling system also works perfectly, and you hardly notice any heat. The business notebook can last for more than 7 hours in moderate usage (browsing internet, video chats, running MS-Office, Photoshop etc.), while in our battery tests, it lasted for 2 hours 52 minutes when running Imtech Battery Mark 1.1 which uses 100% CPU, RAM, Display, etc.