This year’s HP ZBook Studio G8 retains the award-winning style of the G7 series, but increases the power to help content creators in their creative projects, both in the studio and in the field. This attention-grabbing machine features an 11th-generation Intel Core i9 processor, 32 GB of RAM, 2 TB of SSD storage, and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 GPU that meets all the needs of Adobe Creative Suite and beyond.
HP’s laptop is often ordered with one of Nvidia’s professional GPUs, formerly known as Quadro, but it is also available with Nvidia gaming graphics, such as the GeForce RTX 3070 in our test unit, and its keyboard has rainbow RGB backlighting that would look good in a fancy gaming rig. High-speed gamers won’t appreciate our Studio’s 15.6-inch OLED display laptop, which is stunning but limited to a vain 60 Hz refresh rate, but the system adds up to an excellent platform for 4K video editors or other digital content creators.
HP’s ZBook line, which includes the lightweight ZBook Firefly, the inexpensive ZBook Power, the powerful ZBook Fury, and the best of all brands ZBook Studio, does not attract much attention. As a workstation-class mobile device, the ZBook Studio is not as flashy as most gaming laptops or as affordable as most “creator” laptops, but in many ways it is better than both. In the language of tech nerds, HP’s ZBook Studio G8 is a “workstation.”
Hardware-wise, this usually means a Xeon processor, error-corrected RAM, and an A-series or Quadro graphics card, coupled with some sort of reliability testing, software certifications from major developers such as Adobe, and an extended warranty. All of this is usually accompanied by a price tag so high that it will cause mountain sickness if you stare at it too long.
Design
The ZBook Studio G8 looks more like a traditional thin-and-light laptop than a workstation. This is intentional, as the laptop aims to appeal to both consumer-oriented power users and professionals looking for a highly mobile solution. Looking at the ZBook Studio G8 there is a striking resemblance to an HP Specter from a few years ago. There is an aggressive angle along each side, sharp bevels on various edges, and the back edge is a sharp wedge that adds some charm to the design.
The color is called “Turbo Silver,” and the overall aesthetic is sophisticated but striking. It is much more attractive than the Lenovo ThinkPad P15 Gen 2, which shares similar components but is much more boxy and dated. The ZBook Studio G8 more directly challenges the Dell XPS 15 in terms of look and feel, but the Dell is thinner and just as attractive. With very thin display bezels on the sides and relatively narrow bezels at the top and bottom, the ZBook Studio G8 is a decent-sized laptop given its 15.6-inch 16:9 display.
Keyboard and Touch Pad
One of our absolute favorite keyboards is the ZBook Studio G8. The chiclet-style keys with RGB lighting are both clicky and responsive, and have excellent key size and travel. Thanks to the Omen Gaming Hub, which is new to the Studio series, you can choose your own color scheme for the keyboard or play with it and customize it yourself.
The G8’s touchpad is 2.8 x 4.5 inches, centered on the deck and quite large. When using Windows 10 gestures like 2-finger scrolling and pinch-to-zoom, the chrome touchpad is incredibly smooth and responsive.
Display
Bright and colorful, the HP ZBook Studio’s 15.6-inch multi-touch OLED 4K Gorilla Glass 6 display delivers sharp, vivid images and videos. Whether we were editing photos or videos, or playing WRC 10 FIA World Rally Championship, everything was saturated in color. The colorful imagery of the Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora game trailer has been mesmerizingly reproduced. The opening forest scene was like something you would see in a National Geographic special. As we watched a Na’vi jump off a cliff to avoid a missile, we were mesmerized by the orange-red explosion.
The crisp detail of the alien planet’s flora was stunning and believable, as our protagonist Na’vi free-falls to be rescued by a beautiful flying creature. We measured the Studio G8’s screen with a colorimeter and it covered an impressive 142.5% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, beating the average of 84.4% for high-end laptops. It finished in second place behind the ZenBook Pro Duo 15, which scored a meager 143.8%, followed by the MSI Z16 at 114.1% and the Dell XPS 15 OLED, which scored 85%.
Audio
We listened to “Blame it on the Alcohol” by Jamie Foxx through the Bang and Olufsen speakers. We heard the poppy hip-hop dance flow of Jamie’s auto-tuned vocals throughout my studio apartment through the two tweeters and woofers. There was some depth and separation of the bass from the mid and high notes. The music and vocals were all reproduced very cleanly.
All we needed was a cocktail to get the party started. If you go to the HP Audio Control software, you can adjust the equalizer and add a little more bass, just in case you’re a bass player like me. To conclude our audio evening, we put on “Music For Brain Power” by Beethoven. The heavenly high notes of the violins with the slowly building crescendo of the bass strings, with the flowing, harmonic flutes and oboes in the background, as if angels were softly singing.
Graphics
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 GPU of the HP ZBook Studio G8 with 6 GB VRAM is very powerful. We did not experience any lags or performance issues when editing video with Adobe Premiere or DaVinci Resolve. When taking photos with Capture One, the delay between shots was minimal as the images were quickly transferred to the display. With HP Omen software installed, an RGB keyboard, an Nvidia RTX GPU, and 32 GB of RAM, it’s ready for gaming, and we did. We wrecked cars in WRC 10 and murdered enemies in Borderlands 2, which we finally finished, by the way.
The 60Hz display kept up well with an average of 60 frames per second in Borderlands 2 and WRC 10. We tested the GPU with the Sid Meier’s Civilization VI: Gathering Storm (1080p) benchmark. The Studio G8 achieved 79 fps in 1080p and 64 fps in 4K, easily beating the premium laptop average of 32 fps. That was enough to topple the XPS 15 with 67 fps. This puts the G8 in second place behind the MSI Creator Z16 with 95.5 fps in 1080p, but not behind the Creator Z16.
Performance
Given the ultra-thin design, we were skeptical that HP would be able to squeeze every bit of performance out of the Core i9-11950H and NVIDIA RTX 3070. We were only right. In most of our benchmarks, the ZBook couldn’t quite outperform the more recent Razer Blade 15 Advanced, which technically uses an even slightly slower Core i9-11900H, but the thinner ZBook Studio was still able to come out on top. Performance numbers on the shelf.
Whether you’re running Photoshop, Lightroom or Capture One, you can expect Studio G8 to handle most photo and video editing tasks with ease, while remaining extremely quiet compared to some of the gaming laptops we’ve tested. For today’s comparisons, we present HP’s results side-by-side with the same tests conducted on an M1 iMac, an ASUS Zephyrus G14 with AMD, and the aforementioned Blade 15 Advanced.
Battery Life
The ZBook Studio G8 packs an 83 Wh battery, which isn’t huge for this class of device. The Lenovo ThinkPad P15, for example, has a capacity of 94 watt hours and the Dell XPS 15 is almost on par with HP at 86 watt hours. Add in some high-end components and a power-hungry 4K OLED display, and my battery life predictions were bleak. Things were just as bad as we expected.
Starting with our web browsing test, which runs through a range of popular and complex websites, the ZBook Studio G8 only managed five hours, about half of what we’re aiming for in this test. The XPS 15 OLED lasted nine hours and the ThinkPad P15 clocked in at 9.5 hours. In our video test, which repeats a local 1080p movie trailer, the ZBook Studio G8 lasted just 6.25 hours, compared to the XPS 15 OLED at 11 hours and the ThinkPad P15 at 11.15 hours.
Heat
The surface temperatures are symmetrical due to the symmetrical cooling solution inside. The hotspot is near the center of the keyboard, where it can reach over 51 C under heavy loads, compared to 49 C on the Dell Precision 7550. The palm rests can also get quite warm at around 38 C due to the dense design metal base. The warmer temperatures are not uncomfortable for the hands, but they are noticeable.
Configuration Options
The HP ZBook Studio G8 we received costs $4,727 and features an 11th generation Intel Core i9-11950H processor, Nvidia Geforce RTX 3070 GPU with 6GB VRAM, 32GB RAM, 2TB NVMe SSD and a 15.6-inch OLED 4k multi-touch 15.6-inch OLED 4k display. The base version of HP’s ZBook Studio G8 costs $2,479 and is equipped with an 11th generation Intel Core i7-11800H processor, Nvidia T1200 GPU with 4GB vRAM, 16GB RAM, 512GB NVMe SSD and a 15.6-inch FHD (1920 x 1080) anti-glare IPS 15.6-inch IPS display with 400 nits brightness.
Conclusion
We hope you like this article HP ZBook Studio G8 Review. The above caveats apply, but aside from a few minor flaws we mentioned above, we could not find fault with this notebook. For creatives, it’s a workhorse. The ZBook Studio G8 offers much more performance than we expected from such a thin and light chassis, and it’s relatively quiet.
It looks and feels good, and it offers a variety of configuration options that let you find a price/performance ratio that suits you. Ultimately, you will have to decide for yourself whether the less glamorous benefits of a mobile workstation are worth the inflated price. If that is the case, we could recommend this notebook without hesitation.
