HP mobile workstations are varied animals--some are large and heavy laptops with enough power to help you design the next Chevy or BMW. Others are not quite so heavy, not so powerful but are still durable and serviceable for upgrades. Those are the kind of laptops your IT department loves--the price won't break the corporation's bank, and the IT folks can fix or replace most anything that breaks. Want more RAM? No problem! Swap the HDD or SSD? Done. The CPU and GPU might not be a CAD designer's professio
Specs at a Glance
The HP ZBook 15u G3u runs Windows 10 on Intel 6th generation dual core, 15 watt Ultrabook CPUs rather than the quad core 45 watt powerhouse CPUs in the non-u HP ZBook 15, Dell Precision 15 5000 series and Lenovo ThinkPad P50. It has the low end CAD oriented AMD FirePro W4190M 2GB DDR5 graphics card, and can house up to 32 gigs of RAM in two slots. It has an has SSD boot drive and a conventional 2.5" hard drive for high capacity storage. It's available with 1080p and 4K displays in two quality levels (TN and IPS). Despite its mobile workstation status, the ZBook 15u weighs just 4.18 lbs. and is 0.78" thick.
Display
We have the 1920 x 1080 full HD touch screen in for review. This is a TN panel with mediocre viewing angles and weak contrast that even for the business world seems a bit out of date. Color gamut isn't good, but the 280 nits (measured) brightness is adequate for use in the office or at home. The laptop's base panel represents 79% of sRGB and 50% of Adobe RGB, far from the extremely wide color gamut of HP's Dream Color displays and below the consumer laptop average in this price range of full sRGB and 75% of Adobe RGB. That means this panel isn't a good choice for designers or photo and video editors. The more expensive IPS display options are a little brighter and have wider color gamut, thankfully.
Horsepower and Performance
The ZBook 15u Ultrabook workstation is a bit of an oddball: it looks and feels like a hearty, powerful workstation class laptop but it has a lowly dual core Ultrabook 15 watt CPU and low end AMD FirePro W4190M 2GB DDR5 dedicated graphics switchable with Intel HD 520 graphics. It's available with Core i5 and i7 dual core ULV CPUs, and it's not much faster or more capable than the average 13.3" Core i7 Ultrabook with low end dedicated graphics. Its appeal rests instead with the ample selection of ports, robust build quality and HP's relationship with large scale corporate buyers. I have to feel a little sorry for the folks at a big company who get the less powerful 15u version while some compatriots higher up in the engineering and CAD food chain get the more powerful ZBook Studio and ZBook 15 models.