Hands on: The HP ZBook Ultra G1a smashes the ‘work laptop’ paradigm

I’ve searched high and low for an enterprise-grade laptop that’s portable, has the tools I need to keep my work secure, but that’s also powerful enough to run graphically demanding 3D models, design software, and games.

But up until now the closest thing I’ve come across is a creator laptop that can’t compete in the portability stakes. Plus it looks too industrial for the office — yuk!

HP’s new 14-inch HP ZBook Ultra G1a, however, just won’t toe the line on that paradigm. In fact, it destroys it completely, combining an extremely lightweight, thin, and attractive chassis, a powerful AI-capable chipset, and most importantly – the one thing that has me so in awe – graphics power that can rival a gaming laptop. What?!

How much graphics power am I talking about? As an example, at HP’s launch event for the ZBook Ultra G1a the HP team had it running an F1 Simulator and outputting to multiple displays at 2.2K resolution, and it still managed to average an impressive100 frames per second! Are you catching on why this laptop has my attention now?

But as impressive as that is, the HP ZBook Ultra G1a shouldn’t be confused for a gaming laptop. No, this laptop is an enterprise laptop through and through, with all the hallmarks of a modern workstation. It has a compact 14-inch chassis that’s both robust and strong. Its 2.8K OLED display is color rich, but it’s also easy on the eyes thanks to its Eyesafe certification.

I mentioned before that it’s light and thin, but in fact it’s impressively so! It weighs no more than 3.3 pounds and measures just 0.73 inches at the front — so you won’t have any problem packing it into a satchel for meetings on the fly.

The port selection is very good, too, for a small laptop. You get 2x Thunderbolt 4 ports, a 10Gbps USB-C port, a USB-A port, as well as an HDMI 2.1 port and a 3.5mm Kensington lock. This pocket rocket also supports up to 4TB storage, so there’s plenty of space to store large files and programs. For video calls it has a 5MP IR camera.

HP ZBook Ultra G1a also has the kind of security that differentiates work laptops from other types. It comes with HP’s Wolf Security and a fingerprint reader for utilizing the Windows Hello secure login. HP demonstrated the HP SureView onlooker protection feature on the Ultra G1a which blurs your screen when you walk away from it. No doubt that will come in handy when strangers try to peek at your game… ahem…work!

Dominic Bayley / Foundry

The key behind the ZBook Ultra G1a’s power and portability can be put down to one thing: Its AMD Ryzen AI Max Pro chip which I’ve been wanting to see in action ever since I heard about it at CES 2025.

This impressive piece of silicon is based on AMD’s new Strix Halo architecture. It combines CPU, GPU, and NPU processing all on a single chip. Indeed, the Ultra G1a can be configured with any one of nine AMD Strix Halo processors, ranging from the AMD Ryzen AI Max Pro 386 up to the zippiest AMD Ryzen AI Max+ Pro 395.

The latter puts 16 cores of glorious desktop-grade CPU power in your hands with an impressive 5.1GHz maximum clock speed, so more than enough to keep even the most demanding apps ticking along smoothly. The graphics power comes courtesy of 40 integrated RDNA 3.5 cores.

Dominic Bayley / Foundry

If the APU is impressive, so is the memory it feeds. It consists of a unified architecture that features up to 128GB DDR5 RAM running at 8,533 MT/s. A whopping 96GB of that RAM can be allocated to the GPU for when you need the ZBook Ultra G1a to run the most graphically demanding programs.

The other benefit of the APU and unified memory is multitasking, which I saw in action at the HP launch event as well. HP said the Ultra G1a can easily handle complex 3D sets interactively, and large AI models locally — the latter of which is going to redefine what workers can achieve on the edge without the need of the cloud. So, this laptop has workflow as well as rendering down pat.

One demonstration had the HP ZBook Ultra G1a running the application Amuse simultaneously alongside the programs Navisworks and LM Studio, again outputting to different displays. Despite loading up the chip with this level of work, the performance remained very smooth. If there was any lag, I didn’t see it.

Dominic Bayley / Foundry

HP said the Ultra G1a would suit a range of different professionals, from engineers to creative professionals. I have no doubt about that.

Suffice it to say, this laptop has the kind of power and portability that could make their lives a lot easier — not to mention boost productivity. One productivity model presented by AMD at the launch showed a productivity boost of 39 percent — but anything just shy of that would still be useful.

To that end the ZBook Ultra G1a is very well equipped with AI power — which is expected to be one of the biggest boosters of productivity in the future. The NPU supports 50 TOPS processing power to a total 125 TOPS total power for the whole chip. That’s enough for a seamless experience with AI apps like Microsoft Copilot or HP’s own AI Companion.

Me, I’m not sure I’ll push the AI power to the limits. I’m just excited to see how far I can push the graphics power when I get a review model to test. Judging by what I’ve seen so far, I think I’ve got a lot more eyebrow raising to look forward to.