HP ZBook 17 G6 Has The Most Impressive Mobile Workstation Performance We've Seen Yet

For those that may be working from home more frequently now and looking for a very capable laptop to serve as a mobile workstation, HP's ZBook 17 G6 is the most powerful contender we have tested to date that offers great performance potential paired with very reliable build quality and also offering easy upgrade potential.

The ZBook 17 G6 is HP's new flagship laptop for offering "desktop performance on the go" and suited for a multitude of different areas where performance is critical for achieving your work efficiently. This mobile workstation is also built to be very reliable with going through MIL-STD 810G testing and manufactured out of aluminum and magnesium. Other high-end finishes with this laptop include Bang & Olufsen speakers and a dual microphone array configuration. There are also privacy minded elements incorporated like being able to physically cover the web camera when not in use.

Comparing to HP's previous-generation ZBook, the G6 pulls in Coffeelake Refresh CPUs (Comet Lake and Ice Lake ended up coming too late for HP to incorporate this generation), NVIDIA Quadro Turing-based GPU options, WiFi 6, and other improvements.

The HP ZBook 17 G6 that HP kindly sent over for review features a Xeon E-2286M processor, NVIDIA Quadro RTX 5000 graphics with 16GB of video memory, 17.3-inch 4K display, 32GB of DDR4-2667 memory, 1TB NVMe SSD, 1080p web camera, Intel WiFi 6 AX200, and a 95.6 Whr battery. The Intel Xeon E-2286M is an eight core / sixteen thread processor with 2.4GHz base frequency and 5.0GHz turbo while having a 45 Watt TDP. It's a lot of hardware, but it also carries a professional price at around $5000 USD.

For those not needing quite as a high-end laptop, the HP ZBook 17 can also be configured with Intel CPUs ranging from the Core i5 9300H through Core i9 9980H as well. RAM options also go all the way up to 128GB of DDR4 along with many different storage options.

With the 17.3-inch display and large battery, this does come on the heavier end of the spectrum should you be frequently transporting it: the weight starts at 7lbs and the dimensions come in at 1.3 x 16.4 x 11.3 inches. Another benefit though of the larger size is that the bottom panel on the laptop can be easily removed if wanting to easily upgrade your storage or RAM on the laptop yourself. Adding to the weight of the device is also the fact there is even an optical drive on this laptop.

There is plenty of connectivity options with this laptop thanks to its large size: Gigabit Ethernet RJ-45, dual USB Type-C / Thunderbolt 3, one HDMI 2.0 output, SD card reader, mini DisplayPort, USB 3.0 charging, two USB 3.0 ports, and more. As for the battery life with this device, it has a 95.6 Whr battery that HP states can last up to 17 hours of battery life. Under Linux I was able to stretch it out many hours under very light load while obviously under load your mileage will vary based upon how much you are stressing the GPU and CPU.