HP ZBook Ultra 14-inch G1a Mobile Workstation Review

Laptops are just getting better and better but the HP ZBook Ultra 14-inch G1a is not just a laptop, it’s a mobile workstation! Also, ISV certified or if you hate acronyms, Independent Software Vendor certification. ISV certification indicates the software vendor applications have been rigorously tested to run at peak performance on this system. That includes a number of CAD programs, 2D and 3D, also applications for software developers, media and entertainment, large language models, and more. 

Now, that name—the HP ZBook Ultra 14-inch G1a Mobile Workstation. With Ultra in the name, we were thinking it has an Intel Core Ultra processor. Nope. This thing is powered by an AMD Ryzen AI Max PRO processor with up to 16x cores. Just a thought HP, but how about we change the name to the HP ZenBook Ryzen Ultra 14-inch G1a Mobile Workstation. There! Fixed it! Let’s just hit the high notes first. Integrated AMD Radeon graphics, courtesy of the AMD Ryzen AI Max + PRO Series processor. As the name would suggest, also helpful for AI workloads with dedicated AI accelerators. Up to 128GB of memory, up to 4TB of NVMe storage. Copilot, ISV certification, Wi-Fi 7. And, of course, as a mobile workstation, you can use it anywhere. Just added that last bit to trigger some of our more critical viewers, who are now saying, “we all know you can use it anywhere…”

The exterior features an impact resistant case with MIL-STD testing for durability and extreme environments. It comes in two colors and is fingerprint and smudge resistant. Flipping it over, you can see a perforated panel with 2x turbo, high-density fans underneath.

Those fans pull in fresh air, which is then blown through a vapor chamber that helps cool the CPU and out the back of the system, right at the hinge. The system comes with a power cable with brick for charging. At a glance, I noticed the battery life is listed from 8 to 14.5 hours and you can charge to 50% in about 30 minutes. All of that is based on the configuration, what applications you are using and have open, and potentially Gremlins. 

On the right, ports on this platform include a Thunderbolt 4 with USB Type-C port offering 40Gb/s signaling rate and 140W charging. Then a USB Type-A port offering 10Gb/s. That last one is a Kensington nano security lock port.

On the left side, a 3.5mm audio/mic combo jack, another Thunderbolt 4 port with USB Type-C port, again offering a 40Gb/s data transfer rate with another USB type-C port offering a 10Gb/s data transfer rate and then an HDMI 2.1 port for connecting a monitor. 

The Thunderbolt ports can also be used to charge the system or to connect monitors for up to 3x additional displays. Not to mention the crazy fast data transfer rate of 40Gb/s, which we already mentioned. There is also a small LED to either side of the Thunderbolt ports to indicate the charge level on the system when the power cable is plugged in. The two slots towards the front on either side are the internal speakers.  If you do connect additional monitors, you can opt for an HP Thunderbolt 4 Ultra 180W G6 Dock which will provide up to 4x displays, including the notebook display with 4x at 4K. But this notebook display is only capable or 2.8K so maybe a slight discrepancy there on capabilities. Did we mention there is a Dock 2x that supports higher resolutions?

Once we crack it open, you can see the 14-inch diagonal screen with all options featuring an Ultra-Wide Viewing Area or UWVA. There are 5x screen options. Two with full HD 1920×1200 pixel monitors, which is pretty close to 2K. One with anti-glare and a 5MP IR Camera, another without that 5MP camera. Then, 3x OLED versions including two with a touch screen, like our review system. One of those has a 5MP camera too. 

The OLED screens offer 2.8K resolution at 2880×1800 pixels, plus low blue light, also better rendition of black, more responsive for gaming applications, and easier on your eyes. All offer 400 nits, which is a brightness scale. The screen is fantastic! Responsive, glossy, very saturated with color, and offering exceptional resolution and detail. All 4x of the CPUs supported on this system feature a near discrete, whatever that means, GPU. It’s our understanding graphics are integrated with the CPU. That’s a technical term. Depending on your choice, there are 3x different flavors of AMD Radion Graphics featured on the 4x different processors available.  

Right at the top of the screen are 2 internal microphones, a webcam with Infra-red camera, and a webcam LED. The webcam does have a small privacy slider in case you don’t want people spying on you that have potentially bypassed the pre-installed Wolf Pro Security application. It has a full-sized, backlit, keyboard with a large click pad. It’s extra-large! As an option you can get a spill-resistant keyboard.

Our HP ZBook Ultra 14-inch G1a Mobile Workstation has an AMD Ryzen AI Max+ Pro 395 with integrated Radeon 80605 graphics operating at 3.00GHz that can boost up to 5.1GHz max boost. It’s also outfitted with 128GB of memory, a 4TB NVIe M.2 drive, which is the maximum supported. It’s currently running Windows 11 PRO.

The CPU or maybe we should say APU, for accelerated processing unit, features an integrated CPU with GPU and an NPU or neural processing unit. The CPU itself has 126 TOPS with 50 TOPS, or Trillion Operations Per Second delivers by the NPU. Currently, there are 4x APUs to choose from.

We say currently because who knows, this unit may be compatible with the next generation of AMD’s Ryzen AI Max PRO processors. It was only released for actual purchase in March of this year, 2025. You may have noticed, only the PRO 395 has a “plus” after Max, as in AMD Ryzen AI Max Plus PRO. It’s the top of the line for this family so they added a +. Just a note AMD, that PLUS added is confusion but we won’t dwell on that. The MAX + PRO 395 does have the best integrated Radeon Graphics with the 8060S graphics processor. 

The available processors feature 6, 8, 12, or 16 physical cores and twice those numbers, respectively, for the virtual core counts. Base clocks across the family are in the 3.0 to 3.6GHz range and from 4.9GHz to 5.1GHz Max Boost Clock speed. The system can be outfitted with up to 128GB of memory. That would be LPDDR5x memory, which stands for Low Power Double Data Rate. It is soldered onto the system board so choose wisely when purchasing. The low power thing is necessary for mobile platforms as you do want your system to maintain power for as long as possible if you’re not connected to a power source. 

You can allocate up to 75% of total system memory, or lesser percentages, to the GPU for Video RAM or VRAM. Hitting the ESCAPE button several times as the system starts, allows access to the Startup Menu. From there you can access BIOS. Then click on the Advanced tab to adjust the allocation of VRAM for the GPU accelerator. In our case, since there is 128GB total system memory, that means up to 96GB of VRAM. Think about that. The NVIDIA RTX PRO Blackwell Max-Q Workstation edition has 96GB of VRAM. Or how about the NVIDIA RTX 6000 Ada? That one offers 48GB of VRAM, or video RAM, so you would need 2x of those cards to potentially match the VRAM this unit can apply. 

But it is just VRAM, so you won’t get the improved processing power from the Stream Processors, which would be the AMD Radeon analogue to NVIDIA’s Cuda cores. You still can’t install another GPU. No space. That means, out of the 128GB of system memory, you would only have 32GB of memory available for other tasks, which is still quite fine for most applications. 

This platform is currently running Windows 11 Pro with Copilot but can also be preloaded with Ubuntu or Red Hat Enterprise Linux. HP Anywhere allows this HP ZBook Workstation to be accessed remotely. A 1-3 year subscription is required but that’s more for businesses. HP Wolf Pro Security is also available as a subscription service but once again more of a feature businesses might find useful. 

We cranked up the VRAM to the max at 96GB and did some benchmarks on this system. In the interest of brevity, we’ll take a quick look. It performed miserably on the updated Cinebench 2024.1.0 application. It was only a few months ago when we were complaining about seeing the same cozy little breakfast nook each time we tested a CPU! They did change the image, it’s now a cozy little office space or perhaps a den. We were definitely confused by the results. Soooo very slowwww. Then, we loaded it into the R23.200 version with the sunny breakfast nook, and definitely got some more predictable results. Yes, impressive performance rendering the nook. Clearly there is a different scale of measure between the two as in 1306 points on the new version, compared to 25,106 points on the old version. 

Next, we tested on the 3Dmark application. The usual cast of characters, Time Spy, Port Royal, Speedway, and Steel Nomad Light. Steel Nomad is specifically for measuring mobile gaming or workstations. TimeSpy was a bit choppy on the Demo and Graphics Tests 1 and 2. It seemed like it was dropping a few frames to keep the action moving at a normal pace. Looking at the results it averaged 58 frames per second on Graphics test 1 and 50 frames per second with Graphics test 2. The CPU performance in the last module was almost 30 FPS. We did not get Legendary Performance from the APU but still pretty impressive for a CPU with integrated GPU in a less than 4-pound package. We were not expecting desktop workstation performance and were wondering if we could even measure the integrated GPU performance.

Next, we tested it out with Port Royal, which features complex lighting, reflections, and materials. It was definitely struggling a little bit to render the images and was lacking in detail. Frames per second were generally in the low to mid 20s and we got a score of 4912 with almost 23 frames per second on average.

Now, Speedway.  Here are a few scenes from that one. Still a little choppy. Only running in the upper teens of frames per second. The CPU was strangely running at the base clock speed. We were thinking maybe it would run at the boost clock speed of 5.1 GHz or 5100MHz but no. Final results were at 17.5 frames per second. Lastly Steel Nomad Light. 

Steel Nomad Light is used as a stress test for mobile PCs, let’s call them laptops. This too was a little choppy but we were measuring an a 2.8K monitor. At lower resolutions it would probably run quite well. All of these benchmarks are a measure of DirectX 12 which is supported by the AMD AI Max PRO APUs. Our score was at 8,883 points and 65.8 frames per second.

So, there you have it! Will the HP ZBook Ultra 14-inch G1a game? Yes, it will but try it at lower resolutions for the best gaming experience. This platform is for professional applications not for use as a gaming system but we still had to run it through its paces since there is no actual discrete GPU. Given that, we think it did pretty well. It is a very nice mobile workstation with a beautiful screen and a number of high-performance features like those Thunderbolt 4 ports and OLED touch screen. If you are interested in more information on this system, or any other system, contact IT Creations!