Compact mobile workstations don’t just have chips under the hood; they also have chips on their shoulders: they’re fighting to prove that a light 14-inch laptop can run the sort of demanding apps that demand independent software vendor (ISV) certifications. HP’s ZBook Firefly 14 G11 (starting at $1,139; $2,189 as tested) is one such example. It has the premium build quality we’ve come to expect from HP workstations, as well as business-class features like Intel vPro IT manageability and on-site support as standard, not to mention one of the company’s glorious DreamColor displays. That said, one of the Firefly’s main rivals, the Dell Precision 5490 , is simply a faster machine, particularly in terms of graphics performance, and retains our Editors’ Choice award among small mobile workstations.

Design: Built for Business Class

The Firefly 14 is the most portable member of HP’s ZBook workstation family, intended for professional content creation and design. While the system barely tops our qualification mark for an ultraportable at 3.13 pounds, it still offers Intel Core H-series processors and entry-level workstation graphics. Our test configuration is about as powerful as this laptop can be, with a Core Ultra 7 165H processor, an Nvidia RTX A500 GPU, 32GB of memory, and a 512GB NVMe solid-state drive. It runs Windows 11 Pro, supports Intel’s vPro Enterprise, and is backed by a three-year warranty.

HP’s familiar silver-and-black color palette and flattened corners give this ZBook a sleek, professional look; branding is limited to the stylized HP logo on the lid. About the only clue that this isn’t an EliteBook business laptop is the small ZBook print on the palmrest.

The Firefly 14 G11’s aluminum construction is strong and keeps the device light. (The Precision 5490 is slightly heavier at 3.3 pounds.) At 0.75 x 12.5 x 8.6 inches, the Firefly isn’t quite as compact as the Dell (0.75 x 12.5 x 8.3 inches), but in practice you won’t notice the difference.

The ZBook’s port selection meets the demands of a 14-inch laptop, with two USB Type-C Thunderbolt 4 ports, two USB 3.2 Type-A ports, an HDMI video output, and a 3.5mm headphone/mic combo jack. The power adapter slots into either USB-C port. Our unit also features HP’s optional SmartCard reader. Intel Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth come standard, with near field communication (NFC) and mobile broadband optional for wireless addicts.

The ZBook’s bottom panel slides off for servicing, held in by a few standard Philips screws. Getting the panel off is a challenge, however: I used a plastic bezel removal tool and started at the rear hinge and worked my way forward. Swappable components include an M.2 Type-2280 solid-state drive and two SO-DIMM memory modules. The Precision 5490 doesn’t let you upgrade the RAM, so that’s a point in the Firefly’s favor. The wireless card isn’t user-upgradeable, though the main battery is replaceable.

HP is environmentally conscious with ocean plastic, recycled plastic, highly efficient power supplies and 100% recyclable packaging.

Using the HP ZBook Firefly 14 G11: Practical for everyday use

The ZBook Firefly 14 is well-suited for everyday productivity and moderate content creation. The brilliant visuals of our review model’s 2560×1600-pixel DreamColor display bring even dull office documents to life, and it offers full DCI-P3 gamut coverage for color-sensitive work. There’s no shortage of brightness; in fact, I was satisfied with 70% brightness most of the time. It also has a 120Hz refresh rate for extra-smooth scrolling. The screen in our review model isn’t touch-enabled, unfortunately, but some of HP’s other display options for this model are.

The 1080p over-the-screen webcam has a reasonably sharp image and performed better than I expected in low-light conditions. It has infrared capabilities for Windows Hello facial recognition logins, and a sliding privacy shutter. There’s also a fingerprint reader built into the palm rest.

The island-style keyboard felt good under my fingertips; I managed 121 words per minute with 100% accuracy on the MonkeyType online typing test. I like that all the cursor arrow keys are the same size, although they’re half the size. Like many other new laptops we’ve seen, the Firefly has a Copilot key by the space bar. The white backlighting on the keys contrasts with the black keys. The large touchpad below it is accurate and has satisfying tactile clicks.

The ZBook doesn’t skimp on entertainment value. HP’s in-house Poly Studio-tuned speakers sounded loud and clear when I played Rob Thomas’ “Something to Be” and provided a wide soundstage when I played the Captain America: Brave New World trailer.

HP ZBook Firefly 14 G11 Review: Slightly Behind the Competition

As mentioned, our ZBook features an Intel Core Ultra 7 165H processor (16 cores, up to 5.0GHz turbo), an Nvidia RTX A500 GPU, 32GB of dual-channel RAM, and a 512GB SSD. This configuration is a big step up from the Core Ultra 5 125U chip and Intel integrated graphics of the base model.

Workstations are typically purchased with corporate volume discounts, and quantity-one pricing varies wildly between enterprise-bound models like this one. The closest configuration I could find on HP’s website was a $2,189 prebuilt model with twice the storage (a 1TB SSD). The Dell Precision 5490 we tested cost nearly $4,000, though a setup closer to our ZBook’s was priced at $2,943 at the time of writing.

In our round of benchmarks, the ZBook will go up against its arch-rival, Dell’s Precision 5490, along with a larger (but still svelte) stablemate, the HP ZBook Studio 16 G10. We also brought along two prosumer notebooks, the Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio 2 and the MSI Stealth 14 Studio. While these laptops lack ISV workstation-certifications, Intel vPro, and enterprise-class support, they can be used for similar tasks. Given that all five laptops use Intel Core H-class CPUs, we’d expect to see similar performance in some tests.

The Firefly’s single cooling fan seemed to be on its best behavior when we ran these tests; it was audible, but didn’t emit any annoying whining or motor noise. The laptop itself got warm, but not so warm that the surfaces were untouchable.

Productivity and content creation testing

We run the same general productivity benchmarks on both mobile and desktop systems. Our first test is UL’s PCMark 10, which simulates a variety of real-world productivity and office workflows to gauge overall system performance and also includes a primary drive storage subtest.

Three other benchmarks focus on the CPU, utilizing all available cores and threads to assess a PC’s suitability for processor-intensive workloads. Maxon’s Cinebench R23 uses the company’s Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene, while Primate Labs’ Geekbench 5.4 Pro simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning. We also use the open-source video transcoder HandBrake 1.4 to upscale a 12-minute video clip from 4K to 1080p resolution (slower times are better).

Finally, we run PugetBench for Photoshop from workstation maker Puget Systems, which uses Creative Cloud version 22 of Adobe’s famed image editor to assess a PC’s performance for content creation and multimedia applications. It’s an automated extension that handles a variety of common and GPU-accelerated Photoshop tasks, ranging from opening, rotating, resizing and saving an image to applying masks, gradient fills and filters.

The ZBook Firefly finished last in PCMark’s productivity exercise, and its prospects didn’t improve in the CPU benchmarks, where it lagged far behind in Photoshop and Handbrake. At least its Cinebench and Geekbench scores were competitive, with the Dell not much faster in either test despite packing a higher-clocked Core Ultra 9.

Graphics and gaming tests

We test the graphics in all laptops and desktops with two DirectX 12 gaming simulations from UL’s 3DMark: Night Raid (more modest, suited to laptops with integrated graphics) and Time Spy (more demanding, suited to gaming rigs with discrete GPUs).

To further gauge GPUs, we also run two tests from the cross-platform GPU benchmark GFXBench 5, which emphasize both low-level routines like texturing and high-level, game-like image rendering. The 1440p Aztec Ruins and 1080p Car Chase tests, which are rendered off-screen to accommodate different display resolutions, exercise graphics and calculate shaders using the OpenGL programming interface and hardware tessellation, respectively. The more frames per second (fps), the better.

We won’t dwell on it too long since these aren’t gaming laptops, but the ZBook Firefly’s scores were below par in every test, especially compared to the Dell.

Workstation specific tests

We measure workstation graphics performance using SPECviewperf 2020, which renders, rotates, and zooms solid and wireframe models using viewsets from popular independent software vendors (ISVs). We run the 1080p resolution tests using PTC’s Creo CAD platform; Autodesk’s Maya modeling and simulation software for film, TV, and games; and Dassault Systemes’ SolidWorks 3D rendering suite. Results are reported in frames per second (fps); higher numbers are better.

Our other workstation test is Blender, an open-source 3D content creation suite for modeling, animation, simulation, and compositing. We record the time it takes Blender’s built-in Cycles path tracer to render two photorealistic scenes of BMW cars, one using the system’s CPU and one using its GPU. Slower times are better.

The ZBook Firefly isn’t nearly as fast as the Dell, but it did perform better in both Blender’s tests and the two SPECviewperf tests it managed to complete. The RTX A500 GPU is faster than integrated graphics silicon, but it’s not useful for complex 3D modeling like Nvidia’s Ada-series GPUs.

Battery and display tests

We test the battery life of laptops and tablets by playing a locally stored 720p video file (the open-source Blender movie Tears of steel) with screen brightness at 50% and audio volume at 100%. We make sure the battery is fully charged for the test, with wifi and keyboard backlight turned off.

To measure display performance, we also use a Datacolor SpyderX Elite monitor calibration sensor and accompanying Windows software to measure a laptop screen’s color saturation (the percentage of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 color gamuts or palettes that the display can display) as well as its peak brightness in nits (candelas per square meter) and maximum brightness at 50%.

While the ZBook Firefly shaved about 50 minutes off the Dell’s unplugged runtime, it still demonstrated admirable stamina for a 14-inch laptop with above-average power. The display was about half as bright as the Precision’s at the 50% setting we use for testing, so perhaps those numbers are optimistic, but stepping away from your desk to show off CAD drawings at a client’s location shouldn’t be a problem.

The Firefly also had the best display of the bunch, with the same brightness and color coverage as the larger ZBook. On both counts, it narrowly beat out the Dell.

Verdict: A capable, but over-powered mobile workstation

HP’s ZBook Firefly 14 G11 brings impeccable build quality and business-ready features to the table. Its DreamColor display is ideal for color-sensitive work, and we have no complaints about its usability as a business PC in the office or on the road. The Dell Precision 5490 offers far better graphics performance, though, and matches the HP in most other areas, earning it its Editors’ Choice award for compact mobile workstations.