HP ZBook Firefly 16 G11 review: nicely made laptop but with niche appeal

When is a laptop not a laptop? When it’s a mobile workstation, of course. HP’s Z Series PCs include desktop towers, SFF units, rackable servers and portable machines, featuring pro-level hardware that’s not designed for playing games on.

What does that mean in practice? In the case of the ZBook Firefly 16 G11, it’s an Nvidia RTX A500 GPU instead of the RTX 4050 or 4060 you might otherwise expect. It’s a step up from integrated graphics, but with barely the pixel-pushing power of an RTX 3050, it might disappoint some. It does, however, have its uses, being certified for Solidworks and handy for CUDA and AI workflows.

HP itself says the Zbook Firefly is aimed at 2D and light 3D work, particularly photography and running multiple large Microsoft Office documents, so despite sitting in an awkward niche may find itself a place in a studio’s computing arsenal.

Design & build

Are the best-looking laptops the ones that aren’t meant for work use? Is there a reason we should spend the eight hours a day (or more) that we work each day staring at something utilitarian? Would our eyes be ruined by an OLED instead of an IPS? Must every morsel of joy be squeezed out of our world in the name of capitalism?

The ZBook Firefly is a somewhat utilitarian-looking laptop and its specs are - for a 2024 release - unexciting. It has an aluminium chassis, an IPS screen and the largest SSD you can spec for it is 1TB. Being able to select 64GB of fast DDR5 RAM is nice, but the GPU only has 4GB of its own. You’re likely to only consider this machine if you know the pro-grade A500 chip is the right one for you, however, so perhaps that particular limitation is going to be less of a bottleneck than it might be for gamers.

So, there are no ports in unusual places, no proprietary power connectors, no cut-off corners to make the casing into an octagon, and no secondary screens or giant touchpads. It’s all very basic, but does have a nice screen and HP’s usual excellent build quality, as well as the cool, angular new HP logo on the lid.

Features

The Firefly’s keyboard has the new Copilot key, and there's a numpad that’s not too squashed. An unusual feature is that the power button isn’t at the top right, but six keys along the top row between Delete and PrtScr - it’ll take a little getting used to finding it there. A fingerprint reader sits on the right of the chassis below the numpad, and there's a 5MP IR webcam built into the top of the screen that’s compatible with Windows Hello face recognition.

The trackpad that sits below it isn’t particularly large, but it’s big enough and icy-smooth, with a distinctive clunk when it’s clicked. A laptop like this is likely to spend a lot of its time attached to an external mouse and monitor, so it’s good to see that some attention has been paid to the way you interact with the machine. The keyboard is up to HP’s usual high standards, with a few MM of travel for the keys, helped by the depth of the 16-inch frame, and a plain white backlight.

The screen is an IPS panel that’s not particularly high-res at 1920 x 1200. It’s reasonably bright and colourful, though, putting out as much as 458 nits at 100%, and not only displaying the claimed 100% of sRGB, but 85% of Adobe RGB and 87% of P3 too.

Having Thunderbolt 4 is always a great addition to a laptop, as it’s a versatile port that can handle 40Gbps of data transfer, connect to high-res monitors, and be used to charge the machine. There's a full-size HDMI 2.1 port on the Firefly too, which will be useful for external screens and projectors.

Performance

The RTX A-series are workstation GPUs of the sort that used to be called Quadro, and the RTX A500 Mobile GPU is a chip from 2022 built on the Ampere architecture, the same one used for Nvidia’s 3000-series GeForce gaming cards. This means it’s a bit out of date, as the newer Ada Lovelace architecture (GeForce 4000) is about to give way to the Blackwell chips that will probably become the GeForce 5000 series.

The A500 is a pocket-sized unit that exists for one reason only: to be faster than Intel or AMD’s integrated graphics chips while not sucking multiple tens of Watts of power in the way something like an RTX 4070 can.

The gaming equivalent of the A500 is the RTX 3050, and as luck would have it, that's a popular chip that’s been used in a lot of laptops. Take the Asus Zenbook 14X OLED, reviewed here over a year ago. It posted a Geekbench 6 GPU score of 50760 compared to the Firefly’s 20927, and scored higher than HP’s laptop in PC Mark’s Modern Office test too. In our video encoding benchmark, the i9-equipped Zenbook took 6m 23s to transcode the test file, while the Ultra 7-toting Firefly took a minute longer. The point is that these two laptops can be had for about the same price, so you’ll need a good reason to go for the larger HP with the pro GPU.

One reason to like the Firefly is its battery life. It managed to carry out constant work with the screen on for a minute more than 14 hours, a remarkably good result (and almost twice that of the Zenbook 14X). Tasks that fire up the CPU or GPU to a higher level than the office work we put it to will reduce this, but it’s an excellent starting point that easily rivals some of the best Snapdragon laptops.

Price

The HP ZBook Firefly comes in cheaper than the lowest-cost 14-inch MacBook Pro, but you’ll be able to find any number of gaming laptops for the same or a lower price. As a pro-oriented device with exceptional build quality and an exotic GPU, it doesn’t have a lot of direct competitors.

Who is it for?

The ZBook Firefly’s problem is the niche it sits in. The CPU is nice, but could run on its own thanks to its integrated graphics. The GPU sounds good on paper but is outclassed by newer GeForce chips in gaming laptops. Battery life is extremely good, but how often do you do 3D rendering or CAD without being connected to the wall socket? News photographers using Lightroom or Capture One on the move may find it useful, especially with accelerating noise removal if needed, but its main selling point - that A500 GPU - will appeal to a limited market.

Should I buy it?

Buy it if...

You need the pro GPU

Gaming doesn’t interest you

You’ll be working away from power outlets

Don't buy it if...

You don’t need its pro features

You want an OLED screen or gaming GPU

A smaller laptop will suit you better

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