HP ZBook Firefly 16 G9 laptop in review - Mobile workstation with underwhelming performance

Compared to last year's G8 models, HP uses more rounded-off design elements for the newer Firefly G9 (this includes both the 16-inch and the 14-inch models) with good haptics. It offers no big surprises and the silver chassis, which consists entirely of aluminum, makes a very premium impression. The base unit is extremely resistant against twisting from the corners and barely yields under pressure. The lid continues this trend with minimal susceptibility to twisting and no distortions on the display even under focused pressure on the back. Meanwhile, the hinges are slightly too loose. While the display can easily be opened with one hand, the hinges do not completely prevent teetering or the display from closing at small angles. The display can be opened to a maximum angle of 180 degrees.

The ZBook Firefly is fairly subtle visually, since the glossy Z logo on the lid, the black keyboard, and the black display bezels are the only noticeable contrasting elements. The bezels on all sides are fairly narrow and the device looks very modern overall.

The Firefly 16 G9 is relatively compact for a 16-inch model and only slightly wider than for example the older ZBook Firefly 15 G8. It comes in at a weight of close to 2 kg (~4.4 lbs), while the 110-watt charger weighs close another 500 grams (~1.1 lbs).

Most of the ports are located on the left side of the case, where there is a regular USB type-A port, HDMI output, and a smart card reader in addition to two USB type-C ports. With onboard Thunderbolt 4, the ZBook is up to date with current standards, although the workstation comes without an Ethernet port (which can instead be added via a USB-C adapter).

The ZBook Firefly can be configured - but not retrofitted - with an optional LTE or even 5G module. Intel's modern AX211E module handles wireless communications and supports all of the latest Wi-Fi standards as well as Bluetooth 5.2. In our testing, the connection to the 6-GHz network of our Asus reference router was established without any issues and the transfer rates were consistently excellent.

The webcam specifications on the data sheet are somewhat confusing, since HP mentions a 5-MP IR camera. While we are unable to make any statements about the resolution of the IR camera (which is used for facial recognition via Windows Hello), the main camera captures pictures at up to 3.7 MP (2560 x 1440 pixels). The advantages of the higher resolution compared to older webcams are very noticeable, although the color accuracy is nothing to write home about.

There are no power profiles other than the default Windows performance settings. We were extremely surprised to see very low power limits of 51 watts during short bursts and 12 watts under continuous stress. Most importantly, the high Turbo Boost is only available for about one second. We checked all settings (including the BIOS) and installed all the available updates, but the limits would not change. Similarly, the graphics card's 20-watt limit represents the absolute lowest value for this chip. Since we observe similar behavior on our 14-inch version, an issue with our test device seems unlikely. Even if the cooling solution is at its limits under combined CPU/GPU stress, we can find no reason for the CPU throttling this severely under a pure CPU load. According to the data sheet, Alder Lake-P chips such as the Core i5-1240P or Core i7-1260P are also available, although we are currently unable to determine whether their power limits are more reasonable.

Nominally, the Intel Core i7-1265U is a fast processor with two performance and eight efficiency cores. Due to its TDP being massively limited  to just 12 watts, however, the performance is abysmal with throttling occuring even during the single-core benchmarks. Although the actual performance of current Intel GPUs can vary widely depending on the TDP set by the manufacturer, we have never seen results this low and even the older Firefly 15 G8 with the Core i7-1165G7 outperforms our ZBook Firefly 16 G9. While the deficit is less dramatic in the single-core benchmarks, making the poor performance not as noticeable during daily use, the multi-core benchmark results make this mobile workstation more or less one of the slowest laptops available. To our surprise, the performance in battery mode is even worse with power limits of just 30/10 watts. More benchmarks are available here.

Subjectively, the performance during day-to-day use is excellent and the poor CPU performance is not as apparent from the synthetic benchmarks, which can of course be partially attributed to the blazing fast PCIe-4.0 SSD. That being said, users will quickly run into limitations when stressing the system for example by multi tasking. The slow CPU performance also means the system certainly is not future-proof.