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MagyarHP ZBook Fury 15 G8 workstation review: The Quadro RTX A5000 is a beast
While the ZBook Fury 15 G7 represented a massive overhaul over the ZBook Fury 15 G6, the latest ZBook Fury 15 G8 is a relatively minor update overall. The newer model comes with Tiger Lake-H CPUs and Nvidia Ampere GPUs to replace last year's Comet Lake-H and Nvidia Turing options. Its display has also been upgraded from 4K 60 Hz to 4K 120 Hz to be one of the very few 15-inch laptops with such a panel option.
SKUs range from the Core i5-11500H CPU with integrated graphics and 45 percent NTSC 1080p display for approximately $2000 USD up to the Xeon W-11955M vPro CPU with Quadro RTX A5000 graphics and 4K UHD 100 percent DCI-P3 glossy touchscreen for over $6000. Our test unit an upper-range configuration with the Core i9-11950H, RTX A5000, and 4K120 matte display for about $5000.
Competitors in this space include other traditional 15.6-inch workstations like the Dell Precision 7550, Lenovo ThinkPad P15 Gen 2, and the Fujitsu Celsius series. We recommend checking out our existing review on the ZBook Fury 15 G7 for more information on the chassis and its features since the Fury 15 G8 utilizes the same skeleton.
More HP reviews:
potential competitors in comparison
Rating | Date | Model | Weight | Height | Size | Resolution | Best Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 90.3 % | 10/2021 | HP ZBook Fury 15 G8 i9-11950H, RTX A5000 Laptop GPU | 2.5 kg | 25.9 mm | 15.60" | 3840x2160 | |
| 90.2 % | 01/2021 | HP ZBook Fury 15 G7 W-10885M, Quadro RTX 5000 Max-Q | 2.4 kg | 25.9 mm | 15.60" | 3840x2160 | |
| 88.3 % | 10/2021 | Dell Precision 5000 5560 i7-11850H, RTX A2000 Laptop GPU | 2 kg | 18 mm | 15.60" | 3840x2400 | |
| 87.8 % | 08/2021 | HP ZBook Studio 15 G8 i9-11950H, GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU | 1.9 kg | 18 mm | 15.60" | 3840x2160 | |
| 85.3 % | 06/2021 | Lenovo ThinkPad P15s Gen2-20W6000GGE i7-1165G7, T500 Laptop GPU | 1.9 kg | 19.1 mm | 15.60" | 3840x2160 | |
| 82.7 % | 10/2020 | HP ZBook Firefly 15 G7 i7-10610U, Quadro P520 | 1.8 kg | 19.2 mm | 15.60" | 3840x2160 |
Case — Identical to the ZBook Fury 15 G7
Connectivity
Thunderbolt 4 is supported instead of "only" Thunderbolt 3 on the Fury 15 G7. Otherwise, the ports remain identical year-over-year.
SD Card Reader
| SD Card Reader | |
| average JPG Copy Test (av. of 3 runs) | |
| Dell Precision 5000 5560 (AV Pro V60) | |
| HP ZBook Fury 15 G7 (Toshiba Exceria Pro SDXC 64 GB UHS-II) | |
| HP ZBook Fury 15 G8 (AV Pro V60) | |
| HP ZBook Studio 15 G8 (AV Pro V60) | |
| Lenovo ThinkPad P15s Gen2-20W6000GGE (AV Pro V60) | |
| maximum AS SSD Seq Read Test (1GB) | |
| HP ZBook Fury 15 G7 (Toshiba Exceria Pro SDXC 64 GB UHS-II) | |
| Dell Precision 5000 5560 (AV Pro V60) | |
| Lenovo ThinkPad P15s Gen2-20W6000GGE (AV Pro V60) | |
| HP ZBook Studio 15 G8 (AV Pro V60) | |
| HP ZBook Fury 15 G8 (AV Pro V60) | |
Communication
Webcam — Still 720p
Camera quality remains poor at only 720p. Some manufacturers like Razer have since upgraded their integrated webcams from 720p to 1080p.
Maintenance — Have a Screwdriver Ready
The bottom panel slides off easily — no tools or screwdrivers required. Once inside, however, most components are underneath metal plates anyway which require a Philips screwdriver to remove. Additional RAM and storage components are on the other side of the motherboard and so they are not as easily accessible.
Display — 120 Hz Makes all the Difference
The new 4K 120 Hz panel on the Fury 15 G8 is a significant improvement over the 4K 60 Hz panel on the Fury 15 G7 despite having the same high native resolution and wide color coverage. Aside from the obvious benefits of moving from 60 Hz to 120 Hz, the newer panel offers much faster black-white and gray-gray response times by almost 4x for less noticeable ghosting especially when dealing with fast-moving graphics. Both brightness and contrast remain high as well at ~600:1 and >1000:1, respectively.
Perhaps the single biggest drawback to the 4K panel is that it suffers from a bit of graininess due to the matte overlay and so texts and images don't appear as sharp as they could have been despite the very high PPI. HP offers glossy options to overcome this specific drawback.
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||
Brightness Distribution: 87 %
Center on Battery: 626 cd/m²
Contrast: 1079:1 (Black: 0.58 cd/m²)
ΔE Color 5.41 | 0.55-29.43 Ø5.1, calibrated: 0.6
ΔE Greyscale 6.2 | 0.57-98 Ø5.4
87.3% AdobeRGB 1998 (Argyll 2.2.0 3D)
100% sRGB (Argyll 2.2.0 3D)
95.9% Display P3 (Argyll 2.2.0 3D)
Gamma: 2.66
| HP ZBook Fury 15 G8 BOE0969, IPS, 15.60, 3840x2160 | HP ZBook Fury 15 G7 LG Philips LGD0661, IPS, 15.60, 3840x2160 | Dell Precision 5000 5560 Sharp LQ156R1, IPS, 15.60, 3840x2400 | HP ZBook Studio 15 G8 SDC4145, OLED, 15.60, 3840x2160 | Lenovo ThinkPad P15s Gen2-20W6000GGE MNF601EA1-1, IPS LED, 15.60, 3840x2160 | HP ZBook Firefly 15 G7 LGD064F, IPS LED, 15.60, 3840x2160 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Display | -1% | 5% | 4% | -0% | -17% | |
| Display P3 Coverage | 95.9 | 95.6 0% | 94.9 -1% | 99.9 4% | 84.5 -12% | 68.8 -28% |
| sRGB Coverage | 100 | 99.8 0% | 100 0% | 100 0% | 98.7 -1% | 97.7 -2% |
| AdobeRGB 1998 Coverage | 87.3 | 84.5 -3% | 100 15% | 95.3 9% | 97.8 12% | 69.8 -20% |
| Response Times | -253% | -198% | 81% | -141% | -189% | |
| Response Time Grey 50% / Grey 80% * | 14.8 ? | 56 ? -278% | 47.2 ? -219% | 2.4 ? 84% | 40 ? -170% | 44 ? -197% |
| Response Time Black / White * | 11 ? | 36 ? -227% | 30.4 ? -176% | 2.4 ? 78% | 23.2 ? -111% | 30.8 ? -180% |
| PWM Frequency | 240.4 ? | |||||
| Screen | -29% | 7% | -58% | 35% | 5% | |
| Brightness middle | 626 | 672.8 7% | 501.5 -20% | 379.6 -39% | 604 -4% | 381 -39% |
| Brightness | 589 | 674 14% | 467 -21% | 380 -35% | 609 3% | 382 -35% |
| Brightness Distribution | 87 | 89 2% | 83 -5% | 95 9% | 91 5% | 92 6% |
| Black Level * | 0.58 | 0.5 14% | 0.44 24% | 0.34 41% | 0.21 64% | |
| Contrast | 1079 | 1346 25% | 1140 6% | 1776 65% | 1814 68% | |
| Colorchecker dE 2000 * | 5.41 | 3.48 36% | 4.73 13% | 5.15 5% | 0.9 83% | 3 45% |
| Colorchecker dE 2000 max. * | 9.05 | 9.44 -4% | 8.45 7% | 7.79 14% | 2.6 71% | 5.2 43% |
| Colorchecker dE 2000 calibrated * | 0.6 | 3.03 -405% | 0.51 15% | 3.1 -417% | 0.8 -33% | 1.5 -150% |
| Greyscale dE 2000 * | 6.2 | 3.1 50% | 3.6 42% | 2.6 58% | 1.1 82% | 3.5 44% |
| Gamma | 2.66 83% | 2.04 108% | 2.08 106% | 1.99 111% | 2.15 102% | 2.26 97% |
| CCT | 6101 107% | 6380 102% | 6447 101% | 6166 105% | 6656 98% | 7254 90% |
| Color Space (Percent of AdobeRGB 1998) | 75.2 | 84.5 | 64.3 | |||
| Color Space (Percent of sRGB) | 100 | 98.6 | 97.5 | |||
| Total Average (Program / Settings) | -94% /
-55% | -62% /
-23% | 9% /
-19% | -35% /
2% | -67% /
-27% |
* ... smaller is better
Our X-Rite colorimeter shows a 96 percent DCI-P3 coverage versus the 100 percent claim by HP. Combine the wide colors with the very fast response times and you have a 4K panel that works extremely well for both professional graphics editing and gaming applications.
The display could have been better calibrated out of the box against the DCI-P3 standard. Average grayscale and color deltaE values out of the box are at 6.2 and 5.41, respectively, with an ovely warm color temperature of 6100. Calibrating the panel ourselves with an X-Rite colorimeter addresses these shortcomings.
Display Response Times
| ↔ Response Time Black to White | ||
|---|---|---|
| 11 ms ... rise ↗ and fall ↘ combined | ↗ 7.6 ms rise |  |
| ↘ 3.4 ms fall | ||
| The screen shows good response rates in our tests, but may be too slow for competitive gamers. In comparison, all tested devices range from 0.1 (minimum) to 240 (maximum) ms. » 21 % of all devices are better. This means that the measured response time is better than the average of all tested devices (22.2 ms). | ||
| ↔ Response Time 50% Grey to 80% Grey | ||
| 14.8 ms ... rise ↗ and fall ↘ combined | ↗ 7.6 ms rise |  |
| ↘ 7.2 ms fall | ||
| The screen shows good response rates in our tests, but may be too slow for competitive gamers. In comparison, all tested devices range from 0.25 (minimum) to 636 (maximum) ms. » 20 % of all devices are better. This means that the measured response time is better than the average of all tested devices (35.1 ms). | ||
Screen Flickering / PWM (Pulse-Width Modulation)
| Screen flickering / PWM not detected |  | ||
In comparison: 53 % of all tested devices do not use PWM to dim the display. If PWM was detected, an average of 19210 (minimum: 5 - maximum: 3846000) Hz was measured. | |||
Outdoor visibility is better than on many other workstations due to the extra-bright 600 nit backlight. Even HP's own ZBook Studio 15 G8 or Firefly 15 G7 don't approach 400 nits each at their respective maximum brightness settings. Nonetheless, you'll still want to scale the font appropriately and work under shade to maximize viewability.
Performance — Intel 11th Gen
CPU options encompass Tiger Lake-H CPUs and both Nvidia T1200 and RTX A series GPUs up to the RTX A5000. Xeon and even Radeon Pro W6600M options are also available for a very wide range of configurable options. The higher-end options in particular are some of the fastest mobile workstation-class processors you can find on any laptop.
Resizable Bar and Dynamic Boost 2.0 are supported while Advanced Optimus and WhisperMode 2.0 are not. There is unfortunately no manual graphics switch, either.
Processor
Multi-thread CPU performance is a few percentage points short of the Core i9-11900H as found in the MSI GS76 despite the fact that the Core i7-11950H is rated at slightly faster clock rates. Core i9-11950H single-thread performance, however, remains excellent and on par with its non-vPro counterpart. Overall multi-thread performance is about 15 percent higher than the Xeon W-10885M in last year's ZBook Fury 15 G7 but without any support for ECC RAM, of course.
Cinebench R15 Multi Loop
Cinebench R23: Multi Core | Single Core
Cinebench R15: CPU Multi 64Bit | CPU Single 64Bit
Blender: v2.79 BMW27 CPU
7-Zip 18.03: 7z b 4 -mmt1 | 7z b 4
Geekbench 5.4: Single-Core | Multi-Core
HWBOT x265 Benchmark v2.2: 4k Preset
LibreOffice : 20 Documents To PDF
R Benchmark 2.5: Overall mean
* ... smaller is better
System Performance
PCMark scores are consistently higher than that we recorded on the Fury 15 G7 while being nearly identical to what we recorded on the thicker Studio 15 G8 with RTX 3070 graphics.
| PCMark 10 Score | 6789 points | |
Help | ||
DPC Latency
LatencyMon reveals no major latency interrupts when opening multiple browsers tabs on our homepage or when running Prime95 stress. DPC routine times, however, would spike much like what we observed on last year's Fury 15 G7. 4K video playback at 60 FPS is otherwise smooth and with no dropped frames.
| DPC Latencies / LatencyMon - interrupt to process latency (max), Web, Youtube, Prime95 | |
| Lenovo ThinkPad P15s Gen2-20W6000GGE | |
| HP ZBook Firefly 15 G7 | |
| HP ZBook Fury 15 G7 | |
| HP ZBook Studio 15 G8 | |
| Dell Precision 5000 5560 | |
| HP ZBook Fury 15 G8 | |
* ... smaller is better
Storage Devices — Lots of Options
Our unit can support up to four internal storage drives (2x M.2 2280, 1x M.2 2242, 1x 2.5-inch SATA III). Interestingly, HP is not offering any PCIe4 options as all current SKUs come with PCIe3 SSDs instead such as the familiar Samsung PM981a. We've reached out to HP to try and confirm if PCIe4 NVMe speeds are supported and we'll update this page accordingly.
| HP ZBook Fury 15 G8 Samsung PM981a MZVLB1T0HBLR | HP ZBook Fury 15 G7 Samsung PM981a MZVLB1T0HBLR | Dell Precision 5000 5560 Samsung PM9A1 MZVL22T0HBLB | HP ZBook Studio 15 G8 Samsung PM981a MZVLB2T0HALB | Lenovo ThinkPad P15s Gen2-20W6000GGE WDC PC SN720 SDAQNTW-1T00 | HP ZBook Firefly 15 G7 Toshiba XG6 KXG60ZNV1T02 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AS SSD | 24% | 93% | 104% | 19% | -1% | |
| Seq Read | 2937 | 2127 -28% | 5169 76% | 2953 1% | 2796 -5% | 2666 -9% |
| Seq Write | 1688 | 1296 -23% | 1986 18% | 1691 0% | 2525 50% | 1257 -26% |
| 4K Read | 44.27 | 54.8 24% | 78 76% | 43.98 -1% | 50.9 15% | 48.04 9% |
| 4K Write | 105.8 | 110.8 5% | 214.6 103% | 105.4 0% | 211.9 100% | 137.5 30% |
| 4K-64 Read | 873 | 1420 63% | 1232 41% | 1065 22% | 1505 72% | 977 12% |
| 4K-64 Write | 1996 | 2012 1% | 2719 36% | 1957 -2% | 949 -52% | 1142 -43% |
| Access Time Read * | 0.048 | 0.046 4% | 0.024 50% | 0.04 17% | 0.081 -69% | 0.053 -10% |
| Access Time Write * | 0.107 | 0.099 7% | 0.059 45% | 0.105 2% | 0.019 82% | 0.03 72% |
| Score Read | 1211 | 1687 39% | 1827 51% | 1404 16% | 1835 52% | 1292 7% |
| Score Write | 2271 | 2253 -1% | 3133 38% | 2232 -2% | 1413 -38% | 1406 -38% |
| Score Total | 4046 | 4770 18% | 5753 42% | 4297 6% | 4177 3% | 3297 -19% |
| Copy ISO MB/s | 901 | 2779 208% | 3201 255% | 2474 175% | ||
| Copy Program MB/s | 118.7 | 123.3 4% | 415.8 250% | 1074 805% | ||
| Copy Game MB/s | 372 | 440.8 18% | 1212 226% | 1929 419% | ||
| CrystalDiskMark 5.2 / 6 | 10% | 54% | 7% | 31% | 7% | |
| Write 4K | 96.3 | 114.1 18% | 172.4 79% | 110.5 15% | 237.6 147% | 133.1 38% |
| Read 4K | 51.5 | 57.2 11% | 78.8 53% | 51.8 1% | 54.7 6% | 51.6 0% |
| Write Seq | 1942 | 2580 33% | 2991 54% | 2071 7% | 2603 34% | 1986 2% |
| Read Seq | 2504 | 2527 1% | 3351 34% | 2505 0% | 1889 -25% | 2208 -12% |
| Write 4K Q32T1 | 346.6 | 480.2 39% | 459.2 32% | 429.8 24% | 505 46% | 462.3 33% |
| Read 4K Q32T1 | 408 | 387.6 -5% | 484.3 19% | 418.3 3% | 606 49% | 400.2 -2% |
| Write Seq Q32T1 | 3019 | 2996 -1% | 4761 58% | 3060 1% | 2795 -7% | 3074 2% |
| Read Seq Q32T1 | 3514 | 2853 -19% | 7071 101% | 3539 1% | 3448 -2% | 3268 -7% |
| Total Average (Program / Settings) | 17% /
19% | 74% /
79% | 56% /
69% | 25% /
24% | 3% /
2% |
* ... smaller is better
Disk Throttling: DiskSpd Read Loop, Queue Depth 8
GPU Performance — Quadro RTX A5000 Powerhouse
Raw graphics performance lies in between the mobile GeForce RTX 3060 and mobile RTX 3070 to be about 10 to 20 percent faster than the Quadro RTX 5000 Max-Q in the older Fury 15 G7. Certain sub-benchmarks within SpecViewPerf can even see a 40 to 50 percent improvement.
Though not optimized for gaming, the system can definitely power through even the most demanding titles at QHD resolution. Overall gaming performance is similar to the mobile GeForce RTX 3060 in most cases.
