HP bets on 64 GB memory to sell this AMD laptop

A killer feature is something that makes a product stand-out, something that makes you want to hand over your hard earned cash in exchange for it. When it comes to laptop PCs, there are many things that can be a killer feature. A low price makes people want to have the Apple MacBook Neo, a low weight makes the expensive Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon attractive, and strong performance leads people to purchase one of the various gaming laptops on the market. For some laptops, however, things are not as clear cut. In many cases, you also find products that are just average - because, on average, the needs that people have are, well, average.

This is not the case when it comes to the subject of this article and our comprehensive review, the HP ZBook 8 G2a 14. This 14-inch entry-level workstation laptop offers a lot of the greats and goods, with a very comfortable keyboard, fast refresh-rate and high color-gamut display, strong AMD Ryzen HX 9 CPU performance and long battery life. It offers all of that, and there is really only real downside. For a workstation, the GPU performance is pretty weak, due to the fact that HP only offers the integrated AMD iGPU.

While that is a bummer, the HP ZBook laptop does have one ace up its sleeve: HP outfits it with two SO-DIMM slots, which means this AMD powered mobile workstation can take in a maximum of 96 GB of RAM. Our review device was outfitted with 64 GB, luxurious at a time when many manufacturers cut down on the amount of RAM. It is the standout specification of this HP laptop.

A few years ago, having a good amount of RAM was not a huge differentiator. Thanks to the AI crisis, 64 GB of RAM are now the killer feature for some laptops.