A uniquely upgradable design, plenty
of power and a stonking screen make the high price worth paying
The market for all-in-one PCs has been
pretty static over the past year or so, with Apple’s iMac and Sony’s VAIOs at the
top of the heap, a bevy of cheaper and less appealing machines below, and
precious little innovation. HP’s ZI changes all that, with one of the most
exciting chassis designs we’ve seen.
Initially, it looks like any other all-
in-one: it’s a screen on a stand with a computer clamped to the back. Press the
green button on the hinge, however, and the Zi’s 27m IPS screen con be tilted
too horizontal position. A quick tug on two tabs at the bottom of the screen,
and the display lifts up like a car bonnet, revealing the PC’s insides.
HP’s
ZI changes all that, with one of the most exciting chassis designs we’ve seen.
It’s the Zi’s party piece and it’s deeply
impressive. The screen lifts up smoothly on its own hydraulic cylinder - so the
Lid also closes gently - and the PC’s components are laid bare, most of them in
proprietary caddies and enclosures.
On the left-hand side is the power supply,
housed in a long, narrow metal shroud, and it’s connected to the PC with a
standard 24-pin ATX power plug. The graphics card is a mobile part mounted on a
desktop-style card and connected to the board via an MXM PCI Express x16 slot.
Beside that is the hard disk, which is held in a plastic caddy that pivots in
and out of the case, and also inside is a removable heatsink and optical drive.
Almost all the main components can be
removed with a quick tug of a green tab; a Torx screwdriver will be needed to
remove the Intel Xeon processor and its heatsink. The motherboard itself is
accessible, too: the DIMM sockets and SATA ports are easy to access, and the mobile
Wi-Fi chip sits ¡n a mini-PCI Express xl slot with two more of these small
ports free alongside it.
It’s
the Zi’s party piece and it’s deeply impressive
HP’s ingenious design extends further than
the removable components. There’s only one 3.5 in hard disk enclosure, but it’s
home to two combined SATA and power connectors, with support for RAIDO and 1
included, so in theory you could install a pair of 2.5in drives. Alas, there
are no preinstalled fittings, so this approach would require DIY bodging.
Elsewhere, two daughterboards are pressed into service: one for the USB
sockets, card reader and audio connections on the right-hand side, and another
for the four small speakers at the front of the machine. There’s even a handy
diagram of the internals on the inside of the lid.
It’s all put together extremely well, with
cables hidden and routed between components, and we can’t fault the build
quality: the huge stand and sturdy enclosure make for a solid-feeling machine.
Its sheer bulk means the act of moving the screen up and down requires a bit of
muscle, though.
Don’t for one minute think the internal
design is the Z1’s only appealing feature: the IPS panel is o sterling piece of
work. It measures 27m from corner to corner, sports a resolution of 2560 x
1440, and detail is pin-sharp. There’s no sign of backlight bleed and we have
no issues when it comes to quality. The 473cd1m2 maximum brightness makes for a
panel that’s bright without endangering your retinas, and the contrast ratio of
63 7:1 ¡s fine. Colour accuracy is excellent thanks to a Delta E of 2.1 —
better than almost everything else out there, and a fine foil for the similarly
excellent iMac.
HP has specified the Z1 accordingly. Our
review sample is powered by an Intel Xeon E3-1 280, which uses the 22nm Ivy
Bridge architecture, boasts four Hyper-Threaded cores, and runs at 3.5GHz with
a 3.96Hz Turbo Boost. That’s a potent CPU, and its application benchmark score
of 1.02 is in line with the performance we’ve seen from top Ivy Bridge consumer
chips. It’s enough to put paid to most demanding tasks, and is assisted by 8GB
of RAM, a 1TB hard disk and a DVD writer.
Built
with HP's tool-less chassis, HP Z1 lets you swap hard drives, upgrade memory,
and access the GPU with ease.
The Quadro 3000M is one of Nvidia’s
beefiest laptop graphics cards, with 240 stream processors and 2GB of GDDR5
RAM. We loaded up the workstation graphics benchmark SPECviewperf 11 and
recorded an average frame rate of 26fps across its eight individual tests.
No matter what we threw at it, the HP kept
its cool - impressive given the tight confines of its all-in-one chassis. The
processor peaked at 81C - a little hot, but not dangerous - and the graphics
card’s top temperature of 45C is perfectly manageable. There are a couple of
hot spots on the exterior, with most heat escaping through vents at the top of
the chassis, but we’re pleased that little noise escapes the Z1’s shell.
The catch is the price: our review sample
will set you back well over $5000 and can’t just be purchased directly from the
online store.
The
Quadro 3000M is one of Nvidia’s beefiest laptop graphics cards, with 240 stream
processors and 2GB of GDDR5 RAM.
HP does offer more affordable
configurations that do pop up on the store. The entry-level model retains the
excellent display, but comes with a Core i3-2 120, 2GB of RAM and no discrete
graphics, and weighs in at a much more palatable $2499. The cheapest model with
an Intel Xeon features the 3.3GHz E3-1245, 8GB of RAM, a 1TB hard disk, and no
discrete graphics for $2999.
The real advantage here, though, is the
flexibility of the Z1’s design. With all the components so easy to replace and
upgrade, the Z1 has the potential to last much longer than an iMac equivalent,
for example, while still offering all the elegant, space-saving advantages.
The HP Z1 is, therefore, a uniquely
appealing machine: it offers more than enough workstation grunt for intensive applications,
especially ones that take advantage of Nvidia’s Quadro GPU (think video
production, CAD and 3D rendering work). It also boasts a stunning screen,
packed in a chassis that’s built with future expansion and ease of repair in
mind.
With this in mind it is unlikely that mere
mortals wilt ever get their hands on the Z1. It’s expensive, but as it’s the
best designed all-in-one on the market, we’d say it’s a price worth paying, and
a concept we’d love to see eventually turn in o more consumer-focused form.
