HP Z1 review

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 consumer machines and business desktops below, and precious little innovation. HP’s Z1 changes all that, with one of the most exciting designs we’ve ever 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 Z1’s 27in IPS screen tilts to a 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.

It’s the Z1’s party piece, and it’s deeply impressive. The screen lifts up smoothly on its own hydraulic cylinder – installed so it can be left to close safely – 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 next to that is the removable heatsink and optical drive.

Almost all the main components can be removed with a quick tug of a green tab, with a Torx screwdriver needed to remove the Intel Xeon processor and its heatsink. The motherboard itself is accessible, too: the DIMM slots and SATA ports are easy to get at, and the mobile Wi-Fi chip sits in a mini-PCI Express x1 slot with two more of these small ports free alongside it.

HP’s ingenious design extends further than the removable components. There’s only one 3.5in hard disk enclosure, but it’s home to two combined SATA and power connections, with support for RAID0 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 a bit of 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 diagram of the Z1’s 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 an extremely 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, for starters is a sterling piece of work. It measures 27in from corner to corner, sports a resolution of 2,560 x 1,440 and detail is pin-sharp. Theres no sign of backlight bleed at all and weve few issues when it comes to quality. The 472.8cd/m2 brightness level makes for a panel that’s bright without searing your retinas, and the contrast ratio of 637:1 is 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 E3-1280, which uses the 22nm Ivy Bridge architecture, boasts four Hyper-Threaded cores, and runs at 3.6GHz with a 4GHz 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.

The Nvidia Quadro 3000M graphics card is one of Nvidia’s beefiest laptop GPUs, 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 81˚C – a little hot but not dangerous – and the graphics card’s top temperature of 45˚C 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, and we’re pleased to report that little noise escapes the Z1’s shell.

The catch is the price: our review sample will set you back a hefty £2,540 exc VAT, which is a big chunk of cash by any reckoning. Compare the Z1 with its workstation rivals, though, and it doesn’t look so bad. A top-of-the-range iMac with a Core i7 processor, 16GB of RAM and a 2TB hard disk and a 256GB SSD is £2,474, and Dell’s Precision T5600 workstation with similar components will set you back £1,537 with an equivalent professional screen – the UltraSharp U2711 – an additional £619. You’re clearly paying extra for the design, but it’s hardly extortionate.

HP does offer more affordable configurations. The entry-level model retains the excellent display, but comes with a Core i3-2120, 2GB of RAM and no discrete graphics, and weighs in at a more palatable £1,405 exc VAT. 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 £1,874 exc VAT.

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 you far longer than its iMac equivalent, while still offering all the elegant, space-saving advantages.

The HP Z1 is, therefore, a uniquely appealing machine: it offers more than enough grunt for most applications and boasts a stunning screen, all in a chassis that’s built with future expansion and ease of repair in mind. It may be expensive, but as it’s the best all-in-one on the market, we’d say it’s a price worth paying.

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