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.