HP Z-Series Serves Up New Laptop Workstations, Displays, And A Thunderbolt Dock For 2022
It's been one year since HP announced its ZBook G8 series laptops, which notably featured powerful Intel 11th-Gen H-series CPUs and RTX A5000 graphics chips. Right on cue, HP has officially announced its ZBook G9 laptop lineup via a press release on May 12, 2022, and it sounds like the popular computer manufacturer has come armed with a few extra tricks up its sleeve. There are two new premium displays for sale, and there's also a brand new Thunderbolt G4 Dock. HP claims the new additions are "built for professional creators," and this is visibly reflected by the inclusion of powerful 12th-Gen Intel CPUs in each laptop.
Departing from the G8 series, it looks like both G9 laptop sizes cap out at around 16 inches. As it stands, there are more discrete details about the ZBook Studio G9 than there are about the ZBook Fury G9, but it bodes well that there's an option to add an NVIDIA RTX 3080 Ti Laptop GPU to the former model. That likely adds a steep premium to whatever the base price for the ZBook Studio G9 ends up being, but this is still promising for creatives who need to do serious video editing or GPU-heavy design work in resolutions up to 8K while on the go.
Without additional details on GPU specifics, the ZBook Fury G9 seems like an iterative improvement over the ZBook Fury G8, though the upgrade to 12th-Gen Intel CPUs and Windows 11 is nothing to scoff at.
HP Z-series pricing and availability
According to HP's press release on May 12, 2022, the computer manufacturer has yet to list the MSRP information for any of its new laptops. In fact, the only products in the new lineup that contain pricing information at this moment are HP's external Z24q G3 QHD Display, which is expected to become available in May (at a starting MSRP of $374,) and the two HP Thunderbolt G4 Docks that are expected to begin selling in May for $329 (120W) and $439 (280W). Aside from those items, it sounds like everything else will become available over the course of the summer.
Both the new ZBook Studio G9 and ZBook Fury G9 laptops are set to become available for purchase at some point in June 2022 from the HP website. The Z24m G3 QHD Conferencing Display is set to arrive even later in July 2022. Once again, no further pricing information about either of the ZBook laptops or the Z24m G3 QHD Conferencing Display has been disclosed, but HP's press release states that such info will become available closer to the aforementioned time periods.
It's worth noting that previous ZBook models are priced around $2,000 or higher. Some laptop loadouts are priced at up to roughly $6,000. For instance, the HP ZBook Fury 17 G8 – Wolf Pro Security Edition currently costs $5,734 on HP's website. Given that, it's likely that HP's new models will also be similarly expensive, especially due to the ongoing electronics chip shortage.