HP ZBook Firefly 14 G11 Review

The 11th generation HP ZBook Firefly 14 is a capable performer for content creators and others who value performance over battery life. It’s like an EliteBook 1040 on steroids.

Design

The ZBook Firefly 14 is one of my favorite laptops of all time, a classic from a design standpoint with an understated premium look and feel that’s perfect for its target audience. It’s available in 14- and 16-inch variants, and while I’m reviewing the 14-inch version, you can see the familial similarities in both, the only major differences being the screen size, of course, and the unwanted numeric keypad on the larger one. I wish HP, and other PC makers, would offer a numpad-less keyboard option.

What’s most interesting to me, though, is how HP evolved the previous design—which you can see in my review of the 8th generation ZBook Firefly 14 from 2021–in ways both subtle and meaningful. The overall design is the same: This is a classic clamshell laptop, after all. But I still have an older refurbished Firefly with that design, and enjoy using it quite a bit, except for one thing: Now that I’m used to taller 16:10 displays, the 16:9 display on that model seems cramped.

The latest Firefly generations–14 and 16–deliver on that 16:10 display, of course, but they also retain the basic look and feel of their predecessors, with a chunky top bezel for the web camera and sensors, wide range of modern and legacy ports, the fingerprint in the wrist rest, and that delightful, best-in-class keyboard.

But there are so many small updates, and they add up to make the latest Fireflies look and feel more modern. The awkward “Z” logo on the display has been replaced by the more elegant HP premium logo. The crisscross speaker grills on the keyboard sides are gone, giving the PC a cleaner look. The sharp edges have been replaced with softer, more pleasing and comfortable curves. The keyboard layout was updated, losing the column of Home, PgUp, PgDn, and End keys and gaining an unnecessary Copilot key. And the superfluous and vestigial dual pointing stick and its ugly additional buttons have, mercifully, been retired.

The resulting design is familiar but cleaner and less busy. I like that it’s modern but also a nod to the past with a respect for continuity. Love it.

Display

HP offers several 14-inch 16:10 IPS anti-glare display options to ZBook Firefly buyers, split between several Full HD+ (1920 x 1200) panels and a handful of WQXGA (2560 x 1600) panels. Interestingly, only two offer multi-touch capabilities, and neither of those are WQXGA. But there are Full HD+ options with 300 or 400 nits of brightness, all at 60 Hz. And two WQXGA choices with 500 nits of brightness at 120 Hz.

The review unit came with the higher resolution option, which feels ideal, though I ended up switching the refresh rate to 60 Hz because it doesn’t support dynamic refresh. It also lacks the contrast-heavy pop of an OLED panel, but it’s a solid display for the target market. And it does at least support HDR for video playback: HDR content in Netflix looks fantastic.

The ZBook also supports adaptive color, which is similar to Apple’s True Tone in theory in that it detects the surrounding environment and then adapts the display’s color temperature so that colors look correct to the human eye. I ended up disabling this feature as well, as it made white and light gray on-screen items appear a kind of weird pink/orange I couldn’t get used to.

As noted, the bezels are a bit chunky at the top. I had expected that to change with the move to 16:10 displays but it’s the same as my older ZBook. The display almost lays flat now, however. That wasn’t true of the previous design.

Internal components

The ZBook Firefly 14 can be configured with a perhaps too-wide range of Intel Core Ultra “Meteor Lake” processors (with standard and vPro options), ranging from some lowly U-series choices I strongly recommend ignoring all the way up to a Core Ultra 7-165H vPro with Nvidia RTX A500 Graphics. And that’s what arrived in the review unit, the highest-end processor option with a dGPU.

It’s unclear where the sweet spot here is, but I would personally stick to a Core Ultra 5 or 7 H-series processor and don’t really need the battery life-sucking dGPU. Not helping matters, some of the upgrades are pricey: Going from the base configuration to the Core Ultra 7-165H vPro with Nvidia RTX A500 Graphics in the review unit ups the cost by a bit over $1000. Yikes.

You can also configure the Firefly 14 with 8, 16, 32, or 64 GB of DDR5 5200 RAM in one- or two-DIMM configurations, and 512 GB, 1 TB, or 2 TB of M.2-based PCIe-4×4 NVMe TLC SSD storage.

Overall performance has been excellent, especially in the mostly standard productivity tasks I perform. I did, however, install and use full-bore Photoshop 2024 and Photoshop (Beta) to test some AI features. And I worked in Visual Studio 2022 to update my .NETpad app for Windows 11. The ZBook handled these beefier workloads without any drama, and the fan noise was minimal under load. During normal use, I never noticed the fan.

Early on in my testing, I did experience some performance and reliability hiccups. The most common occurred when I first woke up the PC and signed in each morning: The system and running apps would be unresponsive for a few minutes, and then it would pass and things would be fine. Until the next morning. I also had a one-off power management issue that I believe speaks to bigger issues with Intel’s lame-duck “Meteor Lake” processors, which I wrote about separately.

But here’s the good news: Thanks to a series of firmware and driver updates, the reliability issues appear to have been resolved. I’ll keep an eye on this, but it’s been working normally for several days now.

Connectivity

The HP ZBook Firefly provides modern Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 radios, and there are 4G LTE and 5G cellular broadband options with both eSIM and nanoSIM capabilities. The review unit lacks a cellular option, but I had no connectivity issues with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, either here in Mexico or back home in Pennsylvania.

Ports and expansion

Given its focus on professional creators, the Firefly predictably delivers a mostly reasonable mix of modern and legacy ports, identical to that provided by HP’s business-class EliteBook 1040.

On the left, you’ll find a full-sized HDMI 2.1 port, a USB Type-A port (5 Gbps), and two Thunderbolt 4/Type-C ports (40 Gbps with Power Delivery and DisplayPort 1.4).

On the right, HP provides a headphone/microphone combo jack, a USB Type-A (5 Gbps), and (optionally) a security card slot.

The standard complaints apply: Ideally, there would be at least one USB-C port on each side of the PC, and I feel like it’s time to retire 5 Gbps USB ports when much faster alternatives exist and would make more sense in this otherwise high-end device.

Audio and video

The ZBook Firefly is optimized for work, not multimedia. It features dual Realtek stereo speakers, and thanks to HP’s acquisition of Poly two years ago, there’s a Poly Studio logo on the laptop’s wrist rest, replacing the familiar Bang & Olufsen. I have no idea what that even means: There’s no Poly Studio app and audio is customized via the HP Audio Control app. Oddly, there is a Poly Lens app, but it doesn’t do anything because there are no compatible Poly devices in the PC. Well, it does one thing: It provides a set of three “soundscapes”–atmospheric white noise, I guess–like “Babbling Brook,” “Gentle Ocean,” and so on–via a hard-to-discover system tray icon’s right-click menu.

HP Audio Control is no Dolby app, but it has one redeeming quality: You can configure it to automatically adjust audio playback based on what you’re doing. You can manually configure it for music, movies, or voice manually, too, or mess with an equalizer. I didn’t bother.

From a multimedia perspective, it’s adequate. HDR content, especially, look great. And the ZBook has good stereo separation for movies and music, with no distortion at 100 percent volume. But it doesn’t get particularly loud, and works best on a hard surface so the bottom-firing speakers can do their thing.

Hybrid work

The ZBook is well-equipped for hybrid workers, with a 5 MP webcam and dual-array microphones. The camera provides IR capabilities for Windows Hello facial recognition, and thanks to the system’s NPU, basic Windows Studio Effects capabilities like automatic framing, eye contact, and background effects with standard and portrait blur options.

Unfortunately, the NPU isn’t powerful enough for Windows Studio Effects’ creative filters: You’ll need a Copilot+ PC for that.

And the dual-array microphones are nothing special, which is typical these days on laptops. If you want to make the most of what’s built-in, you can use the HP Audio Control app to configure speaker and microphone noise reduction for calls, with microphone noise reduction modes (Intelligent, Standard, and Studio) and Conference and Personal microphone mode choices.

Keyboard, touchpad, and pen

HP’s premium laptop keyboards are consistently among the best I’ve ever used. And given its heritage, I am not surprised to report that the Firefly 14 delivers in this regard. It’s full-sized, with spill resistance and good backlighting, and it may literally be the single-best laptop typing experience I’ve had: It offers quiet, snappy keystrokes, soft and comfortable key caps, and a near-perfect layout with no superfluous keys or mislocated keys. It was a joy to use and I will miss it when it’s gone.

That said, I do have a few minor complaints: As a writer, typing is Job One. The updated keyboard layout loses the Home, PgUp, PgDn, and End keys on the right, which I liked. And while that makes the keyboard feel less cramped and more spacious, there’s also one negative side effect: They Left arrow and Right arrow keys are now half-height to accommodate half-height PgUp and PgDn keys, and I’ve made all kinds of errors trying to navigate with those keys. This is mostly my fault, I’m sloppy. But I never really got used to it.

Tied to that, HP graced the Firefly with Microsoft’s silly Copilot key as well, replacing an equally superfluous context menu key that few used anyway. Because of its placement to the left of the Left Arrow and Pg Up keys, however, I found myself sometimes inadvertently tapping it and launching the Copilot app by mistake. I’m sure this delighted the telemetry watchers at Microsoft.

Like other premium HP laptops, the ZBook includes a programmable key in the function row that can be configured (with the myHP app) in numerous ways, including with modifier key (Shift, Ctrl, and Alt) combinations too. I’ve rarely use this key in the past, but for the review, I went through the customization process, configuring it to launch File Explorer to the To-do folder I work out of. It’s surprisingly powerful and supports automations with multiple actions. A simple example: I configured Ctrl + Programmable Key to open my To-do and Book folders simultaneously. Nice.

The glass touchpad is large but manageable and it offers Precision Touchpad capabilities like multi-touch gestures. I usually end up disabling three- and four-finger gestures because of inadvertent activations, but I left those enabled and had a mostly error-free experience.

Security

The ZBook provides a Windows Hello Enhanced Sign-In Security (ESS)-compatible IR camera and, optionally, fingerprint reader, which is located in the wrist rest and not in the keyboard. The review unit was configured with both, which I feel is the ideal configuration—choice is good—and both worked well during testing. The fingerprint reader was faster and always accurate, and while the webcam always worked, it sometimes took a second or too to identify me.

The webcam privacy shutter is disappointingly manual, but there’s a microphone toggle key in the function row.

Sustainability

HP has pushed aggressively to use more and more recycled materials in its PCs, and the ZBook Firefly benefits from this initiative. It features ocean-bound plastic in its speaker enclosure, 40 percent post-consumer recycled plastic, an external power supply that is 90 percent more efficient than before, and low halogen. The packaging is sustainable, too: The box the ZBook arrives in is 100 percent sustainably sourced and recyclable, as are the corrugated cushions and paper pulp cushions it contains.

The ZBook Firefly is also user-serviceable, with standard Torx screws on the bottom of the device, none of which are hidden under the rubber feat. It has upgradeable RAM (in two SODIMM models), SSD, Wi-Fi/Bluetooth, and, if available, cellular modem modules. And the battery and over system components can all be replaced by qualified technicians.

Portability

At 12.42 x 8.8 x 0.76 inches and 3.13 pounds, the ZBook Firefly is no Ultrabook. But its chunky form factor isn’t problematic, and the minor heft speaks to the PC’s build quality and durability.

Sadly, battery life was disappointing, at about 4 hours after a few tweaks noted below. In the beginning of the testing period, I was averaging only 3.5 hours or so on average, which was concerning. So I started looking around to see what I could to improve matters.

I started with the refresh rate, lowering it from 120 Hz to 60 Hz, as noted. I examined the myHP app and wasn’t surprised to discover that HP is bypassing the built-in power management functionality in Windows to better optimize performance and efficiency. But the Performance control option in the app was configured for “High Performance” and not the more logical “Smart Sense,” which automatically adapts performance, fan noise, and temperature based on usage. And so I changed that accordingly, and hoped for the best.

I also looked at the Battery manager in the myHP app. This can help you prolong the battery’s life, but I left that on its default setting, which optimizes charging, after reviewing the options.

After a week or more, I started measuring the battery life again and saw a 30 minute-ish improvement, or an average of about 4 hours overall. Still not great, but I feel that the ZBook is hobbled in this regard by two factors: Its Nvidia dGPU, which in my experience exacts a 20 percent or more battery life hit, and its “Meteor Lake” processor, which I’ve seen this past year also impacts battery life. Between the two, I estimate a 40 percent loss in battery life, and thus recommend the dGPU-less models for those who don’t need that horsepower.

(HP Wolf Security also adds a small, single-digit percentage hit to battery life, but I uninstalled this solution early on, as an individuals won’t benefit from its business-focused security features.)

HP gives customers a standard 65-watt or a larger 100-watt USB-C power adapter depending on the configuration. The review unit, with its powerful H-series Core Ultra processor and Nvidia dGPU, shipped with the 100-watt variant. It can fast-charge the PC’s 56 watt-hour battery to about 50 percent in 30 minutes.

Long story short, don’t leave the house without the charger.

Software

One should expect a premium business-class PC that’s this expensive to deliver a minimalist software preload with no crapware. And in this regard, HP mostly delivers. There’s no McAfee, at least, but there are three do-nothing apps–Adobe offers, Miro Offer, and TCO Certified–in the Start menu, and a metric ton of HP and third party utilities.

These include 11 HP apps–HP Audio Control, HP Documentation, HP Easy Clean, HP PC Hardware Diagnostics Windows, HP Privacy Settings, HP Support Assistant, HP Sure Click Secure Browser, HP System Information, HP Wolf Security, myHP, and Poly Lens–three Intel utilities related to hardware components plus Intel Unison for phone connectivity, and two Nvidia utilities, Nvidia Control Panel and Nvidia RTX Desktop Manager.

Windows 11 Pro is your only OS choice unless you’re a fan of FreeDOS or Ubuntu Linux 22.04, either of which will save you $221.

Pricing and configurations

As a premium, entry-level portable workstation, the HP ZBook Firefly is predictably expensive, at least if you’re shopping on HP.com as a consumer. A base configuration with an Intel Core Ultra 5-125U processor, 16 GB of RAM, 512 GB of storage, and a Full HD+ display is a bit over $2200. The review configuration, with a Core Ultra 7-165H vPro processor, NVIDIA RTX A500 Graphics, 32 GB of RAM, 512 GB of storage, a 120 Hz DreamColor (2560 x 1600) display panel, and a fingerprint reader is pushing $3800.

Were I configuring this for myself, I would opt for the entry-level Core Ultra 7-155H option (and bypass the U-series variants completely), 16 GB of RAM on one SODIMM, the WQXGA display upgrade, the IR camera, the fingerprint reader, the base 512 GB SSD, and the 100-watt power adapter, which lands at a heady $3000. Which is out of my price range, frankly.

Recommendations and conclusions

The ZBook Firefly neatly straddles the laptop and portable workstation worlds, offering enough configuration options to satisfy almost any need. The review configuration, with its dedicated graphics, provides a performance boost over the similar EliteBook 1040 that will benefit creators and entry-level workstation users, though it undermines battery life as well. It’s also quite expensive, though the businesses that buy these PCs in bulk can, of course, save a lot of money over the retail price.

Though I have lingering concerns about Meteor Lake, HP is clearly doing what it can to address those issues. And I can recommend the ZBook Firefly to professional creators or anyone else with higher-end performance requirements who appreciate its understated beauty, terrific keyboard, expansion, and upgradeability and repairability.

At-a-glance

Pros

• Best. Keyboard. Ever.
• Classy, iconic design
• Fast and accurate biometric sign-in options
• Dedicated GPU for creator workloads
• Nice mix of modern and legacy expansion ports
• Fully upgradeable, with many components user-serviceable

Cons

• Disappointing battery life
• Tiny PgUp, PgDn, and Left and Right arrow keys
• Expensive, Can get even more expensive with upgrades
• Inconsistent performance and reliability at first, appears to be fixed