HP ZBook Fury 17 G7 review – big, powerful, ruthless

Today we have one of the most suitable devices to be called a “mobile workstation”. It is the ZBook Fury 17 G7, and as the name suggests, has a 17-inch display, and furious hardware. Its maxed-out specs include a Core i9-10885H CPU and a Quadro RTX 5000 Max-Q graphics card. If you want to get all of the goodies of workstation computing, though, you can get the laptop configured with a Xeon W-10855M processor.

To say that this platform is new to us would be untrue, as we have previously laid hands on the 15-inch model. It caught our eye because of one thing, and it was its upgrade options. We expect nothing but the same from this device, which should mean that it has four RAM SODIMM slots, as well as four M.2 storage slots. However, it’s not safe to make assumptions here, so let’s leave this to the disassembly portion of the review.

How about the display options, though. Well, you basically get two options – a 1080p, and a 4K unit. However, in addition to the resolution difference, the 4K panel also allegedly supports full DCI-P3 coverage, and some configurations will come with a touch-sensitive layer protected by Gorilla Glass 5.

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/hp-zbook-fury-17-g7/

Contents


Specs Sheet

HP ZBook Fury 17 G7 - Specs

  • AUO AUOCD8C
  • Color accuracy  6.8  4.4
  • HDD/SSD
  • up to 8000GB SSD + up to 2000GB HDD
  • RAM
  • up to 128GB
  • OS
  • Windows 10 Pro, Windows 11 Pro, Windows 10 Home
  • Battery
  • 94Wh, 8-cell
  • Dimensions
  • 398.4 x 267.1 x 26.9 mm (15.69" x 10.52" x 1.06")
  • Weight
  • 2.76 kg (6.1 lbs)
  • Ports and connectivity
  • 1x USB Type-A
  • 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps)
  • 1x USB Type-A
  • 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps), Sleep and Charge
  • 1x USB Type-C
  • Thunderbolt 3, DisplayPort
  • HDMI
  • 2.0b
  • Displayport mini
  • Card reader
  • SD
  • Ethernet LAN
  • 10, 100, 1000 Mbit/s
  • Wi-Fi
  • 802.11ax
  • Bluetooth
  • 5.0
  • Audio jack
  • 3.5 Combo Jack
  • Features
  • Fingerprint reader
  • Web camera
  • HD
  • Backlit keyboard
  • Microphone
  • Dual Array Digital Microphone
  • Speakers
  • 2x Stereo Speakers, Bang & Olufsen
  • Optical drive

All HP ZBook Fury 17 G7 configurations

#CommissionsEarned

What’s in the box?

The packaging here has a couple of paper manuals and a 150W power adapter.


Design and construction

Now, you have to keep in mind that the laptop is neither thin nor light. Its profile stands at 26.9mm, while the weight is starting from 2.76 kilos. Yet again, considering the nature of the device, this seems okay. Also, structurally, the notebook happens to be extremely solid, with no flex in the chassis, and almost zero keyboard bend. Our unit, however, produces an annoying squeak from the top left part of the lid when you open it.

Speaking of which, you can open it with a single hand. Ultimately, the bezels around the matte panel are super thin. Above the display, you can see a 720p Web camera with a privacy shutter and IR sensors for face recognition.

Moving to the base, we find a huge speaker grill that hides a couple of Bang & Olufsen stereo speakers. Beneath it, there is the keyboard, featuring a full-sized NumberPad segment, spill-resistance, and a backlight. Generally, the board is great for typing. It has decent key travel, clicky feedback, and large keycaps. The only downside we saw was the shape of the “Up” and “Down” Arrow keys.

Its also worth noting that this unit features a Black Nipple, which operates in conjunction with a trio of buttons placed right above the touchpad. As for the pad, itself, it has a glass surface, which delivers an exceptional gliding experience. It is also super accurate and responsive. Obviously, it doesn’t come with a clicking mechanism, due to the other set of buttons placed below it.

Further to the right, just below the second Enter key, you will find a fingerprint reader. As for the bottom panel, it houses only the ventilation grill, but it has a far more important role. Accordingly, the hot air escapes from two vents on the back.

Ports

Now, this is a laptop that has a truly desktop scale of I/O. On the left side, you get an RJ-45 connector, a lock slot, three USB Type-A 3.2 (Gen. 1), an audio jack, and a SmartCard reader. On the right side, there is the charging plug, two Thunderbolt 3 connectors, a Mini DisplayPort 1.4, an HDMI 2.0b connector, and an SD card slot.


Disassembly, upgrade options and maintenance

First of all, getting inside of this laptop is extremely easy. Just flick the switch on the bottom panel and slide it away from the chassis. Then comes the battery pack. It has a 94Wh capacity and can be removed by toggling the two sliders on the top.

Interestingly, beneath it, there is a 2.5-inch SATA drive slot. However, with the appropriate mounts, you can fit two M.2 drives instead of it. Furthermore, here you have another M.2 slot, as well as two RAM SODIMM slots for memory upgrades. That looks plenty, but we are far from over. Before you continue, undo the three Phillips-head screws that have keyboard mountings. Then, undo a couple of connectors seen on the video, and poke a plastic tool through the hole on the right-hand side. This will lift the keyboard, so you can pry it more easily.

Now that you have turned the laptop around, continue prying the keyboard and before you lift it away, make sure you disconnect the two ribbon cables.

Underneath it, you will find two more SODIMM slots for memory, as well as one M.2 slot for storage.


Display quality

HP ZBook Fury 17 G7 is equipped with a 4K IPS panel, model number AUO AUOCD8C. Its diagonal is 17.3″ (43.94 cm), and the resolution 3840 x 2160 pixels. The screen ratio is 16:9, and we are looking at a pixel density of – 255 ppi, and a pitch of 0.1 х 0.1 mm. The screen turns into Retina when viewed at distance equal to or greater than 33cm (27″) (from this distance one’s eye stops differentiating the separate pixels, and it is normal for looking at a laptop).

Viewing angles are comfortable. We offer images at 45° to evaluate image quality.

Also, a video with locked focus and exposure.

The measured maximum brightness of 590 nits in the middle of the screen and also 581 nits as an average for the whole area, with a maximum deviation of 5%. The Correlated Color Temperature on a white screen is 707K – colder than the optimal for the sRGB standard of 6500K.
In the illustration below you can see how the display performs from a uniformity perspective. In other words, the leakage of light from the light source.

Values of dE2000 over 4.0 should not occur, and this parameter is one of the first you should check if you intend to use the laptop for color-sensitive work. The contrast ratio is good – 1520:1.

To make sure we are on the same page, we would like to give you a little introduction to the sRGB color gamut and the Adobe RGB. To start, there’s the CIE 1976 Uniform Chromaticity Diagram that represents the visible specter of colors by the human eye, giving you a better perception of the color gamut coverage and the color accuracy.

Inside the black triangle, you will see the standard color gamut (sRGB) that is being used by millions of people on HDTV and on the web. As for the Adobe RGB, this is used in professional cameras, monitors, etc for printing. Colors inside the black triangle are used by everyone and this is the essential part of the color quality and color accuracy of a mainstream notebook.

Still, we’ve included other color spaces like the famous DCI-P3 standard used by movie studios, as well as the digital UHD Rec.2020 standard. Rec.2020, however, is still a thing of the future and it’s difficult for today’s displays to cover that well. We’ve also included the so-called Michael Pointer gamut, or Pointer’s gamut, which represents the colors that naturally occur around us every day.

The yellow dotted line shows HP ZBook Fury 17 G7’s color gamut coverage.

Its display covers 100% of the sRGB/ITU-R BT.709 (web/HDTV standard) in CIE1976, 93% of Adobe RGB, and nearly 100% of DCI-P3.

Our “Design and Gaming” profile delivers optimal color temperature (6500K) at 140 cd/m2 luminance and sRGB gamma mode.

We tested the accuracy of the display with 24 commonly used colors like light and dark human skin, blue sky, green grass, orange, etc. You can check out the results at factory condition and also, with the “Design and Gaming” profile.

Below you see the scores of HP ZBook Fury 17 G7 with the “Gaming and Web design” profile.

The next figure shows how well the display is able to reproduce really dark parts of an image, which is essential when watching movies or playing games in low ambient light.

The left side of the image represents the display with stock settings, while the right one is with the “Gaming and Web Design” profile activated. On the horizontal axis, you will find the grayscale, and on the vertical axis – the luminance of the display. On the two graphs below you can easily check for yourself how your display handles the darkest nuances but keep in mind that this also depends on the settings of your current display, the calibration, the viewing angle, and the surrounding light conditions.

Response time (Gaming capabilities)

We test the reaction time of the pixels with the usual “black-to-white” and “white-to-black” method from 10% to 90% and vice versa.

We recorded Fall Time + Rise Time = 24 ms.

After that, we test the reaction time of the pixels with the usual “Gray-to-Gray” method from 50% White to 80% White and vice versa between 10% and 90% of the amplitude.


PWM (Screen flickering)

Pulse-width modulation (PWM) is an easy way to control monitor brightness. When you lower the brightness, the light intensity of the backlight is not lowered, but instead turned off and on by the electronics with a frequency indistinguishable to the human eye. In these light impulses, the light/no-light time ratio varies, while brightness remains unchanged, which is harmful to your eyes. You can read more about that in our dedicated article on PWM.

HP ZBook Fury 17 G7’s backlight doesn’t use PWM to adjust its levels of brightness. This means the display is comfortable for use, without presenting any excessive eye strain in this aspect.

Blue light emissions

Installing our Health-Guard profile not only eliminates PWM but also reduces the harmful Blue Light emissions while keeping the colors of the screen perceptually accurate. If you’re not familiar with the Blue light, the TL;DR version is – emissions that negatively affect your eyes, skin, and your whole body. You can find more information about that in our dedicated article on Blue Light.

Buy our profiles

Since our profiles are tailored for each individual display model, this article and its respective profile package are meant for HP ZBook Fury 17 G7 configurations with 17.3″ 4K IPS AUO AUOCD8C.

*Should you have problems with downloading the purchased file, try using a different browser to open the link you’ll receive via e-mail. If the download target is a .php file instead of an archive, change the file extension to .zip or contact us at [email protected].

Read more about the profiles HERE.

In addition to receiving efficient and health-friendly profiles, by buying LaptopMedia's products you also support the development of our labs, where we test devices in order to produce the most objective reviews possible.

Office Work

Office Work should be used mostly by users who spend most of the time looking at pieces of text, tables or just surfing. This profile aims to deliver better distinctness and clarity by keeping a flat gamma curve (2.20), native color temperature and perceptually accurate colors.

Design and Gaming

This profile is aimed at designers who work with colors professionally, and for games and movies as well. Design and Gaming takes display panels to their limits, making them as accurate as possible in the sRGB IEC61966-2-1 standard for Web and HDTV, at white point D65.

Health-Guard

Health-Guard eliminates the harmful Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM) and reduces the negative Blue Light which affects our eyes and body. Since it’s custom tailored for every panel, it manages to keep the colors perceptually accurate. Health-Guard simulates paper so the pressure on the eyes is greatly reduced.

Get all 3 profiles with 33% discount


Sound

HP ZBook Fury 17 G7’s Bang & Olufsen speakers produce a sound of very good quality. Furthermore, the low, mid, and high tones are clear of deviations.


Drivers

All of the drivers and utilities for this notebook can be found here: https://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers/selfservice/hp-zbook-fury-17-g7-mobile-workstation/34386188

Battery

Now, we conduct the battery tests with Windows Better performance setting turned on, screen brightness adjusted to 120 nits and all other programs turned off except for the one we are testing the notebook with. This notebook’s 94Wh battery pack lasts for 12 hours and 23 minutes of Web browsing, and 9 hours and 13 minutes of video playback.

In order to simulate real-life conditions, we used our own script for automatic web browsing through over 70 websites.


CPU options

This behemoth can be equipped with a Core i5-10300H, Core i5-10400H, Core i7-10750H, Core i7-10850H, Core i9-10885H, and a Xeon W-10855M.


GPU options

As far as the graphics go, the options are pretty much unlimited. You can settle for the integrated UHD Graphics 630, but let’s be honest, no one will do that. Instead, you can go for the Quadro T1000 Max-Q, Quadro T2000 Max-Q, Quadro RTX 3000, Quadro RTX 4000 Max-Q, or Quadro 5000 Max-Q. But wait… that’s not all. HP also offers AMD options with the Radeon RX 5500M, and the Radeon Pro 5500M.


Gaming tests

Far Cry 5Full HD, Normal (Check settings)Full HD, High (Check settings)Full HD, Ultra (Check settings)
Average fps61 fps57 fps53 fps

Shadow of the Tomb Raider (2018)Full HD, Lowest (Check settings)Full HD, Medium (Check settings)Full HD, High (Check settings)
Average fps55 fps49 fps45 fps

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon WildlandsFull HD, Medium (Check settings)Full HD, High (Check settings)Full HD, Very High (Check settings)
Average fps56 fps52 fps46 fps

Temperatures and comfort

Max CPU load

In this test we use 100% on the CPU cores, monitoring their frequencies and chip temperature. The first column shows a computer’s reaction to a short load (2-10 seconds), the second column simulates a serious task (between 15 and 30 seconds), and the third column is a good indicator of how good the laptop is for long loads such as video rendering.

Average core frequency (base frequency + X); CPU temp.

Intel Core i7-10750H (45W TDP)0:02 – 0:10 sec0:15 – 0:30 sec10:00 – 15:00 min
HP ZBook Fury 17 G74.07 GHz (B+57%) @ 90°C3.93 GHz (B+51%) @ 98°C3.62 GHz (B+39%) @ 87°C
HP ZBook Fury 15 G72.53 GHz @ 98°C2.45 GHz @ 98°C2.53 GHz @ 98°C
Lenovo Legion C7 (15)3.76 GHz (B+45%) @ 81°C3.79 GHz (B+46%) @ 89°C3.62 GHz (B+39%) @ 84°C
HP ZBook Power G73.71 GHz (B+43%) @ 87°C3.60 GHz (B+38%) @ 95°C3.13 GHz (B+20%) @ 79°C
HP Omen 15 2019 (15-dh1000)4.03 GHz (B+55%) @ 96°C3.87 GHz (B+45%) @ 97°C3.65 GHz (B+40%) @ 96°C
MSI GF65 Thin 10Sx3.59 GHz (B+38%) @ 95°C3.48 GHz (B+34%) @ 95°C3.08 GHz (B+18%) @ 91°C
HP Pavilion Gaming 16 (16-a0000)3.74 GHz (B+44%) @ 97°C3.17 GHz (B+22%) @ 88°C2.98 GHz (B+15%) @ 78°C
HP Omen 15 2020 (15-ek0000)3.55 GHz (B+37%) @ 71°C2.88 GHz (B+11%) @ 62°C2.81 GHz (B+8%) @ 70°C
Acer Predator Helios 300 (PH315-53)3.56 GHz (B+37%) @ 76°C3.52 GHz (B+35%) @ 85°C2.98 GHz (B+15%) @ 75°C
Dell G5 15 55003.82 GHz (B+47%) @ 75°C3.63 GHz (B+40%) @ 99°C3.01 GHz (B+16%) @ 81°C
ASUS ROG Strix G15 G5124.16 GHz (B+60%) @ 81°C3.99 GHz (B+53%) @ 95°C3.52 GHz (B+35%) @ 87°C
Acer Nitro 5 (AN515-55)3.02 GHz (B+16%) @ 82°C3.04 GHz (B+17%) @ 92°C2.67 GHz (B+3%) @ 92°C
Lenovo Legion 7 (15)3.78 GHz (B+45%) @ 80°C3.69 GHz (B+42%) @ 83°C3.51 GHz (B+35%) @ 83°C

This notebook manages to cool its processor quite decently. It even dips into 4.00 GHz territory in the first checkpoint.

Real-life gaming

NVIDIA Quadro T2000 Max-QGPU frequency/ Core temp (after 2 min)GPU frequency/ Core temp (after 30 min)
HP ZBook Fury 17 G71493 MHz @ 64°C1497 MHz @ 64°C
HP ZBook Fury 15 G71430 MHz @ 65°C1430 MHz @ 67°C

Obviously, the 17-inch model is quite more capable of cooling its GPU as well. However, the difference is definitely not that big here.

Comfort during combined load.

Generally, even under extreme workload, at least with the hardware we got, the laptop remained pretty quiet, and very cool on the outside.


Verdict

Undoubtedly, the ZBook Fury 17 G7 looks like the ultimate mobile workstation. It has a long battery life, an abundance of ports, great input devices, and a stupid amount of upgrade options. This includes up to 128GB of RAM, and 64GB if you go for ECC memory.

Finally, we are happy with the laptop’s speaker setup, and despite it having a pretty decent cooling solution, we feel that it could have been more powerful. Indeed, you can get a far better configuration than we did, but keep in mind that this will cost you a small fortune.

HP ZBook Fury 17 G7’s UHD display offers super sharp details, high maximum brightness (590 nits), a good contrast ratio, and comfortable viewing angles. In addition to that, the panel doesn’t flicker at any brightness level, and covers the sRGB gamut fully, 93% of Adobe RGB, and almost 100% of DCI-P3. Unfortunately, its color accuracy is not great even with our Gaming and Web design profile installed.

This is a bummer since the laptop could have been a gem in this industry. Nevertheless, where it lacks color accuracy, it gets catches up with functionality and features. Some of them include an IR face recognition scanner, a fingerprint sensor, a Smart Card reader, an SD card reader, and two Thunderbolt 3 connectors.

See, here we’ve come to a bit of a roadblock. Thunderbolt 3 means that you get an older-generation device. And as we know, Intel has made a big step both in performance and efficiency with their Tiger Lake devices. Also, the graphics cards are based on the Turing architecture. This is not bad necessarily, but Ampere is definitely better. Especially when you compare the two Watt to Watt.

At the end of the day, no matter how good this laptop is, you might just want to wait a bit more for the ZBook Fury 17 G8 (if you don’t have it in your region).

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/hp-zbook-fury-17-g7/

Pros

  • Up to 128GB of RAM and 10TB of storage
  • Very good thermals
  • 4K IPS panel with 590 nits of max brightness
  • No PWM (AUO AUOCD8C)
  • 100% of sRGB and DCI-P3 coverage (AUO AUOCD8C)
  • Exceptional keyboard and touchpad combo
  • Great battery life
  • Thunderbolt 3, SD card and Smart Card readers + optional IR face recognition and fingerprint reader


Cons

  • Uses “old” hardware
  • Quite pricy
  • Not great color accuracy even after calibration (AUO AUOCD8C)

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Ender mBind
Ender mBind
11 months ago

And let’s hope that whoever thought it is a good idea to stick the power button in the keyboard (between the other keys) has been executed since.