HP ZBook 14" Review

For $399, you get a very portable 1.35kg business laptop with Windows 11 Pro and Thunderbolt. The trade-off is severe: its Intel i5 CPU and integrated GPU rank in the bottom 20%, making it one of the slower laptops in our database. It's only for the most budget-conscious, non-performance tasks.

The HP ZBook Firefly G8 is a refurbished business laptop that's all about portability. At 1.35kg, it lands in the 81st percentile for compactness, making it one of the lighter 14-inch notebooks you can find. It's built around an Intel Core i5-1145G7 and 16GB of RAM, but our data shows its core performance scores are middle of the pack or lower. For $399, it's a budget-friendly way to get a Windows 11 Pro machine with Thunderbolt ports and WiFi 6. This isn't a powerhouse, but it's a lightweight tool for getting work done on the move.

Performance is where this ZBook shows its age and budget nature. The Intel i5-1145G7 CPU ranks in the 15th percentile, which means it falls behind most modern laptops. In practical terms, you're looking at basic office tasks, web browsing, and light multitasking, but heavy applications will feel sluggish. The integrated Intel Iris Xe Graphics sits in the 18th percentile, so gaming is essentially off the table. Its 256GB SSD is also a weak spot, ranking in the 22nd percentile for storage capacity. The 16GB of RAM is a solid foundation, but it's paired with components that can't really leverage it for speed.

At $399, the value proposition is straightforward: you're trading performance for portability and a low price. This is one of the cheapest ways to get a certified refurbished business laptop with a professional OS and modern connectivity like Thunderbolt. You won't find better raw specs at this price, but you also won't find much speed. It's a budget box for basic tasks.

Compared to its listed rivals, this ZBook is in a completely different league, and not a favorable one. The Apple MacBook Pro 14" (M5) and ASUS ProArt PX13 are modern performance machines with top-tier CPUs and GPUs; this HP's components are generations behind. Even against other budget options, its 15th percentile CPU score is a real handicap. The Lenovo Legion and MSI Stealth are gaming beasts. The only vaguely similar competitor might be a base model Surface Laptop, but even those typically have more competitive processors. This ZBook wins on price and weight, but loses badly on every performance metric.

Anyone who needs their laptop to be fast should skip this. Students running engineering software, developers compiling code, or business users analyzing large datasets will find the 15th percentile CPU a real bottleneck. Gamers and content creators should look elsewhere entirely, given its bottom-tier graphics score. If your work involves anything more intensive than web apps and document editing, this ZBook will feel like a letdown.

We can't recommend this ZBook for anyone who needs speed. Its performance scores are just too low. However, if your only requirements are 'a light Windows laptop for typing and emails, and it must be under $400,' this refurbished unit fits that narrow box. It's a data-backed compromise: you get portability and a professional OS at a rock-bottom price, but you sacrifice any semblance of modern computing power.