HP’s 14-inch ZBook Ultra G1a: A mobile workstation mold-breaker… but with a caveat (or two)

Dramatic performance gains for such a small machine, and its unified architecture offers AI benefits… but it’s not without trade-offs.

June 13, 2025

Alex Herrera

HP’s ZBook Ultra G1a is a mold-breaking 14-inch mobile workstation, built around an AMD Ryzen AI Max Pro APU and its powerful integrated Radeon graphics, foregoing a discrete GPU. Benchmarks show its graphics performance rivals previous-generation midrange discrete cards, though it can dip under heavy concurrent CPU and GPU loads due to shared power and memory. Its key advantage is a unified memory architecture, allowing the GPU to access up to 96GB of RAM—ideal for large AI models. The Ultra G1a offers excellent price/performance, but its integrated-only design presents a trade-off for some professional users. Having evolved rapidly from a

...

Enjoy full access with a TechWatch subscription!

TechWatch is the front line of JPR information gathering service, comprising current stories of interest to the graphics industry spanning the core areas of graphics hardware and software, workstations, gaming, and design.

A subscription to TechWatch includes 4 hours of consulting time to be used over the course of the subscription.

Already a subscriber? Login below

HP’s 14-inch ZBook Ultra G1a: A mobile workstation mold-breaker… but with a caveat (or two)

Enjoy full access with a TechWatch subscription!

This content is restricted

Login