There are many 27-inch all-in-one desktops available today, but none of them deliver workstation-level performance according to HP. The company will supposedly fill that void with its new Z1 Workstation, the only towerless machine worthy of commanding your office desk. Sarcasm aside, HP's new system does offer beefier hardware than what you'd typically find in AIO solutions – assuming you have the coin for it.
The Z1 will kick off in April at $1,899 with a Core i3-2120, integrated HD 2000 graphics, 250GB of storage and a DVD writer. However, this scales up to a quad-core Xeon E3-1245 or E3-1280, various Nvidia Quadro GPUs including the Q4000M, up to a 2TB 7,200RPM HDD, 600GB 10,000RPM HDD or 300GB SSD, and a Blu-ray burner (up to two internal 2.5-inch drives and one 3.5-inch drive). All configurations also share:
- A 27-inch 2560x1440 LED-backlit IPS display
- Up to 32GB of 1600MHz DDR3 ECC RAM
- An HD 1080p 2.0-megapixel webcam
- Four USB 2.0 and two USB 3.0 ports
- Gigabit Ethernet, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 3.0
- DisplayPort in/out, SPDIF and audio jacks
- SRS Premium Sound w/ dual-cone speakers
- One PCIe x16 slot, three miniPCIe slots
- A choice of wired/wireless keyboard and mouse
- A selection of various Windows/Linux OSes
- Dimensions of 23" (H) x 26" (W) x 16.5" (D)
Although the Z1 Workstation is configurable upon ordering, HP has designed the machine so it's easily serviceable with aftermarket components. The system folds back and opens like a suitcase, revealing a tool-less chassis that lets you upgrade the processor, graphics card, memory, storage and seemingly any other component. Cooling is handled by an array of sensor-controlled fans so noise levels are typically around 20dB.