While it almost certainly constitutes overkill for me to use an HP ZBook Studio 16 G10 workstation with an Intel Core i9-13900H and Nvidia RTX 4000 Ada Generation GPU to edit travel photos, I had a backlog of dive photos and videos to clear through, edit, and send to my dive shop for advertising.
While my trusty MacBook Pro could undoubtedly handle the edits, something is exciting about using one of the most potent workstation laptops we’ve tested for some basic Photoshop and Capcut work.
I had about 70 photos of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia to edit for exposure and clarity due to the lower visibility in the water, plus videos of White Tip Reef Sharks and Scalloped Hammerhead Sharks to stitch together in a highlight reel of my trip to Cocos Island, Costa Rica. I even brought out some older photos of Sand Tiger Sharks from a trip to North Carolina. Using Photoshop and Capcut for the edits, I cleared my backlog of travel edits in no time.
And even though I barely scratched the surface of what the ZBook Studio is capable of, there’s something almost absurdly fun about using an overpowered laptop for low-end tasks. This helps solve the question of what to get for the person with everything.
Power overkill: for the person who has everything
OK, so this answer requires that the gift recipient likes high-end laptops. But assuming they do, and they aren’t lifelong gamers, the HP ZBook Studio is a great gift. Who doesn’t love overkill?
The ZBook Studio had no trouble loading 70+ high-res images and 20 video files during my editing power session. However, my editing was so underwhelming to the ZBook’s hardware that the fans didn’t kick on.
Of course, the ZBook Studio is far from a cheap laptop. The sticker price of our review unit was nearly $9,000, at which point you could buy a decent used car.
But if you can find it on sale, or the price is not a concern for you, it makes a solid gift for the computer enthusiast who has everything.
