HP Stream 14" HD Laptop for Students and Business, Intel Quad-Core Processor, 16GB RAM, 320GB Storage (64GB eMMC + 256GB Card, no SD Port), 1-Year Office 365, Windows 11 H in S Mode

I "auditioned" a half a dozen laptops by using each for a month. I tried ALL the big brands. My HW requirements were: 11th gen Core i7 or Core i9, 32 gb memory, 1 tb (or more) SSD drive. The keyboard was of prime importance to me also. I can touch-type and wanted a fast keyboard with good feel and a good key layout, something similar to a standard 101-key keyboard. I tried a couple with numeric keypads, which I use A LOT, but the offset of the trackpad was so annoying, having to type to the left of the screen. I found that CPU & GPU cooling was an important factor, as many of the laptops would throttle the CPU excessively, negating the performance of the CPU dramatically. It also turned out the trackpad was a big deal. Some well-reviewed laptops had excessively large trackpads, which caused me to accidentally highlight text or push on-screen buttons. In the end, what I found about the HP ZBook Studio that made it superior to all the others is: 1) It's fast. MUCH faster than all but one of the others, and it ties that one. Laptops with the EXACT same CPU, GPU, & memory were much slower than the ZBook (I used multiple benchmark app's to validate). 2) The ZBook's superior cooling hardware helped to avoid the throttling plaguing other similar laptops. 3) The trackpad is the right size and its smooth surface makes it a pleasure to use, & I don't accidentally activate it. 4) The centered keyboard, specific to the ZBook Studio model, has great feel, proper key spacing, good key layout, and the included keys are useful. The fact that you can assign different colors & effects to keys, groups of keys, or the entire keyboard was a bonus I'm still struggling to understand the importance of. 5) Good speakers, good screen, good battery add to its comfortable utility. I don't care about weight, but I know that's important to some, like students. It is NOT a perfect laptop. I wish it had the user-upgradeability of others, and I think the case would be much more comfortable if the edges were rounded rather than acute. I wish F-keys were standard sized and that it had a discrete SYSRQ key (for Linux). Despite these issues, it may not be perfect, but it is the best of the currently available workstations/high-end laptops. I know, because I tried them all.