ZBrushCentral

Looking for a mobile workstation for Zbrush

Hello everyone! My name is Andreas and I’m new to the forum.
I’ve been sculpting digitally for about a year now and I recently realised that I could really use a mobile alternative to my stationary PC for sculpting on the go.

I actually just purchased a Mobilestudio Pro 16 i7 the other day, but it still sits unboxed as I’ve decided to return it. Even though it seems to be a great machine that handles Zbrush very well after all the reviews I’ve seen, I’m just not sure I’m ready to commit that much money. The other cons helped in this decision as well. Low battery life, only USB C ports, no stand, etc.

So, I’m looking for alternatives.
I’ve heard good things about the Microsoft Surface Pro, but I find the screens way too small.
HP Zbook X2 looks very interesting, but the CPU only has dual cores, which seems a bit weak for heavy Zbrush work.
The 2017 HP Spectre x360 15" Intel 8th Gen also looks quite interesting for Zbrush use. Being somewhat upgradeable is a nice plus.
Video review: [video=youtube_share;oKbn8CdGR98]https://youtu.be/oKbn8CdGR98[/video]

It doesn’t necessarily have to have a tablet screen though. I’m pretty sure I would do fine with a more standard laptop together with my Intuos pen tablet.

So, any pointers?

Should I look for a gaming laptop to get a machine with a powerful processor or can the notebook style laptops suffice?
As I understand it I need to prioritise the CPU. I7 quad Core seems to be the recommended processor.
At least 16 gb of ram and a sizeable SSD.

Any help would be greatly appreciated! :slight_smile:

I think a notebook like that would suffice, also you gotta get ready for some heat, because the processor will really work. The faster the clock speed the better.

What about RAM? I’m gonna play at lord of the ocean 777 com pretty soon. It’s time for my brother to play there too. That would be fun.

You could work with 8GB with some polycount limitations or 16 GB depending on how many millions of polygons you want to work with. Just be sure to get the i7 8th generation processor. Because you’ll definitely need those extra cores.

P.S. I’m working on a 2.4 Ghz Intel Core i5 (MacBook Pro), it’s a 2 core chip and 16 GB of RAM. Hitting the 10 million polygons with a subtool, it starts to get some lags. And it’s only using half of the RAM. So I blame the processor for that. Having said that this laptop was never meant for 3D apps, although it handles them like a champ.