Mobile device manufacturers seem to have really stepped things up in the engineering department since the arrival of the Microsoft Surface. After racing to the bottom with netbooks for a time, things turned around, and we’ve seen an influx of high-quality systems using premiums materials. We've seen gorgeous designs from ASUS, Dell, HP, and Lenovo, especially in standard clamshell form factors. However, no one seemed to crack the code when it comes to the detachable form factor where the Microsoft Surface Pro shines. There have been some solid offerings in the space, no doubt, but the Surface Pro still sets the bar.

HP takes a different approach to the detachable PC with its Zbook X2 G4 workstation. HP aims high with this machine and shoves as much power as possible into a sleek tablet form factor that’s a little over half an inch thick. While the Microsoft Surface Pro starts at $799 with a Core M3 and spartan memory and storage, the HP Zbook X2 G4 has a much higher $2,699 cost of entry for the latest generation models, but configurations start with a beefy quad-core Intel Core i7-8550u and discrete graphics.