HP Elitebook 840 G1

[Aniallation]

So I was recently at Best Buy looking for a new laptop to replace my 6.5lb Toshiba Satellite A100 for school, and I saw an Acer Aspire V5 for sale for $600, I thought it was pretty good considering it was the cheapest Haswell i5 laptop, it looked really nice, and it had a touchscreen. However a few issues later (horrible battery life reports in reviews, screen as reflective as a mirror, LCD panel ripples when screen is touched, etc) and I decided not to pull the trigger. I went back a few days later to see if the sale ended and they had a sale on a demo unit HP Elitebook 840 for $450, so I got it, and with the money I saved from the budget I set out for the Acer, I got an SSD along with it. 

 

Specs: 

Intel Core i5 4300U

4GB DDR3L

500GB Toshiba 5400rpm HDD (replaced with 250GB 840 EVO)

Intel HD Graphics 4400

14" 1366x768 screen

Dual Band WiFi N + Bluetooth 4.0

Windows 7 Professional

 

PICS!

 

The soft-touch top cover may look durable, but it actually collects fingerprints really easily, and those fingerprints are very hard to remove.

 

Business laptop looks like business laptop, no flashy accents or brushed aluminum finish here. Sadly no LED keyboard though, that would have been nice.

 

On the left side, the Kensington lock, exhaust vent, VGA port (yay), two USB 3.0 ports, and a SmartCard reader. Not sure what the card reader is for, but apparently it reads cards with little chips on them, like a credit card. Not sure what to do with this. I put in a SIM card that hadn't been punched out yet, and it fit and slotted in nicely. Windows installed drivers for the reader, but there's nothing that I know of that presents a use for it.

 

On the right side, the power input, a propriety docking port, fold-down ethernet jack, two more USB 3.0 ports, a Displayport output, and a 3.5mm combo jack.

 

Keyboard with trackpoint nipple, trackpad, and fingerprint reader on far right next to Intel sticker. Not a touchscreen, but I don't care. It want a laptop to do laptop things with proper Windows 7, not a Windows 8 hybrid-convertible-thingy.

 

Fancy security techs

 

The colors of the TN panel are quite good at the right angle, but looking from anywhere but directly in front of the screen leaves you wishing for IPS.

 

The keyboard feels okay, but nothing special. Key travel is short and there's no backlight, however there is decent tactile feedback. The stereo speakers above the keyboard are loud, but quality is pretty poor, with quite a bit of distortion at high volumes. 

 

Such upgradability!!! Pull one slider and the entire bottom cover comes right off, allowing for easy cleaning and upgrading of pretty much everything. RAM, HDD, battery and WiFi card can all be easily removed and replaced if needed, and there is space for an additional DDR3L SO-DIMM, as well as a 3G WAN card and a (for some reason, half height) M.2 SSD.

 

The charger plug design worries me for some reason, I always wonder how long that tiny pin in the middle will last before it gets bent and charger will need to be replaced.

 

Haven't been able to run any benchmarks, but it's pretty much standard fare Haswell i5 plus a slight bump in speed from the base 4200U models. The system does run really quiet under load (under low load fan doesn't spin at all) and temps stay low.

 

Intel HD Graphics aren't the best for gaming, but in a laptop like this, it's definitely adequate.

 

 

Everyday use:

For what I use it for (school) it's an excellent laptop. It's thin, light, and has excellent battery life. With just general internet browsing and MS Office work, you'll get around 5 hours of continuous use at medium brightness, which is perfect for me to get through the day. There's even an optional second battery to get you a claimed minimum 13 hours battery life without adding a huge amount of weight or bulk, so portable power is no problem for this laptop. It is a 14" though, so sometimes, especially when using it around the house, you do miss having a larger 15" or 17" laptop. You do lose quite a bit of productivity room due to the 1366x768 screen though, however an optional 1080p screen is available.

 

Gaming/heavy use:

HD 4400 is nothing special, however it still handles many modern games at a minimum 720p at lowest settings. I've only loaded two games onto it so far, but I'm happy with the gaming performance considering the price of the laptop and the form factor. Battlefield 3 will get playable 25-40 FPS at 720p low-medium settings with no AA, while Need For Speed Hot Pursuit gets playable 25-35 FPS at native res, medium settings with 4X AA. 

 

Intel Quick Sync does really well with video encoding and editing, with 720p and 1080p video editing being for the most part quite smooth with QuickSync supported software. You do notice the lack of CPU horsepower with the low voltage chip, but it's nothing severe, and video encoding and editing is definitely doable. 

 

Overall: 

For the $450 I paid for it, the EliteBook 840 G1 really can't be beat by much if you're looking for a non-touch straight up serious laptop with none of the touchscreen and fancy feature BS. For the full retail price of $750+ though, something like the Lenovo Y40 would be a much better choice, thanks to it's i7 processor, 8GB of RAM, dedicated graphics, solid state hybrid drive, and 1080p screen, even if you do sacrifice portability and battery life.

 

Pros (NOT considering demo unit sale price):

-Clean design

-Extremely easy to upgrade

-Very light

-Thin and portable

-Great battery life

-Decent screen

-Reasonably powered i5 CPU with vPro support

-Very quiet, even under load

-Good quality webcam, records 1080p video

-Displayport output while still retaining legacy VGA support

-Full size ethernet port

-Fingerprint reader?

 

Cons (NOT considering demo unit sale price):

-Not an i7

-No dedicated graphics

-Standard HDD, not even a hybrid drive

-Only 4GB RAM

-Speakers are loud, but actual sound quality is not great.

-Soft touch top collects finger oils very easily, hard to clean

-Sharp edges around the laptop make palms uncomfortable with long periods of typing

-Screen viewing angles

-1366x768 (this specific model)

-No backlit keyboard (this specific model)

[Clyne]

Time to change your sig to a HP elitebook

[Aniallation]

Time to change your sig to a HP elitebook

relax i got dis

[TheSLSAMG]

Didn't end up with a Lenovo? Cool, this laptop looks pretty good. Too bad about the screen viewing angles and speakers. Nice steal though.

[Aniallation]

Didn't end up with a Lenovo? Cool, this laptop looks pretty good. Too bad about the screen viewing angles and speakers. Nice steal though.

Was considering it after I ditched the Acer, especially with that $750 deal they have going on, but I couldn't resist this one for how much they were asking. I don't mind it being a demo, looks new to me

[TheSLSAMG]

Was considering it after I ditched the Acer, especially with that $750 deal they have going on, but I couldn't resist this one for how much they were asking. I don't mind it being a demo, looks new to me

That reminds me, I really need to get some sort of laptop, or even get my normal laptop up and running. (pretty thick Toshiba Satellite, i3 2xxxM, 4GB RAM, may put my new Crucial MX 100 in there depending on whether it makes a difference in responsiveness or not while not having the negative effect on my main rig)

[Aniallation]

That reminds me, I really need to get some sort of laptop, or even get my normal laptop up and running. (pretty thick Toshiba Satellite, i3 2xxxM, 4GB RAM, may put my new Crucial MX 100 in there depending on whether it makes a difference in responsiveness or not while not having the negative effect on my main rig)

SSD makes a huge difference in any PC regardless. In my previous laptop, a Toshiba Satellite with a 1.7GHz Celeron M, an SSD helped responsiveness by a huge amount, even being bottlenecked as fuck by the original SATA 1.5Gbps bus

[TheSLSAMG]

SSD makes a huge difference in any PC regardless. In my previous laptop, a Toshiba Satellite with a 1.7GHz Celeron M, an SSD helped responsiveness by a huge amount, even being bottlenecked as fuck by the original SATA 1.5Gbps bus

Hmm, I may just have to buy a cheap 120GB for it then. I like my MX 100 too much in my main rig

[MoonSpot]

Hmm, I may just have to buy a cheap 120GB for it then. I like my MX 100 too much in my main rig

SSD made a world of difference on my desktop replacement laptop.  Throw the leaner windows 8.1 on top of that and a fair few of the older laptops are quite usable.

 

@Aniallation Nice steal, solid value.

[flibberdipper]

I like the fingerprint reader.

[bi1a1]

I have the i7 variant of this notebook. comes with 8gb ram (upto 16gb), 750gb hdd and 1gb dedicated amd graphics. in all honesty this laptop is incredible. it's really portable and the true beauty is the removable back which allos easy acces to components. it supposedly falls under the unltrabook name but i don't have the sticker to prove it.. Oh and don't even get me started on build quality, without holding the machine it's hard to understand how amazing the quality is. tbh i'm surprised it hasn't been reviewed by linus. i would imagine he would love it.. you sacrifice a little 'thinness' for the ability to upgrade components.  there are other reviews on youtube about this range of machines but they don't really do it justice especially with the build quality. 

 

When you look 'under the hood' you find it also has m.2 ngff expandability which is awesome. my dads zbook15 doesn't even have this.  

 

hp consumer products are kinda sucky and i understand why they are bashed by a lot of people... but the business line of products is amazing. 

 

tbh i spent a really long time looking for a slim laptop portable laptop that could be upgraded but it seems soldering components is the future which is sad. 

 

overall on day 1 i gave it 8/10 but after a few months it's 9.5/10 because as with typical tech fashion it was rushed out before all drivers were really stable, i had some problems with the switch-able graphics. which had been resolved now..

 

PS. i run linux on my laptop most of the time, and the only on that end is the fingerprint reader lacks drivers (which works brilliantly in windows).

[Aniallation]

I have the i7 variant of this notebook. comes with 8gb ram (upto 16gb), 750gb hdd and 1gb dedicated amd graphics. in all honesty this laptop is incredible. it's really portable and the true beauty is the removable back which allos easy acces to components. it supposedly falls under the unltrabook name but i don't have the sticker to prove it.. Oh and don't even get me started on build quality, without holding the machine it's hard to understand how amazing the quality is. tbh i'm surprised it hasn't been reviewed by linus. i would imagine he would love it.. you sacrifice a little 'thinness' for the ability to upgrade components.  there are other reviews on youtube about this range of machines but they don't really do it justice especially with the build quality. 

 

When you look 'under the hood' you find it also has m.2 ngff expandability which is awesome. my dads zbook15 doesn't even have this.

 

hp consumer products are kinda sucky and i understand why they are bashed by a lot of people... but the business line of products is amazing. 

As of writing this review I've added another 4GB of RAM (total 8GB) and a 256GB ADATA SP900 M.2 SSD, removing the 750GB hard drive and putting it in my desktop, so when under low loads the laptop is completely silent and solid state. No noise or vibration from the fan or hard drive

 

However I do have to say I regret not getting the higher end model. I don't need an i7 by any means, but I definitely would have liked the optional dedicated graphics and 1080p screen. 

 

Honestly for me with pretty much anything it's function over form, aesthetics is not a huge deal to me so in the future I'm probably going to end up buying business laptops even for personal use rather then a "consumer" grade ultrabook, I much rather prefer better upgradability and build quality over "nicer" looks and shaving a few points off thickness and weight.