HP Probook 455 G1 F0Y13ES

[Speedbird]

Introduction

I bought this laptop about a year ago to load off some work from my main machine. When I was planning this purchase, I was into flight simulation. My main desktop wasn’t really that powerful, and I had a lot of add-ons running in the background. This laptop was supposed to run said add-ons. Since I first bought it, I have made several modifications to it, both in hardware and software. For this review, I have restored it mostly to stock.

Overall view from the front.

The keyboard - the usual chiclet style. This model has the Scandinavian layout

IO on the right

and on the left

The bottom of the case. As you can see, it is Windows 8 Logo Certified. This means UEFI with Secure Boot and a product key inside an MSDM table, which is also located in the UEFI. This laptop comes with Windows 8, but there have been models in the past with Windows 7 Professional.

And here you can see the internals. No screwdriver is required to remove the battery and service door. The RAM is standard DDR3L and can be upgraded up to 16GB. The hard drive is also a standard 2.5" drive and can be swapped for an SSD. Unfortuantely, this laptop only has one 2.5" bay and all screws are Torx T8.

General info

This laptop costs 499 euros. It has been discontinued by HP, but is still available in local stores. It’s a business-grade laptop, which doesn’t mean Windows 8 Pro in this case, but good aluminium construction, less bloatware, and more focus on security. At this price point, you generally find 500GB hard drives, 1366x768 screens and i3 CPUs. This is pretty similar, but with a few differences.

Hardware specs

CPU: AMD A8-4500M (quad core @ 1.9-2.5 GHz)

RAM: 4GB DDR3L @ 1333 MHz, 1.35V

Storage: Hitachi 500GB HDD @ 7200 rpm

Graphics: AMD HD7640G (APU graphics) with 768MB RAM (from system memory)

Display:  15.6” 1366x768 LCD TN

LAN: Realtek Gigabit Ethernet

WLAN: Ralink 802.11a/b/g/n (2.4 GHz only) + Bluetooth 4.0

I/O:

Left: A/C in, VGA, Gigabit Ethernet, HDMI, 2xUSB3

Right: Kensington lock, optical drive (DVD+/-RW, CD-RW, DVD-RAM, Double Layer), 2xUSB2, Headphone + mic

Front: 5-in-1 card reader

Software

This is a Windows 8 laptop. It comes with a full licence of Windows 8 Core OEM, not Core Connected, not Single Language, it’s full Windows 8. Of course, some HP software is installed. This includes drivers, HP Support Assistant, HP Client Security, HP Wireless Hotspot, a trial of MS Office 2013, PDF Complete, and some others. No Norton or McAfee, fortunately. As it comes loaded with Windows 8, the first logical thing to do would be to update to 8.1. Unfortunately, that isn’t that easy. I’ll cover that in the end. Anyway, once I got it on Windows 8.1, it’s a pretty decent laptop actually. The included software doesn’t really get in the way, but Client Security likes to bug you every login that Device Access Manager is available. Speaking of Client Security, that is one of the main problems I had with its software. It’s security software – but not like an antivirus. This thing here is the only way to use the included fingerprint reader (which is actually pretty good). It also includes a password manager, drive encryption software, File Sanitizer (secure deletion), HP SpareKey (security questions for your laptop, in case you can’t log in) and worst of all, Device Access Manager. That last thing will not let you use any removable storage unless you re-type your Windows password or swipe an enrolled finger. This is disabled by default though, but it will be enabled as soon as you set up Client Security.

Performance

I didn’t really expect much from this laptop in terms of performance, and neither should you, but I benchmarked it anyway with PCMark 8 and 3DMark. This isn’t a gaming laptop, and I don’t really own a lot of games, so that’s why no games were included in these benchmarks. I ran the PCMark 8 Home 3.0 and Work 2.0 tests and the 3DMark Cloud Gate benchmark, suitable for this laptop. Here are the results.

PCMark 8:

Home 3.0: 1779

Work 2.0: 2139

3DMark Cloud Gate: 2170

Battery Life

This laptop has a rather large battery – it even sticks out from the bottom. This makes carrying the laptop inconvenient, but is it worth the increase in battery life? Well, not really. Even though it is advertised with an insane 15-hour battery life, there is no way how you will get it. My PCMark 8 Home 3.0 battery life test only got 1481, with an estimated battery life of 5 hours and 21 minutes, which is not bad at all. But it clearly isn’t what they advertised, so some points off here.

Upgrading to Windows 8.1

As this laptop shipped with Windows 8, it can be upgraded for free to Windows 8.1. However, it’s not that easy. HP does provide some documentation, but all that tells you is to check for compatibility and to go to the Windows Store to update. It tells you nothing about the real problem: Drive Encryption. HP Client Security heavily persuades you to encrypt your hard drive, but that is the main reason why the 8.1 upgrade has always failed on me. The decryption takes a long time too, and most people wouldn’t be bothered to do it. So if you buy this laptop, don’t encrypt the drive until you are on Windows 8.1

Conclusion

This is mostly an average laptop. Its pros would be the metal construction, good security software, and lack of bloatware, for the most part, and performance – the AMD APU’s graphics are much better than your average HD4400. The cons would be the problems with the temperature sensors – even though the fan is very quiet, the CPU temperature sits around 90C. This is not possible, given that the GPU, which is on the same die, is only at 30C. Also the problems that occur when upgrading to Windows 8.1 could be considered cons. Overall, this laptop gets a rating of 3/5 – not exceptionally good, but not bad either.