Hp 2018 Elitebook 840 G1 14 Hd Review

At a Glance

Expert's Rating

Pros

• Sedately fashionable
• Good functioning
• Extremely easy to service

Cons

• Slippery eraser-head tracking stick
• It'due south a fingerprint magnet

Our Verdict

The HP EliteBook 840 G1 has down-to-concern looks, a slap-up design, robust performance, and all the right options for a concern laptop. Just yous should try its eraser-head cursor control before y'all buy.

Sometimes it's clear from the very offset expect that a laptop'south designers understand their market. The HP EliteBook 840 G1 is calmly handsome in a way that will appeal to business users. It's also rugged, fast, ergonomically sound, and a cakewalk to upgrade and repair. If you lot work in an office, you'll like information technology—unless you're an eraser-caput fan.

The EliteBook 840 G1 is styled in silver and gray, with a matte top surface that looks nice when information technology's clean, but that readily shows fingerprints. Keep a wipe cloth handy if you care nearly such things. The chassis is magnesium and the keyboard is made from aluminum, making the unit tougher than most and endowing it with a sturdy feel. HP says the laptop has passed a number of MIL-STD 810G tests, including driblet, dust incursion, and vibration.

The 840 G1 is past far the easiest laptop to repair and upgrade that I've ever used. Flip the unit over, unlock the latch, slide the lesser service cover off, and yous have direct access to everything: hard drive, memory, battery, Wi-Fi, RTC/CMOS battery, and the wireless WAN slot. Information technology types who spend a lot of time repairing laptops exist warned—examining the 840 G1 might make you giddy.

HP'southward EliteBook 840 G1 is supremely piece of cake to service and upgrade.

The keyboard deck design is minimalist. Aside from the keyboard and touchpad, at that place'due south only a power button (in plain sight!) and Wi-Fi and audio on/off switches. Clean. Overnice.

HP delivers non-touch 840 G1s with a matte brandish surrounded by a largish flat-black bezel, rather than the glare-prone, glossy setups that many consumer models utilize. Matte doesn't look quite as squeamish, but it's a scrap easier on the middle. Yous can order yours in either 1366 by 768 or 1600 by 900 flavors (nosotros reviewed the old). A touchscreen is also available, although—like most—it's very reflective.

I was impressed with the 840 G1's keyboard. The short-throw keys provide simply decent tactile feedback when typed lightly, but scooted up against the magnesium chassis, you get a nice bounce and excellent aural feedback when you lot utilize more than force. The touchpad is silky and HP provides two sets of buttons, 1 higher up the touchpad for when you're typing, and one below for when you're using the pad for navigation.

Equally I mentioned before, this laptop's eraser-head track stick is its one truly sour ergonomic note. HP persists in rendering it from a slippery material that even with a pebbled and concave top allows your finger to slip off. It'south an uneasy feeling and a brain-dead moment in an otherwise well idea-out laptop.

We've updated our benchmark suite and picked a new reference laptop. The EliteBook 840 G1'south Laptop WorldBench ix score of 64, which is right in line with our expectations.

The 840 G1 has ports aplenty: Ii USB 3.0 ports (one provides always-on charging), a legacy VGA port, and a smart menu slot on the left side. A headset jack, two more USB 3.0 ports, a full-sized DisplayPort, a super-slim docking port, and a drop-jaw gigabit ethernet port on the correct side. Drop-jaw ways that the lower portion expands to accept an RJ-45 connector, then contracts to near the top of a USB port when you unplug the cable. The bottom has a port to connect with the auxiliary battery slice.

Our exam unit, priced at $1064, sported an Intel Core i5-4200U CPU, 4GB of DDR3/1600 retention, and a 180GB Intel SSD (SSDSC2BF180A4H). Information technology besides has a 720p webcam bordered by dual-array microphones and Bluetooth 4.0 wireless connectivty. Wi-Fi was limited to 802.11 a/b/g/north, with 802.11ac bachelor equally an upgrade. You can likewise add together features such as vPro support, TPM (Trusted Platform Module), biometrics, larger hard drives, and so on, which will boost that price tag.

The EliteBook 840 G1 delivered a respectable 5 hours and 36 minutes of life using its standard battery.

The laptop garnered a laptop WorldBench 9 score of 64, which is right around where a Core i5 laptop with an SSD should sit. Annotation that WorldBench 9 scores will be significantly lower than those for WorldBench 8.i, because our new laptop baseline is a Dell XPS fifteen with an Intel Cadre i7-4702HQ CPU, 16GB of DDR3/1600 memory, and a 500GB SSD.

The EliteBook 840 G1 weighs in at 3.48 pounds. An optional 5400 mAh battery slice adds some other 1.35 pounds and a half-inch of thickness, just information technology more than doubles the laptop's usable life away from an electric outlet from a respectable v hours 36 minutes to a whopping 12 hours 47 minutes.

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This optional bombardment fits to the EliteBook 840'south lesser and more than than doubles the time you can use information technology away from an Air-conditioning outlet.

Given the lack of a discrete GPU, the 840 G1's mediocre gaming scores were expected. The Intel HD 4400 graphics doesn't cutting it for most top-shelf games by 800 past 600 resolution, although it managed simply over 30 frames per 2nd on Grid 2 at 1024 by 768.

Video at 1080p resolution played smoothly as you could wish, and the audio through the speakers was quite nice thanks to the DTS Studio Sound enhancement utility. At least when movies were playing. With the organisation sounds, there seemed to be a bit of distortion. Through headphones at normal book levels, everything is sonically hunky-dory.

What a departure a detached GPU makes: Integrated graphics are fine for virtually business apps, only they yet suck when it comes to games.

Our Elitebook 840 G1 came with only a one-year warranty, but in that location are a variety of more than reassuring plans bachelor upwardly to 5-years with gratuitous pickup for approximately $400.

HP touts its Sure Start self-healing BIOS, which is basically a backup of the BIOS that can exist restored in if the BIOS is corrupted past malware. Motherboard vendors such as Gigabyte have been using a similar scheme for years. At that place'southward also a software component called Trust Circles which is secure group content sharing.

Approximately 18 months passed between the release of the 840 G1 and it'due south 8470 predecessor, which is a decent lifespan. HP promises to go along parts on hand for at to the lowest degree five years.

The 840 G1 has distinguished, become-downwards-to-business looks, a great design, robust performance and all the correct corporate options. My but caveat is that if an eraser-head is your preferred cursor-control tool, be sure you lot endeavour earlier you buy.

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Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/443925/hp-elitebook-840-g1-review-a-gem-of-a-business-laptop.html